Nick Alimonos's Blog, page 2

Doctor Sleep: A Worthy Sequel

A whopping thirty-six years after first releasing The Shining (from 1977 to 2013), Stephen King finally gets around to giving us a sequel, Doctor Sleep. That almost makes the wait for Winds of Winter reasonable! Of course, The Shining was in no need of a sequel. There were no loose plot threads to tie up nor... Continue Reading →

Planet of the Apes: Review

Unless you’ve been living underground awaiting the coming apocalypse, or maybe you just don’t like movies, you’ve probably seen the famous scene with Charlton Heston and the Statue of Liberty. Or perhaps you’re a lot younger than me, and you watched the newer series with James Franco and the CGI apes. There is even a... Continue Reading →

Neil Gaiman: Can We Separate the Art from the Artist?

So, I guess we need to talk about Neil Gaiman now . . . (sigh). Unless you’ve been living under a rock or have zero interest in the literary world (and if that’s the case, why are you even here?), you’ve probably heard about the awful allegations directed at Neil Gaiman, author of some of... Continue Reading →

Magiq of Aenya Production Diary #2: Cancer Can’t Keep Me Down

“Is he . . . writing?” “Yes. Yes, he is.” I heard my nurses saying this, the ones who’d been taking care of me for over the month of May as I was getting treated for acute myeloid leukemia. Now let me just say, chemotherapy is a real bitch. It’s straight-up poison they pump directly... Continue Reading →

‘ART OF AENYA’ SHOP NOW OPEN!!!

Have you ever wanted an Aenya-themed coffee mug with the Aenya logo featured on the cup? How about Thelana wielding her golden sword from the back of your iPhone? Or even a bedspread? You know, the famous one with our intrepid heroine crouched in the treetops, spear in hand, ready to hunt some tyrant dinosaurs?... Continue Reading →

Year End Review and The Shining

As a personal social experiment, I lived for a month like it was 1985. Now I’m back with some insights and observations. First and foremost, it’s not easy pretending it’s four decades earlier when nobody else is playing along. The Internet has become mandatory for making restaurant reservations, planning trips, or buying insurance. Going without GPS,... Continue Reading →

AMERICA, WHERE IS YOUR CONSCIENCE?

I am sick to my stomach, I really am. What bothers me most, I think, is that we seem to be living in a post-ethics world. Apparently, nobody cares about decency anymore, or kindness, or compassion. What the fuck happened to us? Seriously? America was the shining city on the hill. America was the beacon... Continue Reading →

Yearning for the 80s: A Journey Back in Time

In the 1980 film Somewhere in Time, Christopher Reeve (of Superman fame) plays a man who falls in love with a portrait of a young woman long dead. His obsession with her photo leads him to discard everything that reminds him of the seventies, and following a rather intense night of self-hypnosis, he travels back... Continue Reading →

How “Writing Your Passions” May Have Ruined My Life …

WARNING: RANT AHEAD If you genuinely enjoy reading fantasy—if you delight in the works of Homer, Burroughs, Tolkien, Sanderson, Rothfuss, or any author who dabbles in speculative storytelling, you owe it to yourself to pick up the books in the Aenya Series. But if you’re looking to satisfy some voyeuristic urge or wish to justify your... Continue Reading →

Discovering Austen: A Guy’s Take on Pride and Prejudice

Am I really doing this? Yep. This guy (me), who grew up on a steady diet of He-Man and D&D, an author known for action, adventure, and monsters bleeding out across the pages of his own books, chose to pick up and read the most chic-flickiest of books ever written, and you know what? I... Continue Reading →