Author - Artist - Voice Over Actor

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Favorite Reading

When I was a young kid, elementary school age, as mention in a previous post, I had trouble reading. My parents took me to a special extra-curricular study place called The Reading Game.

It is no longer there. The building torn down and replaced by a multi-use apartment complex for students and others from the nearby University.

Reading their remedial booklets went on for many money, I no longer remember how long I attended there.

Then one day I picked up a comic book (I’ve already written about How I got that first comic), and it all changed. I was enjoying reading.

My parent’s asked the instructor if it was okay for me to be reading comics. The response was simple. If he’s reading, done stop him. Encourage him. And so, I have been reading comic books my entire life.

The next thing that got me further into reading was a series of books called: Choose Your Own Adventure. They were fantastic, especially as you could read it three or four times and get an entirely different story each time. Probably the only regular books I checked out of the school library.

(My relationships with libraries is a story unto itself.)

Comics would remain my mainstay reading content.

The reading material assigned to me in class, continued to be a struggle, hard to remain focused on whether it be elementary, junior high, or high school. It would be these outside sources, especially comics, where I could grow and learn.

If I could read something at my own pace, I could enjoy it. If it was an assigned book or chapter, I’d force my way through it but it was always a struggle, and I didn’t always learn anything from it unless the topic was of great interest to me and brought me enjoyment.

I’d later learn to enjoy doing research, but I had to find something interesting in it, something that was fun, in order to devote that much time to it. Otherwise, it was a real struggled.

The first real novel I thing I read was HG Wells’ The Time Machine.

I eventually discover the short stories and novels of Ray Bradbury. Then I found the essays of Harlan Ellison. So you know my creativity and learning process was growing.

Again, it would take an interest to get me to start and then complete reading of a book.

I remember reading a Shakespeare play in high school and enjoyed it, followed by Arthur Miller’s play the Crucible. Probably reading these in script format was probably easier than a full out novel.

During college and friend introduced me to two book series. Since I enjoyed Watch Doctor Who he thought I would like Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Which resulted in my writing several stories for class in Adam’s voice. I don’t think my teacher appreciated it.

He then introduced me to Steven R Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle. Looking back, I am still surprised by how fast I read through these books. They were heavy novels (figuratively and literally). I greatly enjoyed the books.

Over the years I would become more and more of a reader, but finding the books that appealed to me, that I enjoyed wasn’t always easy.  The number of books I have read, per year, has been relatively few.

Sometimes it was the type of book, the type genre.

“So, what’s your favorite fiction genre?”  – Here we are back at this question again, remember my last post.

As to Genre, I think the answer is the same as my “Doctor Who” answer previously:

I will admit I don’t like Horror, but when it comes to the rest of the genres.

“I like the one I am currently reading.”

I grew up on super hero comics, which lead into science fiction and fantasy, and especially mystery/detective fiction. Plus, over the last decade or so I’ve discovered a love for romance novels.

The first romance books I read were fantasy romance, about dragons.

Then I discovered a series called Once Upon A Con by Ashley Poston, starting with Geekerella. Telling a story that took place around a Comic Con, you had me, but these were fantastic stories, and I’ve been all of Poston’s books since.

Because of Poston, I’ve discovered other great romance authors.

Since the start of this year, I have read more books than I have in any full year I have ever had, and they were all Romance novels. Sure, they were all light novels, but still, it’s quite different for me.

Will Romance remain my Favorite Genre? Probably not, I’ll shift back to Mystery and Fantasy, Science Fiction, and shift back around again.

Looking back that the little kid I was, I am still so surprised by how much I am currently reading.

Reading is fantastic. Enjoy it.

What’s your favorite…?

It is a question that gets asked a lot, ever since childhood you are asked this question …
Who is your favorite teacher? Your favorite friend? Your favorite ice cream, and so on. Then there is the flip of that when a kid asks their parents about their siblings “which one of us is your favorite?”

My Voice Is Moving

Been working on recording an audio drama for a podcast over the last few days, unfortunately the apartment building just next to ours is going through some remodeling and the noise is constantly interrupting me. That noise is teaching me to be patient, and it is also teaching me to relax in my recording. I pay too much attention to every mistake I make, every breath I take, every noise I create. I stop too often and go back and make corrections.

NO! I don’t want to be small.

Or

The Incredible Shrinking Blog

Remember those rides at amusement parks that had signs with a character holding of an arm and said “You must be this tall to ride.” Well, this is a story about a ride that made you even smaller than that.

It’s also going to be one of those blogs that give away my age again.

Don’t blame the Devil

This one’s going to be a bit short folks.
I am in the midst of working on a Bible lesson I’ll be giving in Sunday School this weekend.
But the devil is putting up obstacles in my path.


No, I do not blame the devil for this. I don’t give credit to the devil for anything I do in my life. That’s not taking responsibility for my successes, failure, or mistakes.
It would be easy to blame him, especially when something goes wrong at absolutely the wrong time.
I am near finished in writing up this Bible study, but I want to include three or four drawings to illustrate parts of the lesson. So I turn on Photoshop and my Wacom table, which I use to do my webcomic and other artwork.
However, as I start drawing my mouse begins to slow down and it becomes a struggle to make the sketches.
Hopefully the computer isn’t going to crash on me. If I can’t do the drawings I’ll rework part of the lesson, but I also plan to use my laptop in class. It’ll be doomed if that happens.
Even if that happens, I refuse to give the devil credit for messing up my work.
I do know that I’m going to have to buy a new computer soon, but please dear God, not yet. I need a stable job before that happens.
It’s also the reason I have the Ko-Fi link on my page here. Any help is appreciated.
Talk to you next week and I’ll let you know how this turns out.
Thanks, God bless.

WonderCon Day 2 Show up Early

As the day before we drove down to the bus depot and caught the bus down to the Anaheim Convention Center. The price of parking there is just too high. In the past we’ve stayed at a local hotel, but that’s gotten to be too high as well. Hopefully, once I’m employed again, we’ll be able to stay for the entire weekend.

In the meantime, …

WonderCon – Day One

Hi all,

My wife and I went to WonderCon this past weekend. We were only there for two days, but it was an enjoyable time. We can’t afford to go down to San Diego for Comic-Con right now. Even with my pro-badge, it’s just too expensive. So, WonderCon is the next best thing—

In some ways, WonderCon is actually better. Let me explain.

That WICKED Kid

The movie Wicked is now streaming, but we did get to see it in the theater before it left. It is one of those films that is best seen on the big screen. Go out to movie theaters, people!
I absolutely enjoyed the play and liked the movie equally as much…
But this isn’t about the movie, rather the experience in the theatre and the Wicked Kid who sat behind us.

LOCK YOUR DOORS

Remember in my last blog I mentioned that I didn’t know what I was going to write about? How I just rambled about walking around the neighborhood looking for ideas.

Well, God has other ways of providing interesting things for me to write about:

I had a visit from the police this morning.

I don’t know what to write…

There are times when you don’t know what to Blog about.

I know I need to create a calendar and list of ideas for upcoming blogs, but sometimes that takes as much work as writing the blog itself does.

So where do ideas come from? I have no idea.

It all came to this

Engaging Humor – Writing a Compelling Blog

Okay, it took a couple of extra days, but I was finally able to do a recording of my Toastmasters Speech that was based on the blog series I began writing at the start of the year. So let’s get to it.

The Nerve You Say


Hi all,

I’ll be telling you about the Toastmasters speech in an upcoming blog once I get a good recording of it to share with you.
What I can tell you now is my nerves really got to me during the and I’m not really certain why.
I think it had to do with having to work with running my PowerPoint presentation on Zoom while maintaining eye contact with the camera while trying not to look at my script.
That’s all an excuse, I stumbled through it but I got it done. Surprisingly, people liked the speech, I’ll tell you about that soon.
I felt like I was back in school when I was scared to speak up at all. I’ve already told you about the one time in High School I gave a speech.
As an adult I was still nervous about doing any public speaking, but things began to change in our adult Sunday School when I began to speech up with my thoughts on what the teacher was saying and the Biblical verses we were studying. I then began finding myself volunteering to teach the class from time to time. My wife and I have taught together a few times as well. I was also being ask to do the Bible reading each week in class.
Then came the next and newest part of my life. An interest in Voice Acting. As a scriptwriter I wanted to know what the actor needed from me.
So, I took a voice acting class. I wasn’t expecting much, and certain I would be nervous stepping up to the mic in front of the entire class for the very first time.
You know what? I had no nerves what so ever and I read the script and performed with joy. I was so surprised by how I felt doing it I knew this was something I would continue to do. I would go on to take further voice acting classes over the next several years, have demo reels produced, and audition for roles.
So why did the nerves swell up during this speech? I really can’t say, but I won’t let them stop me from doing anything anymore.
Hope to have the speech up soon.

Kevin

The Speech Approaches

If I’m going to keep this up, writing two blogs a week, I’ll need to learn how to be better plan them out in advance. I also have to schedule my writing periods for the blog in the middle of everything else I’m doing.

As mentioned in my previous post, I am currently working on a speech I’m going to be giving at Toastmasters this Saturday.

Quick thoughts on writing

Writing can be one of the most joys filled actives, or the must torturous. More often than not, it is both at the same time.

Mazes and Hanks

Today’s blog is going to be late, and while I thing about what to write I am watching the latest episode of Critical Role streaming on Youtube.
This current story is the latest part of Exandria Unlimited (EXU) about the ancient past of this world told with gaming, role playing games, with Dungeons & Dragons.
It makes me remember a time in my own ancient past.

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