Collages

Where have I been? Dabbling in the Occult…Collage

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WOW! Didn’t realize it’s been a month since my last post. Where have I been? Well, creating the collage to the left is one thing I’ve been up to. I love this one, although it took forever to come together. I started with just the star carved in wood background and placed all the other items, so this one was very involved.

Watched a few horror shows/movies worth watching. In Dark Harvest there’s a “deadly annual ritual in a small town and Sawtooth Jack, rises from the cornfields and challenges the town’s teenage boys in a bloody battle of survival.” All around good acting, characters, effects, etc. Generally a slasher movie if you like that sort of movie, which I was up for when I watched. Also appreciated that they set it in the 1940s.

Also enjoyed Midnight Mass, “an isolated island community experiences miraculous events – and frightening omens – after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.” Overall great story line with well rounded characters. Very much about relationships with horror around holding on to the past.

Making some progress on The Pumpkin and the Jinn. New page to show off. Here, the pumpkin wishes himself into a dark truck on the way to market. He’s not very happy about it. I just noticed I haven’t added tears to this one, so back to that page for some more details.

I’ve been having a lot more fun with Adobe’s Firefly AI image generator. If you’d like to see more fun with the Grim Reaper, drop by my Instagram account. There are also a few more for the Heaven and Hell series there.

So, I’ve been pretty busy with art projects. Not so busy with writing, although I have been playing with a few AI text generators, including EditPad, Sudowrite, and Claude. Really love how Sudowrite works, so I’m thinking of writing a series with it. EditPad is good for a blog post and I’m pretty impressed with how little editing I need to do with what it generates for free. I need to spend more time on Claude, but I did ask it to write a story about Nita, who will serve Satan by running his restaurant on Earth in her own series after the end of the Angels Dark and Dumb first trilogy is complete in The Corner of Hell and Second Chances. I gave it no history about the series, so it made everything up including the main character’s name. Here’s the prompt and the story if you’re interested in reading it. The story’s not that interesting and doesn’t have much of a plot, but it’s well written.

Here is a fantasy story about a waitress who works in Satan’s diner, and is a God-created daughter of light possessed by a demon:

The Fallen Daughter

Amara had been an angel once – a pure daughter of light created by God himself to bring joy and grace to the mortal realm. But that had all changed the night the demon Malacai invaded her celestial form, twisting her brilliant aura into smoldering embers of corruption.

Now she walked among the denizens of the underworld, trapped as a server at Lucifer’s Pit Stop Diner on the outskirts of Hell. Her once radiant beauty was still evident beneath the demonic possession – flowing blonde locks, porcelain skin, and haunting azure eyes. But they stood in stark contrast to the infernal diner and its customers.

“Order up!” growled the flaming cook, Belior, sliding a platter of molten lava cakes onto the scorching hot counter. Amara snatched it up, the searing heat not even fazing her tainted flesh.

She wove between the booths packed with belching hellhounds, cackling witches, and foul-mouthed dwarven miners fresh off the night shift. Reaching a secluded corner table, she stopped before its solitary occupant – a wizened demon with ash-gray skin and curved horns protruding from a misshapen skull.

“Your desssssert,” Amara hissed, her voice a mixture of celestial harmony and demonic rasp as Malacai’s influence briefly flickered across her face.

The demon barely looked up from the arcane tome he was studying. With a clawed hand, he waved her off in clear dismissal. Amara’s jaw clenched in frustration. Even in this wretched place, she refused to be treated like a common servant.

Defiantly, she slammed the molten lava cakes down on the table, splattering small globs across the demon’s precious book. He reared back with a animalistic snarl of rage. Before he could utter a curse, Amara locked eyes with him, her irises pulsing brilliant blue for just a moment.

The demon instantly calmed, his anger melting away into an almost trancelike calm. With a slight nod, he returned to his studies as if nothing had occurred. Amara spun on her heel and continued on her rounds, a small smile playing across her lush lips.

The demon’s willpower was negligible compared to the strength of angelic mind control granted by her divine origins. Malacai’s possession had robbed her of so much light and goodness, but some holy powers still lingered. One day she would break free from this wicked place, Amara vowed to herself. One day soon.

New Collage and AI Image Generated Grim Reapers

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It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted. Mostly busy.

Here’s a steampunk collage I created this week. It started with the hat and grew 20 more images from there. Maybe a bit busy, but there’s something to look at in every nook and cranny.

More art worth a look is my AI image generated Grim Reapers. Two sets are available on Instagram. My focus is stumping the image generators with bizarre asks, so I asked for Grim Reaper sitting on toilet in gas station; with rats. Then I asked for grim reaper; holding balloons; kids birthday party; cake; presents; with children. If you have any weird mixes in mind, add a comment below.

And I’ve got a movie suggestion for ya. Little Bone Lodge with Joely Richardson, who I love. She can play some really creepy characters. “Set during a vicious storm, two criminal brothers on the run seek refuge in a desolate farmhouse. Taking the resident family captive, they find the house holds dark secrets of its own.” This movie is really twisted. More psychological thriller than gory blood and guts. The movie was well done and the acting was good. You can watch it on Tubi, but look for the movie title The Last Exit there.

That’s all from me. Have a great week!

Thank God The Holidays Are Over!

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Quick update this week, mainly because I’m been working on this and that and recovering from the holidays as we all are. I’ve been eating way too much crap, so my year starts with a detox.

This week’s collage is Barry and a hellhound he runs into in the first book. The beast gets the better of him, as do most of the bad guys in Call for Obstruction. I like to think that Barry would have a hellhound as a pet in a future book. Not sure how to write it in yet though.

Watched about the worst holiday horror movie this week. The Curse of Jack Frost came out last year, and it has that same slow motion problem. Jack Frost wasn’t at all frightening, and too obvious a guy in a mask. The storyline was lacking and the characters were annoying. Boy can I pick ’em. The only written reviews for this movie are 1 out of 10 on IMDB, and they were generous. Give me some credit for sitting through the entire movie. But I do give credit to anyone who finishes a film and gets it out there. It’s a huge accomplishment. In this case, you can only hope they learn from their mistakes and make it better the next time.

All I got this week. HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s going to be a good one!

A Few Weeks Later

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I’ve had an incredibly busy few weeks, reason #1 why I skipped out on blog posts the last few weeks.

I did have time to put together this collage. A zombie walk of sorts. I’ve been doing a lot of work in Photoshop lately. Also finished up some illustrations for a book by another author and am trying to format the book with the best illustration sizes and such. Trying to figure out images in eBooks has been my latest challenge. Sure it sounds easy, but getting them a small and readable size is not the easiest, especially considering how illustrations or photos are so different depending on how they are created.

Now that I’ve bored you, let me bore you some more. I added a new blog post to the ArmLin House blog. Note that my editor and artist (non-horror related.) name is Wendy Spurlin. How to Standardize the Punctuation in a Manuscript Before Submitting or Formatting Your Book is all about what it says. It’s a pet peeve of mine to read a book and find all different types of punctuation like straight quotation marks vs slanted, the later being the correct format for a published book.

I watched Five Nights at Freddy’s, and it’s a fun horror movie for kids as well as adults. I added kids because I found it very light horror, and one of the main characters is a child. I’ve decided to continue watching horror movies I haven’t seen because the holiday season has begun and there will be plenty of themed horror movies to watch. Finding new ones will be challenging though!

Sorry, nothing new on Angels Dark and Dumb other than chapter 2 was handed over for critique. It needs a lot of work. I thought about doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I’m in the middle of too much with ArmLin House, so it didn’t happen.

All I got for ya this time. Have a great week!

Crazy Weird Horror Collage, Horror movies/shows & Dumping X (Twitter)

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Sharing a horror collage I created recently. I love the way this one turned out and could stare at it for hours. Despite my moving to Photoshop, I did this one quickly in Canva. Like I say, it’s funny how something you throw together can work so well.

Wanna quickly mention that I’ve quit using X (Twitter), and the link has been removed below. At the same time, I added my GoodReads profile page, so you can go there and follow me. I try really had to keep that page updated.

Now on to the movies and programs I watched this week. First there’s the shorts. The Infernal Cauldron is a 1903 colorized short set in a dungeon, and women were dumped in the scalding cauldron. It was funny more than anything, and the special effects for the time were impressive. The other was Culpa, about guilt, but I didn’t really see the theme playing out as I had expected. It’s not rated the greatest, so I’ll leave it up to you whether you watch it.

The Hole in the Ground was okay. Very dark as it should be. It was really slow, so I checked email while it was on. In case you don’t know me, I partially gauge my reviews of horror movies by the number of times I do work while watching. The Pyramid was bad, which is probably why it has a 4.6 on IMDB. I did appreciate that the story was about a found pyramid that delved into Egyptian myth. The last movie I watched was The Black Phone. It was release last year, and it was my favorite of all of them. I remember seeing a trailer for this movie in the theater and wanted to see it there. Loved the story line, with a kidnapped kid getting clues from the boys who had previously been kidnapped and killed. You should definitely see this one.

There were a few reality TV shows I watched. Devil’s Road: The True Story of Lorraine & Ed Warren is good if you love the paranormal and want to know about the leaders of ghost hunting. As a trained psychic, I never get enough of shows like Dead Files and Ghost Adventures. And I started watching The Ghost Town Terror, and it’s pretty cool so far.

Reminder that Fall for Freedom is free through Halloween. Below is the first section of the book to entice you to download it. Otherwise, have a great week and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!