2018 Edinburg Screenwriting Competition Semi-Finalist
My co-written screenplay with James Raven, The Sentinels of Tzurac, has been awarded a semi-finalist status and marked as an official selection at the annual Edinburg Screenwriting Competition.
Creating the Story Playlist
There are some stories that we can see playing in our heads; we can see the cinematic sequence of every fight, of every kiss, betrayal, victory, and defeat. And as we play these movies through our heads, what do we hear? You can visualize the actions and scenes playing in time as your eyes scan…
Tension and Terror: Pacing Horror for Beginners
Horror is one of the most primal genres to exist. It touches the primitive parts of our minds that still fear what we cannot see in the dark and how it will hurt us. However, a lot of modern day horror focuses less on building to those moments in favor of the instant-gratification emotions of…
Alien Encounters: On Writing Sentient Beings Beyond
Millions of people have stared into the night sky and asked, are we alone? Arthur C. Clarke has said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” But if we are not alone, what will we find? There are thousands of science fiction and science…
Writing Asexually
Don’t tell the television executives and mainstream media this, but not everyone wants sex. Imagine! And here we were thinking that the “A” in LGBTQIAP+ meant, “ally.” There are projected to be over a million asexual people across the world, yet the saturation they have in media can almost be counted on two hands. But…
Anthology Book Launch Party for California Screamin’
Join me as editor of the anthology and contributors E.S. Magill, Jean Graham, Aaron Smith, Richard W. Goldsmith, and Billy San Juan at this festive pre-Halloween Launch Party to celebrate the publication of California Screamin’. Come early for champagne, cake, and other holiday goodies. Anthology contributors will discuss the anthology and read spell-binding snippets of…
California Screamin’
California Screamin’ California. Close your eyes and say it: California. Images of perpetual sunshine, swaying palm trees, and blue waters lapping at sandy beaches. That one word conjures visions of gold and fame, luring dreamers to its mythic shores. The original peoples lived in an abundant paradise. The Spanish found a familiarity to their homeland.…
Gender presentation in Stephen King’s Carrie
Stephen King’s novel, Carrie, is an epistolary novel whose form has the tendency to confuse and disorient the reader. While King’s book was quite popular and successful enough to warrant several film adaptations, it is a bit of a shallow representation of the female psyche, represented by the slew of bitchy teenage high school girls…
The Forgotten
Forgotten (As Script Supervisor) In development by Bagboy Productions and Street Artist Pictures Set in a therapist’s office, a tormented man reluctantly opens up about his abandonment issues deriving from his Greek biological father, reflecting on his addictions, anger and near death experience. Based on true events. Winner: Best Experimental Short Best Experimental Short…
Does Syntax In Dialogue Set a Genre Apart?
Should we consider linguistics and English composition when creating dialogue in fiction? How does syntax function within fictional dialogue and set a genre apart? In How English Works: A Lingusitic Introduction, Adams and Curzan state that we use “intuition” (169) to decipher the meanings of sentences and determine whether a sentence is structured correctly. For…
