Happy New Year 2016!

Whew. Another year come and gone. I hope you all had a great Christmas!

It's been a long year on the blog here. With a large variety of posts covering a slew of different subjects. My blog got a long-needed facelift and a few new pages. We also hit a major milestone this year, with over 30,000 views!

Let's start with the changes to the blog here. We got a new background, one more befitting a Horror blog. You can now click directly on my books on the left side there. The "Reviews" page became "Reviews By Me" to make it clear what was going on, and I consolidated all my monsters posts onto one page for Cryptids.

Speaking of Cryptids, I added to my list this year, starting with the Ropen, then adding Giant Spiders and Sea Serpents. Bringing my list of 31 Monsters up to 22. We will continue to add to that list in the coming year as well.

One thing I stepped up on this year, was sharing my writing here on the blog. It includes my short story Collaboration, as well as the multi-part serials Class 1: The Delivery, and Walkabout. I must admit that I liked doing the multi-part stories, so keep an eye out in the coming year for more blog exclusive stories. 

Where I really stepped up this year though was reviews. Mostly of video games. The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Five Nights at Freddy's have all been done. I plan to continue doing reviews into the new year, but probably not as many video games. I plan on going back to look at a few TV series, and I may start posting some book reviews to the blog itself. We'll have to see how that goes though. 

I've really fallen behind on discussions of writing and Horror itself though. Truth be told, I've had trouble thinking of things that I haven't already gone over. True, some stuff bears repeating, and I have a few things boiling up to a couple rants, but it feels like a waste of time to just go over a subject again with only a few snippets of new info. I plan on going back and looking over some of my old posts though, see what needs updating and keeping my mind open to questions I need to answer. 

In the meantime, if you have a Horror or Writing related question, leave it in the comments, or you can find my email on the Biography page and send it to me directly and I'll do my best to answer it. If I get enough questions, I'll likely devote an entire blog post to them. Now that would really be something! 

In the meantime, I hope you all have a good and safe New Year's Eve, and we'll see you next year! 

~ Shaun 

Review: Lost Tapes (TV show)

So, there's a lot more Horror out there than just movies, books, and video games. There's also TV series. While Horror television shows are somewhat of a rarity, there are a few out there, many available on DVD. (Mostly available on DVD, they don't typically seem to last too long, although there are definitely exceptions.)

Lost Tapes was a series that aired on Animal Planet from 2008 - 2010. It was fairly short-lived, with only 14 episodes in its first season.

The premise of the show is pretty simple. Each episode looks at a cryptid or monster of some kind in a "found footage" type of storytelling. The first episode, for example, is effectively an encounter with a Chupacabra, as seen through the video camera of a Mexican girl sneaking across the border into the US, and then through the body cameras of the border patrol officers that find her. 

Interspersed between camera shots, there is typically narration or a factoid which gives insight into current theories about the creature or the area it inhabits. 

(This one refers to the journey on foot of illegal immigrants from Mexico to the US.)

Unfortunately, which the episodes are a list of the most well-known and popular cryptids, this is mostly an entertainment show, good for creeping you out and a few jumpscares. It's not any kind of real investigation, or even summation of these creatures. Most episodes are only around 20 minutes long too, so it's not hard to blow right through an entire season in a day. 

The first season was also the best, delving into such staples as the Chupacabra, Bigfoot, Megaconda, Thunderbirds, and Megalania. Unfortunately, over the second, and especially the 3rd season, they had to reach for monsters people would recognize. The 3rd season falling prey to zombies, poltergeists, and even the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl. 

Still, the show has a fair bit of entertainment value, and would fit right in for an October marathon if you can find it on DVD. 

Alternately, you can find the first season on Youtube. 

~ Shaun

Holy Plot Holes, Batman!

Sometimes, it just happens that we miss something. A paragraph, or even a single sentence which makes no sense given what happens throughout the rest of the story. These are commonly called Plot Holes.

A perfect example of this would be Buzz from the movie Toy Story. Basically, if he really didn't believe he was a toy, he wouldn't have acted like it when Andy (or his parents) entered the room. Kinda throws off the whole movie, huh?

These things do slip through the cracks though. It's to be expected when you have a novel of 60,000, 70,000, or 100,000 words. Plot holes in books usually only last a single sentence or a paragraph, even if their repercussions span the entire work. In the Toy Story example above, Buzz pretty much does that through the entire movie. Pretending to be a toy whenever any human enters the room, even though he swears he's not one. Effectually, the whole movie falls apart if you think about it too long.

Of course, this is one of the things a good developmental editor looks for. Although, for holes that span the entire book, there's not much that can be done. Still, the more consistent you can make your work, the better it'll be. A big enough plot hole, even an irrelevant one, can pull the reader out of your story and that's the last thing you want.

If you have mind-control slime that takes people over at the slightest touch, your heroine can't take a bunch of it in the face without effect or explanation

If you establish that your town has a single road in and out, you can't set up a military roadblock and then have a character from out of town just show up in town like nobody's business.

I'm certainly not going to claim my own works are hole free. I had a minor one in my book Class 5 that I actually had pointed out to me in a few reviews. I took advantage of it being self-published to fix it though and upload the new version, but it was there, and I'm sure there's a few more that I still haven't caught.

My own plot hole that I fixed was simply not explaining the reasoning behind my character's actions, which didn't make much sense otherwise. It didn't help that the character in question wasn't in his right mind, so his actions weren't exactly a logical leap for most people. The fix was easy though, a couple sentences where someone questions his actions and he mentions his thinking. Problem solved.

So how to avoid plot holes? That's easy, just keep your eyes and your mind open during the multiple revisions your work should go through before it's published. Hire a good editor to go through your manuscript. Have beta readers give your work the once, or twice over. Basically, do everything you should normally do to make your work the best it can be.

Of course, some things may still slip through the cracks, and some things that are technically plot holes will be the axis upon which your story rotates. In that case, you just have to explain it away as best you can and/or hope nobody notices, like the Toy Story example.

Except everything's going to be noticed eventually, so it may be best to just not worry about it.

Don't worry. Be happy.

~ Shaun

31 Posts of Monsters: Sea Serpents

The oceans of the world are deep, dark, and have been terrifying people for as long as mankind has known about them. While we've always known they were full of tasty fish and clams, we also know there are things in there that don't mind making meals out of us if they get the chance.

Name: Sea Monster, Sea Serpent

Size: Variable. Reports can be as small as ten feet, to hundreds of feet long.

Appearance: Long, serpentine bodies with dragon or horse-like heads.

Threat: Medium. Many sea serpents could crush ships just by sheer size, and huge jaws lined with sharp teeth means predators that would likely not pass up the chance to devour some hapless sailors. There are almost no actual accounts of such creatures actually attacking ships or people though. It could simply be because there are no survivors.

Reports of sea serpents have dwindled since we've filled in most corners of the map. That doesn't mean there aren't any though. The news usually has three to four stories a year about unusual creatures washing onshore or a strange shape seen in the water from a ship.

It's been said we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the depths of our oceans. Even the giant squid was just a myth until several years ago, and there's hints of even bigger versions down there. Squid up to 120 feet long. So it's not at all unbelievable that a 60 - 75 foot serpent could be gliding through the water out there, preying on sharks, or even small whales.

Many things are probably just being misidentified though. A giant squid close to the surface could
easily give the impression of a single, or even several long, snake-like creatures. Especially if one tentacle lifted up out of the water, it would certainly look like a long neck with a small head at the end. A lot of times, storms or catastrophic events can drudge up deep sea creatures and toss them on the beach. To an untrained eye, a 20-foot oarfish is easily a sea monster. Not to mention the rotting carcasses of whiles that wash up every so often, giving the appearance of something entirely different.

One of the things that's always struck me is how much many reports sound like creatures we know used to exist. Even reports that date back to before we knew of them. Plesiosaurs for one example, the sea-going reptiles that swam alongside the dinosaurs and that are commonly pointed to in claims of lake monsters. Long neck, dragon-like head, humps. Ocean species may have developed leaner, more snake-like bodies as well, especially in tropical waters.

Plesiosaurs are relatively small fry though. The real sea monsters would be Liopleurodon or one of the Mosasaurs.

Sea monsters are a staple in movies, such as Deep Rising, or Predator X, and Books abound as well. Tim Curran's Leviathan, Max Hawthorne's Kronos Rising, and others are relatively easy to find. Once you expand into sharks, there are literally hundreds of choices in movies and reading to keep a sea-fearing mind busy.

Perfect entertainment if you're planning on taking a cruise.

~ Shaun

Happy Birthday to a Blog

So, it was three years ago on the 8th of this month that I published my first post on this blog. That's a lot of words put down, and a lot of different posts.

This blog has seen the publishing of two books, one novelette, and one short story sampler. It's also seen me reach finalist in a short story contest for a local Horror convention. It's also seen the writing of a third book, and the posting of several more short stories on this very blog.

In honor of that, you may have noticed the blog here has gotten a shake-up. A new background, links to my books on the left side of the screen, and a whole separate page dedicated to Cryptids. Some changes which were a long time coming.

There are some issues when viewing the page on a mobile device, I am aware of and working on that. Sorry. :-/

Now, I'll admit, when I started this blog, I had some rather lofty aspirations of moving over to a full website of my own after a year or so. Obviously that hasn't happened. Best laid plans, and all that. However, sometimes the best thing is for things to not go quite according to plan. I like the way the blog is looking now, and even though I'm still not quite back to a regular weekly schedule yet, things are looking up.

I'm purposely keeping this particular post pretty short. I've got things to work on this week and I just wanted to point out the changes here.

I also want to thank all of you that have followed me along on this journey so far. Your support means a lot to me and I wouldn't even be where I am now without it. So, thank you.

Next week WILL have a real post to keep up on, and I might even have a giveaway or something special. As I write this, my blog is just 50 views shy of 30,000. So, let's hit that milestone and be on our way to the next one!

Feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line letting me know what you think of the new look and/or suggestions!

~ Shaun