A little something for the weekend?

Recommended Watching Free GuySome people just can’t stand Ryan Reynolds. If you are one of those people, give this one a miss, as this movie features Ryan Reynolds at his Ryan Reynoldsiest.If that prospect doesn’t bother you…  Free Guy is a hoot, and a lot of fun.In this movie Reynolds plays “Guy,” a man whose life is so boring, repetitious, and inconsequential that he...

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Let's talk about Newsletters

One of the secrets to building readership, I’ve been told time and time again in marketing workshops and webinars, is to build a mailing list and then to send out a newsletter weekly, or at least monthly.I don’t know about this. I’d always thought the secret was to write great fiction and then put it out where people can read it. Our sales numbers suggest that I am dead wrong...

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 11: Invading Aliens (Dos)

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS...

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Sunday • 23 January 2022

 A very long time ago, back at the beginning of the First Social Media Age, when “blogging” was a thing that was fresh and new and I was running a site called The Ranting Room—which begat The Friday Challenge, which begat Stupefying Stories—I took a vow that Sundays belonged to my family.That vow went by the wayside a long time ago, but it’s time to renew it.Those of...

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A little something for the weekend?

Recommended Watching Ghostbusters: AfterlifeI’ll make this simple. If you are at all a fan of the original 1984 Ghostbusters, watch this one. After a troubled development history and a release schedule frequently delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it finally appeared in theaters last November, to mixed reviews and strong but not overwhelming ticket sales.Never mind that. It’s...

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A question about your home town

 I learned something surprising this week: that filmmaker Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Justice League, etc., etc., etc.) was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin.It’s a good thing I don’t have a connection with him. I’d probably be unable to resist the temptation to ask, “So, tomorrow night: who d’ya pick, the Packers or the 49ers?” And then I’d watch his...

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Once more: Thanks

 Thank you to everyone who has sent positive thoughts and encouraging words since Monday’s announcement. Your kindness and concern is appreciated. Thanks also to everyone who has offered up a suggestion as to how we could reboot this thing and keep Stupefying Stories going. They’re all good ideas. I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts and creativity...

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In response to Bruce Bethke's horrific vision in response to Alien Aliens Part 11, Part 1..

 On 1/19/22...~brb said...There's a sci-fi horror scenario for you. A giant alien ship comes to Earth. Everyone sees it land smack in the middle of Washington DC. The Army rushes to throw a cordon around it, fighting against time. Can they contain whatever alien menace is hiding inside that unearthly ship?! The door opens... All weapons are trained... Fingers tense-up...

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REBEL MOON: The Movie?!

Well, here’s something mighty peculiar. I just learned that Zack Snyder is making a movie for Netflix, and the title of it is…REBEL MOONIMDB doesn’t have much to say about it, aside from the fact that the plot looks like yet another retread of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but there seems to be a lot of chatter about it on the various SF media fanboi sites. I do wonder, though,...

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 11: Invading Aliens (Uno)

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS...

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Today's Free Story Idea

Hey, writers! We can all relax now. The robots are here to do our jobs!First, I want you to check out Jarvis, the AI that writes blog, website, and social media content that is automatically larded with keywords and optimized for high rankings with search engines.https://www.jarvis.ai/Now, before you panic at the thought of Jarvis and its ilk taking over the business of writing...

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2021: The Year in Review | 2022: The Road Ahead

 Obviously, we didn’t make our January 15th target for releasing Stupefying Stories #24. To say 2021 was challenging is an epic understatement. While we began the year in fairly decent form with the release of Stupefying Stories #23—[Buy the book, wouldja? Or if you downloaded a copy while it was free on Kindle Unlimited, read a story in it now, if only to make the...

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An Update to the Update

We are now able to send and receive email again using the submissions@rampantloonmedia.com email address. Unfortunately it appears that every message that was sent in the past seven years using the webmail interface to that email address (and that therefore was archived “in the cloud”) is now lost forever.Yet another argument for having your business-critical software applications and data installed and stored locally, and for only relying on “the...

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Status Update • 14 January 2022

The colossal email clusterfsck continues. Thanks to GoDaddy’s unilateral decision to move us to Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, in the past four days the submissions@rampantloonmedia.com email address has gone from being slow, difficult to use, and unreliable, to being reliable but “Oops! We erased seven years of archived Sent email messages,” to our being able to receive...

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 10: Microscopic Aliens On Earth

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS...

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 9: Aliens In OUR Solar System?

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS...

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Re: The Pete Wood Challenge, SHOWCASE, etc., etc

 I’m working through some issues pertinent to the future of Stupefying Stories this week, and today I’d like to pose some questions and solicit your opinions. 1. Re: The Pete Wood Challenge In 2021 we ran a lot of flash fiction that came out of The Pete Wood Challenge, and most of it was surprisingly good. (I remain particularly impressed by “For Sale: Used...

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