When people talk about their plans for the New Year — any new year — those plans usually revolve around doing something productive or positive. Judging from ads in magazines and TV commercials, we all want to: give up white flour & sugar; do yoga daily; learn a new language; put money away for our old age or simply lose those last five pounds. Years come and years go and we rarely keep those big promises made on January 1. Well, some people make those changes for a little while. The first few weeks of January my gym is packed
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Science (Fiction) Good & Evil
There’s science fiction and there’s “fictional” science. Imaginative fiction of all stripes uses “made up” science on occasion. Whether it’s a magical incantation that halts time, an elixir that enhances strength, a complex machine the propels characters into the past or portals to other worlds built by alien civilizations and discovered by archeologists on earth, fiction is full of solutions to scientific questions that real science has yet to answer. Although usually associated with hardcore science fiction, creative (or fictional) science is all over paranormal, supernatural, horror, futurist and urban fantasy stories. Adding the gloss of a scientific explanation is
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Writing Resolutions
No, I’m not going to write a post about going to the gym more often or giving up white sugar. The only truly successful food resolution I’ve ever made was the one vowing to avoid “bad chocolate.” It was easy to keep. There is so much good chocolate out there that it was never very hard to pass on the “bad.” I have a few writing-related resolutions humming around in my brain — including a fourth Candy’s Monster now in the works. My goal is to have it ready for electronic publishing by the summer of 2013. For now, I
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To Review or Not to Review — That is the Question
Reviews are very important. Authors need them on Amazon, Goodreads and blogs to generate interest in their books. Even mediocre reviews — ones that mention an appealing aspect of a book — are useful. “Loved the setting, but the protagonist was predictable” sounds devastating, but if the reviewer goes on to describe the vivid tour of ancient Rome provided by the writer there are plenty of readers who will be intrigued. Getting a poor review is a very unpleasant experience, but it’s not the end of the world. (Unless it happens tomorrow — December 21, 2012 — and the Mayans
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Ghosts of Holidays Past
How many dramatizations of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” have you seen? The Alastair Sim 1951 movie, “Scrooged” starring Bill Murray as a network television executive from 1988, The Muppet’s version with Michael Caine as Scrooge from 1992, “A Diva’s Christmas Carol” with Vanessa Williams from 2000… There are so many of them. Add the TV shows, spoofs and references to “A Christmas Carol” that appear in other holiday entertainment and it’s an exponential growth curve with all sorts of Scrooges. And all sorts of ghosts, too! I’m particularly fond of David Johansen’s portrayal of the ghost of
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Beautiful Monsters
The relationship between beauty and goodness is a tricky one. The 19th century concept of inner goodness being evident in outward beauty was always a bit shaky. The traditional and much-loved fairy tale about Beauty & the Beast is only one example of a curse or bad choice hiding the natural, inner beauty of a character in a monstrous candy coating. Oscar Wilde certainly wrote Dorian Gray as eye-candy with a rancid center. His story still resonates with us today, because we’ve all met attractive people with rotten cores. Today we have a wealth of human-faced monsters with interiors and
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Reality & Un-Reality
Nothing makes the unreal (supernatural, paranormal or magical) more REAL than adding some reality to the mix. Bits and pieces of normal — even ordinary details — give the vampire outside the door or the ghost in the attic a context. Stephen King is a master at turning the mundane into the fantastic and terrifying. Christine, Pet Cemetery, Carrie and his other classics are super-scary because of the mix of normal and magical. Open up one of his books and you’ll notice tiny details that ring true to real life and give the extraordinary storyline a dash of real. This
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Evil and Not Quite Evil…
I’ve started working on my version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde so I’m deep into the definition of evil. It’s feels a bit fuzzier than it was in Robert Louis Stevenson’s time. Our post-modern aesthetic blurs everything into a muddy swamp of degeneracy, transgression and entertainment. Nothing, or seemingly nothing, is too much or too far out there for long, as all the most outrageous actions or ideas just push the envelope further and further. Does it ever break? The dictionary definition of evil is reprehensible, wicked or sinful and rising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct.
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Holiday Monsters
Now that the turkeys are rattling chains with Jacob Marley, the holiday season is in full swing. In New York, where everything except apartment sizes are on a grand scale, the period between the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Times Square ball dropping on New Year’s Eve, is always a frenzy of wild energy. This year, with our wounds from Super-Storm Sandy still causing pain, there’s an uncharacteristic vulnerability in the air. I’ve seen all too many people lose their tempers, burst into tears or storm away in a huff at minor provocations. I’ll admit that I started to
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