A Far Out Fantastic Site

Photo Credit: The Horror Zine To close Women in Horror Month, I’ve asked editor and author Jeani Rector to be my guest blogger for this post. Jeani is the founding editor of the online literary journal, The Horror Zine . Her latest novel is Grave Events  which released last September. She was elected Best Magazine/e-zine Editor by Preditors & Editors three times: once in 2012, again in 2013 and then in 2014. I’m proud to say she is a fellow Sacramentan and so resides in the Sacramento area. Jeani presents us here with a very intriguing article that breaks the stereotype of horror as a man’s genre. And now heeeere’s Jeani . . . ! ------------- WOMEN IN HORROR by Jeani Rector, Editor The Horror Zine http://www.thehorrorzine.com “What’s a nice girl like you doing editing and writing horror?” This is the reaction from some when I explain what I do. “Women in horror” is a difficult concept for some. We are perceived as more submissive than men, an...

February is Women In Horror month and that includes female authors of fear. Most of what I’ve been reading in celebration of this month has been short stories that fall into the science fiction category but they also overlap with the horror one. Many of them contain mutant monsters and psychotic killers. These five stories come from either of two anthologies that I checked out at the library several weeks ago (and renewed recently). And so here is . . . A List of Female Authors’ Fear Stories One of the stories is by Octavia Butler and comes from a book entitled Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse , edited by John Joseph Adams. The term “zombie” has almost become the equivalent of “apocalypse” in a lot today’s sci fi and horror. However, I’m not sure if there are any zombie stories in this book since I’ve only read two contributions so far. But, sorry zombie fans, the Butler story is not a zombie one but is still a good one.  Butler’s story is called “Speech Sounds” and i...

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 ...

Happy Hallow-Days, Every Body! Credit: OpenClipart.org We’re only days away from Christmas and I haven’t even got all my cards out or shopping done. (Sound familiar?) Although I do have all my decorating done, including my Haunted Holiday Mansion scene. No doubt this is the busiest time of the year and you don’t have to be Santa Claus to feel it; I’ve been feeling the stress of it all week. Some of that stress is coming from trying to choose a charity to donate to for this holiday season. I wrote to one nonprofit organisation based here in Sacramento about donating some comic books to its literacy program for kids. It’s called 916 Ink .  They have a big comic book writing workshop program there for the youth they serves. 916 Ink provides creative writing classes for these kids to help improve youth literacy. They even compile the kids’ writing into anthologies they publish and sell in which the proceeds go to the program. Well I wrote to the program and offe...

I apologise for skipping last week’s blog post. I’ve been trying to post a minimum of once a week. But because last week was Thanksgiving it got really busy with the usual holiday stuff (including that stuff called stuffing): Family gatherings, festive meals, and long visits. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I did, with the exception that my aunt’s black cat got into the pumpkin pie and ate a hole near the middle and down to the bottom of the pan making it into a pumpkin donut pie! And no, I don’t take that as proof that black cats are bad luck, nor is my aunt a witch (though she dressed as one at Halloween). But so what if she were? In fact, I think black cats are one of the nicest looking breeds on the planet and may adopt one myself one day. Credit: PDClipart.org I didn’t get as much writing done as I wanted to, as much as I love my parents staying over during holidays. It’s a little tougher to work on my projects when relatives are here since my flat isn’t ve...

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...