Tag: writing

  • Writer at Work:
    Out of the Stories and into the World

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. There’s a good reason for that. I’ve been working. I’ve always regarded blogging as a leisure activity, fun when there’s time for it, but readily set aside when big projects hit. Last June, with a new film script sold and an ambitious novel expanding beyond expectations, I…

  • From Page to Screen:
    Talking about Writing @ The Penguin

    It all began with Robert A. Heinlein. Back in the 1940s, Heinlein gave what may well be the best writing advice ever given, a five step approach to achieving success as a spinner of tales. And last week at The Penguin Bookshop, an attentive crowd joined me in a consideration of those rules and how they apply…

  • Penguin Bookshop, Nightmare Cinema,
    & “This Way to Egress”

    Don’t go to sleep! Nightmares are coming. On Wednesday, April 27, I’ll be visiting the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley to talk about writing stories and adapting them for film. Along the way, I’ll be sharing some of the latest news about Nightmare Cinema, the forthcoming feature film that will include an adaptation of my story “Traumatic…

  • From Page to Screen: A Story’s Journey

    It’s the journey, not the destination. Emerson said something like that once. He might have been talking about screenwriting. The path that “Traumatic Descent” (a.k.a. “This Way to Egress”) has taken on its way to the screen is the subject of a newspaper article in a recent issue of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. On the whole, the paper…

  • Researching a Novel:
    Trekking the Rain Forest

    The untouched or virgin rain forest was called primary jungle. Primary jungle was what most people thought of when they thought of rain forests: huge hardwood trees, mahogany and teak and ebony, and underneath a lower layer of ferns and palms, clinging to the ground. Primary jungle was dark and foreboding, but actually easy to…

  • Researching a Novel: Into the Abyss

    It glows by night, filling the air with a blood-red cloud. By day, its rising steam billows dull gray from an active crater. Either way, it’s a wonder to behold, a doorway to a hot spot of subterranean fires that recalls the opening lines from Canto Three of Dante’s Inferno: Only those elements time cannot wear Were made…