by mike | Jun 11, 2012 | Books, Bookstores, California, Fantasy, Guilty Pleasures, Movies, Sword & Sorcery, Writing |
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,...
by mike | May 30, 2012 | Adventure fantasy, Books, California, Fantasy, Movies, Science Fiction, Sword & Sorcery, Writing |
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...
by mike | May 24, 2012 | Adventure fantasy, Books, Fantasy, Movies, Science Fiction, Sword & Planet, Writing |
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...
by mike | May 21, 2012 | Books, Fantasy, Magical realism, Movies, Writing |
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...
by mike | Apr 23, 2012 | Guilty Pleasures, Horror, Horror Movies, Movies, Writers' Retreat |
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,...
by mike | Apr 1, 2012 | Books, Fantasy, Horror, Movies, Research, Romance, Sword & Sorcery, Writing |
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...
