An Update on Monsters Among Us

Posted on by Colin McMahon

Okay wow, it has been a bit. Who knew that raising a child could be so time-consuming? I mean, at least there’s not still a pandemic, rising homegrown fascism (fueled by just the most brazen ignorance), a largely ineffective American government, and one of the most useless and wasteful wars in history also going on…

You’d think with all the complications of life, it would be fun to escape into some creative writing. Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but Monsters Among Us, my next novel, has proven to be anything but ordinary. This draft has been sitting, fully written and 95% edited for months. I’m no stranger to writer’s block but this goes beyond anything I’ve ever experienced as a writer. So, what exactly is going on with Monsters Among Us?

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Is King Kong Racist?

Posted on by Colin McMahon

Whenever people ask me to name my top ten films, I can’t do it. How do you narrow down hundreds of exceptional motion pictures to a measly top ten? I’m sure if I thought long and hard enough about it, I could make it work – but I just don’t have that kind of time.

I am, however, always able to answer the question: “What’s you favorite movie?”

King Kong – the original 1933 stop-motion special effects film starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot; directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. I don’t know  how young I was when I first saw it but I have watched it countless times since. It, more than any film, impacted my sense of creativity and my desire to tell stories.

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The Devolution of Journal Writing

Posted on by Colin McMahon

If you’re like me, you’ve been doing a bit of reading during this pandemic. Not that I needed a global virus to force me to read (I read pretty much every night, thank you very much) but I won’t say it hasn’t affected what I want to read. Escapism is in right now, very in. With that in mind, I turned to the latest from author Max Brooks (World War Z) to see what supernatural awesomeness he had for me this time.

Devolution follows a group of people trapped in what I think was very rural Seattle. Our protagonist, Kate Holland, recently moved to a designed community called Greenloop to try and repair the damage to her relationship with her estranged husband. The initial problem: A volcano erupts, cutting Greenloop off from the world and forcing them into survival mode. The additional problem: The volcanic eruption is causing all sorts of animals to move through the area, including the mythical Sasquatch.

So was it good? Yes but I want to actually focus on the one area where it fails. I found Devolution to be very entertaining and engaging, but I also found its least believable aspect to not be the humanoid cryptids, but the journal that our main character keeps.

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