Now Appearing ...

The Further Adventures of Esmerandrella, Psychic to the Confused and Misbegotten has been selected for the Montana Short Cuts portion of the 13th Annual Last Chance New Play Fest in Helena.

A fake psychic meets a real ghost and learns about grief, hope and the nature of the Universe.
 

Unhip

Applying for grants and other applications – everything inclusive -- AS IT SHOULD BE -- there were a couple of ponderables along the lines.

In the section – are you from a historically un or under represented group. Now, everyone deserves to be heard and respected for who they are and where they desire to be met. However, by the time I got to the end of a fairly long list of selections, I was annoyed. So at the last square that said –

 

☐ Other

 

I checked it and wrote – you know who no one listens to? Old women.

 

So there.

 

Another section with its own environment was the gender questionnaire.

 

Again, everyone deserves to be respected for who they are and how they wish to be met.

 

Again, a fairly long list and I hoped it was being used for respect and not some nefarious purpose.

 

I came to one selection that I had to google to decipher. While I mocked myself for being out of touch, I wondered if this list needed an extra square.

 

☐ Other

☐ I’m not sure.

 

I used to be hip. Now I’m just careful not to break one.

New Works Fest 2026

Untethered Again

 

Scott

 

1st Draft Happy Dance!

.

Finished (hahahahahaha) the first draft of my new play. 

Wilder inspired theme. It's about Vietnam and how the past lives with us. 

 Because, like Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." 

A Day in the Life

I wrote a screenplay in which the monster was a zombie werewolf. The script won several awards. One thing I got for it was a silver bullet.

A silver bullet might protect you from a werewolf, but you can’t take it on the plane.

 I carry my silver bullet in a little pouch in my purse because I am a horror movie dork.

 

I recently went on vacation to the Pacific coast. 

This is my favorite vacation. Go to the ocean. Take pictures. Eat seafood until I start craving beef, come home.

 

The weather was perfect. 

The food was great 

I did wonder where all those people were going.

Flight day came. I’m meeting my daughter on the coast. I check in. Park my suitcase in the checked baggage and present myself to TSA.

 

Things proceed smoothly up to the xray of the carry-ons. A supervisor was called over. Two TSA agents peered intently at the screen. My purse exited the ramp into the screening area. 

 

I waited patiently while the agent went through my purse. Frowned. Went through again and finally came up with my silver bullet. 

 

It’s fake. I said. 

 

Doesn’t matter, she said. No replicas allowed.

 

I wrote a story about a werewolf that won some awards and this is one. I am a horror movie dork. I said. And I’m sorry.

 

Can you call someone to pick it up for you?

 

Daughter was already on the coast. 

 

I call her boyfriend at 5 AM – can you come to the airport? TSA won’t let me take my bullet on the plane.

 

What? 

 

No. I don’t have anyone.

 

Did you drive? You could walk it back out to your car.

 

YES!  Oh no.

 

What now?

 

I put my car keys in my checked bag.

 

Well, there isn’t a line because I’m always insanely early and this is a small airport, so the Head of TSA Security walks me back to the Delta counter and asks them to let me retrieve my keys from my bag that hasn’t moved yet. Delta advises I should always keep my car keys with me.

 

Car keys and bullet in hand, and before I take the bullet out to the car, I thank the TSA agent for kindness and understanding and apologize one more time for being a horror movie dork. She says her grandkids like horror movies the best.

 

Me too.

 

 

NYC x 2

Life

 Sometimes I feel like I'm sitting at a STOP sign waiting for the light to change.

Twofer

 

NYC!

 

Prize Winner

 On the Job Training

They ask, "Do you work?"

I just mumble and hum.

And wait for the look

That invariably comes.

It's hard to explain

How I got in this state.

My energy's drained.

My mind wanders of late.

I've developed a squint.

My posture is stooped.

I'm like an old hen,

Kept too long in a coop.

But I won't leave my desk!

Prospects couldn't be brighter.

They say, "Oh, you're a typist."

I say, no.

I'm a writer.

 

 

Curtain

 So, the 2nd staged reading of AN UNTETHERED WOMAN was last night and it went well. 

I was worried that no one would come even after I accosted complete strangers on the streets of Helena asking, "Do you like community theater?" then giving them a postcard-sized invitation to the play no matter what they said.

The space in the Myrna Loy Theater was set up for 40 with me pacing back and forth, programs in hand, asking, "where is everybody?" Up until about five minutes to performance when we had a bit of an overflow crowd.

There were a lot of laughs. A few tears and many interesting conversations after the show about grief and theater.

Do you like community theater? 

Yeah, I do.

We're On!

Myrna Loy Theater

 

Stay out of the Water

Trapped at an isolated mountain resort, a small band of survivors struggle to escape when a primeval entity oozes out of a lake and consumes everything and everyone in its path. 

Weekend recreation turns into a desperate run for survival. 

Is it an algae bloom gone nuclear? An alien from outer space, or a science experiment reaching extinction threshold?

What Really Happened

Photo by Ashin K Suresh on Unsplash

Back in the days when you couldn’t swing an enchanted cat by the tail without hitting some personage who thought he was a god and was willing to wreck havoc willy nilly on innocent passers by, there lived two brothers.

The brothers were named Prometheus and the other brother was named something that’s only pronounceable in the original Greek so we’re going to call the brother of Prometheus, Unlucky in Love. 

 

Now, Unlucky in Love minded his own business which apparently consisted of behaving thoughtlessly which also apparently makes him the perfect model for certain modern men.

 

While Unlucky in Love was minding his own business, his brother Prometheus was busy giving mankind the gift of fire, in the original Greek, which translates as technology in modern English so we could call Prometheus the father of the Internet, if we wanted.

 

But Prometheus stole the gift of fire from a particularly cranky set of persons who didn’t like to share and who could be quite vindictive as we shall see.

 

For the sin of civilizing humanity, a job that has yet to be completed, if you ask my opinion, Prometheus was tied to a rock and forced to provide a liver dinner for an eagle every day.

 

For the sin of being the brother of Prometheus, Unlucky in Love was given the most beautiful woman on earth whose name was Pandora.

 

Pandora was also minding her own business which probably consisted of lying around looking beautiful and fending off Unlucky in Love’s thoughtless comments when she received a wedding gift of, in the original Greek, a jar, but since there aren’t any original Greeks left, this is commonly translated as a box, from Zeus, the cranky villain of this story.

 

I think I forgot to mention that Zeus is the villain of this story.

 

Zeus is the villain of this story.

 

Along with the wedding present box were the instructions DO NOT OPEN. Not like the cute little tag, ‘do not open ‘til Christmas,’ because Christmas hadn’t been invented yet, just DO NOT OPEN. Which makes Pandora’s gift, jar or box, the worst present ever.

 

Now, let’s be clear, what happened next was not because Pandora was a woman. 

 

In fact, I’ll say without fear of contradiction that NOBODY could keep a box in the corner of the room for long, telling visitors who ask, oh that’s just a box we don’t open. 

 

Everybody who’s anybody is gonna sneak a peek. Maybe after midnight when everyone else is asleep, but still.

 

So, Pandora didn’t peek because she’s a woman. She was set up.

 

How long before Pandora peeks? Nobody knows. But she opens the box and all of life’s miseries fly out. War, famine, pestilence, Republicans, light beer, sitcoms.

 

She slams the lid at the last moment and traps Hope inside. The modern interpretation is that Pandora saved hope for humanity, but an older view is that hope was just another way Zeus had to torment mankind. 

 

One view, in the original Greek, was that Hope hid under the lip of the jar and refused to come out. So, not only an empty promise but a coward as well. However, if you’d been trapped in a jar for who knows how long next to war and Republicans with only light beer for comfort, your courage might be worn to the bone too.

 

So, Zeus goes about his business wrecking havoc willy nilly. Prometheus endures eternal torment. Unlucky in Love continues to inspire modern man. But what happened to Pandora? And what became of Hope?

 

In the epilog nobody bothered to write, Pandora, who besides being beautiful, was savvy to the way of men and gods, went back to the box, opened the lid a crack and whispered to Hope, “Hey fella, we’re about to get blamed for every bad thing that ever happened or will. How ‘bout you and me split this joint. I know a place where the sun always shines and they have Guinness on tap.”

 

Now, we might say Hope considered this for a New York minute if New York had been invented yet, but the options being solitary in a box or stout beer with a beautiful woman made this choice no choice at all.

 

Turns out, Hope was the perfect companion for a beautiful woman. Sunny days and Guinness on tap aren’t bad either. So as they say in all the best stories, Hope and Pandora lived happily ever after. 

Talking to Myself

Life is weird, you know.

Sunday morning, finished reading the local paper, or what is left of it post newspapers' demise. Can we call it a paper if it only exists online? 

I had emailed a friend about the difference between being a screenwriter and being a playwright and it got me thinking about what I have said about screenwriting. So, I cruised through my blog to see and found this. 

This is the original link (https://coyoteunderground.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-in-split-second.html ) but you can read the whole thing below.

BEGIN TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

After I completed EMT training and started answering emergency medical calls for our fire department, I worried about how I would do when we were called to our first car wreck.

I didn’t plan to be it.

Monday morning, I cruised the Net, checking activities in Portland, planning our vacation next month to the Oregon coast.

I made progress on my current script and liked what I read. Maybe this will be the “one.”

Ate lunch, collected my Dad and we ran errands in the afternoon.

On the way home, at an intersection I’ve passed countless times, a man driving a full-size Dodge pickup, was waving to a friend, and started across the intersection without noticing I was already there.

He hit us at the driver’s door, which sent the Chevy sliding sideways up a hill until it hit the soft dirt at the side of the road and commenced to roll.

Shaken witnesses at the scene said the car rolled three times.

Fortunately, I don't remember the roll.

I clearly remember the scene out the windshield, sliding sideways up the road. Then starting to roll.

Returned to full consciousness after coming to rest upright.

This ceiling center console which held interior lights and a place for the garage door opener, came loose and bashed into my head.

Every window, save the back one over the tailgate, broke out.

Six Good Samaritans ran to the car, all clutching their cell phones, all calling for help, all trying to assure us help was on the way.

One older lady held my hand while trying to call my family, and she was so upset, she couldn’t get her phone to work. The rollover must have been a horrific to watch. No fun to endure.

Neither air bag deployed.

Volunteer fireman, guys I’ve trained with, used the Jaws of Life, to remove the door so they could package me for the ambulance.

Package. That’s what we call it. An intricate set of procedures to insure the patient suffers no further injury before medical help can be reached. I’ve practiced this several times in training. Works slick, but trust me, it’s no fun being the package.

Another team removed my father.

After eight hours, the hospital sent us home. Dad has a broken collar bone. He’s out of commission for six weeks.

I have cuts, strained muscles and a heck of a bruise on my head. (And I later discovered, a torsion injury in my back from the seat belt that saved my life.) Even my hair hurts.

Today’s Wednesday. My aches are fading. I’m a little less stiff. What doesn’t seem to diminish is my memory.

I clearly remember the view through the windshield and having the presence of mind to think, this is my life. This moment. This second.

Not in three weeks on vacation. Or next fall when the Nicholls are announced. Or that fateful day I get it all together and something sells.

This second, I’m rolling a two ton car.

Make your life what you want it to be. Not next week or six months from now.

This second. 

END OF TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE.

So, here I am on Sunday, wasting time, and always in the back of my mind is a little voice who sometimes whispers, sometimes SHOUTS, Why?  

Why are you still doing this? Writing, submitting, believing?*

Now, a lot has happened since 2007. Some good. Some bad. Mostly just regular life. 

The last two years I've enjoyed a type of career success that I'd never had before. Right now I'm riding something pretty hot, so who knows what will happen? Could be colder than deep space by tomorrow.

Or not.

What my 2023 self needed to know was what my 2007 self learned. 

Your life is what you make it. 

Make it what you want.

And I didn't even need to wreck the car again to remember.

*My latest work has a pivotal moment where the character wonders about the nature of Hope. Why do humans persist in hoping? This morning I paid $40 to get a download of a scientific study that proves there is a portion of the human brain that generates hope. 

I'm still trying to get my mind around that concept. It's not a Pollyanna character flaw or silly wishful thinking. Or a socialized construct of the modern mind. It's our brain. Our actual meat and blood brain.

How 'bout that?

The Latest

       A woman struggles to adjust to a solitary life as she packs her husband's belongings. 

News

Just won 2nd place in the Fantasy Feature section of this year's International Horror Hotel's Film Festival.

And 3rd place in Fantasy Feature 2023 International Horror Hotel's Film Festival.