Nicholas Diak's Blog - Posts Tagged "essays"

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Well, there's one hour left of the holiday, but still.

I hope this blog entry finds you all well? There's been some cool things going on this month for me.

First, a personal accomplishment - I've lost 23 pounds! I still got a lot more to lose, but this has been quite motivating.

Secondly, I got to be involved in not one, but TWO music videos! Holy smokes!

The first was done by my friend Madi of Madi2TheMax. She was shooting a music video at this year's LA Comic Book Convention (formerly Comikaze) and I got to have a small part! What an honour! That can be watched here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkyS...

For the second one, my friend Christian of the band Porta Vittoria (one of my all time favourite bands) is an accomplished director and has made numerous high quality music videos for bands in the underground scene. He recently did one for the band Atropine and I got a small little part in it too!

Here is the link for that one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDCBM...

We recently finished doing a new episode of the HP Lovecast Podcast (after a few months of technical issues and bad timing), and this time we talked about "Pickman's Model." That can be heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2wcq...

In regards to my writing, only a few weeks left before essays are returned back to me for my neo-peplum book! I am so excited to dive in and edit them! I still need to complete my introduction though.

I just turned in a really short essay about Greek representation in the old Disney Silly Symphony cartoons. It is for an anthology about Greek gods and days of the week. I'll be curious to see the end result of the project.

Have a great black friday everyone!

It’s the end of the year and I’d like to take a moment to reflect, document and aggregate my accomplishments this past year. I’m still early in my career of trying to be an academic writer, so while I may not be as prolific as some of my other peers, I do feel like I am growing.

In 2016 I didn’t have any academic work published, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t complete any projects. I finished my essay “Meteor Madness: Lovecraftian Horror and Consumerism in the Battle for Small Town USA” which will be published in an anthology on Space Horror films edited by Michele Brittany in 2017. I also completed another essay called “Between the Seasons: Reconsidering Disney’s Silly Symphony The Goddess of Spring” which I am not 100% sure of its publishing fate, but should see the light in 2017 in some avenue.

The big, big thing for me though was starting my first book, Ad Victoriam! Essays on Neo-Peplum Cinema and Television. This was a huge leap for me to try and do, and now I am knee deep in editing essays for it. The manuscript is due to the publisher in the Spring 2017, and I am excited yet nervous to see the process through.

So while I didn’t have anything scholarly published in the traditional means, the work I did do in 2016 will see fruition next year.

However! I did have my first fiction, short story published! I don’t really consider myself a fiction author, but the opportunity came up, I tried and got accepted! So I have a Lovecraftian Dreamlands story called “Nix’s Night About Town” published in the anthology Kill Those Damn Cats: Cats of Ulthar Lovecraftian Anthology. I think that is wicked awesome.

In other avenues, I continue to create content for Heathen Harvest Periodical - my own particular brand of reviews that I try to embed with as much citations and cultural knowledge as possible. This year I have had 10 articles published there. You can find my content there by clicking this link: https://heathenharvest.org/tag/Nich...

My friends over at Fanbase Press allow me to contribute a guest article here and there at times, which I am thankful for since it gives me an avenue to talk more pop-culturey things. I’ve had 6 articles published there this year, so check those out too: http://www.fanbasepress.com/index.p...

Our H.P. Lovecast Podcast is still going strong! This year we cranked out 9 episodes. Those can be found here: http://www.hplovecast.com/

I also got to be involved in three music videos for projects by my friends! This was a crazy honour. I got to be an extra in Shaena Stabler’s video Just for Tonight , in Madi 2 the Max’s video Beauty and Stan Lee , and in the ATROPINE video Exterminism directed by the amazing Christian Ryder. I am really humbled to have been a part of these projects from some really awesome folks. (I've linked these videos in the video area of Goodreads).

And finally, on a personal note, I did wind up losing 32 pounds these last few months. I am on a quest to lose lots of weight, and I would say I am half way there.

What does 2017 hold for me? Well...

I do have the aforementioned essays and book that will be published. I am also working on an essay on the TV show Stranger Things and Synthwave music.

I will be co-chairing the first ever Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at Stokercon 2017.

I hope to get back into the habit of doing book reviews to be published in journals. I also hope at the conclusion of my neo-peplum book that I can dive right into starting another book. And perhaps I’ll even give fiction writing another stab.

So I am pretty optimistic I’ll accomplish a few more things next year, in my continuing journey to become a scholar of sorts.

I appreciate all my friends and peers who have been supportive to me! With sincereity, I appreciate yall and wish you all success in the new years.