Anyone that knows me or listens to my podcast, B-Movies and E-Books, knows that I absolutely love horror films and fiction. Although most of our listeners probably do not know that I have written almost every day for the past three years. Much of the time, these little entries into my personal collection do very little except help me hone my craft.
You see, my love for horror started at a young age. As a child of the eighties, horror was everywhere. You could not flip on the television without being bombarded with advertisements for the newest Friday the 13th film or the next entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street Saga. Episodes of Tales From The Darkside and Monsters aired late nights on Saturdays right before the television stations signed off for the night and I faithfully ate up every bit of it.
When I was 22, I badly wanted to be a filmmaker. I could feel the cinema pulsing through my veins, dying to be let out. I wanted to improve upon the forgotten films of yesteryear and out of this passion, I wrote my first full-length screenplay. It was a creature feature named Pillow Fright and it was about - you guessed it - KILLER PILLOWS. I wanted every horror trope known to man to be pumped into this low budget epic.
The trouble with this was that I had ZERO money, experience, or connections so after a few attempts to make the film, it sat on my bookshelf for years. As I finished up with business school, I would often glance at the screenplay and daydream about what could have been if I just had the guts to pursue my passions instead of focusing my time and effort on the safety net that college provided.
Even after I began my career, I would sometimes think about the various stories that took up permanent residence in my head. Entire worlds played out in my mind and I would lay up at night thinking about what to do with this. I don't know why, but writing genre fiction never occurred to me until I got a mysterious call from a man that I met almost a decade prior.
This man indicated that he ran a small production house in Houston and he wanted to option the film rights to Pillow Fright. In fact, he was willing to pay me a small sum of money for exclusive rights to make the film that sat on my shelf for years. I was shrouded in pure what-the-fuckery for days on end. It seemed so implausible to me that a person whom I met a decade prior couldn't shake my campy little horror story either. Maybe there are others that might want to hear my stories as well.
Honestly, I've optioned the film multiple times and I am not sure whether the it will ever get made. But in any case, this re-ignited my passion for creating these twisted little worlds of mine. It gave me the courage to write again although it definitely dissuaded me from writing more screenplays. I simply do not have the shelfspace or the patience to watch another screenplay collect dust while I wonder what could have been.
The next few years, I spent trying to learn the craft as best as I can but I cannot wait any longer. I feel like I am writing better now than I ever have in my entire life.
That said, I present...
That's right. This fall, I will finally release my first short story to Kindle audiences everywhere. Making Cuts is going to be a nasty good time and I am so excited to unleash this little tale onto the world.
Watch this space.
