Musings of Two Creative Minds

At the beginning of this year, I made a post listing my plans for this year. And as the end of the year draws closer, let's take a look at how things went, shall we? 1- Re-work, re-edit, and re-release “The Bridge” in a special 10th Anniversary version. RESULTS: As of today, this project is just shy of 2/3's of the way finished. So, it's well on target for being re-released in 2023. Admittedly, I had hoped to have it completed and ready to release in January 2023, but I'll settle for getting it out before the coming year is over. 2 – Get a complete 1st draft of “The Vampyre Blogs – Family Ties” which takes up mere weeks after the end of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”. RESULTS: Well... the first draft is under way, so that's something. Right? Please tell me I'm right. I'm feeling guilty over here. 3 – Release the first volume of “The Pass” trilogy, which I wrote with my old high school friend Rich Caminiti, with some fantastic illustrations by the tale

Christmas came early to me... Last night I received this comment over on my YouTube channel regarding my presentation of an unabridged version of Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol" from Barbara Ortiz... "This version is among the best, the added images are very nice, your extra research is appreciated. Ahh, also, your voice acting is spot on." This meant the world to me. I hope everyone else who's checked it out enjoyed it just as much. And if you wish to give it a try, I'm supplying the link just below. Happy Holidays everyone and may the season bring you all the joy and happiness it can. Link: Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, a Joyous Kwanzaa and a Happy New Year to you all.

The holiday season is upon us, and I hope you are all enjoying yourselves. I know I've been on the quiet side for some time, but I've been dealing with some health issues (which I'll discuss down the road, it's still not fully resolved yet). But I've also been working on a special project for the last 2 years. It's been quite a journey with this particular effort of mine, as it's part audiobook and part video.  As you all know I've done a fair amount of audio work, but adding video was a whole new ballgame for me. Getting everything lined up just right, finding imagery in public domain, as well as music to go along with it, took a considerable amount of time and energies. But I feel like the results were worth it. I learned a lot along the way and may actually start doing some podcasting in the near future. We'll see. But for now I'd like to present to you all to a brand new Unabridged presentation of Mr. Charles Dicken's classic "A Chri

Yesterday I was scrolling through YouTube and ran across something that really caught my eye. Yes, I'm one of those people who when the Halloween season rolls around, I break out all kinds of horror movies, especially the black and white ones. And I freely admit that I've watched this classic gem many times.  However, it wasn't the full movie that was being advertised. Instead, this was a 40-minute video about 'deleted' scenes from this movie, which immediately caught my attention. Pausing only to grab a cup of tea, I sat down for a good viewing and was not disappointed. Now, I'm not saying that they had actual footage that was left out of the final cut, but what they did have took me completely by surprise. For those who are less familiar with the old universal black and white monster films, I'll give you a quick rundown here. This video covered the actors who played Frankenstein's monster.  For the first 3 films it was Boris Karloff who had been handpi

Recently I've been struggling to try and get Helen's short story collection up onto Smashwords, with less than sterling results. Now, in case anyone out there isn't familiar with Smashwords, they use an entirely different format style than say Amazon's KDP. By the same token, they also have a wide distribution that includes Barnes and Noble Nook, Kobo, Scribd, and a host of other sites which includes distributors for public libraries. Now after successfully getting our first book up on Smashwords, I created a template to make things easier for future submissions. And until recently, this template worked every time. I would simply change a few details like title, year of publishing, etc. then I would simply copy and paste the new manuscript into that template.  However, this time something went horribly wrong. We kept getting messages that there were problems with the formatting of the document and at one point, I even uploaded the corrected manuscript onto Smashwords un

Kindle Pre-Orders are being taken now for Helen's "W. I. T. C. H. Hunters Forever" a short-story collection/spinoff of her Forever Detective Series of books. Here you'll find some familiar faces such as Clara Thomas, Sir Lynn Fox her brother-in-law/wizard, Medium Brown a spiritualist accountant, plus many new faces. Here's more: When he heard about Hitler's interest in seeking out artifacts and legends, British wizard Sir Lynn Fox knew he needed a group with unusual talents to do more and better. W.I.T.C.H. Hunters is that group. This collection of stories gives us a sample of the wide variety within the group: a sympathetic healer, a hedge witch with a penchant for sleuthing, a telekinetic sculptress, a spiritualist accountant, a demonologist monk, two Antipodean adventurers, and one extraordinarily ordinary woman who wants to do her part, and an immortal cat. Order your copy now and have it arrive in your e-mail this Saturday: Amazon US Link:  W. I. T. C. H.

It's been a while since I did a book review so I'd say we're do for a new one. Right? Well even if you said no, this post is going to be a book review anyway, especially since the book in question is by an author I've long heard about and was a huge influence on HP Lovecraft (one of my favorite authors of all time). Now some of you may have already figured out who I'm talking about, but for those who haven't caught on, I'm referring to Lord Dunsany (better known by friends and family as Edward Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany). Now as I said before, I've heard of Lord Dunsany from my collection of HP Lovecraft books which often reference his lordship as having a big influence on the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos. And I'd been rather interested in trying some of his work for some time. However, I'm one of those readers who likes shall we say... a sampling of an author's work before committing myself to a full novel. So, I read a lot of coll

Back when I was 18 (many many moons ago) I received a rejection from a college I had applied to for their Commercial Arts program. I was so crushed I didn't pick up a pastel or pencil for over a decade. If anyone at that time told me I'd one day be doing book covers I'd have asked what they had been smoking and did they bring enough for everyone? Yet here I am having just finished my 8th book cover for my wife Helen (who wrote all the stories in this collection). Plus I'll soon be voicing those stories for Audible. The journey is never a straight one my friends, but you have to keep moving forward to see where it leads. PS: This collection of paranormal tales (which is a spinoff from her Forever Detective Series) is set during World War II will be arriving this September. *So now you all know where I've been and what I've been doing for the last few months. This was an very involved piece for me and I was trying be more meticulous th

  When I started out on this writing journey, I never saw myself as someone who could a whole bunch of writing projects going at the same time.  That kind of thing was reserved for some of the great prolific authors like Isaac Asimov, who was notorious for working on multiple projects on a regular basis.  The man insisted on having a portable typewriter or two wherever he went.  And if he couldn't get his hands on a typewriter, he'd pull out a pad of paper and a bunch of pencils/pens and wrote the old fashion way, long hand. But me, I could never picture myself even thinking about working on more than one story at a time.  In fact, the very first novel I started working on was set in the early 1800's and I had gotten about 2/3's of the way through the tale when my wife pointed out that a historical piece would be harder to market.  On hearing this, I gave it some thought and put the story aside and began a whole new piece which eventually turned into my first published

  In my last entry I explained how I had settled on the idea of Parallel Realities for the premise of the series.  But what could I do with it that was new and different? Well as Doctor Who would say, "This is where things get a bit tricky."       We all know that a lot of choices are man-made, but events are also a major player in our world and our lives.  There's an old school of thought that says, for whatever choices we make another alternate timeline exists where a version of ourselves exists who follows the path not taken.  I began pondering this concept and asked myself, "What if not just choice could lead to a parallel reality?  What if events that didn’t happen in our reality, did happen in another reality?  And what might be the consequences and effects of that event?"  This idea really intrigued me and I began to think about the concept on a much LARGER and OLDER scale...      Current theory says that that moon we all know and love was made as a resul

With the 10 year anniversary of the release of our first book "The Bridge" on the horizon (next year to be precise), we thought it might be nice to share with you all just how this journey began.  Where did the ideas for the Para-Earth Series come from?  Who and what inspired the concept?  And finally, for those who haven't had the opportunity to actually read any of the books but are curious to know more, what   IS   a Para-Earth?  To answer all these questions, let's begin with a familiar opening from a very familiar television show from the 1960's... ​ ​     “Submitted for your approval…” these are the opening words written and spoken for the Twilight Zone by its creator Rod Serling.  In that place, people found themselves facing death, adventure, revelation, terror, or even worse… themselves.   So in the spirit of the late Mr. Serling, today’s entry is submitted for the approval of all our readers (whoever and wherever you may come from) as I guide you through