A Far Out Fantastic Site

Finally, I’ve received the final product of the cover art for my short-read book, "The Trespassers"! So, I have a cover reveal for you today! However, this is only the illustration, not the full cover. I have not added the title or author’s name yet. I’ll be doing that during the week. I'm trying to get this book out as soon as possible and so I didn’t add the text to the cover for today’s reveal. If several of you would prefer the full cover reveal with the text included, then let me know in the comments box below and I’ll try to provide that at my Facebook and Instagram pages. For now, here's the completed illustration for "The Trespassers" book cover along with the new synopsis (blurb) that I shared with you last week: “The Trespassers"  After crash-landing on a desert planet, astronaut and forensic anthropologist Gav Torres becomes separated from the rest of his expedition. He soon enough reunites with everybody except one person: his fiancé, Shelle...

Credit: Pixabay I’m admitting it straight out: I hate John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. I always have. This remake of the 1950s original, which bears the slightly different title of “The Thing From Another World”, is based on John Campbell Jr.’s sci fi horror novella, “Who Goes There?” . Carpenter’s movie came across to me as more gore exploitation than anything. Regardless of that, I liked the movie’s promo poster.  I first saw this poster in the summer of 1982, when the movie released. I was 11-going-on-12 and with my parents and younger brother travelling around the Los Angeles area (we had just moved to Fresno). The poster depicted a monstrous, shadowed out, humanoid figure, beams of cold white light seeming to radiate from the center of its face, set against a dark arctic background. This poster was all over Los Angeles: on the benches of the bus stops, on the freeway billboards, and definitely on buildings throughout its place of production, Universal Studios (which my b...

(Updated 7/11/15) Happy Fourth of July, everybody! Since it's a day to celebrate freedom and independence, including the freedom and independence to be the artists and art lovers that we want and also write and read what we want, I'm going to keep this post a little shorter than usual. However, I did say a while back that I would share concept art for the cover to my next book of short stories, tentatively titled The Hidden . So here it is (Click on it to enlarge). Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. I'm thinking about using  red and black as  the main colours. However, because the wall that the girl is standing against is supposed to be shadowed, I may make that blue in a tone that complements the red or mediates between the red and black. I'm not sure if I want to leave the club in her hand or give her a knife instead. I'm strongly considering the knife since it's more iconic of the horror genre which several of the stories in this book will be of ...

A Little on Character Development This week I’ve been trying to work character development into my latest short story that I used as an example for last week’s post onworld-building . For me, character is much easier to develop in a profile than working traits of that profile into the story itself. It makes a person ask the question what is more important, the character influencing the story or the story (the events within) influencing the character? (Much like what came first, the vulture or the egg?) What do you think, fellow writers out there? Please feel free to leave your answers in the box at the end. On Joe Hill I’ve been reading Joe Hill’s collection of short stories, 20 th Century Ghosts . I checked it out at the library a couple weeks ago, intending to only read one or two stories; so far I’m on a third. His stories are great, although if you want to read him for his horror fiction you may be a little disappointed with some of the stories, since, as the writer o...

I didn’t finish the science fiction art for “ The Assassin ”   in time for when I posted the story early last month. If you haven’t read it yet, you should check it out. It’s still up and, of course, it’s free! I’m just now posting the illustration here this evening. I’m not replacing it for the clip art (which is not mine) I provided the story with because it isn’t really complete to serve as an illustration. In other words, I screwed up on it. And here's how: This pen and ink drawing for “The Assassin” is supposed to be of a laser gun in semi atom age/space age, 1950s style. This style is what we now call atom punk for newer work based on the sci fi of that period (roughly the 1950s through mid ‘60s, but it’s often debatable). Most of this subgenre of science fiction is based on the idea of an alternative history (also referred to as "alternative timeline") which my story involves. To learn more about this far out subgenre, check out author Philip Ree...