Musings of Two Creative Minds

     First I'd like to thank all the guest bloggers, authors, and reviewers who were so kind to supply our blog with posts. It gave me some much needed time to get some rest and help family members who had suffered a terrible loss. It also allowed us to get back to work on our anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time” which will be coming out in early October, a perfect time for creepy stories and tales of encounters with strange beings. With only two stories left to be completed and edited, we will soon be lining up Beta-Readers and then doing our final edits.      Work has also been progressing on “The Door” latest full-length novel in the Para-Earth Series, and “The Pass” the first installment in a brand new series co-written with Richard Caminiti.      In the meantime, I have been studying and purchasing the necessary equipment to begin audio-readings. As you can see below I've been slowly setting up a “R...

Guess what? September has been quite the month for me and Helen.  Some of you may remember that about a month ago, my little blue laptop became... 'unreliable' to the point I dared not risk any of our stories on it.  So it was sent to the wayside, leaving only our desktop (which I could not bring to work of course) and Helen's laptop which she needs on a daily basis for her online college classes.  This put a serious dent in my ability to write or even be online as often as I wished, much less getting much writing done except on weekends.   We also had expenses to take care of, like college books for Helen which took priority over replacing my laptop.  Finally, things were looking up just on the eve of my weeklong vacation at the beginning of September when illness and car troubles reared their ugly heads and forced us to push the laptop purchase back even further.  After getting the car situation squared away (over the course of most of my...

The long wait to replace my now deceased laptop has unfortunately been extended due to circumstances beyond my control like, car registration, car repairs, books for my wife's college classes, etc.  Luckily I am on vacation this week, or rather a 'stay-cation' and am working hard to get our upcoming anthology edited and ready for beta-reading.  We hope to have this process completed by the end of this month.      In the meantime, with our time and resources being a little limited, we decided to offer the first sneak peek into the anthology itself.  We hope this peek will intrigue and delight you all, since it will be the first of several leading up to the day of the book's release. So without further ado, here is a snippet from the first of the twenty plus tales that will appear in the collection we call:   "The Vampyre Blogs - One Day At a Time" : FROM THE DESK OF CAPTAIN BRIAN WESTON OF THE UNION ARMY – June 30th, 1863  “A Letter ...

First I'd like to thank everyone who took advantage of my "Hobbit Birthday" party.  Over 30 copies of "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" were snatched up.  While I would've loved to have seen triple digits, I'm not going to complain.  The book got into more readers hands and that is always a good thing in my opinion.  Hopefully, this will lead to some more reviews.  Sadly, Nathan and company have been stuck in the single digits as far as reviews go on Amazon, with absolutely none on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. So I'm going to offer everyone who is interested the opportunity to get a free copy of the book (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, even paperback) in exchange for a fair and honest review.  Reviews are important to bringing a book to a wider audience.  We all know that whenever we think about purchasing a book or almost anything these days, we check online to see what kind of rating the item has.   Naturally, I'd love to see ...

A fun and fulfilling collection of the most tangled, yet intriguing, tales one might want to read.  Miss Kings, a. k. a. the “Vampire Maman” has enchanted many with her blog “Vampire Maman, Musings of a ModernVampire Mom”.  It is a very popular blog, and where all the tales found in this collection originated.  Of course, while one could sift through her blog, it would take hours or possibly even days to find each of these tantalizingly delicious vignettes.  Each story stands on its own merit, yet are connected at the same time, as the author shares stories not only about her own long existence, but those of her brothers, children and family friends which include zombies, the occasional werewolf, ghosts, elder vampires, and more than a few ordinary humans. Our dear Vampire Maman, weaves each tale in such a way to make us laugh, smile, feel a little remorse, or simply take a moment to appreciate those around us.  She brings wit and wisdom as well that ...

Book review time again.  Today I wanted to share with you my review on what I consider one of THE best  collections of vampire stories ever compiled.  It covers some of the earliest vampire tales known and finishes with more modern ones from the 1980's.  With the many takes on vampires we see these days from Anne Rice to Stephanie Meyer, I thought it might be interesting for you all to check out some other takes on the vampire genre done by other authors over the decades.  So without further ado, allow me to introduce you all to... THE PENGUIN BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES is one of the best anthologies I've ever found. Part of the reason is that it covers authors who've touched on this subject as far back as 1816 and goes up to 1984. There are a number of familiar names in this book like Clark Ashton Smith, Sheridan Le Fanu, Tanith Lee, and August Derleth to name just a few. But what fascinates me the most is seeing how the vampire legend is explored. ...

Greetings everyone.  I wish to make a couple of announcements.   First, after careful consideration and evaluating where things are at, I've decided to aim for releasing the book in time for June. This way people can enjoy it as part of their Summer reading. As a result of this decision I'm declaring the Kickstarter a failure and ended.  Mind you, I am not angry or upset by this. In fact I think it may be a blessing in disguise.  I will have more time to rework the book and possibly have some Beta-testers read it to get a better idea how my unpaid team and I do at getting it edited as best we can. If there still seem to be a lot of problems, then I may try another Kickstarter or find another way to raise the money for a professional editor. I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who did pledge to the Kickstarter.  The Kickstarter was not going to succeed, but I do appreciate your belief in me and your support. Remember "THE SHIP" is still comi...