On pop stars, pop stores and pop shirts.

Recently I was back in the mall's cutting-edge culture store, Hot Topic, for the first time in I think years.  They didn't actually have anything that I wanted to buy that time, since it was mainly culture that I wasn't currently interested in, or perhaps didn't currently follow, more to the point.  Maybe that's only part of getting older in years.  It's understandable.
Actually, one item I considered buying the next time I visited Hot Topic (current culture of the day or not) was a t-shirt based on the album cover shot featuring Prince of his 1981 opus, "Controversy." I figured it would be another method on my part, having been a Prince fan in my younger years, of paying due, posthumous respect to His Purple Highness.  It's also one of the more potent in impact, I think (I won't apply to it the cornball term "impactful") album covers ever, socially speaking.  Flanked in the background by headlines in "The Controversy Daily" such as "President Signs Gun Control Act" and "Annie Christian Sentenced To Die!" ("Annie Christian" is one of the song titles on the album, and it is calculated itself to be controversial; hence), HPH is specifically striking a look of partly surprise, but mainly indignation.  I've actually had that album on tape for many years, so I would know the social waves not only the cover, but the song content were intended to lash up.
I only hope that the next time I'm at Hot Topic, they still have that shirt in stock, and in my size.

Third post

This will be the last post in which I focus on my own writing for a while.  I'd just like to mention that whereas before I have tried to hold up my horror writing career as Ross S. Simon, and I've stated this before, I've recently set out in a new direction.
Under my own name of Sam Ridings, I'm writing an epic series of adventure novels with cool titles, starring a main character who's also pretty cool herself.  Yes, I said "herself." I won't say anything more about the main character, or the titles, since I don't want to give anything away, but I'll just say that I hope you'll wish me good luck getting these adventure stories published (and perhaps also finding an agent for them).
My future posts will concentrate on my personal opinions pertaining to cultural issues about the past and present.

For my second post, I thought I'd talk a little about how I feel my writing style to be.
It used to be pretty pretentious and melodramatically intense when I was only doing handwritten drafts of things (usually hack jobs and, unfortunately, fanfic pieces) during my adolescence.  At least, most of the time.  Now, I guess it's a little more straightforward.  My style tries to follow cogent plot lines, but doesn't always, I don't really believe.  On the other hand, I try to do that.
I've done away with much pretense over the years in my prose technique.  I don't know if it's improved much, but I have noticed philosophical spots here and there in the stories I write.  Even in the horror of Ross S. Simon, we see the villainous, murderous monsters frequently speaking to the heroes frankly and pragmatically of embracing despair, and even joining forces with those monsters, after they have already wrought chaos in those heroes' lives.
On the whole, I wouldn't place my writing style outside the area of a lot of others'.  I only hope people can get to enjoy the novels I write.

Hi all, I'm Sam Ridings, an amateur fiction writer.  I write in a variety of genres, most of which I just delve into, really.  One of them, in which I've actually been published in relatively recent years.
It's in the horror genre that I was published, under the pseudonym Ross S. Simon.  Ross S. Simon's more successful books were "The Snow" in 2012, and "Red Dahlia" in 2013, by Eternal Press and Damnation Books, respectively.  "His" third novel, I'm still trying to sell.  It's called "Arthur O' The Bower." That one was released through Caliburn Press.  They're not doing all that well for me.
If anyone is interested in these titles who visits this blog, I'll try and share the buy links for the ebooks  for the first two, and the print copy (or maybe the ebook as well) for "Arthur." I'm actually flexible about sharing the links, and am pretty sure I can manage it though I don't have much experience posting links on blogs, lol.
I'll be sure to tell you a little more about myself as a writer in future posts.