Richard Schiver

Tag: books

  • Fridays 5 with Tina S Transformation

    Fridays 5 with Tina S Transformation

    1: When did you first consider yourself a writer?

    A: I considered myself a writer the moment I realized my words had the power to connect with others on a deep, emotional level. That was long before publication, I was 12 when storytelling became not just an outlet, but a calling.

    2. What is the hardest part of writing?

    A: The hardest part is balancing vulnerability with strength, digging into the darkest places of the mind and heart while still shaping those emotions into stories that empower readers rather than weigh them down.

    3: How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

    A: It was a mixture of pride, disbelief, and gratitude. Holding my book in my hands for the first time was proof that pain could be transformed into something meaningful, that my words could reach others and perhaps even save them. More than that, I felt a deep sense of legacy, knowing my words would be forever immortalized on pages for my children, grandchildren, and generations to come.

    4: In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

    A: I am deeply passionate about forensic psychology, victim advocacy, and raising awareness around mental health and trauma. Beyond that, I dedicate time to community causes, especially anti-bullying efforts and supporting survivors through storytelling, my passion is fitness and nutrition and adventures.

    Q: If you could ask any author, living or dead, one question, what would it be?

    A: I would ask: How did you stay true to your authentic voice when the world tried to change your story? Because staying true to who you are as a storyteller is the greatest challenge and the greatest triumph. I love Nicholas Sparks he has been a inspiration of mine since I was a child.

    Tina S. Transformation is a compelling voice in psychological thrillers and suspense, known for crafting dark, haunting stories that explore the fragile line between trauma and resilience. With a background in the criminal justice field and forensic psychology, she brings raw authenticity to her work, using fiction to shine light on the hidden corners of the human mind.

    Tina’s Amazon Authors page is here:

    https://www.amazon.com/author/tinastransformation

    If you’re an author working in the speculative fiction field and would like to participate in my weekly Friday’s 5, answer the five questions above and send them to me at rschiver@gmail.com along with an author photo approximately 200px by 200px.

  • How Music and Writing Connect: Finding Your Flow

    I’m running a little behind right now. Installed a new entry door on my house last week and have been paying for it ever since. My sciatica is kicking my butt and the heating pad has become my best friend. Hopefully soon it will loosen up and I can get back to our normally scheduled programming. My apologies all around.

    I recently found a clip on You Tube taken from the concert film, The Song Remains the Same, a movie released in 1976 that featured the group Led Zeppelin. Filmed during three nights of concerts at Madison Square Garden.

    The clip features the song Stairway to Heaven which has become a classic since it’s release in the early seventies. I grew up listening to groups like Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Boston, and The Eagles just to name a few. But this was the first time I even saw the guitar solo by Jimmy Paige halfway through the song, and I was blown away.

    In the close up you’ll notice that Jimmy’s eyes are closed as he’s playing. It’s as if he has transcended the mechanical melding of guitar and man, the song no longer coming from the musical score in his head. It is no longer the act of metal strings being strummed while fingers move to the appropriate fret. This goes much deeper than that. In a sense he has become the song itself and what we hear comes from the depths of his soul. Jimmy has entered the zone. If you were to ask him what he was thinking about while he was playing, I’m willing to bet he wouldn’t be entirely sure himself.

    Writers do the same thing when they create. During the initial phase of a story’s creation, after the spark that inspired it. To write that first draft the writer finds it necessary to venture into the zone where all things become possible. In the zone there is no grammar, no punctuation, at least not consciously at first. That will come later, during the many rewrites to polish the story to a hard brilliance. No, during that first stage, the very first time a word intrudes upon the unblemished page, the writer infused with the fever of creation slips into a state of self-hypnosis.

    For some the ability to slip into the zone becomes second nature. As soon as they sit down at their work they enter that altered state. For others it is a struggle to find that quiet room in the mind where all things become possible. Here time has no meaning. The seconds, minutes, and even hours pass unnoticed as the writer becomes wholly focused on that imaginary place they have created in their mind. Where the words flow like the waters of a swift moving river that passes through their consciousness. Dark, deep, and muddied by the swirling emotions that whisper across the page.

    It is only then that the writer is at peace.

  • Upon the Shoulders of Giants.

    From Poe to Carpenter.

    In the early part of the nineteenth century Edgar Allen Poe visited the South Polar Region in his only novel length work titled: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship aptly named the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile natives before escaping back to the ocean aboard the Jane Guy bound for regions even further south. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue towards that mysterious region around the South Pole.

    It is believed by many that H.P. Lovecraft consciously continued Poe’s tale with his novella, At The Mountains of Madness. That was serialized in Astounding Stories from February to April of 1936. Lovecraft twice cited Poe’s disturbing and enigmatic story in his text, and explicitly borrows the mysterious Tekeli-li cry from Poe’s work. In a letter to August Derleth, Lovecraft wrote that he was trying to achieve with his ending an effect similar to what Poe accomplished in Pym.

    In August 1938 the novella, Who Goes There, by John W Campbell writing under the pen name Don A. Stuart was published in Astounding Stories. John never publicly claimed that his novella, Who Goes There? was intended to show H.P. Lovecraft how to write a story. However, literary critics have frequently drawn comparisons between Campbell’s work and Lovecraft’s earlier novella, At the Mountains of Madness, and have noted fundamental differences in their writing styles.

    The idea of a direct response to Lovecraft is further supported by the rediscovery of Campbell’s longer, unpublished version of the novella, titled Frozen Hell. A reddit user notes that the longer version “reads almost like a direct sequel to HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness,” before Campbell shortened it for publication. This suggests that Campbell’s original text had even stronger allusions to Lovecraft’s work

    John Campbell’s story has been adapted for the screen three times. In 1951 as The Thing From Another World, in 1982 as The Thing directed by John Carpenter, and most recently as a prequel to the Carpenter version, also titled The Thing, released in 2011.

    The history of this story inspired me to go one step further. In each of the stories above the alien presence never reaches civilization. Until now. I am nearing completion of my trilogy Shadows of the Past, that I’m working to have ready for release as early as next month, if all things go as planned.

    In Adversary, an ancient alien artifact discovered in Antarctica has a strange effect on anyone who touches it. Stolen to repay a gambling debt the artifact is lost and infects Jack Griffith, a sewer worker dying of cancer. The essence of the creature inhabiting the artifact offers Jack hope for a longer life. But is the price worth paying? Below is the proposed cover for the fist installment.

    A mockup of the proposed cover.

  • Fridays 5 with Kat Yares

    Fridays 5 with Kat Yares

    Continuing Fridays 5 with another author we lost too soon.

    1.) When did you first consider yourself a writer?

    A.)  I think I’ve always considered myself a writer – or at least since I could write a legible sentence. Have always written stuff, even poetry, and have earned a living from my words at times. But I didn’t consider myself an author until I had a short story accepted into a magazine and actually got paid for it.

    2.) What is the hardest part of writing?

    A.)  Putting butt in chair and just doing it. Next to that, is the absolute necessary rewriting/revision process.

    3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

    A.)  You could have heard me whooping and hollering all the way to the next town, I think. I still have that first dollar made taped to my desktop.

    4.) In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

    A.)  Movie making. Can’t call it film making because no film is involved. But I love the creativeness that you can achieve looking through the lens of a camera and then putting the scenes and segments together to tell a story.

    5.) If you could ask any author, living or dead, one question, what would it be?

    A.)  I would love to converse with John Steinbeck. And if I could only ask him one question it would be, Can I borrow the characters from Grapes of Wrath to interact briefly with my characters in the story I’m working on now?

    Kat Yares has been writing fiction her entire adult life. She is an author, screenwriter and indie movie maker. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous print publications and online. She passed due to heart failure in 2015.

    Her fiction is primarily in the horror/thriller genres. Unlike many, she writes horror not to gross out or startle her readers, but to make them think. Most of her stories are mind games and deal with mans (or woman’s) inhumanity to man (or woman). She is currently working on a two book series – set 2000 years apart. Part fantasy, part thriller – the two stories that comprise The Descendants are reminiscent of both Marian Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon series and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

    Her work is available on Amazon

    http://www.amazon.com/Kat-Yares/e/B002O6QCGE

    If you’re a writer working in the horror, sci-fi, or fantasy genres and would like to participate. Answer the questions above and send them to rschiver@gmail.com along with a brief bio and an author photo 200px by 200px in size Thanks.

  • Fridays 5 with Rick Hautala

    1. When did you first consider yourself a writer?

    A.  That’s a tough one because while I always had what I’d call an “artistic sensibility” (i.e. I didn’t fit very well into normal life). At first, I wanted to be a painter–an artist–an illustrator. Then I realized I could do with words what I struggled to do with paints. I think by the time my tenth novel was published, I figured I was a real writer and it wasn’t a fluke.

    2. What is the hardest part of writing?

    A.  Ideas are easy for me. And writing is a struggle, but a fun one. Revision is always fun. And editing is tedious but necessary. But the absolute hardest part of writing for me is developing the ideas once I get them. That’s where you have to fill in the blanks and piece the story together to get an outline or, at least, a clear idea of where you’re going. That is the worst and hardest. After that, it’s easier … but never easy.

    3. How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

    A.  I was thrilled, of course, but I was also nervous. I felt like I was an imposter. It was like standing in the middle of a shopping mall with no clothes on. I was insecure enough about my work (and still am) to not allow myself to enjoy … to savor the moment.

    4. In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

    A.  Reading, of course. You can’t be a writer and not read–good books, bad books, indifferent books … every kind of book to see and learn what the craft is all about. Other than reading and writing–my family and politics. My friend Tom Monteleone calls me a “leftie, liberal, tree-hugging, granola-crunching, long-haired hippie.” That works for me … and my politics reflect that.

    5. If you could ask any author, living or dead, one question, what would it be?

    A.  I’d ask Shakespeare not where he got his ideas, but how he developed them … or I’d ask Hawthorne why he seemed to be depressed all the time.

    About the author.

    Rick arrived on the horror scene in 1980 with many of his early novels published by Zebra books. He wrote and published over 90 novels and short stories from the early 1980s on. In 2011 the Horror Writers Association awarded Rick and Joe R. Lansdale the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. Sadly, on March 21 of 2013 we lost Rick to a heart attack. For me personally he was a writer who was always willing to help those of us starting out, and though I never met him personally I counted him among my friends.

    Rick’s work is still available at Amazon, stop by and check it out by clicking on Rick’s photo on the right.

    If you write in any of the speculative fiction genres and would like to participate, answer the five questions above and send them, along with a brief author bio and an author photo no larger than 200px by 200px to rschiver@gmail.com.