Musings of Two Creative Minds

  The GIF above was basically me last night as we welcomed in the new year. I gave 2026 a warning that we would not tolerate any of the shenanigans we've experienced in 2025 and to behave itself and straighten up right off the bat. I guess we'll all have to wait and see if it listened to me or not.  But in fairness, it wasn't just the new year that I'm being firm with. I'm also kind of cracking down on myself. Over the last few weeks, I've really been looking at myself and what I have and have not gotten done over the last couple of years. Although, in fairness to myself, a LOT went on. Between trying to adjust to my continuing fight for SSDI, my mom suffering dementia and eventually passing away in 2024, then starting 2025 with me and Helen struggling with our apartment and having to get stuff moved out of it and into a storage unit because the landlord didn't like our place having a lot of boxes in the living room. Then of course, looking for and buying a ...

Hello again everyone. Hope you've all been doing well. As for me and Helen we've had a LOT on our plate lately to deal with. However, we're not abandoning our readers by any means.  We're still getting settled into our new home, which of course seems like a never-ending task, plus Helen is putting in for a number of jobs, especially in the realm of state, county, and city employment. And of course, I've been still contending with Social Security and trying to bring my now 2-year ongoing efforts to get approved for SSDI.  Oh, and did I mention Halloween is coming up? We're big fans and have plans which include FINALLY getting The Library of the Obscure YouTube channel fully up and running. I'm hoping to release a "Coming Soon" video (which I will feature here as well as elsewhere) very soon. Certainly, before Halloween, because I want to drop the first video either on the day before Halloween, or on that day. Haven't fully decided. We'll see...

Good news, it's finally happened. Helen and I now have an online store for our books. Anyone who has been wanting to get a personalized/signed copy of one of our books, now all you have to do is click on the link below and it will take you straight to our store. And "yes" it takes credit cards. (I know, welcome to the modern age, Allan. Took you long enough). Here's the link:  https://musingsof2creativeminds.com/shop/ And while not ALL our books are up just yet, I'm working on it and will be adding more this week. NOTE: I also plan to add another branch to the store for our original artwork, so stay tuned for that as well.  In the meantime, come see what we have available and maybe place and order or two. Until next time take care and keep writing and recording my friends.

  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 fir...

  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 ...

 A whole year of planning, working, sweating, and it still wasn't enough.  For those who are wondering, I'm referring to my unabridged dramatic reading of Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol". My plan was to unveil the finished project as a picture book on YouTube. Besides spending hours recording voices, some sound effects, finding music in public domain, as well as dozens of images (also in the public domain) created over the last 150 years since the book's creation... and I still couldn't quite get it across the Finish Line. At least not in time for this Christmas.  All I have left to do is film an opening and closing to the project, but between work and other audio and writing projects, I just couldn't do it justice this year.  Now some of you might be asking yourselves, why? Why was this so important to you?  After all, there are so many versions available of the story available on YouTube, streaming services, Blue-Ray, DVD, etc.  Well the answer is, n...

The 4th book in Helen's "Forever Detective Series" There's no place like home for the holidays-- or for having you darkest secrets revealed! Can Rafael Jones manage to find the missing girl, build on his romance with agent Clara Thomas, and still keep his parents thinking he's living a normal life instead of being living dead? And will working for the forces of Heaven strengthen Rafael's faith, or shake it? Wizards, witches, angels, and Pixie Dust bring their own surprises for Rafael's Christmas. So get ready to order your copy, and maybe a few to put in stocking or under a tree.  (Personally signed paperbacks will also be available)

While waiting for Audible to approve/reject our submission, we have heard back from a number of people who say they don't do Audible. Some prefer CD's because they cannot afford Audible's monthly charges. So this got me an Helen thinking about offering CD's even if Audible accepts our books. We are also considering the fact that some people cannot afford Audible but also don't have a convenient CD Player these days, or may prefer audio files for storage. For them, we are thinking about selling MP3 audio files that people can order from this site so they can download the entire book into their own device of choice. So please take a moment and let us know which of the following options that would be of interest to you. We are simply seeking feedback which would be a huge help to us in deciding what path(s) to take as far as making our audios available to people, so your responses are VERY important to us.  NOTE: you CAN vote for more than one option from...

New Year's is a time for reflection and looking ahead... or so I've been told. My first thought was "I didn't really get that much done this year. I don't have much to say or show for it." Then at the urging of Helen I pulled out a pen and paper and started making a list. The results surprised me.                                              I created not one but three book covers. This is the most art I've done in one year in I don't know how long. Two of them were of course for Helen's new The Forever Detective Series. The other was a new cover for "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" which we re-released as the first Young Adult (YA) installment of our Para-Earth Series. Speaking of Helen's new series, we created not one but two book trailers, one for each book.                        ...

Every so often we come to a realization that something we've been doing hasn't been working as well as we'd hoped. Admitting you didn't do something right the first time is not a sign of weakness, it actually shows growth. Learning from your mistakes is just as important as getting things right the first time.   Recently, during a book release party (for someone else) a mutual friend who is a librarian started talking to me about the Para-Earths series. She's watched trends and keeps a close eye on what's popular in the industry and she pointed out to me that the Para-Earths might actually do better aimed at a Young Adult (YA) audience. This would still make the books quite available to the adult crowd of course, while opening the series to more readers.  I gave this a lot of thought, especially after several others readily agreed with her. So I spent the next week or doing some serious research into YA books. To my surprise, what I found there real...