Musings from the basement...

Some Time With The Family: A comic journey into horror

One of the great joys of working on Pitched! and Pitched! Vol. 2 (you can purchase them here and here, respectively) was having the opportunity to work with a wide range of people while delving into genres I don’t usually write. One of the highlights — and there were many — came when working on a horror story called “Some Time With the Family.” I don’t usually write horror, but I wanted to try my hand at it and had some folks in mind to help me bring a twisted little tale to life.  Artist Logan Reilly brought the story to the page. Inker James Pipik, who illustrated “The End of all Summers” from the first Pitched! anthology, gave Logan’s excellent pages weight with his…
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“Stuff Every Husband Should Know” Giveaway

Interested in a free copy of Stuff Every Husband Should Know, the book I wrote last year for Quirk Books? If so, surf on over to this website and take a gander. One copy is up for grabs at no cost other than an email. Hurry up before someone else snags it! And hey, why wouldn’t you want the book Guerrilla Geek called “a book not just for married men, or even committed men, but for all you single men out there who are wondering just what the hell you need to do to get a girl to stay with you for more than a week”? (You can check out their full review right here.) Good luck, and may the fastest emailer win.

Last thoughts on Bradbury’s passing

I have already posted about Ray Bradbury’s passing, but he had such a big impact on me as a reader and writer that I feel like I want to revisit his career’s influence one more time. He was just that important to what I aspired — and still aspire — to be. As my friend and collaborator Zaki Hasan said in his post on the subject, “the impact he had on my life, as a reader, a filmgoer, and a writer is hard to encapsulate.”   I discovered Bradbury pretty early, and he stuck with me all my life. I’d read most of his work several times, and even 30 years after I first read it, some of it just kills me every time. Dandelion Wine makes…
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Hey writers, watch out for SCAMS

Fellow freelancers, keep your eyes peeled for seemingly legitimate offers by articlebat.org, an outfit which is NOT affiliated with articlebat.com. The way it works is simple: Likely drawn from your resume being posted to various job sites (though you may also get them at random), you get an email offering steady writing work. It may look something like this: Job- copywriting Salary – $600 a week Duties – if you have knowledge and ambitions for writing articles on different topics you are just what the doctor ordered and you are welcome to our writers team. -Previous experience would be great but not a must. -If you have a broad outlook dont hesitate and give it a try. -We need articles of high quality and deadlines are to be followed. To launch…
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Goodbye, Ray Bradbury

I’m not much for mourning celebrity deaths. I generally don’t care that you were in a few movies or TV shows, or that you wrote some catchy song I haven’t heard in six years. Such passings are sad, but they have little impact on my life. But Ray Bradbury, who passed away this morning at the age of 91, was more than a mere celebrity author to me. He was a tremendous influence on me both growing up as well as in later years when I began to pursue writing more seriously; a man whose work informed me, inspired me, and solidified my long clung-to dream of being a writer. Bradbury was a special kind of wordsmith. Unlike most modern authors, he rarely dabbled in…
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