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Prolific genre actors are not necessarily contained to a single series. Major science fiction franchises are a great example -- just look at every actor who's been in both "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" over the years. It's arguably even more amusing when an actor who's primarily known from one sci-fi thing turns up in another in such a stealthy fashion that fans don't even realize until the credits roll.

This brings us to the late, great James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader. While he doesn't ever show up onscreen, his iconic, booming voice is an integral part of the "Star Wars" experience, and his slew of other roles mean that his face is immediately recognizable to any fan. As such, you wouldn't expect the man to be able to sneak a cameo in another notable sci-fi property without people immediately noticing. Yet, that's exactly what he did...

Fans don’t always realize how much of what they get to read on the marketplace gets out there despite publisher preconceptions. History is filled with any number of books, ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Confederacy of Dunces to Harry Potter, that hit the market and left in their wake a host of rejections from various editors because the stories didn’t fit in with what they were looking for. Pulling Up Stakes first made its presence known at various conventions when I first started working on it. I’d read sample chapters and enthused audiences begged to know when it was going to be done so that they could find out what happened next. Yet when the book was circulated to editors, the reason for their passing on it were impressive, to say the least. Pulling Up Stakes tells the skewed tale of Vincent Hammond, a twenty-something vampire stalker,...