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: Deadly Friend
Actually, I’d wanted to write a post on one of my all-time favorite dumb guilty pleasures, Deadly Blessing. But my old VHS tape had long since gone the way of Goodwill, and DVD versions were no longer available. (Good news: they’re reissuing it in DVD and Blu-Ray next...
Writer’s Block—What’s That?
Okay, I don’t mean to belittle a malady that is prevalent among so many writers. It’s just that I’ve never had writer’s block. I mean, never. Not ever. I will admit that there were periods when life got in the way big time, and accordingly I just stopped writing. But...
The Big Five-O!
No, this post is not about a cop show in Hawaii, and it’s definitely not about me approaching a significant birthday. OH, I WISH! I passed that particular milestone a long, long time ago and just kept on truckin’. So what is this all about? Well, I started this blog,...
Alien, Aliens—And Even More Aliens: Part Two
The last post addressed two cross-genre, sci-fi/horror classics, Alien and Aliens. Trust me, the praise will not be as effusive for Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection. Still, they’re part of the quadrilogy and deserve some thoughts, so here goes. Keep in mind that the...
Alien, Aliens—And Even More Aliens: Part One
The four-film Alien series—the ones with Sigourney Weaver—easily merits a couple of posts. And yes, I know that there were scads of later movies—Alien vs. Predator; Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem; Alien vs. Care Bears, etc.—but those don’t count. (Okay, I’m pulling your...
Guilty Pleasures: Bats
Okay, a confession: of all the things that creep, crawl, fly, slither, swim, burrow, or move around by means of propulsion other than two legs, the ones that weird me out more than anything else and cause nightmares are—bats. Go figure. It’s not like we had a barn...
Psycho Memories
Until Field of Dreams hit the screen in 1989, my number one favorite movie was Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror flick, Psycho. That was a long run of twenty-nine years, Psycho having been released in 1960. A lot of great movies over the last two decades have pushed...
Searching For January
“Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin’s-egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the veranda of my farm home in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, ‘If you build it, he will come.’” These words...
So Glad I Did It
Last month I wrote a post titled "Celebrating a Friend" in which I shared some thoughts and feelings about mystery writer and good friend, Jeff Sherratt. At the time Jeff was quite ill, and I wanted to make sure that he, above anyone else, read those words. Among...
Guilty Pleasures: Anacondas
Wait, what? Hey Mike, didn’t you write about this film already? Nope, this one is Anacondas, plural. This 2004 film has a whole lot more of the slithering creatures than the first one did. (Anaconda had two, so technically it could’ve been called Anacondas, but…oh,...
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