Ode to October

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October.

Time to read

the stories of Ray Bradbury,

the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe,

and the novels of Daphne du Maurier.

October.

Time to watch anime like

Soul Eater,

Hellsing,

and Black Butler.

October.

Time to see TV shows like

Dark Shadows,

The Addams Family,

and The Twilight Zone.

October.

Time to revisit films like

Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder,

The Raven with Vincent Price,

and the work of Alfred Hitchcock.

October.

Time to listen to music by

The Rasmus, HiM,

and Nightwish.

October.

Time for sweaters, scarves, and hot soup,

for shadows, smoke,

and morning mist.

October.

Time to curl up under blankets

with cats and cups of hot chocolate

mixed with Baileys Irish Cream.

October.

Time that is in two places at once,

the month that is both eight and ten,

Julian and Gregorian.

October:

Time to celebrate the things that go bump in the night

and try, oh so convincingly, to pretend

we are not afraid of the dark.

Should the Cat’s Cradle have film reviews?

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Hello, readers! I have a question for you. Well, a couple of questions, really.

The main focus of The Cat’s Cradle is (supposed to be) writing, specifically in relation to fantasy novels, structured around personal experience and anecdote. However, I also like writing reviews of films and television shows along with a large dose of fangirling. Some of these kinds of reviews have already popped up, but I try to keep them to a minimum. After all, this is supposed to be a writing site, not a movie review site.

But I do enjoy writing about things I really loved (or hated) about stories in other media, even if it doesn’t directly relate to writing. Over the last few years, I’ve done a few “reviews in sequence” where every day or week for a certain span of time, I write a brief review of a film that is part of a series or franchise. The two I’ve done so far are “7 Days of Star Wars” from 2016 where I watched Episodes I-VII (one each night for a week) and wrote reviews about each one. Then I did “The Merry Months of Marvel,” where I reviewed one Marvel movie each week starting in January 2018 and ending in May 2018. Currently these are only found on my private Facebook, as I didn’t want to flood The Cat’s Cradle with this off-topic random content, so they’ve only reached a very limited audience.

Ideally, I’d like to have a separate “blog” section on The Cat’s Cradle to post geeky gushing, but my WordPress site is, by necessity, very simple since I have neither the funds to afford purchasing a more complex theme/skin, nor the skills to modify what I have beyond some basic cosmetics. Right now I can only add static pages rather than individual entries, and apparently this Piano Black theme has been retired, so if I try to overhaul the site, I may not be able to switch back if I decide I don’t like the new look. I don’t really want to do that if there is little to no interest in my screen-rants.

Plus, there are a bunch of other questions I need to answer before making such a change:

These reviews are fun to write, but will they distract me too much from working on my regular entries and my novels?
There are already a lot of sites that do far better, more in-depth, and more entertaining reviews than I do, so do I have anything new to add?
If I can’t add a second scrolling blog to the current site, do I just post them in with regular entries (with a special tag, of course), or should I make a whole new site and link the two? (I already do have basic access to another site, Geek La Femme, but I technically did not create it. It is essentially abandoned, and I don’t know if I can or should resurrect it in any way.)
If I do make a new site or section, do I move the reviews that I already have done over to that new place (which can create a host of dead links) or leave them where they are (which may leave people confused and the organization system muddled)? And if I decide to make a new site, should I take my content from Geek La Femme (which includes reviews of anime and video games) and add it to the new one?
If I write or post any such reviews, should I add them to my Audio Editions, even though I get behind on the regular ones so often? (Recording them doesn’t take long, but editing can range from 2 to 4 hours, and I have little enough time as it is.)

So, what do you folks think? Should I bother with this or just let things rest as they are?

Influential Books: Introduction

But all my life I’ve wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom … Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn’t simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame . . . There was a knowledge that ran deeper – an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access – telling me that by crossing over, I’d be coming home.

That’s the reason I’ve yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It’s because I know that somewhere across the border there’s a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I’m supposed to be. I’ve tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.

— page 60 from The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint

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