by mike | Oct 5, 2020 | Death, Horror, Myths & Legends, Nightmares, Uncategorized |
When Wes Craven, the late film director, needed source material for his 1977 horror classic, The Hills Have Eyes, he turned to a story that combined truth and possibly fiction. An easy choice: he referenced the legend of Sawney Bean. For those who are not aficionados...
by mike | Sep 28, 2020 | Books, Editing, Research, Uncategorized, Writers' Conferences, Writers' Retreat, Writing |
Yes, I mean that literally…but not in a nasty way. Quite the opposite. I’ve written over two dozen novels and countless stories, articles, blog posts, etc., and there has been one consistency over the decades that I’ve been engaged in this: I do my best preliminary...
by mike | Sep 21, 2020 | Aging, Baseball, California, Death, Life, Uncategorized, Writing |
Day 11,587 of the Coronavirus Pandemic (give or take): feels like it anyway, right? We all want it to be over, but the reality is that the blasted thing will likely be around for a long time to come. We’ll just have to deal with it as best we can. Meanwhile, 200,000...
by mike | Sep 14, 2020 | Aging, Death, Fantasy, Movies, Thrillers, TV Shows, Uncategorized |
British actress Diana Rigg passed away last week at the age of 82 from cancer. She had a long and successful award-winning career in theater, film, and television. But her most iconic role—at least for us older folks—was that of Emma Peel, the kick-ass government...
by mike | Sep 7, 2020 | Creature Features, Disaster Movies, Horror, Horror Movies, Monster Movies, Movies, Thrillers, Uncategorized |
The 2019 creature feature/disaster flick, Crawl, is an anomaly. It did well at the box office, which is not that odd for the genre. But it also garnered its share of excellent reviews, compiling 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that doesn’t usually happen for creature...
by mike | Aug 31, 2020 | Curious Possessions, Myths & Legends, Travel, Uncategorized |
When my bride and I returned from an amazing trip to Iceland over a decade ago, we brought home the studious troll you see pictured here. Icelanders love their trolls (and elves, too) and are happy to point some of them out to visitors—the ones that have been turned...
