Swords, Specters, & Stuff
Welcome to My World
I started this blog in January 2012 for one simple reason: I love to write. I named it “Swords, Specters, & Stuff” because I especially love to write about writing, about books and movies in my favorite genres, about authors that mean a great deal to me. But there’s more to it than that, which is why I included “Stuff” in the title. It is “Stuff” that gives me carte blanche to write about anything, which is why you’ll see stories about special trips to Cooperstown, Sedona, and other places; about getting older; about baseball; about the otherworldly way in which I met my soul mate; about the loss of good friends, and so much more. Enjoy! And feel free to leave a comment.
Guilty Pleasures: Conan The Barbarian
The thundering drums from Basil Poledouris’s awesome score tell me that, for perhaps the hundredth time, I’m about to immerse myself in the 1982 screen exploits of author Robert E. Howard’s most famous character, Conan the Barbarian. What can I say? I love this film,...
Ray Bradbury: “Everyone Must Leave Something Behind…”
For many years now, Ray Bradbury was often referred to as “the world’s greatest living science fiction writer.” Not many people would dispute that statement. Sadly, this giant of science fiction and fantasy passed away earlier in the week at the age of ninety-one. But...
Otis Adelbert Kline: Who’s He?
Since I’ve spent the last two posts on my favorite and most inspirational writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, I decided to continue that theme with a story about a less famous author, Otis Adelbert Kline. What does one have to do with the other? Readers of the science...
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Master Of Lost Worlds
In my last post I noted that Edgar Rice Burroughs was the single greatest source of inspiration for both my love of reading and my own writing career. With the recent re-release of the first book I ever wrote, The Master of Boranga—which had the Burroughs stamp all...
Thank You, Edgar Rice Burroughs
In the 1980s I published a sword & sorcery novel titled, The Twentieth Son of Ornon (reissued earlier this year as The Sons of Ornon). It might have been my tenth or eleventh published book at the time; I’m not sure. More important was the dedication/author’s note...
So Glad Shoeless Joe Came To Iowa
It began as a short story by Canadian author W.P. Kinsella in an anthology of baseball stories titled, Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa. Later on, Kinsella expanded the story into a novel called, simply, Shoeless Joe. Most all of us know it as Field of Dreams, the...
The Modocs: Reality And Myth
Of my four horror novels, three are steeped in Native American culture and mythology. More specifically, the Native Americans that I chose to write about are among California’s indigenous people. Why? First, there has been a book or two (or a gazillion) written about...
A Dog Story With A Ghostly Ending
As a writer I don’t often use the old cliché, “Love at first sight.” But that’s what happened the first time I saw Barney. This runty German shepherd, about two months old at the time, sat by himself in a large cage inside an Indianapolis pet shop. There were other...
Scaring People: A Few More Thoughts
In an earlier post, “Horrors! Or How to Scare the ‘Yell’ Out of People,” I wrote about the effect of scaring readers and film watchers with subtle horror, rather than in-your-face buckets of blood, entrails, oozing brains, various and sundry dismembered body parts—you...
Guilty Pleasures: Eight Legged Freaks
Let's talk about guilty pleasures. The term itself relates to something that a person enjoys despite feeling guilty for enjoying it. Where does the guilt come in? From worrying about what others might think about one’s tastes, maybe seeing you as a real lowbrow, or an...
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