It has been fully eleven months (yes, 11 !) since my last blog entry. I apologize for it taking me so long, especially after vowing to post more often after my last multi-month hiatus. Let me explain what has kept me so occupied — and in some cases pre-occupied — in the interim.

As most of you know, I alternate back and forth between writing novels and writing screenplays for feature films. This is relatively easy to do when you’re just plugging along, your career doing well artistically, but maybe there’s not a whole lot going on professionally. As a writer, you just make sure you spend time in front of your laptop doing the grunt work required to create new content. The grunt work is required because you can’t simply create new content. No, your content has to be new, fresh, and exciting, with something to say, and you must say it at a professional level.

Anything less is a waste of your time.

In years past, I had been a client of a different literary manager, who essentially was not doing much to advance my screenwriting career. In retrospect, I have come to believe he was my manager so he could have access to every unproduced script I’ve written without having to pay an option fee on each one of them. But at the time, I did not think that way.  Anyway, he and I were trying to set up a film finance deal to shoot a small found-footage creature feature at about the $500K level. I had approached the rep for a known horror actor to see if perhaps said actor might be interested in doing a few weeks’ work on our project. They read my script and LOVED it. The actor’s rep wanted to help produce it, but at a higher budget level. I was elated! Not only was it vindication of work (I was worthy!), but a larger budget meant more money for everyone all around. Win/win, right?

Wrong. My manager was resistant to this; I could not figure out why.  And when queried directly, he never did give me an answer that made any kind of logical sense. This lead to friction between us. We eventually had a blowout argument, and my (now former) manager kicked me to the curb at Christmas almost two years ago.

Not to worry, though. I should thank him. His firing me wound up being the best thing he ever did for my writing career. The other rep, also a manager, offered to represent me and my screenplays. I said yes, and we haven’t looked back since. And now the budget on the project has crept up to somewhere between $5 – $10 MILLION. Which will mean a much bigger payday for yours truly if we ever get the thing financed. And since, at this budget level, the film will be sanctioned under the WGA (Writers Guild of America), I will have an opportunity to join the union.

Please indulge me a brief word about unions in show business. Here’s the bottom line. Regardless of your political or social views, regardless of how you view unions, Hollywood film and television is a union industry. It really is that simple. If you want to work and keep working at that level of filmmaking, you better join the union at the earliest opportunity. If you view unions positively, it’s a non-issue. If you don’t, suck it up and deal with it. Join your union. It’s a fact of life you cannot avoid once you make the jump from backyard, DIY films to working within the established industry.

And here’s where the business of screenwriting comes into play. As each actor came onboard, they each wanted changes made to their respective characters. So I rewrote the scripts. A new directing duo came onboard. More changes. And more changes. And more…

You get the idea.

All totaled, I have rewritten that original script no less than 35 times. And I say that because 35 is where I stopped keeping count. But in addition to the script, I learned there were other documents I had to prepare. Creating a logline and a synopsis for the script was a no-brainer. In fact, I already had that done. All I had to do was tweak a word here and there, turn a phrase here, delete a clause there, and I was home-free. But I had to write something akin to a business plan, something edgy, artsy, beautiful, and cool to wow prospective Executive Producers and financiers. And since it has some elements similar to a business plan, that’s what I called it in the early days. My manager corrected me, it was (at the time) referred to as a “Pitch Plate”, or a “Visual Deck”. As of this writing, the proper term around Hollywood is the colloquial phrase, “Look Book”.

So I had to get a Look Book put together. This is something I had never done before, and I could find VERY few examples. So I had to do it on the fly, and learn by doing. Trial and error is a painful, effective way to learn anything. Even with memory problems like I have (thanks to cancer, chemo, radiation, and ongoing medications), once you’ve done one, you will never forget how. In the lengthy, frustrating, stressful months-long process, I have written, rewritten, done and redone the Look Book not less than 50 times.

This is in addition to working on my next novel, BLOOD RED MOON, and attempting to write the pilot and the first season of an hour-long TV drama series I am still trying to finish. Sometimes I might go days or weeks without hearing from my manager, and I’m the kind of guy who generally subscribes in the old adage, “No news is good news”. I’m basically a fairly optimistic, “glass half-full” kind of guy. So I would spend those days and weeks working on new material rather than sitting by the phone, obsessing over when the project was getting financed and how much money I might get paid. But then I would get various emails or phone calls, saying something needed to be tweaked again, a photo needed to be changed, altered, resized, desaturated, etc. And of course, I would immediately stop whatever project I was working on, push it to the back burner, and focus on the problem in front of me. This has been happening off and on for the past year and a half.

Mind you, I am not complaining about any of this. This is the art I have chosen to pursue. This is world I have chosen to inhabit. This is the business I have chosen to occupy, and this is all just a part of the business.

I make no excuses for why I haven’t posted more, I simply want to explain the reasons why. What is true for writers is also true for other artists who make a living through their art: writing the story or screenplay is only the beginning. And your job is not finished when you send the script off to your agent or manager to read.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks. And your job has only just begun.

I don’t often do this, in fact I believe this is the first time I have done it on my blog, as I like to keep things positive and uplifting here. I want to inspire others to pursue their dreams, whatever they may be, and be the best writer (or whatever) they can be. Sort of like that slogan for the Army. But to any aspiring screenwriters out there who may read these words, let me warn you about a situation that comes up time and again in the film industry.

Never, NEVER, ever, EVER, sign an agreement with an established producer, production company, or studio to write an original screenplay, or to adapt a novel into a screenplay  for NO MONEY UPFRONT.

Trust me on this. Heed my sage advice, for it is wisdom born of pain. Yes, I have been suckered in by a predatory production company once myself, back in 2009. Notice I said ONCE. And I learned (the hard way!) that having no deal is better than working under the constraints of a BAD deal.

Here’s what happened. An established indie producer of straight to video action movies liked one of my scripts. The Producer (who shall remain nameless) wanted me to write a faith-based action thriller specifically for an (at the time) aging action star they were working with. They wanted to have it set partly in Africa. So we signed a deal where I would write for no money up front, but would be paid $10,000 when the project got greenlit.

It sounded good at the time. I was a non-union writer who had written and directed a feature horror film (DELIRIUM, 2007, York Entertainment) a few years before that had lost money, and funding for my follow-up horror feature fell through in the economic crash of 2008. I was overextended at the time, and when my Investors pulled out, my company, Forsaken Media Group, collapsed. Thank God I had a day job at the time that paid well.

So this Producer and I developed a basic plot, then I wrote a logline, then a synopsis, then an outline, then I wrote the script. At every step of the process, I was in contact with the Company, as they had approval authority. I was writing the script “on assignment”, meaning I was a “writer for hire”. I did not own the script I was writing, or any of the characters therein. But that was okay by me. I was writing, and I felt confident that the script would get a green light, because the action star was big on home video in many parts of the world at the time.

A director got hired. He worked with me on the script. I learned about script notes, and how to incorporate input from others into revisions on the script without completely writing over what I felt was the true emotional core of the story being told.

I turned in the revised draft to the company. They thanked me, said they would be in touch. They never were. And when I called for an update, the exec who had been so accommodating to me was suddenly unavailable, and no longer returned my calls. Eventually, his assistant even refused to answer my emails.

Long story short, the project never happened. And I know because I watched for a couple of years to see if the movie came out with someone other than me being credited for writing it. I had all my script drafts, revisions, script notes, etc. I would have sued, and I would have won. But it never happened, so…..

If you’re in the WGA (Writers Guild of America), this will never happen to you. The Union sets the basic terms of your agreement as a member of the Guild, and real Producers, i.e., producers who are Signatory to the Guild, know they can’t do that. BHut if you’re not in the Union, well, welcome to the deep end of the pool, buddy. Are those lead weights tied to your shoes?  You know how THAT ends, right?

Listen. Professional writers GET PAID. We have a unique set of marketable skills, honed over years, sometimes decades of grueling training, education, and experience that few people have. These skills carry with them a certain monetary value. And if a Producer can pay option money to an author to get the rights to a book, a magazine article, a stage play, etc., then he/she can pay you at least SOME MONEY upfront for your work, with more being paid upon the delivery of your Main Draft. A final payment is usually made when you deliver the rewrites they ask for after the Main Draft.

This is commonly called a “Step Deal” in the industry, and it’s how things are done. The writer gets paid a portion of an already agreed-upon total amount at every completed “step” of the deal. Make sure you have an agent, literary manager, or entertainment attorney look over the contract BEFORE you sign it. Because it’s not about what’s legal. It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about what’s in the contract. And under California law, once you sign the contract, you are bound to it, right or wrong, for better or for worse. Something in there you don’t like? Oh well. You should have dealt with it BEFORE you signed your name to it.

See what I mean? Morality never even enters into it.

So how do these guys sleep at night? My guess is, quite well, actually. But here’s the rub: If a producer wants/asks/requests/demands you develop a script from an idea (which can take weeks) or to adapt a screenplay from another original source (which can take MONTHS) but they claim they can’t pay you any front money, then they’re not for real. They are either an amateur without any solid financing behind them, or they are a predator looking to exploit you and your talent. In either case, exit stage left. QUICKLY!

Writing for no money upfront means you’re working for free, and will never see a penny. And there are Producers out there willing to exploit a non-union writer with promises of paydays, IMDB credits, and more work somewhere down the road in the future to essentially get a script for free.  I hope there’s a special place in Hell for producers like this.

As I said before, real Producers don’t conduct themselves in this manner. They will either  negotiate a deal with you where you get paid at least some money up front, or they will tell you they are just starting out and don’t have funding. Sometimes, you can make an exception and negotiate a producer’s credit for yourself, along with gross profit participation in exchange for working on spec. But be careful. This is Hollywood we’re talking about, and these are definitely shark-infested wasters.

Beware, for here there be monsters.

Writing for no money is called writing “on spec”; that is, you’re writing something on the speculation you might be able to sell it later. Most writers do this on their own time to build up a “war chest” of scripts on various subjects and in different genres and budget ranges. That way, they are positioned for success when an opportunity arises. They are already poised to capitialize on the opportunity, as these windows of opportunity tend to close rapidly. Completed spec scripts can be sold or optioned themselves, or used as calling cards to the industry to be considered for hire for work on other projects.

Here’s the bottom line, folks.

The only person a screenwriter should write on spec for is him/her self. No one else. No exceptions.

Period.

I often find myself feeling like I have two people living inside my head, with each one struggling with the other for supremacy.

On one side is the Artist, the guy who just wants to sits down at his laptop, have a hot “mug o’ Joe” beside him, and be left alone to write all afternoon. This is the guy who sits at the desk in the house by the fireplace, occasionally goes out to his neighborhood Starbucks or indie coffee-house (a big shout-out to Coffee Oasis in Port Orchard, WA!), but mainly keeps to himself and does what he does best: WRITE! As a writer, I consider myself an artist first and foremost. I paint pictures, creates images, and characters and events. But instead of painting with pigments on canvas, I paint pictures with words, that convey that picture into the mind of the reader. It is the epitome of sublime satisfaction and artistic achievement.

On the other side, is that other guy, the Business Man. The Entrepreneur. The guy who keeps the books, balances the bank account, keeps track of the money. Money comes in; money goes out. he’s the guy who keeps it all straight — not just for him, but for Uncle Sam as well. You know Uncle Sam. He’s our poor uncle. We send him money every year, right?

The Business Man is also the guy who handles all the technical aspects of being an indie publisher. This is a perplexing, frustrating, and time-consuming endeavor. Luckily, it is not something I have to spend time and energy on every day. But I spent the ENTIRE AFTERNOON today dealing with these repellent, cringe-worthy, but important tasks.

When I published NOCTURNAL, I did so through Amazon’s Create Space tool. I published the e-book exclusively through Kindle, since Kindle is the most widely read e-book format in the world. And the trade paperback was (and still is!) available through Amazon, one of the most dominant e-commerce sites on the planet.

Good to go, right?

WRONG.

You see, you can’t get your Amazon-published book stocked in bookstores. There’s specific technical reasons for this. I won’t bore you with them here, but you can email me if you want to know, and I will be happy to explain it. But suffice to say, if you publish through Amazon’s services, Barnes and Noble won’t touch it, and neither will the smaller indie booksellers, or libraries, or anyone else, for that matter. So that’s a problem, right? That’s sales that aren’t happening, and potential readers not getting their hands on NOCTURNAL, which means I’m not growing my reader base that way I should be growing it.

Problem, right?

Enter Ingrahm Spark! This is a new self-publishing tool, similar to Create Space and Kindle, except you actually purchase an ISBN for each format you plan to publish in. It’s a bit pricey at $85.00 each, but the value you get in return makes it worth it. Through Ingrahm, Spark, I can get books into Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar stores, indie bookstores, iTunes, iBooks, Barnes and Noble.com, and I can be stocked in countries throughout the Americas, Western Europe and even Australia.

So the Business Guy won out today. I had been planning this switchover for a while now, but had been procrastinating. Not that I was afraid or anything, I just figured it would have a very high “PITA factor” (PITA = Pain In The Ass), which it did. But I sucked it up and did the grunt work to make it happen. Got all the agreements signed, uploaded all the pertinent files in the proper formats, etc. Now the sites review process begins. If all goes well, NOCTURNAL should be available through Ingrahm Spark in a week or so. That’s a good thing. There are a lot of writers, both high-profile and obscure, who call the Pacific Northwest home. The Barnes and Nobles up here like to showcase local writers, and my nearest Barnes and Noble has assured me they will showcase my book as soon as it becomes available in their computer system database, which means Ingrahm Spark.

This is the plight of the indie author. It’s not enough to simply write the damn book. You do your own editing, publishing, marketing, and promotions. You cough up the dough to make these things happen. Your publisher can’t do it for you because YOU ARE YOUR OWN PUBLISHER.

The important thing is, I got done. The ball is in Ingrahm Spark’s court now. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with ENT at Madigan Army Hospital. I’m still in aftercare for my throat cancer. But after that, when I get back home, I’m definitely going to let the Artist out of his cage and left him roam free.

Or at least, let him stretch his legs for a while.

It has been since March 2017 since I last posted to this blog. Almost seven months. I apologize for being away so long. There have been some health issues, both with me and with my beloved wife, but we seem to have things on an even keel now.

Speaking of an even keel, things are going swimmingly with my new literary manager who handles my screenwriting. She lives and works out of Beverly Hills, and is quite enthusiastic about my work and believes in my talent. Big meetings are set up at AFM (American Film Market), which happens next week in Santa Monica. We have a horror feature film project we’re trying to get funded, and it all revolves around one of my scripts. She is meeting with international financiers who have already expressed a strong interest in the project, both because of the strong cast we’ve already assembled (several high profile horror actors are on board), a hot, up-and-coming directing duo, and the relatively modest budget we need to get the film done.

Fingers crossed!

Rather than sit by the phone awaiting the news, I have instead decided to dive back into writing another novel. My experience writing NOCTURNAL after dedicating the better part of twenty years dedicated almost exclusively to feature film screenplays  was quite liberating. I flexed writing muscles I didn’t even know I had. I am eager to repeat that process, and plan to split my creative time between the two disciplines. I even wrote a short story I plan to send out to magazines and literary reviews in the hopes of getting published. Regarding short stories, it is not about the money, as the money is negligible when compared to novel sales and screenwriting, rather it is about building your street cred as a writer. If I am successful in achieving publication, I will write about it here in a future blog post.

The thing about being a writer — a true writer — is to not allow yourself to become pigeonholed into one type of writing or genre. A writer who considers themselves an artist will at least attempt to master multiple formats. In my case, novels, short stories, and screenplays. And within screenplay writing, I have not only written feature film scripts in multiple genres (horror, scoff, action, thriller, film noir), but I have also written a half-hour comedy pilot script for a series that has not yet been produced. In addition to that, I am working off and on on a one-hour drama series that, if sold, would be suitable for premium cable TV (HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc.)

So to you writers reading this, I say, don’t be afraid to leave your comfort zone. Strike out into other formats, other genres than what you’ve worked in before. A story is still a story, character is still character, and plot is still plot regardless of the format in which you present it.

So keep crashing through boundaries. Keep scaring yourself. It will keep you on your toes, and help you create better art.

I shall endeavor to do the same.

My Granddad gave me a typewriter.

It was the summer of 1972 (if I remember it correctly), and I had been writing short stories by hand on lined school paper for about a year. I showed no signs of letting up. I had shown some of my stories to my Mom, and to my Grandmother and Grandad Allen, who lived two blocks away from us when I was a kid. They would read them (or pretend to read them, I’m not completely sure in every instance), smile at me, and give me encouragement to keep writing. After all, one never knew where it might take me, right?

My Granddad gave me a typewriter.

My Grandaddy Allen had been self-employed for years. He ran a successful TV and radio repair shop in downtown Jacksonville, Texas beginning in the 1930’s. Of course at that time, TV was a luxury for the rich. So mainly he repaired radios, as radio was the primary form of mass communication for news, entertainment, and information. After World War Two, in the 1950’s, peoples’ wages increased, the price on luxury items decreased, and suddenly everyone had both radios and televisions. And of course, when wires got frayed, circuits got shorted, or or tubes got burned out, who did they contact for repairs? Yep. My Granddad.

Work was steady and life was good. He ran his own shop, kept his own books. Whenever I visited his shop after school or in the summer, I could sit at the workbench in the back and play with the old manual Remington typewriter. Of course, as I got older, the time I spent on the typewriter became less like play. I think Granddad had an inkling about my compulsion with storytelling. So in 1972, he bought a new Smith-Corona electric typewriter for himself. But what to do with that clunky old manual typewriter that still used ink-laden silk ribbons? Well Granddad was from a generation that was loathe to throw out anything still even marginally functional, and he had a kooky, slightly off-kilter  grandson who wrote short stories, so….

My Grandad gave me a typewriter.

Needless to say, I was elated! We set it up in my bedroom on a tiny table against the north-facing window between the foot of my brother’s bed and the small 12-inch black and white TV that sat at an angle in the corner of the room. My Mom made sure I had plenty of plain white typing paper, and I took care of the rest.

From then on, I was unstoppable. Anything I wrote, I wrote on that typewriter. I even rewrote my old short stories, typing them up as fast as my untrained “hunt-and peck” fingers could fly. And in the 45 years since, not much has changed on that account. I never learned how to type properly; I never took a typing class in high school. But I loved that old typewriter, loud and heavy, peppering out interrupted rapid-fire staccato as the mechanical letterheads struck the ribbon, infusing the paper stretched beneath it with ink. I banged away at that thing almost every day. Probably drove my poor, long-suffering mother damn near insane. I typed until the ribbons ran out of ink. I’d save up money so I could go buy another one, have one in reserve at all times.

I loved what I did. I still do. That event opened new doors, led me to new realms, new discoveries, new lessons, new disciplines, new headaches, heartaches, and introduced me to writer’s block. And I loved every second of it, because I knew it was all part of the journey, part of becoming a literate storyteller, a human being who wanted to communicate and share with others through the power and the magic of the written word.

Most importantly, it taught that I could not live my life in a fulfilling fashion WITHOUT writing. I can’t “not write”. I know. I’ve tried. And it did not work out well. I felt off-balance, off kilter. The listing ship never righted itself until I got back to doing what I was born to do — WRITE.

And while I no longer have that first typewriter, I still remember it. I still can see it in my mind, a slightly faded photograph, a Kodak Moment in the scrapbook of my childhood memories. And though I still write in my own unprofessional, self-taught “hunt-and-peck” fashion on my trusty laptop (the typewriters of our modern age), everything I’ve done, everything I’ve accomplished as both a screenwriter and a novelist, I can trace back directly to that one seminal, life-changing event in 1972.

My Granddad gave me a typewriter.

I was off and running. After getting that A+ in fourth grade, I was hooked. I submitted myself to constant bombardment of Universal Classic Monster movies and 1950’s “Big Bug” science fiction films. Whenever I had free time — which is to say whenever I wasn’t at school, doing homework, or riding my bike with my childhood friend — I was watching monster movies or writing horror short stories.

Most of my stories only ran three or four pages. That was okay by me. I was just having fun, telling and retelling quickly paced, poorly worded stories about Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy. Hey, I was about eleven years old. At least I knew a sentence needed both a subject and a predicate, and I knew the difference between a noun and a pronoun. So I was happy with it.

As weeks turned into months, the page count slowly started to tick up. Within a year, most of my stories ran an average of about six pages. Bear in mind, I was writing by hand in blue ink on wide-rule notebook paper. This was 1971 or 72. This was long before laptops, word processors; this was an age when electric typewriters were the tool of businesses and the status symbol of wealthy individuals. So in addition to practicing the mechanics of the craft (letters create words, words create paragraphs, paragraphs create stories, and stories communicate emotions and convey thoughts and feelings), my cursive penmanship improved simply due to sustained repetition.

When I finished a story, I stapled the pages together down the left side so the pages could be leafed through like any both book. Three staples only. I had no cover. The thought never occurred to me. The top page was the first page of the story. The title squatted, centered on the top line followed by name immediately underneath. Then skip two lines, indent a quarter inch, and start the story.

My desk was of sturdy pine. Constructed with a wide flat top and ample leg room underneath on the left, the right side sported three (count ’em! THREE!) drawers. The top and middle drawers were identical, each about nine inches wide, and two or three inches deep. The bottom drawer, however, was three times deeper, a full six to nine inches deep.

After Operation Stapler had been successfully completed, I opened the bottom drawer n my desk and consigned my new literary creation to its gloomy bowels. Over time, they started to pile up. By summer, that deep bottom drawer was almost half full.

Prior to this, my summers had been comprised of riding bikes, climbing trees, and convincing my Mom to take me to the swimming pool. Now, all I wanted to do was sit at the desk and write every day, and watch TV when I got tired of writing. Even then, I somehow knew that every writer has to take a break and recharge the creative batteries.

But a true seminal moment, a moment that was going to change my life forever, was right around the corner.

As I said at the end of my previous blog post regarding creative writing, “I was sure  of one thing: I was going to apply myself and see where it might lead”.

Actually, I can’t look back and call it creative writing, since I had totally ripped off a Godzilla movie and scribbled out three ages of mayhem in order to score an A. But I certainly loved the attention, and got me to thinking that maybe, since this writing stuff came easy to me and I got positive attention (ego strokes!) when I did it well, maybe I should really try to come up with something original.

As many young amateur writers do, I wrote what I knew. That meant that since I spent all my time watching Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, et al., I started writing out (in longhand!) story after story after story. Naturally, they were not good, as I simply lifted characters (copyrighted characters at that!) from the movies I watched, and plunked them down into settings created by my own imagination.

Since I had not developed a voice as a writer, my stories simply mimicked the writers I was reading at the time. Most writers start this way; it is all part of that growing process of a writer finding his or her path on the road to being able to see what others see, but be able to take away something different from the norm and then relate that to others in a unique and interesting way.

So in the evenings, on weekend, and on school holidays, I put pen to paper and wrote. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I’d take a break, play with my friends, watch a scary movie, etc., then I went back and wrote some more. And some more.

You get the idea.

Writers WRITE.

Artists learn their craft, flex and develop their artistic muscles, and sharpen and hone their skills and instincts by actually DOING what it is they want to do. Certainly, students of any art can and must learn the fundamentals through organized classes. Teachers become mentors. For me as a would-be writer, that meant English Comp. A lot of it, all through Elementary, Junior High (Middle School) and High School.

But mostly, it meant WRITING. Putting the seat of my pants to the seat of the chair, staring at a blank page, and getting the ideas flowing from my mind, through my hand and pen, onto the paper, with only my eyes to guide me. Sometimes it took me days to finish a story. After all, I as just a kid. I had chores, homework, playtime with pals, and a short attention span. When I had finished, I would edit. This was editing at its most primitive: using a red ink pen to make notations about spelling and grammar. Scratching out words, phrases, even sometimes entire sentences and paragraphs. They sounded good when I wrote them, but did not pass muster in the cold glaring light of an editor’s eye. And then, I would rewrite the story again, incorporating my notes and revisions into the new draft.

A funny thing happened as a I spent the ensuing months performing this ritual. My writing actually started to get better. My characters became less stilted. Dialogue became properly punctuated. The prose lost its rough edges, and smoothed out like rough wood under the gentle rubbing of sandpaper. Of course, I had started at the very bottom, so I had nowhere to go but up, right? But the point is, I did improve as I gained experience and found my “groove”.

When I had the story written and rewritten (and rewritten again!) the way I wanted it, what did I do? I paper-clipped and tucked the slightly curled pages of wide-ruled notebook paper that contained my story into the deep bottom drawer on my desk.

I knew I would be starting a new story the next day.

Growing up in a small Texas town in the 60’s and 70’s, I experienced that idyllic childhood that older folks remember, and younger folks doubt ever really existed. Well, it did exist, folks. I was lucky enough to live it. I could go out and play all day with my friends, ride our bikes – Stingray bikes with the banana seats! – all over town and its outskirts, and only show up at home around noontime for lunch, and then around six or seven when it started getting dark. When it was dark enough for the street lights to come on, it was time for me to get home.

I was not particularly athletic as a kid. I rode my bike with my childhood pals, and of course I played football. Not because I wanted to, but because it was expected of me. You see, I was born in a state where football is considered a religion, stadiums are cathedrals, Pro players are Gods, and the worship starts at a young age. So I knew the object of the game, basic routes, how to pass, how to catch.

But I did receive multiple benefits from participating in team sports. I learned to follow directions. Do what I was told to do. I learned teamwork, sportsmanship. And I learned how to exercise, how to stay in shape. This was particularly beneficial because my natural tendencies were to be sedentary and chubby.

While not what one might call a “gifted” or a “natural” athlete, I excelled in academics. I do not know why. English, History, even mathematics. It all just came easy to me. Sure I had to work at it, concentrate (“Pay attention, young man!”), do my homework and study (somewhat), but school work simply did not faze me the way it did some of my classmates. All I had to do was read it once or twice, do it once or twice, and I had it well enough to pass the exams with flying colors and actually retain some of it.

The point to all this? When I was in fourth grade, Miss Richards gave us an English assignment. Over the weekend, we had to write a short story at least three pages long, and on Monday, we would read our stories to the rest of the class. The story could be about anything we wanted. Wow. An entire weekend to come up with three measly pages?  No problem, I thought. After all, a weekend is a long time, right? Three whole days!

So what did I do? I rode my bike home as soon as school let out, unlocked the door, dashed down the hallway to my room, tossed my books across the bed, and dove for the TV set. WFAA-TV Dallas/Ft. Worth had monster movies on Friday afternoon! That particular Friday? Why, a Godzilla movie, of course! What else would they be broadcasting on a Friday afternoon, right?

So, Saturday comes and goes, and now it’s Sunday and we’re home from church. After lunch, I have to sit down and do my homework before I can go out to play. No problem. The only thing I need to do is bang out the aforementioned short story, right? So I sit down with a pencil and paper because we were taught to write rough drafts in pencil so we could erase stuff we misspelled, got wrong, or decided later we didn’t like. Then we wrote the “smooth draft”, the one turned in for a grade, in ink.

So what did I do?

I completely plagiarized the Godzilla movie I had seen Friday afternoon. Of course, I did not understand anything about plagiarism or copyright laws or trademark infringement in fourth grade. I just wrote a cool little story about Godzilla attacking Tokyo for reasons unknown (because they were unknown and unimportant to the author!), and then getting promptly killed somewhere on page three when a building fell on him after he hit it with his radioactive fire breath. Hey, it ate up three pages and got me an “A” for the assignment, all right?

But it did something else, too. Something far more important. It got me praise both at school and at home, that particular combination being a Holy Grail of sorts; and it got the creative juices flowing in that 10-year old kid. If I could write and score with a completely derivative three-page Godzilla story that I just churned out like literary butter (okay, margarine!), what would I be capable of accomplishing when I really sat down and put my mind to it?

I wasn’t sure. At 10 years old, you’re not sure about many things.

But I was sure  of one thing: I was going to apply myself and see where it might lead.

“Why do you write all that horror stuff?”.

I’ve gotten this question thrust upon me from family, friends, and acquaintances for as long as I can remember. The underlying implication is that there must be something wrong with me, that I must be a latent psychopath or something even more nefarious, in order to choose expressing myself through such dark material. After all, I was that weird kid, right?

In my mind, my strangeness as a child notwithstanding, nothing could be further from the truth.

Other authors write gritty mysteries, crime novels, and stories about hardboiled detectives, conniving criminals, demented killers, rapists, and of course, seductive femme fatales. It does not mean they themselves have any underlying wish to murder, steal, or cheat for the insurance money. When screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script for BODY HEAT, I doubt if we was thinking about killing anyone as part of an insurance fraud.

An actor may play a rapist, a pedophile, or a serial killer. That does not mean that actor is inclined himself towards any of these depraved and heinous acts in real life.

All it means is these artists have done their research, have gotten their own thoughts together, decided on an approach to their subject matter, and then applied their own creative abilities to their art.

Writing is my art. My channel happens to be horror, or something in a similar vein. I have written screenplays in the thriller and film noir genres (as yet unproduced). I’ve even written an action thriller (also as yet unproduced). But sooner or later after taking a literary exit off the highway for a quick pit stop, I always come back to the fast lane of horror.

Growing up in rural Texas in the 1960’s and 70’s, watching on a 12-inch black and white TV in my room, old movies were my main source of entertainment when I was not doing homework or out playing with childhood friends. I grew up watching the old Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney movies of the 30’s and 40’s.  A TV station out of Dallas, WFAA-TV, played a movie every day from 3:30 to 5:00pm during the week. Fridays was horror or sci-fi day. So I would dash home from school on my bicycle, unlock the door, rush into my room and dive for the TV while simultaneously tossing my schoolbooks onto my bed. What a way to end the week! These classics never failed to entertain me, even after I had seen them a dozen times. When you’re a kid, repetition is a good thing.

By the time I was maybe 10 or 11, the old Hammer films with stars like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, made their way to American television, though relegated to the Late Late Show. They usually came on at 11:00 or 11:30pm on a Friday or Saturday night. My biggest problem was staying awake.

My older brother, who had been blessed with more sophisticated tastes than I (a situation that perpetuates until this day, I might add), did me a solid by turning me on to the “Big Bug” science fiction movies of the 50’s — movies like THEM, TARANTULA, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, GODZILLA (the 1956 American one with Raymond Burr). Notice these movies, while technically science fiction, all have strong horror elements infused into their stories. This blend of sci-fi with horror elements continues to this day with movies like ALIEN, PREDATOR, and all their sequels and imitations.

This was the content that shaped my young mind. With the suspense, the buildup, the spooky mansions and creepy music, my heart raced as the hero or heroine (who always seemed to wear a gossamer, low-cut gown!) was always just two steps away from the lurking monster, or just one door opening away from certain death at the hands of some frightful fiend. That emotional roller coaster I felt as a kid is something I continued to crave as an adolescent, and on into adulthood. I’m still looking to replicate now as a middle-aged man. And I want to create that same emotional response in my audience.

Notice I said, emotional response. Because horror is more than just a genre; it is emotion at its most primal.

Good horror cannot be constrained by the normal limitations of genre. When executed well, horror transcends, breaks through boundaries, crashes through walls, and communicates profound thoughts, philosophies, or ruminations on life, death, loss, and love. It grips us by the throat. It makes our breath catch. It delves into the psychology of universal human fears. And it examines the darkest impulses we humans have, especially the ones we don’t want to admit (to ourselves or to others) we have. And while such examination may be cause for some to cringe, it is essential to accepting who we are as human beings, warts and all. Hey, someone has to do it.

And that is why I write horror.