Happy Friday! For the first five years after I broke in I looked forward to this holiday dead zone because it meant a break from pre-production on both seasons of EXTANT, the writers room on THE STRAIN, and a brief respite between production and post-production on REVERIE. This year the idea of a month with nothing going on makes the inside of my skull itchy. This reminds me, in mid-December of 2017 I wrote and covered set for the final episode of REVERIE. While we were shooting on the Universal lot I got run over by a golf cart driven by one of the executive producers from WORLD OF DANCE. I had to go to the lot’s emergency room to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. When I got back to set later that evening someone on the crew had drawn a chalk circle where I got laid out.Good times. Because we’re entering the dead zone I’m spending time on the crime novel and just starting to experiment with putting short stories on Kindle. I did a brief experiment with self-publishing a middle-grade novella in 2012 and the whole ecosystem has changed since then. What excites me about things like Kindle Vella is that you can come with an idea, write it, and start reaching out to an audience the moment you think it’s ready. It seems like a good way to test the stickiness of an idea. If someone reads your piece and reaches out to tell you they enjoyed it, or better yet, they share it with someone else, then hey, maybe you're on to something. This first short story is called “The Billboard." It's about a rural Midwestern town plunged into chaos following the appearance of a mysterious billboard that has the ability to broadcast the deepest, darkest secrets of its citizens. It’s pretty dark, one of the ideas that I came away with after visiting Binghamton and immersing myself in THE TWILIGHT ZONE again. The link is below if you want to check it out. In terms of a content warning, there is violence and death, as well as mentions of drug abuse and suicide.
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Worldbuilding (20 minute read)
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Happy Friday! For the first five years after I broke in I looked forward to this holiday dead zone because it meant a break from pre-production on both seasons of EXTANT, the writers room on THE STRAIN, and a brief respite between production and post-production on REVERIE. This year the idea of a month with nothing going on makes the inside of my skull itchy. This reminds me, in mid-December of 2017 I wrote and covered set for the final episode of REVERIE. While we were shooting on the Universal lot I got run over by a golf cart driven by one of the executive producers from WORLD OF DANCE. I had to go to the lot’s emergency room to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. When I got back to set later that evening someone on the crew had drawn a chalk circle where I got laid out.Good times. Because we’re entering the dead zone I’m spending time on the crime novel and just starting to experiment with putting short stories on Kindle. I did a brief experiment with self-publishing a middle-grade novella in 2012 and the whole ecosystem has changed since then. What excites me about things like Kindle Vella is that you can come with an idea, write it, and start reaching out to an audience the moment you think it’s ready. It seems like a good way to test the stickiness of an idea. If someone reads your piece and reaches out to tell you they enjoyed it, or better yet, they share it with someone else, then hey, maybe you're on to something. This first short story is called “The Billboard." It's about a rural Midwestern town plunged into chaos following the appearance of a mysterious billboard that has the ability to broadcast the deepest, darkest secrets of its citizens. It’s pretty dark, one of the ideas that I came away with after visiting Binghamton and immersing myself in THE TWILIGHT ZONE again. The link is below if you want to check it out. In terms of a content warning, there is violence and death, as well as mentions of drug abuse and suicide.