Musings of Two Creative Minds

  HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! Sorry it's taken most of the day, but the "Library of the Obscure" is now officially open over on #YouTube . And since it's Trick or Treat season, here's the trick... Click on the link below to get your treat: Have fun and stay safe everybody!

  It's finally coming... on HALLOWEEN Stay tuned everyone.

This year has been 'difficult' for me on a number of fronts, some of which I've already shared with you. Still there are others, that are still ongoing and taking up a lot of my time and brain power. I have actually done a number of audio short stories which are perfect for this time of year, I just haven't had the time to really gather and piece together videos to present on YouTube for my "Library of the Obscure" channel. However, if any of you wish to hear any those recordings (complete with sound effects), I'll be happy to post them as a prelude to the podcast itself here on this blog as well as on the Library of the Obscure YouTube channel. Please let me know what you think by leaving your thoughts in the comments section below. In the meantime, here's the link to a story by Lord Dunsany (one of HP Lovecraft's greatest influences), that I shared last year. I hope you enjoy this tale, and I thank you for your understanding... NOTE: I will be a...

 ... because you might just get it. So, after all my talk and posting about finding a crystal ball... well...um... Ah, the photo pretty much tells you what happened.  Now to be honest, I've had this crystal ball for years. Helen got it for me long before we got married, and we exchanged our vows 35 years ago. (Go us!) But I'd lost track of it some time ago, and I literally just ran across it in one of our boxes in storage. Upon spotting it, I just had to pull it out, cleaned and dusted it, and now it is currently sitting on my desk. "So? Did you look into it or not?" I hear some of you ask. Or maybe that's just the voices in my head, and believe me, as a voice-actor I've got a LOT of them. The answer is... I'm thinking about it. Why haven't I done it already? Well, I got kind of side-tracked wondering what would my characters do? See how I slipped the topic of writing into this entry?  Although to be honest, I have had one of my characters actually wei...

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...

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. So this is the final weekend of your early Halloween treat, as we suspect most folks will have a lot to do next weekend with the holiday itself. But we still have 3 more chapters for you to sample "Forever's Too Long". Chapter 5 - NOT JUST A SPARK After a long day of tussling with crooked antique dealers and wasting time with useless police detectives who are more interested in playing games, Rafael and Clara deserve a night off. So they decide to step out and enjoy some music and dancing. So let's click on the link below, and enjoy their evening out as as they get to know a little more about each other. Chapter 6 - CULT FOLLOWING It seems like a simple job to Rafael. Go in, get some evidence of wrongdoing-- there's always wrongdoing by cult leaders-- and present it to Eugene's former employees to get them to get their lives back on track. But Rafael has no idea just how wrong things are behind the faca...

The Halloween Season is still going on, and so does the treat. Last week we brought you the first 3 chapters of Helen's 1st solo novel "Forever's Too Long". Today we're giving you the next 3 chapters along with a chance to see Rafael and Clara working together, as well as getting to know one another better.  You'll also get to see how others view Rafael, especially from his days back on the police force. As you'll hear, the reactions he gets tend to run from delighted, annoyed, and downright suspicious. So sit back and enjoy these three new chapters from the first book of the Forever Detective Series. Chapter 3 - The Ellis Island Traffic Control Board Chapter 4 - Moose's Memory Chapter 5 - Clara Proved Me Wrong Next week we'll be sharing the next three chapters where things begin to get a bit more hairy for Rafael. After an evening of dance and romance, he begins to delve deep into the second of his two cases. By infiltrating the cult that has been...

Hello everyone, Halloween is just around the corner and I felt that since I haven't been posting a lot hear lately (due to back issues and other life events) I thought perhaps you all deserved a treat. And since I spent months talking about recording and creating audiobooks, I thought it only appropriate to share some of my work with all of you.  So I'm presenting the first 3 chapters of Helen's first solo novel "Forever's Too Long" here on the today and a few more in the next two weeks. Why that book? Because it's the Halloween season and the novel is a vampire tale set in 1940's New York City. It stars Rafael Jones, a former police officer who just came back from Germany, where he was an investigator gathering evidence for the famous Nuremberg trials. Now he's back home in America and opening his own detective agency. In this story his first two cases will lead him straight into the depths into another world that holds wonders and terror, the wor...