When writing science fiction horror, it's important to know that the genre should not dictate where your story goes, or how your characters behave. The characters, the people whose story is being told, are what matter. They're the hook. They're the meat and potatoes. The science fiction is the background—the shiny dinner plate that holds the meal. The horror? Well, that's the itch in the back of your mind wondering whether the meat was undercooked and exposed to pathogens that will be obliterating your insides over the course of the forthcoming night. That's how I like my stories, at any rate.
This book and the entire Dark Tower series spurred my interest in fiction. Stephen King is a master storyteller, yet this novel is exceptional in its simplicity. The first line is as gripping as any I've ever read, and it also summarizes the core of the plot: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." The Gunslinger stands alone, both the character as well as the book. The way the story grows from a simple get from A to B plot line into an exponentially grander web of mind-bending As and Bs and Xs and Os will forever have an impression on me and my work. My book, and its characters, were heavily influenced by The Gunslinger.
The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.
'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.' The iconic opening line of Stephen King's groundbreaking series, The Dark Tower, introduces one of his most enigmatic and powerful heroes: Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.
Roland is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey toward the mysterious Dark Tower, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.
On his quest, Roland begins a friendship with a kid from New York named Jake, encounters an alluring woman and faces…
This complex sci-fi epic taught me the importance of forming my characters as people rather than puppets. Amid the setting of an endless war and the intricacies of its opposing factions it is the individuals who stand out in this novel. The war is a backdrop. The people are the story. Whatever chaos and calamity the author concocts—none of it matters unless it is felt by the characters, and the feelings of the characters don't matter unless the characters feel real to the reader.
In Conquest Born is the monumental science fiction epic that received unprecedented acclaim - and launched C.S. Friedman's phenomenal career. A sweeping story of two interstellar civilizations locked in endless war, it was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award.
Ray Bradbury's stories ooze charm—an approachable and inviting essence that is absent from nearly all other works of science-fiction. This novel, and in a broader sense many of Bradbury's works, taught me to let loose, to have a little fun with my writing. From this I learned that you can have a spooky and suspenseful story that isn't grotesque, that is funny, that doesn't cling to suspense like it's the only thing holding the plot together, that is poetic, that is fun to read, that is a story you can share with anybody, that is engaging, witty, and philosophical. Ray Bradbury taught me to write for me, and not for anyone else.
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all…
Hyperion taught me how to be afraid. The feeling I get when I read Hyperion is quite similar to how I feel when I watch Alien, my favorite movie. I see the Shrike as the ultimate literary sci-fi horror monster, much the same way as the Xenomorph is the quintessential movie monster. These creatures create the fear that I crave from my media, and the fear I hope to incite within those who read my works.
I must admit, I never read Storm Front or any of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I listened to them on audiobook performed by the masterful James Marsters. However, my biggest takeaway from this book and the rest of the series isn't the depth of its characters, the impressive detail of its urban fantasy world building, nor the nail-biting blockbuster action sequences—that's all spectacular. But no, what Storm Front and all of the Dresden Files taught me was the importance of structure. Jim Butcher sticks to a particular structure that he uses in nearly each and every one of these books, but he also knows exactly when and how to break away from that structure to create a monumental impact on the reader and his imagined world. It's fascinating, and it works.
In the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files series, Harry Dresden’s investigation of a grisly double murder pulls him into the darkest depths of magical Chicago…
As a professional wizard, Harry Dresden knows firsthand that the “everyday” world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most of them don’t play well with humans. And those that do enjoy playing with humans far too much. He also knows he’s the best at what he does. Technically, he’s the only at what he does. But even though Harry is the only game in town, business—to put…
Son murdered. Wife abandoned. Head hunted. When a violent pandemic turns his neighbors homicidal, Kozz is forced to break out of his solitude and venture back to the world where he left his love behind. Frostarc is a journey through one man's struggle to forgive himself.
The people of his frozen planet have gone insane, and many have disappeared. Kozz needs to find a way off his ice-block prison to track down his wife. Hiding from his past is no longer an option. A decade of isolation and self-loathing has destroyed his spirit, but a young boy and mother who Kozz finds on his travels serve as a surrogate family, one he feels compelled to protect. Frostarc will haunt readers with its bloody, western-shootout style and frightening revelations of Kozz's secret history.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
