A Far Out Fantastic Site

(Credit for above image: Pixabay.com) You're probably surprised to see a post here after I had said that I'm taking today off from blogging and would be back with another post next week. Well, at the last minute, I switched my day off to next Monday. I knew you'd be expecting the print edition of "The Trespassers", my new short-read of alien terror, to release by the weekend. As you probably noticed, it didn't release. I wanted to explain the reason for the delay: I haven't released the print version yet because I had forgotten all about having to look over a proof of it.   Before I release "Trespassers" as a print book or paperback, I have to look at a proof, or unofficial sample copy, of it. I don't want to leave anybody with a badly printed and formatted book and so I want to look at it before making it available for purchase anywhere. I have to order the proof which will probably take at least three days to reach me by mail.  So, it may b...

Credit: Pixabay I'm running late with the October issue of my author’s newsletter, “Night Creatures’ Call”. I've been loaded with getting the short story collection, "Bad Apps", together. I meant to release the collection this month but am going to have to push it to next month or maybe even December. There are still several more stories for it to put through critique and revise and I want to do a beta release of it as well. But it hasn't been so much the book that has put me behind in this month’s newsletter than myself.  October’s Issue of ‘Night Creatures’ Call’ I purposefully put off this month’s newsletter because I want to include in it an offer for a free book that I’ve already had out. But to do that, I have to publish the book to Smashwords because Amazon won’t let you offer discounts or free books if you don’t participate in their Kindle Select program in which I no longer participate. In order to participate in it you can’t have your books at Smashwords...

Credit: Pixabay.com Halloween’s come and gone again, but the horror and fun haven’t ended. Now we’re in the month of NaNoWriMo in which I’ve been working on my novella for. Also, there’s upcoming horror films and comics. That said, in this post I have a comic book review for you and Lightning News Flashes   covering a sci fi horror movie and the state of science fiction short stories. Working on My Novella for NaNoWriMo  For NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I’ve been revising my sci fi horror novella that I wrote during the NaNoWriMo of a few years back. I kind of put it on hiatus back in October to concentrate on promoting the print edition of “The Boo Brothers”, now available at Amazon , and the Halloween book sale  which I hope you had a chance to check out before it ended. So now it’s back to revising the novella, which so far I’ve titled Invasion of the Avatars . I just finished writing out the details of the game for Avatars . No, the...

It’s the third weekend of the month and so it’s time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. If you’ve read Ray Bradbury's short science fiction story, "A Sound of Thunder", the 2005 movie adaptation of the same name may strike you as a continuation of where the former left off. That's not to say that director Peter Hyams and the movie’s screenwriters may as well had made it a cinematic sequel to the short story instead of a direct adaptation. The movie does a great job staying true to the basic elements of this short story about time travel. However, the plot is further developed extending beyond where the short story ends. Why shouldn’t it? It has to fulfill a two-hour feature film based on a tale that can be read in less than fifteen minutes. ‘A Sound of Thunder’, the Short Story Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is about a hunting expedition in the future that travel...

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Radio-Science Publications I just started reading Larry Niven’s novel from the ‘70s, Protector , and so far it’s been really grabbing and thought-provoking. I’ve been reading a lot more novels for about the past two years even though I’m more a short story person both as reader and writer. Over all, short fiction isn’t as well-received as it was in the earlier half of the 20 th century. It may be better received in the sci fi and fantasy genres than it is in other genres such as mainstream. But even among speculative fiction for the last decade or so, the short story has been dwarfed in popularity by larger works. Until now. The literary market is beginning to lean towards shorter works again. The Short Story Returned For the past year, media and literary organizations have been reporting on the return of the short story. Sources everywhere from the New York Public Library to Writers Digest have been indicating this. What has made th...

(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 ...

Image Credit: PDClipart.org I said last post  that I would have an article about outdated science fiction here. I was working on it this afternoon but discovered that it was going to take a little more work than I had anticipated. So I decided to postpone it to next week. But I thought I would give you some updates on other things that are happening in science fiction and horror. Preview of Coming Attractions “Outdated” Sci Fi : I already mentioned my article on outdated science fiction. It will talk about how older sci fi that seems not to live up to today is really not outdated and why. InterGalactic Expo [ link ]: If you’re in or near the Sacramento area, InterGalactic Expo is next weekend. This con is basically the reincarnation or, perhaps to use a better metaphor, the transformation of the past two years’ May the Forth Be With You event, only bigger and better. Why the change in name? Basically because this “ Star Wars ” con has occurred on May 4 th ...

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Although I’m not superstitious and, like Ben Kenobi in Star Wars , I don’t believe there’s such a thing as luck, you might consider this your unlucky day because I don’t have time to put a lot in this post on this Friday the 13 th . I’ve been very busy with my writing projects and getting ready for upcoming events, one which was yesterday evening at the Crocker Art Museum here in Sacramento . It was called Art Mix: Cirque--a carnivalesque, French style, circus-themed event. Not your average childhood circus. It wasn’t bad. In hopes of being able to promote my book of short stories, The Fool’s Illusion , because it went with the theme of the event, I decided to dig up some of my extra promo bookmarks which I still had to cut out and do so in a hurry because the idea came to me at the last minute. However, I decided not to leave any book marks there because the area where the staff told me I could put them didn’t seem to attract very much traffi...

I apologize for not posting for the past two weeks. My schedule has been filled up with more client projects than before and I’m just learning the details of a new platform I’m doing freelance blogging for (not my own blogging, but clients’). I’m trying to get things settled with these projects so I can go back to posting here once a week again. The first month of a new year has just flown by! Can you believe it? I said in my last blog post that I would have a list of my New Year’s resolutions for writing and so you’ll find it below. But I think I would like to look back on key points from last year before looking ahead, which is partly what New Year’s is about: looking back so you can look ahead to see what you can do better. And so it goes along with the Roman myth of Janus, the god with two faces: one face looks forward while the other looks back. Looking Back At 2014 2014 was a great year. Besides selling several copies of The Fool’s Illusion , I sold my first one ...

I was going to write a New Year’s resolutions post but I got too far behind in my other writing projects during the holidays. It would take a while to explain the resolutions I have planned for this New Year of 2015. I fell behind on several things including my most current short story I’ve been working on which was supposed to be completed, including revisions, by the last day of 2014. After that I would still have to distribute it to my critique group as my beta audience. But I wanted to start the year with a new post so even though I’ll make this post short I’ll tell you what I did for the holidays. Christmas Eve day I worked on the above short story. I admit that I’m a slow writer. Not everybody writes at the same pace like not everyone walks or talks at the same pace. But that evening I went to a couple relatives’ houses to celebrate. Christmas Day, I went to church (Mass as us Catholics call it). In the evening I went to my aunt’s for dinner where we opened gifts. One of my ...

How would you like this bird for Thanksgiving dinner? It will probably have you first. Photo Credit: PDClipart.org This post is going to be mostly a list of highlights of what’s been happening with me during the week, so don’t be surprised if you don’t find a unifying theme. Speaking of which . . . I just started planning my new short story collection. Unlike with a novel, which consists of one main story arc, it’s hard to plan a book of short stories if you’re basing it on several different stories that you hadn’t necessarily intend to include in a collection. I rarely write my short fiction with a theme in mind for a larger work. So, when I plan a book to include my stories in, I have to look for a common theme that runs through several of them. Besides that, I need to make sure the theme runs through enough of my stories to total a sufficient number of pages to make self-publishing the book worthwhile.  When I finally have a theme and if only a small number of storie...

As I said, here's a Halloween treat of terror just for you! It's the short horror story I was talking about in yesterday's post . As I also said, it was especially written for tweens and young adults but I think grown adults may enjoy it too. Let me know what you think of it in the box below. Take scare and Happy Halloween! The Boos Brothers By Steven Rose, Jr. Photo credit: PDClipart.org Jerry thought it would be neat to steal one of the silky cloth ghosts or cardboard decorations that hung in the old Victorian mansion’s porch each Halloween. All of them were more real looking than ones he and Roy had seen in any store. This included size. Some of the figures were taller than Jerry who was five-foot-seven-inches. That was pretty tall for an 11 year old boy.  Jerry wanted to scare Melissa Collins and her friends with one of the figures from the porch when the girls would trick-or-treat later that night. Both he and Roy hated Melissa and her frien...

It's a new year and a new year calls for a new template and background for a blog. I was looking through what seemed like hundreds of templates and I'll be be looking through hundreds more before I select one because I am very choosy about my blog's appearance. But you'll see a new look in the next week or two, maybe even three. Speaking about a new year, as late as I'm running with my book, The Fool's Illusion ,   it's a great time to put out a new book. I'm coming near to the composing of it. The stories are written, I just have to get them together in one manuscript. I'm presently working on the introduction. If you want a pre-introduction , if you will, you can read one with a free excerpt of the title story at HorrorAddicts .net .  That will give you the perfect sneak peek to the book. If you want even more of a sneak peek, go to my other posts here at the Fantastic site for two whole, free stories--" The Puppet Show " and " The...

Here's my final concept sketch of the cover illustration for The Fool's Illusion with the lettering. Thanks to those people who gave me their feedback so far, much of it very positive (including Facebook likes). Feel free to give me feedback on this finished version in the comments box below. Again, never mind the Linux Penguin in the background, that's Larry Ewing's that accidently got in there. (Please see last week's post .) I'm aware of the title coming too close to the right edge. I will center it correctly on the final drawing, of course. I may move the byline (my name) closer to the title since it appears to be too isolated from it. Because the title looks to be drowned out a little by the illustration, I may enlarge it or may move it closer to the illustration. Again, please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments box. Please include any of your own personal suggestions you may have. It doesn't mean I'll use them, but I would...

Hi, everybody. Last weekend I said I would have at least an excerpt of my ghost story posted here. Only a couple minutes ago I was going to post an excerpt, but when I looked over the story it was still too much of a mess to show anybody. It's very short so I thought it would be better if I the just post the whole thing next weekend when it's all cleaned up. I've been revising an article of an interview I did with an editor of an online literary magazine called The Horror Zine. That's right, it's entitled exactly what it is. And there's a story behind how the founder and editor, Jeani Rector, named it in the article which I hope to have up at Examiner.com by the middle of next week. So keep checking back at my sci fi news page there and I'll definitely let you know in next weekend's blog post whether I have the article up yet. But It was a real pleasure to interview Miss Rector; she's a very interesting, very hardworking and very nice person. Yo...

Warning: Contains material that some readers may consider offensive and/or objectionable. Hey, everybody! I told you I would have Part Two to my short story that I posted for you the last time and so I do! I hope you're enjoying it. If you missed that one, you can read it here . If you want to read more of my short fiction I may be posting some in a blog at HorrorAddicts.net 's very first online horror con which will occur in November. I'll try to update you on this con as much as possible, but you can also go to HorrorAddicts.net yourself for updates if you'd like. And while you're at it, you may as well read some of the interesting blog entries by other bloggers there who have a lot of neat things to say about the dark genres of literature, film, television, music and in some cases even video games! Speaking about video games, there are also a few music videos there. Many of these are of music genres such as dark alternative rock, goth metal, and even some horror...