Shaun Horton's Blog, page 18

The Antagonist

Any Horror story worth its salt will have a good and hopefully memorable antagonist. An opponent to the heroes that gets in their way at every turn, trying to kill and/or devour our hapless protagonists throughout the story. Sometimes you have a vicious monster, who happens to have caught their scent and thinks they smell absolutely delicious. Other times you have a villain who is chasing after them to take revenge for some past slight or just out of convenience or some other reason. Occasion...

Class 5 is now available!

As some of you may know, and some of you may not. I hit the big blue publish button on my second book over Labor day weekend. Class 5 is now available on Kindle and in paperback through Amazon or the Createspace store for $2.99 for Kindle and $8.99 for paperback.


Gotta say, that feels pretty good. I've already had one person tell me Class 5 is head and shoulders above my first work and I hope more of you will agree with that. Also, if you haven't already, hit the link up above and Like my face...

Owning Up

People make mistakes. They screw up, miss deadlines, get your phone wrong by one number. Jeez, people are touchy at 8 am.

So, I missed posting last week. In case anyone noticed. Or in case you didn't notice. Anyway, I did. Now, I have any one of a dozen things to which I could attribute it to. Class 5 came back from the editor for work, which I powered through and got back to her, which then came back and I've been working on formatting for Kindle and Createspace. I have it out to a handful of...

Stories about me.

Odd, the things that can make you think. Currently, I'm reading (or attempting to read at the very least) House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.  And I must admit, due to either it's tempting madness that it inspires, or the boredom of my mind through it's various footnotes and tangents, it has given me a fair few thoughts which seem nearly as random as the story itself.

While I could easily spend this post delving into the theories of what constitutes madness, the truth of the written...

Are you "Professional" ?

Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece, based on another opinion piece. The views expressed herein are those of the author of this blog and do not represent the views of any organization, association, political party, TV station, institution, modeling agency, or girl scout troop the author may or may not be a member of. 
Many authors when they're just starting out, are curious for some kind of benchmark. Some goal to reach that tells them they are an actual author. For many, that benchmark...

The Importance of Proper Editing

You've written a book, gone through it a dozen times on your own, revising, editing, spell-checking, making additions, deletions, and modifications. Now what? Now it goes to a professional editor.


Why? I've been through it myself a dozen times already?! I ran spell-check AND grammar-check! Why should I pay someone else to look through it before I send it out to agents or self-publish it?
Simply put, Professional Editors do it for a living. You probably don't. Let's look at a few more specific reasons. ...

Review: Pacific Rim

This is the big monster movie of our time. At least until Legendary releases the new Godzilla next year. 
For me, this film worked on a ton of different levels. The level of detail in the monsters (Kaiju) and Robots (Jeagers) was just amazing. There is a lot of real thought gone into their designs, how they move, and how they work. The scale was also well done, making the Kaiju and Jeagers building-sized, but not overly so. 
There are a lot of giant monsters vs. robots that have come...

Doing your Homework

Lots of jobs have special training you need to take or college courses to master before you can claim to be proficient at work. This is true of Firefighters, Doctors, Lawyers, and even Politicians. Not so much for writers. Sure, you can go to community colleges and universities and walk out with English and Creative Writing degrees, but those are more for your own enrichment than anything that's going to help you be a professional writer. Publishing companies don't put you higher up on the li...

31 Days of Monsters: Whew, Uncle, already.

Well, I made it halfway at least. 


I'm calling it quits on the post-a-day challenge. Doing a post a week makes it seem like it really wouldn't be that difficult, but a post a day really is a whole other monster of its own. The sheer time it takes in writing, posting, and advertising such an ordeal leaves little for actually getting much else done. Time I could be better off spending writing a new book or trying to fix the leaks my first book has. As it is, my second book is nearing the fi...

31 Days of Monsters: Man-Eating Plants

While there are certainly plants that are sustained by the blood of other creatures and some that can even catch their own food, most are of a size that isn't even a threat to your toe, let alone an entire person. You'll note there, I said MOST.

Name: Ya-Te-Veo, Bloodoak, Man-Eating Tree

Size: Being plants, size varies, but most are at least the size which would be required to catch and kill a human being and grow to well above that size.

Appearance: The Ya-Te-Veo has a short, thick, trunk, and...