News

2011 I completed a fun, horror short, TERROR EYES, and already have a friend interested in producing it. DEEPER & DEEPER had its regional premier at the Violet Crowne Cinema, and several of my friends came. Also, THE CUNNING MAN made it to 2nd round in Austin Film Festival, and I coordinated a workshop with Karl Iglesias, author of Writing for Emotional Impact.

I taught a two-hour class on screenwriting for the (new) Texas Chapter of A Room of Her Own on November 6, 2010. Later, I read some of my work aloud at the AROHO event at Bookwoman. This was also the year I coordinated a workshop with Tim Albaugh, UCLA script instructor and guru and Pixar consultant.

CAN'T SAY NO, the comedy screenplay I wrote using Blake Snyder's 15 Beats (from his final workshop in Austin), was quarterfinalist in the Open Door (Bender Spinks) screenplay contest 2009.

DARK BLOOD got to semifinals in FINAL DRAFT. Also to quarterfinals in the Final Draft Contest. That means it was in the top 500 of 2500 submissions for 2007/08. And I got to send it to producer Andy Cohen with Grade A Entertainment, and to Seth Lockhart, agent/ manager with Creative Instinct.

I took a development job (meaning: getting the script story into shape and assisting with casting) with Bright Shining City Productions. The psycholological suspense screenplay, DEEPER & DEEPER, was written by local playwright and indie-award -winning actress, Cyndi Williams, from a story by Mariusz Kotowski. I helped turn the story into a twisty tale of erotic suspense (yeah, baby!) and it came out great despite the micro budget. Plus now I have an Associate Producer credit! And that photo above is me being interviewed for their "Behind the Scenes" documentary. UPDATE: The movie is winning "best screenplay," "best director," and "best actor" awards in some of the film festivals, yay!

HEAVEN & NELL was a quarter-finalist in the 2007 Cynosure Screenwriting Contest (which looks for scripts featuring women or minority protagonists), in Writers Network and was in the top 10% in SlamDance too.

Also in 2007, I've expanded my screenwriting education with some significant names. Thanks to the San Diego Film Festival and ASA Conference, this is now the list of people I've workshopped with: Robert McKee (still the coolest), Chris Vogler, Ken Rotcop, Pilar Alessandra, Dave Trottier, Kate Sandler and Michael Hauge. Also met and pitched to Andy Cohen with Grade A Entertainment, who's reading a couple of my scripts.

THE CUNNING MAN was a second-rounder in the Austin Film Festival Heart of Film Screenwriting Contest for 2006. Good old script; I'm re-entering my feature length ones in the good screenwriting contests each year, starting now, because my friend Brian Anderson was a finalist at AFF last year with a horror script he'd entered eight years in a row!

HEAVEN & NELL was a second-rounder (which means in the top 10% usually) of the Austin Film Festival Heart of Film Screenwriting Contest for 2005. It was also a quarter finalist in the Writers Network/Fade-in-Online screenwriting contest this year and one of 10 finalists in the "First Fifteen Pages" contest of the Best Little Pitchfest in Texas, here in Austin in July. Didn't place but it was nice that all the pros at the pitchfest had read the pages. Also, I'm getting to send it and my DARK BLOOD script to some of the producers and agents I met at the Pitchfest and at the AFF. Keep your fingers crossed!

October 2005, we filmed my 6-page short HELLO, OFFICER right here in Austin. It's just got three characters and one setting. Angela Lee is the producer, and she used her many local contacts with FilmAustin to get the talent in front of and behind the camera. I got to be script supervisor, which was a trip! The plan is to get it placed in some film festivals! Watch the low-res version on YouTube.

I really enjoy screenwriting, but it's very, very hard work. I've got several feature length screenplays done now, have outlined a few more, have a half-dozen short scripts, and am working on a high-concept romantic comedy. I'm in the market for an agent, or a producer, or both. If you see a logline below you like, please email me for a copy of the script!

Loglines

CAN'T SAY NO is a family comedy about a geeky, ignored engineer who invents creativity glasses to help his overworked team of product developers become more productive. Their job at a combo Ronco-type product company and Home Shopping Network is driving them all crazy since the new Assoc Producer cut their project schedules by half. But turns out the glasses have a side effect: they make the wearer so charismatic people are drawn to them, hang on their every word, and find it impossible to deny them anything they ask for.

HEAVEN & NELL is modern fantasy with a lot of soul. What happens when a con woman trying to go straight winds up in the one town in American where dishonesty can end the world as we know it? A recovering grifter thinks she's been left a bake shop in the same small town where she experienced first love. But she and her precocious daughter show up to find an eerily wholesome community with a secret of Biblical proportions. Confusion, complications, and all Hell breaks loose in the sleepy streets of Enoch. Read the synopsis of Heaven & Nell.

AMISH MEN is Southern Gothic. Cissy is a high-spirited, ex-cheerleader whose father has condemned her to live in a trailer with her bastard son on a turkey farm in Concrete, Texas. She becomes convinced that the local Amish are plotting to steal Petey, but nobody takes her seriously. So she steals her father's rifle...Read the synopsis of Amish Men.

TERROR EYES is a short film that takes the high school boo! scare genre and turns it upside down to make creepy existential horror. Written to be made on a micro-budget, it's the story of when the cool kids take the odd, new girl in school to a midnight adventure at the haunted Redvine Clinic. But turns out she knows the place better than they do, and their plans go awry. If you'd like to read the script please email me.