Sam Knight's Blog, page 11

I have a new story out just in time for the crrrrreeeeeeepy time of the year!

Fittingly, it is kind of a crrrrreeeeeepy story!

It is available now as the story of the month at the Story of the Month Club!

A ***FREE*** flash fiction story available at my AuthorPage.

I am pretty darn excited about having a story in this anthology! When I first saw the cover art, I was entranced. When I heard what kind of stories they were looking for, I was hooked! I had to write a story for it! I am proud to say my story was accepted and I look forward to reading the other stories in it.

My story is Ride a Raptor! You know, exactly the kind of story you would find an anthology like this. Who wouldn’t want to ride a raptor? All the little kids at Jenny’s birthday party want to. It’s just like pony rides! Right?

Right?

What could go wrong….

You can pre-order the e-version on Amazon now or the print version should be available for order about the same time the e-book releases.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to co-author a Planet of the Apes story with Kevin J. Anderson (of Star Wars and Dune fame). Look for the anthology to be in a store near you in January 2017, or you can pre-order it from Amazon now!

The story I co-authored is titled “Of Monsters and Men” and I had a great time working on this story with Kevin. I hope you will get a chance to check it out!

Here is a link to the EXCLUSIVE First Look — PLANET OF THE APES: Tales From the Forbidden Zone.

You can Read more about it here.

Last year, Villainous Press, a big handful of authors, and myself, all came together to make an anthology, the proceeds of which go to benefit MileHiCon. That anthology was called Sidekicks, and you can find it here:

Links to Sidekicks:

Kindle               Print

This year it is being done again, and we are nearly there!

Look for the release of Adventures in Zookeeping at MileHiCon this October!

This coming weekend, August 12 – 14, 2016, I will be at MALCon! Come on out and say “Hi!”

If you are a Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files) fan, this is a great chance to get to rub elbows with him (and that’s all! I mean it!) as MALCon is smaller and more intimate than most conventions.

If you’re a writer, this is a great con to meet other writers and sit in on discussions on many different writing topics!

My panel schedule, should you need to find me!

Fri, 7:00 PM-7:50 PM, Sex and Violence in YA Literature (Serenity)

Fri, 8:00 PM-8:50 PM, Is It True You Always Have Story Ideas? (Kings Landing)

Sat, 1:00 PM-1:50 PM, Creating a Writing System (Kings Landing)

Sat, 5:00 PM-5:50 PM, Writing the Supernatural (Lawrence, KS)

Sat, 6:00 PM-6:50 PM, Book and Media Tie-Ins (Lawrence, KS)

Sat, 7:00 PM-7:50 PM, How Much Weird Could a Weird-Western Go if a Weird Western Could Go Weird? (Serenity)

Sat, 10:00 PM-10:50 PM, What is Our Fascination With the Undead? (The Shire)

Sat, 11:00 PM-11:50 PM, How Not to Get Published (Helms Deep)

Sun, 12:00 PM-12:50 PM, Age Appropriate Reading: Too Young, Too Old (Lawrence, KS)

Sun, 3:00 PM-3:50 PM, Overcoming Creative Fears (Kings Landing)

Many cool things are learned while researching things for books. Some you can eventually work into a story, others you find yourself trying to work into conversations…

Poison is different than venom because of they way it reaches you. Poison is ingested or absorbed, while venom is injected into you.

Phobophobia is the fear of phobias

Astronauts use Velcro and magnets to stop things from floating around while weightless. Things like the food on their food trays.

The idea of nice, happy fairies, like Tinkerbell, is a modern conception. Once upon a time, fairies were mean tricksters. Many were suspected of stealing babies and replacing them with things like a log or an old, dying fairy.

Dragons, unicorns, water-people, ghosts, zombies… they appear in ancient cultures all around the world. Kind of hard to discount things that peoples who theoretically never came into contact all believed in….

The elf owl is only about 5 inches tall.

It is believed that less than 10 of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime, and none of those were by her permission.

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13.  Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester rifle fortune and driving force behind the construction of the “Winchester Mystery House” was considered to be a triskaidekamanic- obsessed with the number 13.

One of the rarest PEZ dispensers sold for over $32,000 on eBay.

At one point in time, the original Star Trek series, while still in development, was called Gulliver’s Travels and the Captain was named Gulliver.

George Story, as a baby, had his photograph in the very first issue of Life magazine with the caption Life Begins. George died around the same time Life announced it would be shutting down, and the very last issue of Life magazine ran a story about his death.

Mike the Headless Chicken lived for around 18 months after his head was cut off. The enterprising owners put him on display and earned around the present day equivalent of nearly $50,000 a month.

Zhiznennia voda, the original name for vodka, means ‘water of life’

Doing research is fun. A little too fun. Sometimes it’s called “going down the rabbit hole” because, like Alice, you will get swept up into wondrous places you never imagined that can change you forever, and you might never find your way back. Here are some fun rabbit holes:

The Urban Dictionary– This is a great place to keep up on all that modern lingo you come across on the internet your old foggy brain can’t figure out. Beware! This is so NSFW (Not Safe For Work). While you will learn interesting and unusual things here, you will also come across people doing their damnedest to gross you out and ruin your life with things you didn’t want to imagine.

Snopes- One of the best places to find out that a rumor isn’t (or maybe is!) true. They do a pretty good job of vetting things out and explaining where the ideas came from. Here is a great one to start with!  http://www.snopes.com/cuban-refugees-...

Which leads right into…

The Onion– while this is a farcical, fictional paper, it flies close enough to the truth to fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

TV Tropes – a great list of (overused) story lines with examples. Not just for TV and movies! There is so much to be learned here if you are a lover or writer of stories.

I will be at StarFest this weekend, March 11-13. Come by and say Hi!

If you would like to come to one of the panels I will be on, here is my schedule:

Saturday, March 12

11:00am

Obligatory Media Tie-In Panel

1:00pm

Ow! My Spleen!

3:00pm

Oh No, They Did NOT Just Go There

Sunday, March 13

10:00am

Where Did This Chocolate Come From?

Hope to see you there!