by mike | Mar 18, 2019 | Books, Creature Features, Films About Writers, Horror, Horror Movies, Humor, Movies, Research, Uncategorized |
Bestselling horror novelist Malcolm Page is on his way to Snake Island—which is also the title of this 2002 creature feature—to gather material for his next book. The other tourists and crew on this African river cruise are in awe of the guy; one crew member has...
by mike | Mar 11, 2019 | Baseball, California, Fantasy, Research, Uncategorized |
I’m old enough to have watched the original Twilight Zone series when it was new. It ran for five seasons, from 1959 to 1964, and was one of my favorite shows. Thanks to Netflix I’ve been watching it once again, and having just started the second season, I’ve got a...
by mike | Feb 28, 2019 | Books, Bookstores, Films About Books, Horror, Horror Movies, Movies, Psychological Thrillers, Research, Thrillers, Uncategorized |
This was the first post in my long-running series, “Films About Books.” It first ran in 2015. BY THE DEVIL’S HAND Roman Polanski’s eerie 1999 thriller, The Ninth Gate, opens with an old guy named Andrew Telfer hanging himself in his library amid shelves crammed with...
by mike | Jan 21, 2019 | Books, California, Editing, Historical Novels, Native Americans, Nightmares, Non-Fiction, Research, Uncategorized, Writing |
When writing historical novels based on true events, the challenge is to not make the scenes read like dry, academic research for a thesis. My award-winning historical novel, Stone Woman: Winema and the Modocs, offers many examples of how (hopefully) not to bore...
by mike | Dec 13, 2018 | Films About Writers, Movies, Research, Sports Movies, Uncategorized, Writing |
This is a compelling film that I first wrote about in 2015. Not a whole lot of folks saw the sports drama, Resurrecting the Champ—“inspired by a true story”—during its short theatrical run in 2007.That’s too bad, because it is an excellent film, and Samuel L....
by mike | Nov 1, 2018 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Read & Critique, Research, Uncategorized, Writers' Conferences, Writing |
Here is a point that I always made clear to my writers. I first presented this post in 2015. Back in my salad days, when I took on just about any writer who had a pulse, I worked with a woman from the Midwest—let’s call her Helen—who had written, according to her,...
