Writing

Ken Russell’s The Devils

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My wife and I caught the recently restored, uncensored version of Ken Russell’s The Devils. I’ve heard so much about this film, about its truth-to-power, about its blasphemous imagery and willingness to confront an uncomfortable, but true story, head-on.

I caught ‘Ken Russell’s The Devils’ at my favorite theatre in the world.

It’s been a few days since seeing the film, and my thoughts have had time to settle. The Devils originally premiered in 1971, and the film was censored at home and abroad for its content. I can see why, and while it’s an uncomfortable watch, it is one of the most necessary and powerful films I may have ever seen. I don’t say that lightly.

Ken Russell’s The Devils is as much a film about a conspiratorial witch hunt to usurp power from a free city and consolidate it under Cardinal Richelieu in 1600s France as it is about the unholy union of church and state. It’s a film about using the fear of God as a cover for power. In a time when access to education was limited to the elites and plague festered, superstition and carnival-like hysteria undercut sanity and common sense. 

The Devils is not technically a horror film, but it very much is one in spirit. It’s unsettling, haunting, and terrifying, complete with complex characters. It’s one of the most powerful examples of moral decay I’ve seen on film, and the irony is that it’s a film about religion. 

In an era when book bans are increasingly common, when news is highly polarized and endlessly editorialized into bad-faith soundbites and “gotcha” moments, The Devils is more than an echo. It’s an ear-splitting siren. 

As much as it scares me, I take comfort in the fact that so many people are rushing to the theater to see it, that there are showings nationwide and a fervor to see a film that is as impactful today as it was in 1971. 

We will not go the way of Loudun or Father Grandier. We can and will overcome the devils currently wielding a double-sided sword of government and religion. We will endure, so long as we speak our truths, share our horrors, and educate each other. It’s on us to keep the institutions of art and learning alive. 

Keep creating. Keep learning. Keep sharing.

We’re all in this together,

Scott

Quick Update: What I’ve Been Up To

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It feels like it’s only been a hot minute since I last posted on my website, and in that short span of time, not much happened. But then the gears in my brain finally turn. As they grind and creak, as the dust bounces off, I realize… a lot of little things happened between my last post and this one.

For starters, my wife and I took a vacation that saw us driving through Cologne, Bonn, Dusseldorf, and more of the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany, with stops in The Netherlands and a final sendoff from Paris.

A shot of Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France.

I also finally got back into the swing of interviewing again. This time, I chatted with a colorist whose work I greatly admire. We chat about his work on the most recent Defenders of the Earth miniseries from Mad Cave Studios, as well as a recent The Phantom one-shot.

My most recent newsletter about Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, and the drive to keep creating also dropped on Substack. I’ve been holding pretty steady at one a month for my main Because We Can newsletter, which is and will always be free to subscribe to.

You can read the most recent post here.

I’ve also not only brought back my Books & Boards newsletter, which also releases monthly, but I made it into its own newsletter and added a few changes.

Read Adventure #4: City Lit Books here. In both this adventure and the previous write-up, Adventure #3: Harvey’s Tales, I’ve added a new component to these little bookstore and game store visits. Whatever I pick up, I plan on reviewing something from these stores in video format.

The first of these videos is a review of War on Gaza by Joe Sacco. It’s rough, but I’m working on making graphics and building this out a little better. I’m also not going to limit these reviews JUST to bookstore purchases. Any indie book, comic, etc., that I really enjoy… I’m going to try to add more reviews here and there. I think it’ll help elevate and give voice to authors and other creators who don’t have the luxury of a crackshot marketing team or powerhouse publisher.

At any rate, those are the new things happening in my neck of the woods. I have a few more interviews in the works, as well as some more comic book updates that I can’t talk about just yet.

Stay tuned, keep creating, and let me know about all that wonderful new-ness in your world. Got a new book? Tell me about it. Had a story published? Share it please.

Aggressive Whimsy

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A picture of the band The B-52's. It's meant to evoke a sense of whimsy and magic.

It’s Monday evening (as I write this) and the end of a long day. Ice drapes over everything, but it’s about 20-30 degrees warmer than it has been, so I take it as a win. 

My brain is tired. Emotions weigh heavy, but I’m here. I have a draft of my next novel open on my desktop, and there’s fire burning within to crank out another chapter or two. Last week, I knocked out my first newsletter of 2026, and I’m already itching for the next one.

Read “Art is Rebellion

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I Finally Found Something That Improved My Writing

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A couple of years ago, I posted about forcing myself to write on my phone. Part of the goal was to capture those thoughts that pop to mind throughout the other day. I also wanted to make use of the downtime that pops up sporadically throughout the day (15 minutes here, 10 minutes). Why? Because keeping that torch of creativity lit during busy work-weeks while juggling family obligations and errands is no easy feat.

I have creative friends who set aside an hour each day to write. I know others who are weekend warriors. For myself, I write whenever I can fit it in. Sometimes it’s on weeknights. When I’m lucky, I carve out some time in the morning or during lunch at the office.

But I found something, friends. I plunked down an easy $10 on a bluetooth keyboard I found in the wild at our local Aldi (of all places). It’s foldable and is about the same size as my smartphone.

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24-Hour News Cycle of Violence

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Note: This short fiction piece was originally published in Behemoth Magazine. No AI was used in the writing of this short story.

Monday, 10:04 AM
Bob rearranged the foil candy wrappers into a neat stack on his desk for the second time. On his computer monitor, an AI chatbot wrote an email response that Bob would copy and paste into a draft saved in his inbox. When the script finished, Bob quickly scanned the text for any glaring errors, then pasted it into an email draft with the subject line: Please upload this to CMS. When Bob clicked send, the email fired off halfway around the world to an ever-expanding part-time office in the Philippines. 

After confirming that the email was sent, Bob pulled out his smartphone and scrolled social media. A sweating man with a bulging vein ranted about a kids movie at the top of his feed. Beneath that, Bob’s aunt posted an awkward photo of her standing in front of a mirror at the gym. This was followed by an inflammatory article about the potential risks tortilla chips pose for dental health. Bob opened his camera, switched to selfie mode, and rooted around in his mouth with an unwashed index finger. His yellow, coffee-stained teeth looked the same as they did six months ago, and his gums also appeared unchanged since he last rubbed a grimy finger over them. 

Satisfied, Bob opened the drawer on his office desk and rummaged through a sea of empty chip bags. His hand returned empty. Looking to the left, then the right, Bob stood up from his worn office chair. The smell of ass sweat wafted from the seat, and Bob carefully slid his legs out in order to air out. On the TV across the room, a ticker tape ran below the newsfeed that read: Both candidates call for cooler political rhetoric and national unity. 

Bob stretched his arms over his head, gave his bulbous-eyed, blonde colleague with the gopher teeth a nod, and then followed the sewer brown carpet toward the front of the office. Most of the cubes stood empty, faded memories of coworkers whose jobs had been shipped overseas. A crinkled agenda lingered here. A pink motivational post-it note still stood firmly there. 

“I want a donut,” Bob announced to no one in particular. 

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Whatever You Need It To Be

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When I was a little guy, I was both mischievous and an ardent rule-follower. That sounds like an oxymoron, but there’s truth in it. I enjoyed bending or breaking rules when I found a way to circumvent them. I’d stay up late on a school night reading or playing video games, then steal back some lost sleep with micro naps in class. When Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith premiered in 2005, I cut class with a few friends, and we spent the afternoon at the movie theater. This was far from the only time I flaked on important opportunities in lieu of fun, and as I grew, I found creative ways to skirt the “way things are supposed to be” for mischief. 

At the same time, I was strict about which principles or rules I followed. Because storytelling was so important to me at a young age, I was a devout believer that there was an order to art and creativity, that there were laws that weren’t supposed to be broken. Vampires were warded off by garlic and avoided sunlight for fear of death. Silver bullets were the main method of dealing with werewolves. That sort of thing. 

It sounds silly to think of myself as a child who was comfortable with skirting social expectations and norms but consumed books, movies, and comics with such rigidity. But this is also something that’s so very human. It’s a dichotomy we all carry with us in one way or another. 

Eventually, I dropped the rigidity when it came to art and creativity. It came about in the most unexpected way. I watched a vampire flick called Innocent Blood, wherein an empathetic “good” vampire had to slay nefarious mobster vampires who were turning New York City into their playground. She did so with a gun, and the “bad” vampires were killed by destroying their brains. As much as it was fun, my brain couldn’t process rules normally reserved for ghouls or the living dead being applied to vampires here—two distinctly different monster types. 

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Don’t Want to Support Bezos? No Problem

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We live in strange, frightening times. Many of our most vulnerable populations are at risk simply because they ask for the right to exist. Assistance programs, resources, and educational assets like museums, libraries, and cultural centers are on the chopping block. What many of us consider “civilization” is teetering over the edge, plunging us into a warped reality that’s being advertised to us as “greatness.”

We write our representatives. We help each other out. We rebel in small ways, including where we decide to vote with our dollars. In the indie publishing/writing community, many readers and fellow creatives have decided to stand their ground and choose NOT to shop at Amazon. I consider myself among them.

This seemingly simple protest vote has been effective, it would seem, especially when it comes at a time when tariffs are applied and revised inconsistently. As I write this, Amazon has been declining since early February, and it’s lower than it’s ever been year-to-date.

As more readers hold strong, choosing to shop directly from businesses instead of a marketplace platform, having an ebook on Kindle becomes more challenging.

Luckily, a reader of mine turned me onto a platform called Itch.io. It’s geared toward younger readers, gamers, and niche communities, but it’s also home to a thriving ebook author community.

I’ve since added my novel, MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale, to the platform. Because I make more with each purchase on Itch.io, I’ve also lowered the price on this platform. What was $8.99 on Amazon is now a cool, easy-breezy $4.99 on Itch.io. It’s never been a better time to check out the first in a new series of mine.

Buy MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale on Itch.io

If you are unable to purchase my ebook and still want to show your support, considering sharing the link. For those who have read it, any and all reviews and feedback are welcome. Even if you hate it.

Short Story: “16-Bit Heroism

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Please Note: This short story first appeared in Literary Orphans. It’s being uploaded here as a way to preserve its presence on the web.

Image by Mariya Petrova-Existencia

“Feet-all-Al-Coal-Hall-Sin-Drum,” Alan sounded out. “That’s what my mom and dad said you have.”  He jabbed his finger into the cool spring air to emphasize the point, just in case his furrowed brows and trembling lips failed to convey anger.

“What does that EVEN MEAN?” Markie fired back. His voice was raspy. He smelled like stale cereal. The tangled fluff of red hair atop his head was lopsided and bunched up to one side, and his freckles were gross. And Markie swore. The fear of God hadn’t touched him the way it had the others, hadn’t stirred in him the wrathful revelation, rendering him free to utter syllables no one else dare speak. One time, in front of the teacher, he even blurted out, “Shit!”

“It means you’re a jerk. That’s what it means!”

It was true. Markie was a jerk. He was the meanest jerk on the playground, and he’d bully kids on a whim. Everybody used to shy away from him at recess, so he’d have to conscript his “friends,” demanding to join their games in lieu of school-wide humiliation. And he wasn’t afraid of hitting to get his way. This was why the boys were afraid of him; it was why the girls hid from Markie.

Oh, the girls, Alan mused. Just entertaining the thought of ladies filled his mind with daydreams teeming with wet kisses and bony fingers wrapped tightly around his midsection. He imagined soft chins gently nuzzling a single hair taped to his smooth chest. It didn’t matter from which girl or for how long or if she had milk or peanut butter breath. Alan just wanted kisses. He wanted to be the lip-smeared hero from all of his videogames, defying all odds and manner of foes to collect puckered smooches from the fairer sex.

“You want to take that to your grave?” Markie loomed over the would-be hero like a ruby-freckled goliath, his broad shoulders rippling with visible muscles under that Van Halen T-shirt. His Neanderthal forehead creased as he drilled his right fist into his left palm. The resulting sound reminded Alan of a handsaw chewing through lumber. Slowly. Painfully.

When a tree is sawn in half in a forest, and nobody is around…

“I’m a meat-eater, chicken shit, and you’re the meat,” the barbarian growled. An inhuman growl. The kind of throaty growl that reminded Alan of the second boss in that Sega Genesis game he unwrapped last Christmas – Joe & Mac. It’s true; Markie lacked the flailing vines and the leafy mouth of the gargantuan, man-eating plant, but their bellows were nearly identical – ominous and pitched in the wrathful, revelatory octaves of Hell.

It took Alan and his brother, Greg, three tries before they cleared the second level, three tries before they discovered the perfect combination of stone boulders and boomerangs that would pummel that prehistoric flora back into the dirt. And when they finally mashed their fingers to victory, mugs of eggnog, the Christmas elixir of 16-bit champions, never tasted so sweet.

But even sweeter were the kisses. The spoils of war. The prizes of valor. With each boss slain, a voluptuous cavewoman would jog onto the screen, seeking out the hero who dealt the most damage. She’d kiss this loincloth-wearing champion – long and hard – for half a second. His life meter at the top of the screen refilled, he’d raise his arms in victory, standing next to his untouched brother, whose head bowed in shame. For only one could unlock the sensation of puffy-lip smooches. Only one could boast the lecherous treasures of courageous conquests at the caveman bar.

And each time he shamed his brother, Alan would watch in awe. His gleeful voyeurism lapped up the adventures of his digital Casanova, scribbling mental notes. There must have been damsels everywhere, inexplicably thrust into wanton captivity.

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Looking Forward to 2025

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2024 was a big year for change.

It was the year I was promoted from a specialist to an account manager with the digital marketing agency I work for, meaning more responsibility as well as more freedom to assess clients’ needs and come up with a plan of action.

2024 was also the year where, creatively, I had to reassess where I put my time and efforts. I had to learn to say no and walk away from certain tasks if I wanted to say yes or carve out more writing time for myself, as well as time to spend with family, friends, and, most importantly, my wife.

It was also the year where I finally released MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale, a book I had been writing and talking about off and on for several years now. After much trial and error querying publishers and agents, I decided to release it independently. MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale is digitally available for purchase on Amazon Kindle or Gumroad. It’s also part of Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it for free (and leave a rating/review).

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‘MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale’ Out Now

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It’s out! It’s (finally) out on Amazon!

My robot novella, MACHINE: A Cybernetic Fairytale, is available as an ebook. For those of you who have been following me for a while, this is a long-time coming. For newcomers who are fans of my comic book reviews, short stories, Substack newsletter, or podcast interviews, I’ve been tinkering and shopping MACHINE around for years now, and I’d be thrilled if you would read it and share your thoughts.

What’s it about?

Meet Rocket Pal Model 5.624 (“Rocket” for short). Despite his strongest efforts, his yearning and best attempts at self-termination are thwarted at every turn. Luckily for Rocket, his continued survival in a repugnant civilization teeming with humans who couldn’t care less for machines leads this bot on a journey of exploration and self-discovery. From joining a robot rebellion to finding itself at odds with both human villains intent on subjugating Rocket and a self-aware, vengeful rebellion leader who adopts the moniker of its former owners, Rocket computes the meaning of perseverance and what makes humans persist. No longer obsessed with its own destruction, Rocket works to overcome its enemies, fully realizing that we all have value — human and machine — and the capacity for good.

In short, it’s a science fiction odyssey about a suicidal robot. At its core, it’s about a feeling many of us have when we look in the mirror, and it’s a book written for those who have struggled (or currently are struggling) with suicide-ideation. The world’s a big place, and it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle of daily challenges, social strife, bad news, and everything else that leaves us feeling lost and hollow. Though a machine, Rocket is emblematic of anyone who has ever felt these negative feelings. He’s a champion for us all, a rallying call that could, perhaps, help us lift ourselves out of the rut.

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