As many of you know, I have entered, quite a few time the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers Of The Future Contest. Twice I have gotten an honorable Mention, twice I have gotten a semi-finalist, and many times I have been simply rejected. Continue reading
It’s been a couple of weeks since I purchased a NOOK, in part with early birthday funds from my sweetie-wife, and here are my early thoughts.
I bought a NOOK tablet because I wanted an e-reader with a wider range of capability than what I was getting from my ezreader pro, but I felt I didn’t need to the full functionality of the more expensive iPad, and I think I made the right call.
I downloaded a few public domain texts, transferred ebooks from my Adobe ereader software, moved a few personal files, and subscribed the SF magazines ANALOG and ASIMOV’s as tests for the tablet. I can happily report that in all these tests the NOOK performed quite well and the reading experience was easy and comfortable. The most vexing issues dealt with personal files and learning how to transfer them so they were accessible, once that was achieve they worked fine.
I had missed having subscription to SF magazine, but I detest the way the physical magazine piled up and I was generally loath to throw them out. Having an e-subscription is the perfect solution for me and it was quite pleasurable to be reading new SF authors and shorts. (Though I admit reading some of those stories makes me wonder what’s going on in short story writing these days. I mean, shouldn’t a story be about something?)
The battery life seems quite serviceable, and while the net surfing on it is less that optimal, I did not buy it as a net device, thought it will serve in a pinch.
Over all this has been a pretty good purchase and a nice birthday gift.
Sunday night was the 100th anniversary of the RMS Titanic disaster and I very nearly gave into the idea of re-watching James Cameron’s Titanic as my Sunday Night Movie, but to do so I would have needed start about 8:00 p.m, because Monday morning comes early enough as it is.
Instead I slipped into the Playstation 3 Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece, Alien. Continue reading
Here let me get something of my chest; I HATE the term xenomorph as the proper name for the creature featured in the Alien franchise.
Now I fully sympathize with people in that using the word ‘alien’ as a proper name is clumsy to the point of stupidity. Science-fictions, and SF movies are overrun with aliens of ever strip and creed from the Mu-Tants of This Island Earth to Mr. Spock of Star Trek and countless others, so trying call one particular breed of alien, The Alien, make for grammatical suicide. Continue reading
So the other night I needed some unwind time and I queued up HULU+ on my big screen T.V. and watched the pilot episode of the single season science-fiction series The Time Tunnel.
The Time Tunnel was created by Irwin Allen, the television producer of such memorable fare such as Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Land of the Giants. Continue reading
So now that injuries, illness, and contests have been taken care of, at least for a little while, I can get back to the writing schedule I was trying to maintain.
Today I managed to pull out the short story “A Question Of Justice,” and resume work. This is the mystery story and represents a departure for me. I have never written a mystery and certainly never one that lacked all the fantastic elements found in SF, Horror, and Fantasy. (Though I suppose an argument could be made that ghost stories are often mysteries, with the reader and protagonist trying to unravel the reason for the haunting. My story “The House Of Bad Blood,” falls into that vein, but I would still maintain I have not written a proper mystery before.)
While I did not get much written today at lunch – when I am working on short subjects – I did get the story moving again. (Sadly I was unable to resist the sirens of the internet.)
Tonight I will get back to work on “Command and Control,” my new Seth Jackson novel. If that goes well tonight then I shall be happy to be back in the saddle.
I’ve also had a setting, more properly a concept, floating around in my head for a new SF novel. It would concern a nebula as seen from Earth, but from a vantage point much closer the nebula vanishes and instead there is a planetary system with inner rocky planet and out gas giants. Of course a ship is sent to study this stranger system up close.
Last week my sweetie-wife and I decided to add HULU plus to our video on demand services. You see, we do not have regular cable services, the vast wasteland that is television has little interest to us. So what we watch comes from Netflix on disc, Netflix instant view, and now HULU plus, 
which gets us The Daily Show and The Colbert report in addition to a number of feature films and other tidbits to watch.
This week I decided to watch a Criterion Collection film – a vast number of the Criterion Collection movies are available on Hulu Plus — The X from Outer Space. This is a late 60’s Japanese giant monster movie, the sort of thing I wasted a number hour upon as a young-un, though I have no memory of this particular feature. Continue reading
The quarter is coming to a close and that means I need to be looking at an entry for the Writers Of The Future Contest. I stated I had a goal of entering each quarter of 2012 and this will be the second attempt.
I have once story written and ready to go, “Lady Jane” a short experimental piece that I have shown to no one. I am also nearly finished with an SF Cosmic Horror title “Lies I tell myself.” This one is story I have tried to write many times over the years. Usually it crashes and burns, and when it goes get completed it doesn’t come close enough to my vision to send out.
This time it is going much better. If I can get it finished before the 31st then this is my entry.
I’m going to take two very different ideas and meld them together in that fusion that is best achieved by way of science-fiction. Continue reading