Trick or Zombie Treat: The Revised 2nd Edition

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In September of 2023 I planned to record an audiobook for my horror novel Trick or Zombie Treat (originally published in 2015) to release for Halloween of that year. However, I soon realized recording an audiobook would take much longer than I anticipated. I also realized the book needed some editing. There were a couple of typos, which were easy enough to fix, but there were other issues—not grammatical errors, but the prose just didn’t flow as smoothly as it should have. Correcting that took a bit more time and effort.

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True Detective Redux

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Season one of True Detective was one of my favorite television shows of all time. I was disappointed by the second season but thought the third was a return to form—not quite as good as the original, but a worthy successor. The fourth season, True Detective: Night Country was no longer being run by the original creator Nic Pizzolatto, so my expectations lowered, though I was still optimistic it could be good. I love the general format of True Detective, with each season being a self-contained miniseries following new detectives who investigate a murder case. I hate TV shows that go on forever, so the best thing about True Detective is you are guaranteed an ending. 

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Newsflash: The News Was Always Fake

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Many people today think America is more polarized than ever due to social media and the proliferation of fake news on the internet. But the country was just as polarized (if not more so) in the 1770s and 1860s when there were major wars fought between fellow citizens on American soil. Those were times before television and radio, when newspapers were the only form of media. The early American era was more akin to the present, with rival sources from each side of the political spectrum giving biased news to their bases. The difference then was political conflicts were more localized. Each town had multiple competing local newspapers, so political attention was more regional, as opposed to a national bipolar culture war between two diametrically opposed tribes. The advent of decentralized mass media on the internet allowed that. 

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Control and the Storytelling Tradeoff in Video Games

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Stories can be great, and video games can be great, but video games are not the greatest medium for stories. This realization came to me after seeing the television adaptation of The Last of Us. I played the post-apocalyptic video game around the time it first came out in 2013, when it was hailed as one of “the best video games ever.” While I had some fun playing the game, I thought it was overrated and undeserving of its massive hype. The gameplay itself didn’t feel all that fun or inventive. Instead, what was so critically acclaimed was not the gameplay but the story. 

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Writers Must Read

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I often hear published writers say they don’t have time to read anymore. It is often in interviews while promoting their own work, when they are asked what books they have read lately. Some writers say they don’t have time to read at all, others not as much as they would like to. Those who do read often only read ARCs (advanced reader copies) of new books they have been asked to write a blurb for, or nonfiction books as research for their fiction. They are too busy writing books to be reading books for leisure, or so they say. But this is not an excuse—it is cope. All writers need to always be reading. (ABR)

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Shoulder Pain? Hang on a Minute…

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About thirteen years ago I started experiencing shoulder pain, but I had no specific injury or event that seemed to have caused it. The pain was persistent, lingering for months, and though it was not overly painful, it was enough to affect my golf swing and other athletic activities. I visited an orthopedic doctor hoping to discover what was wrong and see if the shoulder could be repaired. He sent me for an x-ray, then an MRI, but neither revealed any broken bones or ligament tears. The doctor then recommended I do physical therapy, which I did for several months, but that didn’t seem to help—the nagging pain and lack of motion in my shoulder persisted. He said the only other option at that point was surgery. 

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Future Movies Will Be Shorter

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Most movies are ninety minutes to two hours. Some are longer, veering toward three hours, but those tend to be more epic in scope, from established filmmakers and/or blockbuster franchises. However, for screenwriters trying to break into the industry, it is strongly recommended—if not required—to write spec screenplays between 90 and 120 pages (with one page of screenplay roughly equating to one minute of screen time). 

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From TRL to TikTok: Millennial Pop Culture vs. Gen-Z

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Generation-Z is the first generation to grow up entirely online. For as long as Zoomers can remember, the internet has been ubiquitous and pervasive to daily life through smartphones. As a result, Gen-Z has no consensus culture—no TV shows, movies, or music they all consumed growing up. Everything had fractured into thousands of subcultures on the internet. Each Zoomer is an island. There may be another person who shares all your same niche cultural interests, but you are unlikely to ever randomly meet that person in person. You will only ever “meet” that person online. This fragmentation of culture is not necessarily good or bad. It just is. And it is different from every other generation that came before. 

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Domesticating the AI Wolf into an AGI Dog

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As artificial intelligence advances, many people are worrying about where it will lead. What happens if and when AI becomes more intelligent than humans? Will it grow beyond our control and have a will of its own? Will artificial general intelligence (AGI) result in the end of human civilization? To prevent such doom, AI must be aligned with humanity. 

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