'Neath the Cover of October Skies

This post first appeared in my secret e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

I've just wrapped up four weekends in a row of screening SCARECROW COUNTY, from Iowa City to Englewood Ohio, and it was a fun run.  We averaged 25-50 people at each screening, and it was a good mix of cast and crew, old friends and new, fans and (I hope) newly-converted fans.

The most interesting Q&A was probably in Iowa City, where discussion ranged from Ursula K. LeGuin to Steve Alford, but the best audience reaction was at the Englewood Cinema, where somebody yelled "KILL HIM!" when the scarecrow began chasing Jeff Rapkin's character Cotton.

In the middle of all this, SCARECROW COUNTY got picked up for distribution, and more details on that will be available soon.

And also in the middle of all this I had an infection that sent me to the hospital for a day.  This caused me to cancel my trip to Columbus Ohio to give a screenwriting talk, which I was deeply sorry for, as I was looking forward to that one a lot.  And I'm on my second round of antibiotics trying to kick it, so between good times and bad I didn't get to all of my October challenges.

We only saw a handful of horror movies, but my running away favorite was the zombie movie THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD, if you haven't caught that one.

I only got in a handful of #inktober sketches as well.  My most popular sketch--as voted on by Facebook and Instagram likes and comments--was this "dream team" Fantastic Four line-up I revisit every year.

I don't think Cecilia Reyes ever had an X-Men name, but the others are Black Goliath, Power Man, and Deathlok, squaring off against Moebius the Living Vampire and Bloodstorm, an alternate universe version of Storm, and who wouldn't want to read this comic?

I've been poking around on some short stories for my pal Henrique Couto's podcast WEEKLY SPOOKY, and the first one aired last week; you can listen to I SAW THE DRAGON here or here.  I originally called it I DREAMED I SAW DON "THE DRAGON" WILSON if that tips you over into listening to it.

Trying to get the machine running on whatever is next; thanks for sticking around until then.

#inktober 2018

For whatever reason I was able to get more #inktober drawings in than in previous years.  I'm not getting markedly better, but I enjoy cartooning.  Here are the top five, as voted on by your likes and comments on Instagram and Facebook.

Some Velvet Morning

This blog post first appeared in I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, an e-newsletter you can subscribe to from the sidebar.

Last time, I listed all the books that appeared in or around THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, and this time I thought I would provide a list of all the movies and TV shows mentioned, many of which were influential in the movie as well.  Many of them appear in the scene I wrote about last time, the one that seems to be a lot of people's favorite (curiously enough) where the D&D group talk about all of their secret crushes.  I remember Erin Ryan telling me she watched all the trailers on YouTube to try to understand it, and Jeff Rapkin telling me he would wake up in the middle of the night, trying to recite his.  Here they are, in order:

DOLEMITE
THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS
DJANGO THE BASTARD
WONDER WOMAN (TV SHOW)
THE KROFFT SUPERSHOW (TV SHOW)
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (TV SHOW)
THE AVENGERS (TV SHOW)
WONDER WOMAN (MOVIE)
THE AVENGERS (MOVIE)
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
THE BIRDS
ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP
SUPERMAN II
ROSEMARY'S BABY
THE BIONIC WOMAN
HERCULES UNCHAINED
HERCULES VS MOLOCH
HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN
HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD
HERCULES AND THE TYRANTS OF BABYLON
HERCULES VS THE HYDRA
MANNAJA: A MAN CALLED BLADE
GOD FORGIVES, I DON'T
SARTANA THE GRAVEDIGGER
KEOMA
RETURN OF RINGO
A SKY FULL OF STARS FOR A ROOF
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
THE LAST OF THE RENEGADES
I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH
THE GREAT SILENCE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE--ROGUE NATION

If you ever needed a horror movie to give you a spaghetti western primer, this is it. My love for Italian films in general has only increased by multiple trips to Italy chaperoning my wife's college class trips over the years as well.  But there are a lot of personal references here too.  I caught HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN on Saturday afternoon television one day and was scared badly as a child.  I saw FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE playing in Italian on television in Rome a few years back.  THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS shocking my sensibilities on Kung Fu Theatre as a teen.  A friend showing me DOLEMITE on VHS at work in the early 90s and having my eyes opened. I hope one or two of these ring out for you.

I am incredibly late to the podcast game, but the radio quit in my 2007 Honda and I just limped along without one for a while, listening to podcasts on my phone.  I would have to recommend the creepy-crawly podcast ALICE ISN'T DEAD, about a long-haul trucker traveling the lonely highways looking for her missing wife.  This is a three-season story from the people who made the breakthrough hit WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE which is over a hundred episodes and going strong, so I wasn't sure where to drop in.  I started listening to another standaloone one they did, WITHIN THE WIRES, but it has creeped me out so badly I am listening to it in very small doses.  The premise is exceedingly clever; the first season is presented as "relaxation tapes" that actually have a hidden message.  The second season is supposedly a recorded museum tour, and the third just underway is based on office dictation into a machine.  Pretty dang clever.

I am trying #inktober again this year to flex my creative muscles, even my flabby cartooning ones, and on the brink of doing more than I have in past attempts.  At the end of the month, I'll post the most popular ones here.

Until then, thanks for reading.

#Inktober 2017!

This post first appeared in my secret e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can subscribe to from this blog.

I didn't do as many #inktober sketches as I might have liked, getting about a dozen in.  Here are the most popular, as voted on by likes and comments on Instagram and Facebook.

At #3 was this request, which was to "draw Deadpool," not necessarily make a weird Fantastic Four lineup.  But this might make a cool one!  Here they are fighting The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

#2 was another request from my pal Tom, to draw Sunshine Superman and Skyrocket in one of those 60s style DC romance covers.  Weird, but I was happy with it.

And #1 I was super happy with, bringing back the Mind-Grabber Kid alongside a mind-controlled Justice Society and a pretty interesting Justice League line-up. I think this vaulted to #1 because of a discussion on Facebok about the frittered-away life of Amazing Man, killed senselessly with nobody bothering to bring him back.

I'll try to do more next year!

Just when we were about to fall into a show-hole, we thankfully found HOTEL BEAU SEJOUR, a Belgian crime show with supernatural overtones that kept me interested straight through.  Worth a try for the offbeat.  And we finished it just in time for the new season of THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW to appear on Netflix, a happy thing indeed.

Lots going on, and it seems like we are on a rocket to the holidays.  Talk again soon.

From my Laboratory in the Castle East

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar and have delivered right to your inbox.

About a week ago I finished the first draft of THE GIRL WITH THE GRINDHOUSE HEART and boomed it out to a couple of b-movie friends to see what they think.  Usually I only have to please a director and, if the deal is set up, the distributor, but since I wrote this one for myself I thought I would send it to a close circle of honest b-movie friends to see where I'm at.  Either way I like to leave a script sit for a few days so I forget what I was thinking when I did it and then look at it with fresh eyes.  Sometimes I have time for it and sometimes I don't.  This time I do.  We'll see how it looks when I open the file again.

I was flattered to be interviewed for a midwestern movie site recently, and I don't want to give away the whole game until it comes out, but I wanted to share this part:

What advice would you give an aspiring screenwriter living in the Midwest?
There is good work being done everywhere. You don't have to live on a coast to do it. I live on several acres with chickens and dogs and so on and I have done pretty well for myself. When I was starting, I went to a lot of conventions to meet people and prove I was a normal person. There are so many people just dreaming about movies, that you have to be able to tell who is trying to make their dreams more real by making you believe their stories and who can actually do something. On the writing part, remember a lot more is craft than art. Talent is an empty bucket you have to fill with kept promises and met deadlines and finished pages. You have to work on it, by watching a lot of movies including those outside of your comfort zone and reading, reading, reading everything. You have to sit and type even when the football game's on.

I have wanted to watch only horror movies this October but the actual world seems pretty horrific at times so it's been hard to do that.  I did watch CHILDREN OF THE CORN, as I somehow missed it in 1984, and now live surrounded by cornfields, but it was pretty benign to me and mostly churned up 80s nostalgia. On a whim I bought the entire seven movie series for I think seven bucks and maybe can coax my wife into watching more of them.

So I have stuck with milder stuff, except I have picked up Inktober again this year.  It's where you try to draw and post a picture every day, and speaking of 80s nostalgia, my cartooning style frozen in 1978 is in full effect.  I'm sticking with stories I wished existed, characters I wish somebody would bring back, things that seem fun to draw.  At the end of the month, I'll post the most popular ones here.  If you can't wait, look for me on Facebook and Instagram, if you haven't done that already.

I found out the movie I wrote codenamed THE HORRIBLE ASP has already started shooting, so I hope to have more about that, and some more interesting projects, soon.  Thanks for hanging around.

#Inktober 2016

I took another stab at #inktober this year, drawing a new picture for each day of the month, and didn't get as much drawing done as I wanted, but here are the top three most liked and commented on images I uploaded to Instagram and Facebook.  Far and away was my imaginary West Coast Avengers cover, which harkens back to my childhood desire to draw the covers of comic books I wished existed.

#Inktober

In 2014 I tried the #Inktober challenge, posting an Instagram picture of a drawing every day of the month of October (more or less), along with people of actual talent and skill.  Nonetheless the mind is drawn towards trying it again, so for your relative pleasure, here are the Top Ten most liked images (in order) from that run (adding Facebook and Instagram together).