Ilona's World

- One of my poems will soon appear in a charity anthology. (It will be included in an English-language anthology containing poems and short stories about wolves.) - A short short story of mine was accepted and will appear in print, in Spanish, some time next year. (I submitted it in English, then it was translated into Spanish.) - Stay tuned. There will be more. ;)

2012 was a good year for me in every respects. As for my writing, I became busy writing only towards the end of the year, but it felt great. I had more poems published in English and I also wrote an urban fantasy story , and I managed to submit it to the publisher in time. This also means that I learnt to handle deadlines . I was also learning more about screenwriting and I would really like to learn more about it later. In 2012, I also became brave enough to perform in front of people, so I was reading poetry at the Write Like Bukowski contest and I also did stand up for the first time, in a pub , at a charity event. The latter was a so-called open-mic event. (I'd like to do this again some time.) I also made lots of new friends and got a lot of new ideas that still need to be put on paper. The year 2012 was a better one for me than the ones before, and I was able to start the next one as an optimist .

Title: The White Death and Other Ghastly Ghost Stories Author: Debbie Kuhn Genre(s) / Subgenre(s):  speculative fiction / dark fantasy, horror Copyright: October 17, 2012 Formats: electronic: Kindle edition Rating: 10 URL: at Amazon Those who like good horror fiction should certainly become familiar with Debbie Kuhn 's work, even though she writes in several genres. The White Death is a collection which includes ten dark tales and it is definitely worth reading. Whether they are humans or ghosts, the main characters are all motivated by basic human fears and desires , and this makes it very easy for the reader to care about them. No matter how scary the story is, you will want to know what is going to happen to them. The ghosts are not always the evil, vengeful ghosts of the typical B movies either. Some just want company, others warn you of imminent danger, and one simply just stays until she can finish her memoirs that she writes using other people's bodies. Al...

I have recently spent some time exploring the archives of Lightspeed Magazine, which is an excellent magazine of speculative fiction and it also includes podcasted stories. I decided to share my best of list with you . (URLs added. All of this is free content.). Check these out if you still haven't. These short stories will give you a very nice outlook on contemporary speculative-fiction literature. The selection is completely arbitrary and only reflects my personal taste. I only selected stories that give the reader something different form the classic (hard) sci-fi themes, as I like my sci-fi new and fresh. These are the best 15 stories that I have found at the Lightspeed website : - Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor by Grady Hendrix A hilarious story about the sci-fi clichés about landing on alien planets and also about the extiction of humanity. It is worth listening to the audio (12:46 minutes), th...

You can read a hilarious short story, Some Day My Prince Will Go at the Daily Science Fiction website. This is a highly unusual fairy tale, which made me laugh out loud again and again. Sheila Crosby is a British author who lives in the Spanish Canary Islands. You can find links to many of her short stories and poems on her blog .

I have not updated this blog for a bit more than two years . Well, that's a long time. Things I've done : - living, loving, partying, learning and working... - reading a lot of books, (contemporary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and sci-fi classics). - I wrote a short story, a couple of poems, and lots and lots of blog posts in Hungarian about books and movies. (I don't think it is worth the time and the energy to translate these to English, but we'll see what the future holds.) My poetry book is not on sale anymore . (I will soon remove the dead links). That's all for now.