Lucky me! In July, I got to write a guest post for Shuffle Synchronicities – the music/memoir newsletter on Substack, and was interviewed on a super-interesting podcast called Pivot Point with Joseph Debeasi. If you enjoy reading about anxious dads, pressure and songs that inspire you to lose your virginity—or listening to how cancer and living in Australia can lead to a career in writing, check ’em out!
WRITING
My front burner projects for May/June/July were :
THE INFLUENCER (spec feature) When the manager / best friend of a struggling social media influencer cuts a deal for her client to beta-test some new tech in order to get more followers, the results are more than she bargained for. The first “feedback draft” is out to my manager for notes—plus two 20-somethings, and an actual bona-fide influencer for authenticity testing!
CONSENSUS (original pilot / series) Two detectives living in different worlds — one where Earth’s wealthiest people have abandoned it, the other a constructed utopia where no one remembers their past — unknowingly work a case that will lead their lives and worlds to collide. Yeah, it’s a hard one to pitch in one sentence! Which is why, after finishing the rewrite in May, I submitted it to a couple competitions where it has moved through the early stages—we’ll see where it’s at in a few months.
GIRL, WOLF, WOODSMAN (short fiction) A contemporary retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” that imagines Little Red’s life after the woodsman dispenses with that pesky wolf. Destined for submissions to a half-dozen lit journals, it will eventually be part of Season 2 of my fiction podcast .
WATCHING and READING
Have you discovered anything you’ve loved as much as I loved PIG, the film starring Nicolas Cage as a reclusive truffle hunter who has to face his past when he returns to the city in search of his abducted truffle pig?
TV: The West Wing, This is Us, Good Trouble, (Season 3) Deep Space 9 (re-watch, final season), Couples Therapy, Hacks, Grace & Frankie, Solos, Loki.
MOVIES: Tenet, Alive (Korean Horror), The Ritual, Scream, The Half of It, The Thing, Night of the Living Dead, Imagine I’m Beautiful, Inez & Doug & Kira, The Sounding, A Quiet Place Part II, Cruella, Zola, Black Widow, Snake Eyes, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, The Donut King, Old, Pig.
BOOKS: Blood Child and Other Stories, Octavia Butler; The Collected Stories, Elizabeth Bowen; The Tools, Phil Stutz; Beacon 23, Hugh Howey; Performing Under Pressure, Dr. Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pauliw-fry, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Robin D.G. Kelley, Short Stories by George Saunders; Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home, Natalie Goldberg; The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We’re Falling Apart, Alicia Garza; Thrill Me, Benjamin Percy; The Dead Lands, Benjamin Percy, The (Other) You, Joyce Carol Oates