H, to me, is a letter with an old-fashioned vibe similar to E — a Victorian feel, honorable as well as haughty, but with touch of horror, like Charles Addams’ old New Yorker series of Addams family cartoons, the creepy family of which obviously came from old money. But H can also be hip and …
Category: Writing
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon [Review]
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon by Moira Greyland Castalia House, 2018 The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/20/24: Dog Magic
Since I’ve been doing dog breeds for the past two weeks, how about Dog Magic? The first dog magic, of course, was the human domestication of dogs. From what I’ve read, the first dog was a now-extinct subspecies of wolf similar to the present-day Arabian Wolf, which roams the Middle East. In other words, a …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/13/24: Toy Dog Breeds, Part 2
More Toy Dog breeds. Toy Dog Breeds Mostado-Michu Tricolor dog (white, black, brown – think beagle) with a strongly arched tail. It has drooping ears covered with soft, silky fur and its body fur is also soft to the touch, with no rough undercoat. Gentle and sensitive, they were prized by upper class townsfolk …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/6/24: Toy Dog Breeds, Part 1
Toy Dogs are a show class of the American Kennel Club referencing small, cuddly canines whose chief job is human companionship. They can be of various breeds — spaniels and terriers for example — or shrunk-down versions of larger dogs like poodles. The one thing they all have in common is their diminutive size, which …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/30/24: Mummies
The 1930s and 1940s were a golden age for horror movies AND graphic design for horror movie posters. Look at the color, the composition, the pleasing mix of typefaces in the poster above! It’s gorgeous. Which brings me to the subject of mummies. Mummies are part of the rarefied classic movie monster club that includes …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/23/24: Horror Movie Antagonists
As it’s turning towards Halloween, I thought I’d do a post on second and third-tier horror movie antagonists. The human kind, not monsters. There are many versions of Dracula, The Wolfman, and Mummy and even more imitators. From the get-go, the Silent Movie era spawned Count Orlok (Nosferatu, 1922) an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula …








