A Far Out Fantastic Site

For the ones who voted on the title lettering for my short story collection cover, The Fool's Illusion , I'd like to say thanks.  And for those who haven't voted yet, you have roughly 21 minutes from the time of the writing of this post to vote.  So vote!  How many traditional authors who publish through traditional big name publishing houses let their readers vote on how a book cover should be designed (lettering or otherwise)?  Not many at all.  The great thing about being an indie author who self-publishes is that he/she is free to let their readers participate in the creation process.  And so I'm allowing you to do that in the case of this book. Please take advantage of it. I'll talk about the results of the poll next week and may have a movie review of a rare sci fi horror film too.  Speaking about movies, if you haven't seen Hunger Games yet don't feel bad. Neither have I.  I just haven't had the time to hit the theatre this weekend....

I said several weeks ago that I would post the cover illustration for my book of short fiction that I plan to release in April. Well, I haven't got the cover illustration done yet because I haven't got the lettering for the book's title,  The Fool's Illusion , on the illustration yet. But I do have two sketches of the letter design for the the title which are posted below. Take a look at them and then vote for your favorite at the poll provided in the top right margin. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to finish the lettering for the full title in the second sketch, but hopefully you'll have an idea for the style that I'm using on that one which is '70s psychedelic ("illusion" and "hallucination" come pretty close to being synonymous although they are not). Just so you can fit the letter styles into context a little better, you can read about my upcoming book and an excerpt from the title story at HorrorAddicts .com. Vote soon...

Alien and Prometheus director, Ridley Scott Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Alex Guerrero I haven't posted my article on my interview with Jeani Rector  to Examiner.com yet because she has not returned the draft that I emailed her to review for any errors or misinterpretations. I want to make sure the interview reflects her true answers. I was late on getting the draft to her so I'll follow up with her this Wednesday and try to have it posted next Friday or Saturday. I also mentioned last time that I would write and post an article about a Day of the Triffids remake. That's up at Examiner.com now, so if you haven't read it yet please take a look at it when you get a chance and let me know what you think. I was just typing my revisions to one of my stories for my fiction collection. Unfortunately I'm running behind with it and I think I said that the plan is to have it released in April which is still the plan. However, things do get in the way an...

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...

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Anne Rice I told you that I would publish an article on Ridley Scott's newest films: Prometheus which releases in theatres later this year (I believe summer) and a second Blade Runner movie that's still in the planning stages. I apologise for not publishing the article yet. As is the case with many other writers, I got sidetracked with other projects. Well, I did do an article on Anne Rice's return to writing horror fiction. You can find it at Examiner .com. It is a little outdated in that the article mentions a live interview with Ms. Rice that was broadcasted over Google's YouTube channel the other day (the article was published a day or two before that). However, the video of the interview may still be posted on YouTube.  To tell you the truth, I didn't even get a chance to tune into it myself. But you'll also find all kinds of neat information on Anne Rice in the article. I also mentioned last time that I would ...

(Photo removed for reasons of copyright.) Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons This has been a week with a lot of online talk on Ridley Scott's current projects: Prometheus and a second Blade Runner movie. Prometheus is, what can best be called, a "prequel" to 1979's Alien , although there are some people out there who are not calling it a prequel or sequel. The reason for that is that the movie's storyline simply takes place in the same universe that Alien takes place in. There are no characters from any of the previous  Alien movies (as far as I understand), and that includes the monsters. I was watching the trailor to it yesterday, though, and it seems to be just as intense and as terrifying as the first film. The scenes in the trailor flash by successively and the soundtrack contains that screeching melody like that of the first movie. The movie is due to release this summer. I can hardly wait! I'm in the process of doing an article on the two...

Another busy week. I was all up in the air today almost about everything. I was so undecisive of what I was going to do on this Saturday. I asked myself, "Am I going to go join friends to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 3D and then write a review of it or am I going to go to a video gaming tournament instead so I can write a review on that? And if I decide to see Star Wars , at what theatre and what time will I go see it?" In asking these questions I factored in the financial situation. Well it all lead to backing out on both those plans (though I'll still consider Phantom Menace 3D for another time) but maybe for all unforeseen reasons as opposed to just financial ones: I discovered while searching for a story for my Social Networking column at Examiner.com the most hilarious, eccentric geeky show that I've ever seen. It's a web series called " Smosh ". Not even "Big Bang Theory" could make me laugh anywhere near as this series can. I s...