BRYAN W. ALASPA

It's a funny thing how life works sometimes. Not too long ago (keep in mind, I still think the 90s were "just a few years ago"), I wrote a blog about how I hated and feared spiders. I killed spiders left and right anywhere and anytime I saw them around. I especially enjoyed spraying them with things so that I could see them crawling around before dying. Yeah, I was a spider serial killer. Then I started working for, of all things, a pest control company. Yeah, my day job invo

For my new novel, S.P.I.D.A.R., I decided it would be fun to set it in a place cut off from the rest of the world. A place where it would almost be feasible that the actions taking place within the novel could happen. That meant creating a place totally cut off - perhaps one where pretty much the entire population lived in one very large building. Well, for inspiration, I turned to the real-life town of Whittier, Alaska, then named my own fictional version after it and filled

The world of insects... so much to truly be afraid of. Of course, most of it is at a very small level and most of the time you, as a full-fledged human being, do not need to worry about little wasps like the one above: the Emerald Cockroach Wasp or jewel wasp. Look at it. It's beautiful, and it's relatively small, and it poses virtually no threat to people unless a person were to grab it and hold it. If you're a cockroach, though, you would find the emerald cockroach wasp the

For the most part, we are pretty lucky here in North America when it comes to spiders. If you live in Central or South America or some of the warmer or more tropical climates (or Australia - so many deadly things live there it's almost unfair) you may have poisonous spiders, ants, centipedes or giant spiders or other insects. However, in the U.S. and North America there are few spiders to fear - but there are a couple. One of the most infamous is the Brown Recluse Spider The

People have been afraid of spiders for a long time. The term of fear of spiders is known as arachnophobia. Of course, a phobia itself is known as an "irrational fear of something." I myself have suffered from arachnophobia and also suffer from astraphobia (fear of thunderstorms). For the most part, the terrifying attributes of spiders is very overblown. If you think about it, it makes sense. The vast majority of spiders are small and all they want to do is be left alone to se

One of the things I have written about before is that I am a 'working' writer. This doesn't mean I make a living just writing my books. It means I write for a living and, in my case, this means writing blogs, website content and marketing materials. You may have thought I spent my days coming up with the demented stories I put out, but instead I spend my days writing blog articles to generate leads and writing high-SEO content for websites for a large international corporatio