As a person going through a divorce, I took a deep, personal interest in the Synod on the Family. I was thrilled that my beloved church wanted to take a pastoral interest in the needs of its sheep. I wanted to see good, sound and practical steps from the assembled church leaders on how to navigate the troubled waters of modern family life. Sadly, the whole thing almost got derailed by the so-called “mid-synod” report. Conservatives screamed bloody murder at... Read more
(So, here is our next HWA writer. Leigh M. Lane has been writing for over twenty years. She has ten published novels and twelve published short stories divided between different genre-specific pseudonyms. She is married to editor Thomas B. Lane, Jr. and currently resides in the outskirts of Sin City. Her traditional Gothic horror novel, Finding Poe, was a 2013 EPIC Awards finalist in horror. Her other novels include World-Mart, a tribute to Orwell, Serling, and Vonnegut, and the dark allegorical... Read more
Sometimes, writers hit a wall. It happens to the best of us. I won’t call it “writer’s block”. This frightening tale is an urban legend used to scare young and developing storytellers. Anyone with a work ethic can find a way to put words on a computer screen. Maybe what a person writes is bad, but it can always be rewritten. There’s no such thing as not being able to write at all. However, at some point, a writer comes to a point where the Well of... Read more
(As everyone knows, I just became a fully active (and proud) member of the Horror Writer’s Association. So, I thought it would be a cool way to celebrate Halloween by interviewing some writer’s from the HWA about the genre. Tom Calen has some great insights below…) What made you want to write horror? By the fourth or fifth grade, I had made my way through Poe and was on to Shelley and Stoker. About a year after that, I “borrowed”... Read more
As I watch TV and movies, I’m often frustrated at how they treat the subject of religion. Pop Culture either ignores it (wouldn’t want to offend anyone) or degrades it as much as possible (just about every episode of Family Guy). Very few shows or movies take religion at face value and address it in all of it’s glory and absurdity. This is why the Simpsons are still one of my all time favorite TV shows. As much as church groups protested the show back in the... Read more
May 23, 1994 – a cheer erupted from a house packed with nerdy (and not-so-nerdy) high schoolers as the Riker-commanded three-nacelled Enterprise unapologetically demolished a Klingon bird of prey. Star Trek: The Next Generation was about to end. What was next? (more…) Read more
(Salt Lake City Comic Con has been a mind blowing experience. I have so much to write about and I’ll try to get to all of it in the next week. I’d planned to give a run down of the past two days in tonight’s post. My plans got changed in a hurry. Why? Well, on Thursday, I walked the floor of the vendor hall before the crowds started to pour into the arena. As I toured the aisles, I stopped short... Read more
(Today, The Remaining comes out in theaters everywhere. I had a chance to screen the movie. I have to say, it’s the best “faith based” movie I’ve seen. Parts of the movie scared me and provided some great thrills. Casey La Scala is a Hollywood rebel who makes his own way. He’s produced amazing cult films like Donnie Darko (one of my favorites) and mainstream films like What a Girl Wants. The Remaining, however, is his directorial and writing debut)... Read more
Tomorrow is Salt Lake City Comic Con! The madness begins. My day will start off at 11:00 P.M with the press conference at the Salt Palace Convention Center. What will this look like? From the official press release…. The press conference is a chance for Dan Farr, the Show Producer and founder and Bryan Brandenburg, the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder, to give updates and answer questions from the media about Salt Lake Comic Con. Farr and Brandenburg will be... Read more
The countdown to Salt Lake City Comic Con is T-minus two days. As of this time Thursday, I’ll be giving my first panel discussion. So, what am I looking forward to the most at my first ever Comic Con? Here is the list….. 5) Interviewing Cool People. Here’s the thing, I’m not really a celebrity geek. I’ve got my favorites, of course, but no one I’d really fall over myself if I met them. When I do a celebrity interview,... Read more
The Rogue
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