(But We're Only Helping Your Royalty) Every so often, I hear a theory on TV or in a movie that makes me cringe. The specifics vary slightly but in essence it can summed up as, “It is impossible for humans of that period to have achieved this feat, indicating they were probably helped by extraterrestrials …
Continue reading We Came All This Way…
I had a blast doing this. So - much - fun. Here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/live/RoWrpcguSqw?si=wu1sf_64yyiOsRp_
I’ve spend a good portion of my waking hours observing nature – all of it: fauna, flora, and humans. Most of the time this is done subconsciously. I seem to have been born with some tools making me predisposed to this, although I’m not completely certain what those tools are. I’m reasonably certain two play …
Continue reading Ornithological Observations
There's a lot of buzz on Bluesky the last couple of days referring to an article and search tool published by The Atlantic. In brief, there is a site, LibGen, which has pirated over 7.5 million books and research articles. It is not the only pirating site out there, but what bubbled this one to …
Continue reading Were your books stolen for AI training?
We’ve been hearing probably more than we stomach about AI lately, so I figured it’s the perfect time for a pest like me to add my voice to the cacophony. And, while my title relies on an overused cheeky application derived from the classic 1966 Sergio Leone film, I feel it well warranted here. But …
Continue reading AI: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
I'm not a big user of most social media apps, but I did settle into Twitter back in 2016, primarily to connect with other independent authors. To this day, I find the community exceptionally supportive and positive – an anomaly, but that’s another story for another day. From that time, I managed to follow and …
Continue reading Apparently, I’m Part of an Evil Empire (A Rare Rant)
In a recent edition of Writers Supporting Writers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0VZVOXs9QU), we were discussing a process proposed by a script writer. Overall, our group doesn’t believe in any flat formulae for writing, but there were some merits in the proposal that I could relate to in my own (non-script) writing experience. Specifically, I have a process I …
Continue reading How I Approach Complex Action Scenes
I love this photograph. Of all the family photos I have, this sunlight-bleached reproduction – well into the process of a blotchy chemical aging – is my favorite. The subject of this image is nothing special: a group photo of myself and some of my cousins taken at a wedding reception. I’m guessing late 80s, …
As you may have noticed, I'm not much of a blogger. However, I've begun writing a new book - mainly as a distraction from losing two WIPs and trying to reconstruct them (long story I don't want to go into). For a while, I've been toying with the concept of recasting one of the Greek …
Continue reading Discovering a Personality
The Devil and the Wolf Consider the title of the book. What is the nature of the relationship between the two characters as the story progresses? What are the primary characteristics of each? What are the similarities and differences between the two?The author relies upon a handful of locations in this novel. The story opens …
Continue reading A Readers Group Guide
Richard L Pastore 