I Study Oil Recovery for a Living. I Wrote a Crime Thriller for Fun.

People get a little thrown when they learn that the guy who measures how heavy oil behaves at high temperature spends his evenings writing about a trafficking ring and a soldier freezing in a cold-storage unit. The two facts don’t seem to belong to the same person. I enjoy that more than I probably should.

The book is called The Deccan Harvest. It’s a dark crime thriller, and I wrote most of it in the middle of a petroleum engineering PhD, which is not a thing I would recommend on paper and would absolutely do again.

Here’s the part nobody quite warns you about with a science PhD. For long stretches, it is pure logic with the lights off. You build an experiment so that exactly one variable is allowed to move. You read forty papers to find the three that matter. You write a manuscript in the most heroically boring prose our species has ever produced, you submit it, and then you wait for a stranger named Reviewer 2 to inform you that your life’s work is “incremental.” Do that for a couple of years and something specific happens to your head. A part of it goes stiff from lack of use, the way a leg goes stiff when you sit on it too long.

I did not start writing fiction to heal anything or to find myself. I’ll be honest about that, because the internet is full of writers pretending their hobby was a spiritual awakening. I started because I was bored in a very particular way, and because after a full day of trying to be a clean, objective instrument, the idea of inventing a genuinely nasty villain, a night train, and a terrible situation sounded like the most fun I could have without getting out of my chair. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/deccan-harvest-karthik-sivaraman-oil-recovery-crime-thriller
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"I'm sorry" has a problem, and the problem is you've said it so many times it's started to mean nothing.

Not because you're insincere. Because the word has been worn smooth from overuse, the same way a doorknob gets shiny in the spot everyone touches. You said it when you bumped into someone at the grocery store. You said it when the waiter brought the wrong order and somehow it was your fault. You said it reflexively, automatically, the verbal equivalent of clearing your throat. And now, when you actually need it to carry weight, it sounds exactly the same as it did when you apologized for someone else's mistake.

This is the problem with "sorry." It's not that it's wrong. It's that it's generic. And a generic apology for a specific offense feels like exactly what it is: minimum effort.

Here's how to apologize without leaning on a word that's lost its power.

Why "Sorry" Stops Working

The word "sorry" expresses regret. It does not, on its own, express understanding. That's the gap.

When you say "I'm sorry," you're communicating that you feel bad. You are not necessarily communicating that you understand why she feels bad, what specifically went wrong, or what you're going to do about it. She already knows you feel bad. You wouldn't be apologizing if you didn't. What she actually needs to hear is evidence that you understand the thing you did and its actual impact, not just an acknowledgment that something happened.

This is why "I'm sorry" sometimes gets met with "sorry for what, exactly." It's not her being difficult. It's her noticing that the word is doing the emotional work while the understanding is missing.

READ MORE HERE: https://apologyflowers.com/blog/how-to-apologize-without-saying-sorry

Hollywood had run out of ideas, until a cursed videotape crossed the Pacific.

By the late 1990s, American horror was exhausted (to be kind). The post-Scream wave of self-aware slashers had burned through its own premise fairly quickly. It was fun while it lasted, but audiences had seen every variation and it quickly got stale. The genre needed something it hadn’t seen before, and it wasn’t going to find it in Hollywood.

It came from Japan. And it arrived on a videotape.

The slasher cycle of the 1980s and the ironic meta-horror of the 1990s shared a common assumption: the audience needed to be in on the joke, or at least in on the formula. Scream was brilliant and fresh (at the time) precisely because it understood and articulated every convention of the genre it was operating in (thanks to Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven). But once you’ve deconstructed something that thoroughly, rebuilding genuine dread is difficult (yet somehow they kept trying…to this day…but that’s a subject for another article).

Japanese horror wasn’t operating under any of those assumptions. It wasn’t interested in being clever about its own conventions. It was interested in atmosphere, in dread that accumulated slowly (and didn’t explain itself!), and in supernatural forces that followed their own internal logic rather than Hollywood’s. It was serious in a way American horror had largely forgotten how to be. READ MORE AT: https://horrorfam.com/2000s-j-horror/

Director Ari Gold lost his mother in the helicopter crash that killed Bill Graham. Here's how he turned that grief into a Student Oscar-winning short, and why the healing took twenty more years. Read the article at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/the-short-film-and-the-shaman-making-helicopter
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From Mary Shelley to Elvira to Sigourney Weaver, these are the women who built, defined, and reinvented horror, plus some up and coming names to watch. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/women-who-shaped-the-horror-genre
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Here you'll find a strong opinion piece, so, dear reader, continue at your own peril. The idea for this post came to me recently when I made several embarrassing mistakes without meaning to. And so I naturally wanted to share a few of my philosophical ideas that I believe could help you on your quest to become great writers. Additionally, you might also get a good laugh out of it. Furthermore, if you were wondering what my mistake was, I nearly burned down my uncle's food stand. So, everyone who reads this article, I invite you to laugh at my expense. To find out the reason why I welcome such mockery, please read this post to its conclusion, and have fun.

Read the article: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/embrace-foolishness-viktor-frankl-eiichiro-oda-creative-writing
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When ShivaOm, first submitted his artist statement, his UV art instantly grabbed my attention. I had questions. A lot of them. So I sent them, and what came back is what’s below.

Feeling Creative? has had the honor of featuring a few artists from Ukraine, and that will never change. Their creativity, resilience, and generosity of spirit in sharing their work with the world during unimaginable circumstances deserves every platform we can give them. ShivaOm is no exception.

This is his story. https://feeling-creations.com/articles/shivaom-ukrainian-visionary-artist-uv-art-sacred-geometry

See the full list at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/horror-series-every-fan-should-check-out

Horror is a difficult genre to sustain across multiple episodes and because of this, there really aren’t that many good ones. A movie can build dread for 90 minutes and release it at the end. A series has to keep resetting that tension week after week without burning through its premise (and audience).

I left out the obvious ones that you know, like Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, The Walking Dead etc…These are the series that didn’t seem to get enough love from horror fans and are worth checking out. I’ll try not to spoil any and since trailers these days seem to do just that, I wont post trailers to any that are worth going in cold.

A year ago J.E. made his first drawing during a difficult period. Twenty-five pieces later, the former elite athlete based in Spain has become a visual artist working in acrylic markers on cardboard.

See more of J.E.'s art at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/artist-statement-je-art-acrylic-markers-spain
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Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there...so here we have a list of the best movies for dads, written by a dad himself Michael Field from the Forgotten Cinema podcast. Check it out, and maybe watch one with your dad, or your kids, or your dad and your kids. Enjoy.

From Field of Dreams to John Wick, a movie-loving dad's essential Father's Day watch list — with a few extra picks for good measure. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/.../films-for-movie-loving...

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Kevin Ligabue left tech and oil to open Future Ink Tattoo in Oakland. A conversation about Japanese Geometry, heavy blackwork, suminagashi, and why ego is the hardest skill to master in tattooing. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/tattoo-artist-spotlight-kevin-ligabue-future-ink-oakland
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Before the internet, museums did something radical: they loaded real Rembrandts and Picassos onto tractor-trailers and drove them to rural America. Here's the story of the Artmobile: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/the-artmobile-when-museums-brought-the-art-to-you

Returning from Silence: A Skeptic's Near-Death Experience and the Question Science Can't Answer...Phil Allard's debut novel follows a skeptical chemistry teacher whose near-death experience refuses any scientific explanation. A philosophical thriller that unsettles in the best possible way.

Read more here: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/returning-from-silence-phil-allard-debut-novel
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Spielberg returns to sci-fi with Disclosure Day — a film that asks all the right questions about alien disclosure and humanity's response, then refuses to answer a single one of them. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/the-aliens-have-no-clothes-a-review-of-spielbergs-disclosure-day
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Before tattooing at Day One Ink in Westminster CA, Bryant Howerton drew custom trading cards for Marvel. A conversation about surrealist ink, floral tattoos, and the stories behind the most meaningful pieces he's done. READ MORE HERE: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/tattoo-artist-spotlight-bryant-howerton-day-one-ink