Happy Halloween!



Never forget, when taking down Houdini, bring prizefighters, a platoon and high calibre weapons.

Stargates and etc.



So Eli Roth is working on three projects simultaneously, which, including a fantasy past time of beating Nazi with baseball bats, makes two things we have in common. Getting back into the workshop scene has revealed that my tenuous grasp of storytelling has slipped and that my favorite convoluted and apparently genre-obscure project isn’t universally appealing. So two projects go on the back burner and another one comes back for another pass.

Elsewhere, I snagged my second limited edition print from the arg-inspired LOST art project damoncarltonandapolarbear.com. It did not involve dolphins killing the president, but I am expecting some murderous marine mammals once the show returns.

Also, completely unexpectedly, I’m kinda digging Stargate Universe. The first episode was interesting, and it might just scratch the itch BSG left behind when it finished up. Robert Carlyle is playing things slightly detached, which is creating conflict with just about everyone at this point. Here’s hoping it holds up.

Won’t waste time or effort on the CS Open again



Updates being few and far-between I don’t expect I get much screenwriting traffic on the blog anymore, but just in case, I thought I’d pass along an opinion on the CS Open screenwriting competition- avoid it and spend your time doing more productive things. Like clipping your toenails or something.

The CS Open sounded interesting $12 an entry for an elimination style tournament. You get a prompt and have increasingly shorter deadlines to return a new 5 pg scene with each round. Since I’m a spec writer and I’ve been out of college for a while, the idea of a deadline really appealed to me. (I’m sure working writers who genuinely sweat crazy deadlines are thinking I’m crazy, but… Well okay, I can’t really deny being crazy.)

Here’s how things have played out… First, there were technical problems with registration, then some folks had issues submitting their entries by the deadline so it was extended, and now it appears some entries have just disappeared into the ether. But as far as I knew until this morning, I wasn’t having any of these problems. Got my proper #digit entry ID, had my pages done and submitted, properly formatted and title paged, by the original deadline, got a confirmation page and everything. But no score. No nothing.

I’ve sent several emails after each “Check by” date they posted to the site and still have not received a direct response. Found out via Twitter that a few other people are having the same problems. Done Deal reveals others.

So to hell with that noise. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a lot invested in this. $12 ain’t gonna break me, which was half the reason I entered. Plus I had a lot going on the weekend of the first round, SparkCon was going down in Raleigh, bands were playing, I had even gotten a little sick. But I came up with my 5 pages anyway, trying to put a fun spin on the vague plot requirements- but that was it, these weren’t characters I’ve spent months learning about and I guess I like my process a lot more when I live and breathe my characters for more than 5 pages.