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.
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...
Unpleasant Dreams: The Curse Of Creativity
What’s the deal? A guy who writes horror, fantasy and other weird stuff thinking that creativity is a curse? To be honest—no, not the majority of the time. My brain is almost always swirling with new plots, unique characters, exotic settings and such, and for the most...
Nightmare In New Jersey
Next week, when I facilitate workshops at the Hunt Country Writers’ Retreat in Virginia, I will finally get to meet Ken Kraus for the first time. Ken is a New Jersey-based writer of speculative fiction, and while I’ve worked with him on and off for years as his editor...
The First Time
What? No, this isn’t about THAT first time. This blog is about writers, and writing, and fantasy, and horror, and stuff like that. Besides, that would be telling. This is about the first time I wrote a novel, and since I’ve written over thirty of them, I had to take a...
The Whole Wide World: Cross Plains Revisited
Who knew? While writing a recent post about Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and the acknowledged “father” of Sword & Sorcery, I did research to make sure some of my facts were correct. I discovered that a movie had been made about a portion of his short...
“She Wouldn’t Even Harm A Fly”
Horror fans in particular, and movie buffs in general, probably know that line well. Actually, it’s a part of the last line from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film, Psycho. Norman Bates, played so creepily by Anthony Perkins, has been taken down—wig, dress, and...
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