Where to start? Probably here:

Cloudy_Poster
Click for a closeup – my name’s in that credit block

This frames a journey. About two years ago I got the news that I had been cast in my first on-camera speaking role in a feature film. As you work out here you start to appreciate just how long the timetable usually is for making anything on a large-scale. Either you have all the resources in the world and it takes a long time because you’re using them, or you have nothing but determination and ingenuity and only a few hours a day to use them, and the need for everyone to wedge their bits of work around other things slows it down.

But the movie got shot, and finished. Last spring I got to see it on a big screen on the Warner Brothers lot at a cast/crew screening. The fact that my name is on the poster still gives me cognitive problems on the scale of a medium blow to the head, but even more shocking was seeing my name in the opening titles. The sequence is set in a coffeeshop, and all the names are rendered in actual hand-crafted menu signs. Somehow the idea that someone made a physical object with my name and put it on film swats me with awe.

And now the film has been booked for its first festival screening, at the very high-profile Manhattan Film Festival on Saturday, April 16th. The filmmakers will walk the red carpet, and, over there on that other coast, my face will be on a big screen in front of the public. I hope they laugh.

I made friends with one of the actresses from that movie, Jennifer Joliff, and she recently invited me to come shoot a little role in her web series, Sisters. The infrastructure required to roll up and shoot something these days is so small that inviting someone to do your web series is rather an equivalent commitment in L.A. to inviting someone to meet for coffee.

Life has been thrilling for awhile in terms of activity and accomplishment, not always lucrative enough but I haven’t been bored for a very long time. In a couple of weeks I’m headed to Santa Barbara to shoot two days on a feature film – a rock opera, of all things. I have two songs in the film and recorded my vocals for them in a studio right on the Sunset Strip, which I had to retroactively add to my Bucket List since even though I’d never thought to want to do it, it was too exciting a thing to not have there once I had done it, if that makes any sense.

We got Samantha Gets Back Out There into two festivals and won an award, and now my second short, The Retriever is in post-production and this filmmaking team is expanding and planning yet more ambitious fare. Tomorrow I’ll finish editing a 7-hour audiobook I narrated, by far my longest audio project ever, and, I think, a really entertaining work (it helps when it’s based on a good book. I’m also picking up more V.O. work, particularly in video games, which I would happily do every working day if enough people wanted to bring me in.

My new novel with MF Thomas is done, and as soon as the final version of the cover art is finished (just a matter of days) we’ll set a release date and start promoting it. After a few years away from the chase I’ve started submitting short stories to literary magazines again – I’ve got a batch of post-Stages of Sleep work I’m very proud of and am eager to measure myself out in that world, so to speak. I wrote an animation project that I can’t publicly identify yet but which is way cooler than anything I ever thought I’d get to be involved with; and I just picked up a freelance job outlining a proposal for a film adaptation of a book series. That’s really satisfying work because it really unifies a lot of my skills dating all the way back to my story development days. I’m also working on the script for a big live stunt show for an amusement company, which has been an incredible education, since you really have to work to wedge dramatic storytelling into a precious few minutes between action beats. I’ll be that much readier to write superhero movies if the producers of such movies ever hear my name.

Earbud Theater is enjoying the brightest spotlight that’s ever shined on it, thanks to friendly coverage from Nerdist and Blumhouse. We have a lot of new fans who have eagerly nommed our whole catalog of podplays and seem to like what they’re hearing. Of course, our next episode is our live show script that I wrote, Boney McGee, which is tonally pretty far afield from our most recent piece. I don’t ever intend to give whiplash to our listeners’ expectations, but I can’t seem to help myself.

My best friend, Adam Stovall, is about to go into production on his first feature film, A Ghost Waits, and I’ve been helping out as a co-producer. “Co-Producer” wasn’t on my list of dream jobs when I got to town, but I feel a thorough satisfaction working in this kernel of people I really love and respect, and figuring out how we can all lift each other up. In this case, I just happened to have a few assets and abilities that would help the movie exist if I applied them, and that just about defines “Co-Producer”.

He invited me to come out to Kentucky for production, but the truth is I’m planning to take the airline miles I would use and apply them towards a vacation. Taking time away from work to go work on the set of a movie is exactly the mindset that always prevents me from taking vacations. That and the crushing lack of money.

The only thing that makes this all really tiring is that I can feel tied to a large number of deadlines for various unrelated parties. Trying to get everything I invest creative energy in to drop at the right time is like having to hit triple bank shots with each of my limbs and my teeth all at once. It helps me appreciate what William Goldman said about how he never stopped writing novels no matter how lucrative or distracting Hollywood got, because if you don’t have something going that belongs only to you, you’ll go mad. Good thing I’ve got one of those about 20-25% finished right now!

What’s crazy is that this doesn’t even capture every thing I’m doing, but it’s more than enough, isn’t it? Makes me want to lie down.

Probably a good thing I have no time to blog

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