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.
Throwback Thursday: Writing Humor—It Doesn’t All Have To Be Funny
I’ve learned a lot in life through trial and error, or by accident. More specifically, this can be applied to writing. We could say, in paraphrasing a familiar adage: To err is divine.
A Grand (Canyon) Mystery
Did the newlywed couple drown in the river and get washed out to sea? Were they murdered? Or did aliens abduct them right out of their boat? Nearly ninety years after Bessie and Glen Hyde set off down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, their disappearance remains shrouded in mystery.
Throwback Thursday: Guilty Pleasures—Cat People
You might feel a bit…well, sleazy watching this 1982 “erotic remake” of the 1942 movie that bore the same title but, understandably, had way less sex and violence. I suppose that would qualify it as a guilty pleasure. But even though it wasn’t a box office smash, CAT PEOPLE is a dandy horror flick that garnered mostly positive reviews, including a great one from the late Roger Ebert.
Remembering Bill Paxton
A fine actor—and, from all I’ve ever heard about him, and even better person—Bill Paxton passed away a little over a month ago at the all-too-young age of sixty-one. A personal favorite of mine, Paxton played in quite a few of the fifty or sixty films that I include in my Top Ten. My way of remembering him is to look back at some of those roles.
Throwback Thursday: Finding The Time—And The Discipline—To Write
Having been a teacher, coach, editor—and, of course, a novelist—for the past couple of centuries, I have heard it all from wanna-be writers about how difficult it is to make themselves sit down and begin writing a book, which at the least should be 70,000 words in length.
Evil Never Dies
I’ve chosen this time to re-run a post from a few years back. Why? Because it seems that EVIL is running rampant, not only around the world, but also in our own country. And if anything, it is getting worse.
Exploring The Planet Of The Apes: Part Four
If Rise of the Planet of the Apes was outstanding, then its sequel was even better. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes received a great deal of critical acclaim (90% on Rotten Tomatoes), and it took in over $700 million at the box office. Not bad for a franchise once thought moribund.
Exploring The Planet Of The Apes: Part Three
After the “craze” died down following BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES in 1973, not a whole lot happened for a long time regarding the series’ return to the big screen. Plans for a remake of the original began in the late ’80s but would wind up in “development hell.”
Exploring The Planet Of The Apes: Part Two
So how did the producers of the first two highly successful Apes films manage to get three more sequels out of the series—especially after the Earth was blown to space debris in the fortieth century at the end of the second movie?
Exploring The Planet Of The Apes: Part One
It began in 1963 as a slim novel, La Planète des Singes, written by Pierre Boulle, a Frenchman. Alternately translated as Monkey Planet or Planet of the Apes, it told the futuristic story of a world turned upside down, a place where apes were the dominant species, while humans had become mindless, speechless beasts. The concept just begged for a Hollywood adaptation, and thus began a film series that is still going strong to this day—the eighth installment scheduled to hit the big screen this summer.
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