<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[K.F. Hartford]]></title><description><![CDATA[Crafting Worlds Through Literary Imagination]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2026 18:20:21 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.kfhartford.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[The Monsters We Are Building Now]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part V of Monsters By K.F. Hartford Every age invents the monster it deserves. Once, the monster lived beyond the village, beyond the forest, beyond the map. Later it lived inside the body, inside the mind, inside the enemy. We gave it claws, scars, scales, distorted faces, corrupted appetites. We used monsters to make uncertainty visible and danger legible. Now many of our monsters begin in laboratories, server farms, code repositories, weapons systems, and design meetings. Artificial...]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/post/the-monsters-we-are-building-now</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a8fa427d2a5268a5fb74945</guid><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:50:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/11062b_6da5b14f84324c2380424433f214039b~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>K.F. Hartford</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why Do We Want Evil to Look Evil?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part IV of Monsters By K.F. Hartford Close your eyes and imagine a villain. Not a particular villain. Just a villain. What does your mind give you? Perhaps a scar. A crooked smile. Hollow cheeks. Unusual eyes. A damaged hand. A body that is too thin, too large, too angular, too still. Perhaps the figure dresses in black. Perhaps there is something wrong with the skin. Whatever appeared, I suspect it was not an entirely ordinary-looking person standing in line at the grocery store. Stories...]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/post/why-do-we-want-evil-to-look-evil</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a8fa17dbbd513a813cae4ff</guid><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:36:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/11062b_0ef222dd753d4b24bf825084dcaee6e8~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>K.F. Hartford</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why We Keep Building Monsters]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part I of Monsters By K.F. Hartford Long before human beings wrote novels, we made monsters. We painted strange creatures onto walls and carved them into stone. We populated forests, oceans, caves, deserts, mountains, and the darkness beyond the fire with beings that looked almost like animals, almost like humans, or some unsettling combination of both. We gave serpents multiple heads, men the bodies of bulls, women the tails of snakes. We imagined giants and demons, dragons and ogres,...]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/post/insights-from-k-f-hartford-a-writer-s-journey</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a88afdd700eb2025e8e8aab</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:06:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0823e90c7ab043d8b409571ffe025aaf.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>K.F. Hartford</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Who Gets to Be the Monster? ]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part II of Monsters By K.F. Hartford In the first century CE, Pliny the Elder attempted something extraordinarily ambitious: he tried to describe the world. His Natural History sprawled across thirty-seven books and gathered what was then known—or believed—about astronomy, geography, animals, plants, medicine, minerals, art, and human beings. It was an encyclopedia written when much of the world remained beyond the direct experience of those reading it, which meant that observation and...]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/post/exploring-themes-in</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a88afd9ec9ee797848e50c5</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:06:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7d5501_8873121e09494ee4907a9a7ef1fba544~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>K.F. Hartford</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[When the Monster Speaks]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part III of Monsters By K.F. Hartford The first thing Frankenstein's Creature does is open his eye. Victor runs away. It is a strange beginning to a relationship that will destroy them both. Victor Frankenstein has spent years pursuing the secret of life. He has studied death until the human body has become material to him: bone, muscle, tissue, mechanisms to be assembled and animated. He has imagined the moment of creation so obsessively that almost everything else has disappeared beneath...]]></description><link>https://www.kfhartford.com/post/the-creative-process-of-speculative-fiction-writing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a88afd8ec9ee797848e50c0</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:06:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/11062b_9798c7aa56db4e348ac597ff16733ce2~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>K.F. Hartford</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>