What Star Trek Did Right You Can Too – Guest Post by, Jacqui Murray…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

Iwanted to write a quirky article for Chris’ blog, The Story Reading Ape (I mean, when you start with that title, readers expect outside-the-norm, don’t you think?). Well, unusual fits my stories, mostly set within the rarely-read prehistoric fiction genre. My overarching theme–survival–might sound mundane in today’s world where man is king but in prehistoric days (one-two million years ago), we were always one encounter away from extinction. The mystery of how we survived a habitat filled with sabertooth tigers, massive tusked mammoth, and vicious wolves almost as tall as us is why I began writing this genre. Add to that, our predecessors had puny teeth, dull nails, skin that could be sliced open with one swipe of a five-inch claw, rarely wore clothes, and had no idea what a number or a wheel was. Well, you see the problem with the simple goal of survival.

So each…

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Special Items: Paranormal

Story Empire

Hi Gang. Craig with you again today and I’m about to bite off more than I can chew. I write what I call speculative fiction. This is the stuff that requires a suspension of disbelief from your reader to enjoy the story. It’s a broad area that encompasses science fiction, fantasy, paranormal/supernatural, horror – and those are just the broad categories.

Let me get the barbecue off them first.

It occurred to me that most of these genres have special items in them that enhance the setting and help the hero succeed. Honestly, I could write a book about this stuff, but this is a blog post. Let’s throw the bones and see where this winds up.

Looks like paranormal/supernatural. It’s as good a place to start as any. Truth be told, there is a lot of drift between the speculative fields, and if you’ve ever read steampunk you might…

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