Category: Cosplaying

After Knocking On Death’s Door, I Redecorated His Office

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cemetery, Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism3 Comments

Am I the only one who sees the irony in being a Grim Reaper cosplayer before and after almost becoming his most recent acquisition? No wait; don’t answer… there’s more! There’s nothing quite like a near-life experience to remind you of priorities and those I’ll-get-to-them-eventually plans. I came quite close to death a year ago, so now I’m getting closer to Death as a way to celebrate my extension.

I joined a gym, healed up, and have kept it going; youthful energy is a good thing. I’ve earned my way up to a better day job, rebuilt my workshop as well as upgraded my crypt for you-know-who, and pushed forward in all the things I want to accomplish. I need to get four books out the door before Christmas 2017 — my fourth Matriarch book, two new Spooky books and a novel-sized Spooky anthology — plus launch a few other ideas I’ve had… including (fingers crossed) a regular web show featuring Grim D. about movies and general pop culture with a Halloween twist.

For today, however, I’ll continue to catch up on my reading… including this book Grim left for me as a gift.

Guest Appearance: Comicpalooza 2015, May 22-25

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Horrificus, LiterarianLeave a comment

I’ll be running a few panels (and running around in general) at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas at Comicpalooza 2015, May 22-25. Panels, cosplay, roleplaying, celebrities, and all that kind of stuff. Plan to come on out and say “Howdy!”

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I Hope to Never Meet One of My Own Vampires

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Horrificus, Literarian, Paranormal7 Comments

JanissReadingJanissSome of you may be aware of the Vampire Community, not just fans of the genre who embrace the lifestyle but those who believe themselves to be actual vampires. Psychic vampires absolutely exist, stealing your energy or lending it with their very presence, but I’m not talking about (to quote Ian from The Matriarch) “a mystically animated corpse that imitates the living so (it) can feed off of it.” Do they exist? I hope not – both for my sake and their own – because if they ever find out I created their world and inflicted them with their condition, I wholly expect them to be rather pissed off at me.

What I am saying is this: as a fiction writer, I do not believe what I create is real anywhere but on the page. These characters exist in my mind and that is what I share, and there are things I write about I wouldn’t wish on anyone…but, alas, such atrocities make for interesting storytelling.

I also don’t hate anyone calling themselves a vampire, but like an organized religion, there are a FEW who take it upon themselves to wage a personal crusade to say “yours isn’t real because *I* am real.” The Bard’s phrase “the lady doth protest too much” fully applies here with the same level of annoyance as believers knocking on your door Saturday morning to tell you “the good news” about our Lord and Savior (we all have our little illusions; far be it from me to take away yours).

Finally, we all wear masks, and the first step in any personal change is to act the part; it isn’t a far stretch of the imagination to think the human mind can convince itself of anything (Nic Cage’s “Vampire’s Kiss” comes to mind as an example) until the mask becomes the truth. All of this said, however, no vampire character I have ever created would log onto a social network expressly for the purpose of convincing the world that they’re real; it is far more likely they’ll deny everything and smile at the ones screaming in all caps across the internet.

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Good Guests Behaving Badly: Con Guest Commandments

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, ManagementLeave a comment

Convention HotelPopular Arts Conventions are great places for fans and artists to meet and interact over common interests: books, film, television, cosplay, web, or whatever. The fear, however, is that fans – abbreviated from the word “fanatics” – are the only source of irresponsibility and poor judgment. For those of us who at one time or another have stood on both sides of the convention table, there IS such a thing as a bad guest.

Fortunately, David Gerrold has nailed a comprehensive list of essential guidelines that guests new and old should probably abide by. With his kind permission, I have immortalized it not only for myself but for anyone in the industry.

The 15 Con Guest Commandments… (read more)

All of you know someone who might have benefited from such knowledge.

Don’t be that guest…ever. Or ever again.

Read and heed.

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Meet Me @AncientCityCon in Jacksonville, Florida on July 18th-20th!

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Literarian, RoleplayingLeave a comment

Gamers! Cosplayers! Cinephiles!

Lend me your ears…that’s disgusting; take those back this instant!

AncientCityCon2014After taking a year off to concentrate on my burdening…no, bludgeoning… wait, *burgeoning* writing career, I’m a guest at this year’s Ancient City Con at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront on July 18th-20th, 2014. I’ll be bringing a bunch of books: copies of The Matriarch and The Matriarch: Guardians. If you already have one or both, bring them by to get those dead-tree editions signed at no charge! There will be panels…oh yes, there WILL be panels…including an all-new edition of The Ultimate Occult Showdown with myself and Brett Link as your enforcers…whoops, I meant “hosts!”

C’mon down, get a hotel room right on the waterfront, and party with us for the eighth-annual Ancient City Con this mid-July. Seriously, there’s nothing else to do that weekend in Jacksonville…I promise. Would I lie? I mean, when it’s important?!

See ya there!

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The Bloodlist (Fun With Photoshop)

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Conspiracies, Cosplaying, Creativity, Hollywood, Satire1 Comment

KevinAsReddington-Edit3-300pxBrandedI’ve done professional renderings for various companies, but now I usually only do this kind of work for myself.

This is a cosplay I’m putting together for conventions, based loosely on James Spader’s excellent show “The Blacklist” on NBC. I mentioned to my wife that it’d be fun to get suited up and do a fake poster called “The Bloodlist” with the tagline “Never trust a horror writer,” so she dared me.

Done and done.

You: “I don’t think you’re telling me everything.”

Me: “I’m never telling you everything.”

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The Reaper Rants Return!

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, HollywoodLeave a comment

Back a few years ago, I changed over the “horror host” for my movie review website, MovieCrypt.com, from the static “Crystal Lich” (a disembodied crystal skull with an attitude) to “Grim D. Reaper” (a gleeful Angel of Death that reviews movies when he’s not reaping souls). The response was wonderful, and even outside of his film critique venue, Grim’s popularity is obvious.

One of the big changes from the Lich to the Reaper was for making videos. These started out on the simplest of tools, Windows Movie Maker. I shot film, taught myself editing, learned how to improve the sound, and so forth. One thing that never made me happy was the limited space I had to create an actual lair for the character, something I’ve now fully realized at my home in Texas.

At-home tools for both capturing sound/video and editing it on a home computer have improved drastically, so I have put my new “Reaper Rants” video series into production and set up a YouTube channel for it. The micro-set was designed and lighted (thanks to my theater experience) to make it very easy to quickly shoot the baseline footage I need, and my custom-built editing suite (fortified with Sony Vegas editing software tools) enables me to assemble and polish videos on a whim.

Check out my YouTube channel and subscribe or follow MovieCrypt.com to catch all of the Reaper’s latest videos. With Halloween coming up very soon, who knows what mischief the Angel of Death is going to get into.

Come Out to the 2012 Ancient City Con, July 20-22!

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Existentialism, Literarian, Roleplaying1 Comment

Ancient City Con in Jacksonville, Florida is three days long this year, and I’m a guest! I’ll be on and/or running a few panels, have lots of Spooky Chronicles books for sale (and how you can get some for free), and Grim D. Reaper of MovieCrypt.com will be making a few appearances throughout the weekend (don’t mention his face lift, though; he’s kind of sensitive about getting work done). Come say hello and get your picture taken with Death…!