Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
Oct 30
Witches are a staple of fantasy and horror fiction. In their broad definition, they mean any kind of magic-using female. But for this list I’m going to use a more narrow definition: the Halloween type of witch, evil, cackling, out to do no good. The kind that brews potions in a big black cauldron and …
Oct 28
Scarecrow and Tin Man from a 1902 stage production of The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know what makes it more creepy, the old-timey photo or the Scarecrow’s stiff-fingered, Leatherface-like appearance. In its time, though, it was a great success and the first version of Oz to be adapted into a script.
Oct 23
Medieval England came up with more than its share of punishment devices. Take the Pear of Anguish pictured above. It’s a speculum, basically, with an extendable pointy thing in the middle which may or may not have been spring-shot. It was inserted in any of the victim’s orifices and splayed them open. The spike then …
Oct 16
Elfquest, created by Wendy and Richard Pini, exploded onto the publishing scene in the early 1980s. A graphic novel series about, basically, hippy Native American elves who ride wolves, it took the comic world and SF fandom by storm, kick-starting the indie comic movement while also growing out of the earlier adult comic movement of …
Oct 14
They whisper between themselves when you’re not around. Who knows what they talk about?
Oct 12
Easy-to-comprehend diagram of Horror genres. Some changes I’d make: Move “Creepy Kid” under the Monster genre The genres at the bottom aren’t really genres, they’re more like themes… …with the exception of Goth, which is a legitimate genre IMO. The Supernatural subgenre under Paranormal is just wrong. I’d call it Metahuman or Mutant and class …
Oct 09
As I discovered when I read Rowan Jacobsen’s Apples of Uncommon Character, a name can make or break an apple type. Heirloom apples were commonly named after who discovered or propagated them or where they were discovered. Such as Ben Davis, McIntosh, and Rome, which came not from Italy but the little town of Rome, Ohio. …
Oct 08
Apples of Uncommon Character: 123 Heirlooms, Modern Classics, & Little-Known Wonders by Rowan Jacobsen Photographs by Clare Barboza Bloomsbury, USA, 2014 [Challenge # 18: A book where food, cooking, restaurants, chefs, etc. play a major role. ] I was all set to read American Pie as my foodie selection for the 2019 challenge, but then …
