Tag: The Art of Writing

EXAMINATION

Liver gets a bad rap. It says a lot about a meat that folks typically cover up their poorly prepared liver with something as strong as onions.

However, with the right preparation and sauce, liver is more tender and just as delicious as any cut of beef. Leave it to Hannibal Lecter to suggest to us a fine pairing of liver with fava beans served with a nice Chianti wine.

ANALYSIS

Servings: 2

Ingredients

8 Tbsp butter, divided
1/2 cup diced pancetta or bacon
1/2 cup diced white onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 lb fava beans, shelled and peeled if fresh
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 lb young beef liver, which should provide 2 slices
1 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 cup red wine, Chianti preferred

Apparatus

• Saucepan
• Skillet

Procedure

1. In a saucepan, melt 2 Tbsp of butter over medium-low heat then add the pancetta…

Steering the Craft, A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story  by Ursula K. Le Guin

Book Review and Commentary  May 17, 2016

Are you a storyteller? Have you been writing for a while now? Steering the Craft is a comprehensive but short guide for writers who are not beginners, but those who need direction about their narrative prose. Ready to target some of your writing weaknesses?

Filled with lots of exercises (I’m not big on writing exercises but these are better than most), this book can function as you own private writing workshop. There’s a wealth of examples of writing achievements by authors like Alice Walker, Jane Austen, Dickens, Grace Paley, Virginia Woolf.

In Chapter One, Le Guin asks you to listen to the sounds of your writing. Listen to the forward movements, pace, rhythms, the silences. How does the changing sentence rhythms express the emotions of the…

Join us

Friday, May 20th, 2016

7pm-9pm PST

on Twitter for a LIVE Tweet event!

To celebrate the release of Once Upon a Scream, we’ll be watching our favorite fairy tale movie and live tweeting during it. Join us by watching your favorite fairy tale and including @horroraddicts13 and #OnceUponScream.

Don’t miss a minute of the fun, follow us now:

@horroraddicts13

@emzbox

At 11pm on the night of March 28^th 2016, Crystal Connor, sat down to watch a slasher film that used a small California town located in the Mojave Desert as a back drop. With the coffee table piled high with popcorn and snacks, with her small dog nestled by her side she picked up her remote and pressed play.

This is the unedited journal chronicling the harrowing experience of her screaming, crying, and expletive outburst that her neighbors were forced to endure as she watched Riley Woods 2011 The Victorville Massacre.

Reader discretion is Advised

Entry 1: Last line of the movie: “Never had a serial killer in this town.” Ummm…

Complaints: I think watching horror movies should be an ‘interactive’ activity (which is why I watch them alone) and the more I yell at the people on the screen the more fun I’m having. I’m a…

Our featured author for episode 125 of the HorrorAddicts podcast is Mark Taylor. Mark recently answered a few questions for us about his work:

What is your story for episode 125 about?

The excerpt comes from ‘Total Entertainment’, a short story from my collection ‘Strange’, published in 2015 by Eleventh Hour Literary Press. It is a dark dystopian telling of a future where employ is everything, and where dreams have become a commodity in the entertainment industry. Dreams are sold as interactive simulations.

The story has been so well received that my publisher has contracted me to turn the short into a novel, which will be coming out later this year, entitled: ‘A Night at the Dream Theater’.

What inspired the idea for using dreams as a virtual reality game in the future?

I was thinking about where the next stages of entertainment were coming from. With virtual reality now…

I always get stuck at around 30 thousand words. I have been thinking about why, and this is my thoughts on it at this point in time.

Let’s open a story.

He entered the hidden room, returning to confirm his suspicions, not expecting an occupant. The lady was there, standing with her purse gun in her hand, her eyes welling with rage. He ducked out. She shot. The bullet ricocheted off the wall shredding a shower of debris into the dark hallway, filthy and cold, where he crouched on the floor fumbling on the shoulder holster, hanging empty and limp, for his gun that was not there.

This is pretty much a typical opening for me. Being a pantser, I just pile on events after an opening and see where the story goes. But we don’t know who “he” is or who “the lady” is at this point. We do…

Sirens Call Publications is pleased to announce a new open submission for a horror anthology titled Alone With Your Fear!

The Call:

Isolation… not just physical, but psychological, emotional; it plays with your mind, drags out your deepest fears, makes them larger than life and far more sinister.

For this call, we’re looking for stories that pit the main character against their own greatest fear. It seems deceptively simple, but be warned – it isn’t. We want the fear to be the overarching theme, so make sure your story contains a hefty dose – if we don’t feel it, the readers won’t either.

Perhaps the best place to write this tale is Alone with Your Fear…

Deadline: September 1, 2016

Word Count: 4,000 – 8,000 words

All submissions MUST be submitted to: Submissions@SirensCallPublications.com

Reading & Evaluation Period: Two to three months after close of the deadline

NO REPRINTS WILL…

Frankenstein is a 2016 British ballet directed by The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett at London’s Royal Opera House. The ballet is a music and dance adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Gothic tale of morality and love.

American composer Lowell Liebermann, composes a new score for the production. John Macfarlane created the stage designs, while David Finn provided the lighting design. The ballet is being simultaneously screened in a number of select cinemas. The main stars are Laura Morera, Federico Bonelli and Steven McRae.

Plot:

Victor Frankenstein is sent away to university, away from his family and his closest friend Elizabeth. Just before he leaves, his mother dies in childbirth. Distraught, Victor throws himself into his studies, learning obsessively all that he can from his Professor. Fuelled by his experiments and in a desperate hope to find a way to bring his mother back, Victor works furiously, and eventually succeeds in giving life…

While a small part of me died a little when I saw that one of the most exciting directors in the genre was using his talent to make a found footage movie, it’s hard not to be excited to see what Adam Wingard does next. And that movie happens to be The Woods, a found footage horror film that’s largely a mystery—all we really know is that a bunch of kids go into the woods and don’t get to leave.

The First Omen is a 2017 American supernatural horror movie prequel to the 1976 smash hit The Omen, to be directed by Antonio Campos (Afterschool; Simon Killer) from a screenplay by Ben Jacoby (Bleed).

The film is being produced by David Goyer (The Forest) and Kevin Turen via their Phantom Four banner for 20th Century Fox.

The original Omen went on to spawn two direct sequels, Damien: Omen II in 1978 and Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981, plus a TV movie continuation. A reasonably successful theatrical remake of the film emerged in 2006 and there is currently a TV series about the exploits of grown-up Damien.

IMDb