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I have heard this all my life - "there's nothing new", "there's nothing original anymore", "everything's already been done".

Any artist or musician or writer know that this is simply not true. Yes, there is plenty of "borrowing" and even theft but I would argue that is a necessary part of the creative process. Ask any coder and if they are honest they will tell you they learned by stealing everything they could get their hands on. Creating original content, any content, takes time and it often...

It's a question as old as the movies - which is better, the book or the film?

With some genres, most notably Science Fiction and Fantasy. there is no comparison - the book outshines the movie adaption in almost every respect. With other genres the distinction is not so clear. This is perhaps most with the horror genre.

Three of my all-time favorite horror books are The Exorcist, The Omen and Clive Barker's Books of Blood. The movie adaptions of The Exorcist and The Omen were both excellent in...

Among the many poetic and literary examples of stream-of-consciousness writing, perhaps the most famous are Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that follows Clarissa Dalloway throughout a single day in London, using stream of consciousness to reveal her thoughts, memories, and perceptions as she prepares for a party, and James Joyce's Ulysses, considered a landmark work of modernist literature. Ulysses employs stream of consciousness to explore the inner lives of Leopold Bloom, Stephen...

They say a picture paints a thousand words but a well-placed word or sentence can paint a complex picture as well.

I remember reading Kevin J Anderson's "Saga of the Seven Suns" series where a Klikiss Robot is explaining things to a human. The human is confused by the explanation and the heart of his confusion is his belief that robots cannot lie. To conclude its explanation the Kilikiss robot says, "I lied."

Two words. Simple, yet powerful when placed in context. The much overused "Jesus wept"...

Today, everyone relies on numbers to quantify sales, readership, and "clicks" for books. There is no escaping the parsing and interpretation of data anymore.

However, it is a travesty to authors and readers alike that certain "books" continually remain on the "bestseller lists", touting themselves as "the most popular books of all time". Of course, I'm talking about The Bible, The Quran and The Book of Mormon.

None of these works is technically a book. Authorship is dubious, at best. How would...

There are almost as many genres of literature as there are people on the planet, and we all tend to gravitate more to one or two of them.

Over the years I have consumed philosophical literature, historical literature, dramas, thrillers, scientific treatises, psychology, astrophysics, genetics, genealogy, and countless other fiction and non-fiction books covering a plethora of subject matter.

But two genres keep me coming back for more, year after year: Fantasy and Science Fiction.

You can...

When it comes to poetry, everyone has a favorite, whether it's the limerick you learned in elementary school or something a little more substantial.

For me, Dylan Thomas' is one of my all-time favorites, and the poem that inspired me to master the Villanelle Form. Here is "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night":

Dylan Thomas 1914 – 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know...

Over the course of my lifetime I have read literally thousands of books.

Some were good, some were bad, some were too obtuse, some were too simple. But every now and then an author punches you in the face with his or her creation. Such was the case when I discovered Stephen R Donaldson.

The First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever are arguably the greatest fantasy fiction ever written and even if you don't feel as I do, they are in everyone's Top 5 at least.

Not resting on...

Everyone has an opinion when it comes to book covers.

Like divorce and roulette, people aren't shy about giving you their opinions about what works best, what the public want, and what will sell the most books.

I only have one piece of advice - do what you want! Not what someone else wants.

I design all my own book covers because I enjoy it and I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to artwork. I like some better than others, and that's OK. At the end of the day I get to tell myself that it...

Pablo Picasso, a true artistic genius, had  a lot to say about art.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."  (maybe paraphrased) - Pablo Picasso

"Good artists copy, great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso 

"Youth has no age." - Pablo Picasso