The Official Blog of A. E. Costello

Inspired or Stealing: What’s the Difference

Let me tell you a story about a time I got inspired, but I didn’t steal due to that inspiration. I was watching a movie (2016 Sing Street) for my Studies in Young Adult Literature class. At the very end the young teenage couple are in a small boat running away from home together and…

A. E. Reads: Hollow City [Book Review]

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs is the second novel in the series Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children. Hollow City picks up directly after Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ends and continues the story right away with no time skip. The children are in London during WWII air raids, and find themselves facing bombs as well…

Speculating Black: M. Haynes [Guest Post]

We live in a world where more people know names of the Avengers rather than of US presidents. If we take a look at the most popular book and film franchises (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars) we will see that this is indicative of our relationship with speculative fiction: we absolutely love…

A. E. Reads: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children [Book Review]

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was published in 2011 by writer and filmmaker Ransom Riggs. The story is about a boy named Jacob Portman who finds out the fantasy stories his grandfather used to tell him were actually reality and the adventure Jacob goes on to find out the truth. Miss Peregrine’s Home for…

Black Speculative Fiction: Why I Write It

Spring 2018, I took the English course that would change my views on being a writer and author. The class in question was Studies in Genre: Black Speculative Fiction, taught by Dr. Stacy Boyd. Before his class, I had never heard of black speculative fiction. That includes I didn’t know who Octavia Butler was or…

NaNoWriMo: Day 7

It’s Day 7 of National Novel Writing Month and my overall progress looks like this: Not very awe-inspiring. And the fact that I have less than three thousand words when I should have around ten thousand by now brought me to the obvious conclusion that the story I’ve been working on for so long is…