We’re at a stage in the media landscape where I sometimes wonder if we should ever so slightly gatekeep the word camp, if only to preserve some sense of meaning. For the sake of this thought experiment, imagine camp in your head. Further imagine camp horror, specifically. Because we do this thing where we’ll say… Continue reading The Application of Camp in Horror Media
When I was about nine (give or take a year) some cable channel or other was re-running the 1990 It mini-series over the course of a week leading up to Halloween. My mom hadn’t seen it since in released the first time and thought it would be fun family TV. Now this might be horrifying… Continue reading I Hate the Book It, but Love the Mini-series
For horror movies, I love a good paranormal story. Something with demons or ghosts that present this sort of otherworldly threat. Mostly because I have the audacity to think I could take out a slasher, alien, monster, or otherwise corporeal menace. So I like a real threat.It's also one of the very few genres where… Continue reading Deconstructing Genre Expectations Through the Lens of Horror
One of my favorite examinations of adaptation from book to movie or television is comics. That covers graphic novels, superhero comics, manga, webtoons, etc. All these types of comics while ostensibly in the same essential format present entirely different challenges.Graphic novels and completed short serials (ex. V for Vendetta, Gender Queer, 30 Days of Night)… Continue reading An Adaptation Casestudy in Comics
There’s this really annoying (to me) piece of advice that gets flung around in writing circles about the use of dialog tags. The short is just to not use them at all. Just use “said.” On the surface it’s that same sort of blanket advice that doesn’t actually work and isn’t reflective of real life… Continue reading Acting and Set Design Theory for Books
There was this very interesting thread of videos that popped up on TikTok one time which was essentially just making fun of the way physical actions are described in, typically, romantic works. And not the sexy actions. But things like he “his eyes darkened” or “his mouth curled into a grin.” Because these are a… Continue reading Acting in Book Form
AbaratClive BarkerYA Dark Fantasy-2002 From Storygraph: "It begins in Chickentown, USA. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold. When the answer comes, it’s not one she expects. Welcome to the Abarat, a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day. Candy… Continue reading August Reads and Reviews
We did foster care respite for a short while. For the uninitiated, this is basically extended babysitting for foster kids. Now something you run unto a lot with foster agencies is that they're faith-based and ours was no exception. It was pretty common that any child entering the foster system, through this agency, that came… Continue reading The Adults at the Base of the Literacy Crisis
In talking about school books on TikTok, someone mentioned in a comment that one of the current strategies around teaching books is returning to a previously read novel years later and reevaluating it from an older perspective. That might be why some summer reading I was discussing for local high schoolers looked more like middle-grade… Continue reading That’s My Secret, Cap, I Didn’t Read the Book
In fourth grade one of the whole class (not pull-out group) required readings books was a novel called Finders Keepers by Emily Rodda. This is one of those books that sort of fundamentally changed me as a person, but I’ve not met anyone else who remembers reading it. Even people I went to elementary school… Continue reading How House of Seven Gables Almost Ruined Jr. High English Class
Pixels and Pins Studio 