Things have gone crazy...and it's Saturday

It's hard to believe that it's already October 12! I've been busy like I haven't been in a long time; I've been averaging 5 hours of sleep a night, juggling various day jobs, pitching more articles to Fangoria and Rue Morgue, working on my new screenplay and tending to the many demands of my mistress, Horror Works -- and I'm loving it!

For each event I cover for the Dervish Pictures subsidiary site of Horror Works, I Photoshop event photos, research and write coverage, layout the page, create a photo album of additional images from the event (in most cases) for our Facebook extension, write clever descriptions for the images and tag relevant people, then promote the heck out of the page via Twitter and by sending e-mails and Facebook messages to strategic folks. In this way, each article reaches / expands the Horror Works audience, and most everybody whom I've hipped to the site has loved it and shared it with their own friends. Thus, the target Horror Works audience is growing on a consistent basis (knock wood).

Some of my recent articles have included coverage of H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon, Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, The Hive Art Gallery's Tribute to Ray Harryhausen and the Cambria Scarecrow Festival.

It is only because I had a few spare hours this evening, that I'm taking a brief break from my Horror Works responsibilities to take care of a few of my recently neglected tasks, like: updating this blog, taking a walk and doing the dishes. With that said, I should be getting back to it. Tonight's objective: process the photos from Los Angeles Haunted Hayride and finish writing the article on it. I attended the hayride on Thursday; last night I attended Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare, and tomorrow I'm attending Son of Monsterpalooza.

All right, then. Enough of this break; it's back to work I go!

Another fine Saturday you've gotten us into!

I'm in the heat of my new script. The subject matter is top secret, but I can say that working on it is a very exciting and disturbing process! I've probably written about 10 feature length scripts (two of which I produced: Summer People and Outtake Reel), but this is the first one I'm working on since I was inspired by Dan O'Bannon's screenplay book (for which I wrote a review in Diabolique magazine issue #15). Needless to say, Dan O'Bannon was a really good writer, and I loved the screenplay writing book that he co-penned with Matt Lohr.

The Horror Show TV, the UK company which recently made Outtake Reel available for download throughout most of the UK (I learned from my pal Colin McCracken, curator of the very groovy site Zombie Hamster, that Ireland isn't included in The Horror Show's territory), that there is a chance they are going to expand their distribution and possibly make OR available on DVD for the UK. Speaking of Zombie Hamster, Mr. McCracken did me the honor of promoting my LA Horror Community site, Horror Works, to his readers! Here is the article he created.

In other Horror Works news, I'm on the invite list to Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, once again (last year, I checked it out and wrote this coverage for Diabolique's website). It's kind of funny that working as the Editor-in-Chief of Diabolique took up so much of my time that it took me nearly a year to get around to writing part II of that article, in which I review two additional haunted attractions that I visited last year. Oh well, better late than never! Also, Ten Thirty One Productions, the company behind The Great Horror Campout and the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride has included me on their guest list for a media night.

And last but not least, Rue Morgue issue #136 features a couple of articles by yours truly! At the moment, I believe that that's all of the news that's fit to print! Until we meet again, peace!

Wednesday...some time in the United States

Aloha dear reader!

Yes, it's been a while [standard pre-amble for many a blog-post]. I must confess, I've been spending a lot of time with my other blog, but that's no reason for this blog to be jealous. It should be happy for me; I've been extending my creative energy into the world in the most productive way I can conceive [Freudian readers, please enjoy this sentence], and that has been my principle way of dealing with the various little (as well as overwhelming) life issues which have swarmed upon me and infiltrated my soul as of late.

However, since this is not an appropriate venue for expressing my issues -- even though it would really be a bargain for both of us -- I'll just stick to business here, and if you're really interested in experiencing the creative impulses of a suffering soldier who is fighting to get a grip on this thing called life, I urge you to follow my other blog. I promise, this one won't be jealous. As far as providing details of my personal struggles, that's off of the table at the moment, suffice it to say they deal with relationships and good old fashioned money.

Now for the sauce! In addition to my article which will be in an upcoming issue of Fangoria magazine, I've contributed an article and some ditties to Rue Morgue magazine. I'll keep you posted on street dates / issue numbers. As for TITO, I heard back from the Fantasia Film Festival...and they thought the acting sucked, but at least it wasn't a formal rejection. [Note to self: stop acting in your films]. But there's still hope for the project; two rejection notices are pending! In any event, that's certainly enough negative reinforcement to make working on The Making of TITO into an uninspiring chore. Still, I've got some decent material to cobble together for it, so it's still a possibility...

Currently, I've been pouring a lot of energy into yet another high-concept project [Note to self: perhaps if you created fewer "high-concept" projects and more "paint-by-the-numbers" ones, you might see an increased critical response and a modicum of money]. Anyway, this one is a sort of musical film project. I've written a series of songs which tell a metaphoric story. So far, I've workshopped and recorded several versions of the first two songs, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about continuing to develop the songs and then eventually produce a live-action / animated film to show the story.

Whelp, I guess that's about it for the news. There are other things in the planning, but since there always are, I'll just share what I've done and what I'm currently doing.