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 | May 14, 2012 | Books, California, Horror, Native Americans, Research, Writing |
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...
by mike | May 4, 2012 | Books, California, Horror, Nightmares, Science Fiction, Writing |
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...
by mike | May 1, 2012 | Books, Horror, Horror Movies, Research, Sword & Planet, Writing |
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...
by mike | Apr 18, 2012 | Books, Fantasy, Horror, Nightmares, Research, Sword & Planet, Sword & Sorcery, Writing |
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...
by mike | Apr 13, 2012 | Books, Research, Writers' Retreat, Writing |
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...
