Blue Scream of Jeff: 2025

Monday, June 30, 2025

“Strange New Worlds” perfect feel-good summer series

I often spend my summers rewatching old Sci-Fi movies from my youth in what I call my ’80s Sci-Fi Flashback and review them to see how they have, or in some cases, have not held-up over the years.

Among the films I re-watched and reviewed last year were “The Final Countdown,” “Blue Thunder,” “Battle Beyond the Stars,” “Ice Pirates,” “Starcrash” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I posted my thoughts about them on my personal Facebook page. (I might repost some of them here later this year).

Some like “The Final Countdown,” and “2001” held up really well while a others, like “Starcrash,” not so much.

But this summer, I decided to try something a bit different. I went back and rewatched the first episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”

When I first saw it a couple of years ago, I was a bit cranky about some of the choices and visual changes they made to my beloved franchise, especially to the interior design of The Enterprise and some of the changes they made to the characters. And I think it may have negatively colored my opinion of the show.

So when I saw YouTube was offering it free tonight, I decided to give it another watch, this time ready for those changes, and able to view it on its own merits.

I have to say I really enjoyed it and like many other “Star Trek” fans, I think it is perhaps the “truest” to the feel of the original series. It has the same mix of an optimistic future combined with allegorical storytelling that doesn’t come off as too preachy.

I also found it ironic that when the original series aired at the end of the 1960s, the United States was going through a turbulent time and was sharply divided along both racial and political lines, and here we are again, some 60 years later, with another “Star Trek” show airing, going through the same thing. Maybe that’s why this time its message of hope and its belief that reason, science, and logic can prevail when facing our problems resonated with me more than it did a few years ago.

Especially now, when the nightly news seems to be filled with stories about yet another war, social unrest and how our society seems to be falling apart. I needed a break from all that doom and gloom and was looking for some light, summertime fare to make me forget our troubles for a while.

It's nice to see that not all of today's Sci-Fi is all grim-dark and dystopian and I don't always have to retreat into the movies of my youth to recapture that feeling of escapism and fun.

Friday, May 30, 2025

Writing Requires Discipline— Or at least a solid excuse

There is an old axiom among authors: “Writing is easy. You just stare at a blank piece of paper until you start sweating blood.”

Well in today’s world, the paper is most likely a blinking cursor in an empty text file, but the sentiment is the same.

So, how do I deal with this?

Easy.

Like any good writer, I procrastinate.

You see, I’ve been so tied up trying to figure out ways to market my first book, Tears of the Phoenix: Prophecies that I have told myself I didn’t have time to write. But that needed to change.

You see I usually get a majority of my writing done in the summer months, and if I want to even try to get the sequel to “Tears” out anytime soon, I’d better stop procrastinating and get to work.

Since I had the week following Memorial Day off, I figured it would be a perfect time to kick-off my summer writing season. I planned to spend every afternoon writing.

But as poet and fellow writer Robert Burns so eloquently put it, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

It’s not like people and events were conspiring to keep me away from the keyboard or the pad and paper I often use to write my first-drafts. It’s just that I kept finding excuses and other things I needed to do first:

I needed to create an author’s website. (I did and you can find it here)

I needed to setup an account on Instagram to start promoting my book there. (I did that too and you can follow it
here)

I need to create an AI-prompt to come up with a social-media marketing plan for me, so I know what to post on those sites. Then after that, I needed to create the posts and videos it suggested. (I’m still trying to figure out how to get either ChatGPT and/or Google Gemini to actually generate the complete post including pictures and hashtags then schedule them to go up automatically, but that’s a topic for another blog).

And let’s not forget about taking my daily walk and doing the chores I’ve been putting off for months as well.

Well toward the end of the week, I started to run out of excuses and did actually sit down and began working on my sequel novel again.

But it really was slow going. I spent the better part of three afternoons staring at my first draft and maybe only getting out 1,000 words. And most of that was a re-write of what I had already written.

But at least this new section is beginning to point me in a new direction and connect what until now had been a few scattered scenes into the beginnings of a coherent story.

I know that like anything else, writing is a habit as much as a skill, and the more I do it, the easier it will become. And I’m hoping that by the end of the summer I will at least have half the story done, because it’s really hard to write when all that blood gets in your eyes.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Writing a book was the easy part

You can get the e-book or paperback over at Amazon.com by
clicking this picture.

It’s been almost a month since I released “Tears of the Phoenix: Prophecies” and if I thought writing and finally finishing a book was hard, well it’s nothing compared to trying to market it myself.

I got my college degree in journalism because I liked to write, and only moved into IT because I was also fascinated by the things computers could do to help people be more creative. To me marketing is an arcane and dark art, best left to fast-talking used-car salesmen or Jon Hamm “Mad Men” types.

But being an “independent author” in a world where anyone with a word processor and access to Amazon can publish a book, means you have to be your own publicist. This is not a bad thing. There is a stunning amount of creativity out there and I shudder to think of what the world would be like if only a few big publishers controlled what books saw the light of day.

But without “big publishing” behind you, how do you go about finding your audience? They say no matter how small your niche is, there are a least a few thousand people out there who will enjoy it. The problem is finding them.

So in the month since “Tears of the Phoenix: Prophecies” was published, I’ve been trying all sorts of things to find them. I’ve started annoying people on social media, letting them know I’ve published a book. You can follow me on my author Facebook page here.

I’ve restarted this blog to draw attention to my writing.

I’ve contacted my alma mater, Syracuse University, asking to be included in their list of alumni authors. Afterall, the first half of the book does take place on and around campus, so it seems like a natural fit. And who knows, it might appeal to fellow Orangemen who graduated from there in the 1980s.

And just recently, I’ve begun reaching out to YouTube book reviewers who specialize in science fiction/fantasy. I’ve even contacted a big-name influencer, Adam Savage, of “Mythbusters” fame, since he seems to be as big a geek as I am, and talks a lot about his interests over on his Tested YouTube Channel. (Adam, if you’re reading this, I’d love to send you an autographed copy!)

But what I hope will really start the ball rolling (and the book reviews pouring in) is that I will be appearing at
Princeton’s Author Day at the Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, NJ 08542 on Saturday, May 10, 2025. So if you’re in the area, please stop by and see me and check out the works of other local authors.

And if you have any other suggestions or marketing tips for this book, please leave them below.

I’d appreciate it!

Sunday, February 16, 2025

New Beginnings

My new book which will be published on
Amazon.com on Feb 28.

A few years ago, I stopped writing this blog to focus on finishing writing a story that I’ve been working on in some form or another for the past 40 years.

Well, I finally finished it at the end of 2023 and spent most, if not all of, last year editing it and getting it ready for publication.

Initially I was going to release it in January to coincide with the start of the New Year. But, as the saying goes, even “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

You see, right around the time I was finishing my book, our dog, Merlin, passed away unexpectedly from a very aggressive form of canine cancer. Of course, Mrs. Blue Scream and I were devastated and I thought he’d be our last dog. Then in December, a new dog, Shadow, came into our life and while he’s a super chill Lab, he’s turned our lives upside-down and just about everything ground to a halt while we worked to get him adjusted to his new fur-ever home. (It’s still a work in progress).

Then just when things were beginning to settle down again, my mom got sick and a few weeks later, she passed away. My mom was my first and often toughest editor, and I know she would have been thrilled to see her baby-boy’s first novel get published. So despite still feeling sad, I vowed to continue my journey in her honor.

It’s been a long road to get here, but I’m glad I made the trip. And as we move further into 2025, I’m looking forward to a new and better beginning with my remaining family, my new dog and my publishing career….