On 30th September 1955, James Dean was on his way from LA to Salinas, California. He was set to take part in a sports car race in his Porsche 550 Spyder - a car nicknamed "Little Bastard" when he crashed. The 24-year-old was rushed to hospital. By the time the ambulance reached its destination, James Dean was dead. Since then and so began the story of the curse of Little Bastard.

The first inkling came on 23 September 1955, from fellow actor Alec Guinness. Dean  was showing off his newly customised ride outside of a restaurant. Guinness was far from impressed. He said the car looked “sinister”. If that was too subtle a hint at what was to come he then told Dean: “If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.” Seven days later, Dean was dead. Little Bastard would not only claim the life of James Dean. More were either injured or killed and here’s where things start to get creepy…

George Barris, who (allegedly) carried out the aforementioned custom job (and famously did the work on the original TV Batmobile), forked out $2500 for the wreck of “Little Bastard”. Shortly after the purchase it slipped off its trailer breaking a mechanic’s leg.

Before long Barris sold parts of Little Bastard to racers Troy McHenry and William Eschrid. The two were racing against one another, each in cars that had parts from Little Bastard, when of course things went wrong. The latter entered a turn when his car locked up and rolled over, leaving him seriously injured. Bad enough, but McHenry lost control and drove straight into a tree. He was killed instantly.

Two tyres from the accident which claimed Dean’s life were somehow untouched. Barris decided to sell them. Both blew out simultaneously forcing the new owner off the road. The bits of Little Bastard that Barris hadn’t sold caught the eye of two thieves. The theft, of course, went awry. The first thief tore open his arm trying to nab the steering wheel while his compatriot was injured attempting to remove a bloodstained seat.

California Highway Patrol borrowed the cursed wreck for a highway safety campaign. Misery followed. While being transported the truck carrying the car lost control. What happened next was truly bizarre. The driver fell out of his cab and was crushed by Little Bastard after it fell off the back. More disaster was to come. The garage that housed the car burned to the ground in a fire which somehow left the car undamaged. Highway Patrol hoped for more success at the next exhibition at a local high school. That ended abruptly when the car fell off its display. An unfortunate student was left with a broken hip. And speaking of “highway safety”…

In a cruel twist of irony, just weeks before his fatal crash, James Dean took a break from filming epic Western "Giant" to record a public service announcement. The announcement was to promote safe driving. During the message he uttered the fateful words, "Take it easy driving, the life you save might save might be mine."

Embellishment? Coincidence? Curse? You decide. I just know if someone asked me to get in a car that had anything to do with Little Bastard, I’d take the bus instead.

On the topic of my book Jane Doe: A Northwoods story, I’d like to share a quirky little synchronicity. I was listening to a podcast (re-listening actually. I’d heard it before and put it on again just for something to fall asleep to. The joys of insomnia!) and the topic was something I was familiar with, but I hadn't realised it may have subconsciously inspired my Jane Doe story. While there are plenty of YouTube videos on the topic, finding anything written on the subject is not so easy, so I’ll do my best to give you the nutshell version of one of the strangest phenomena in modern paranormal study - The Missing 411.

Retired police detective David Paulides was asked to look into strange missing person cases in US National Forests and Parks. According to the park ranger, they would talk amongst themselves about how often people would actually go missing and how nothing ever came of it. Not only that, the stories had similar connecting themes and bizarrely creepy circumstances. It took little digging for him to find instances of missing people were far for prevalent than anyone would care to admit.

Paulides reached out to the the various National Parks about these missing persons to ask for a list of current cases. Being a former police officer, he was familiar with police protocols for missing person cases, knowing you could walk into any precinct, ask for the information, and they’d be happy to hand a list over to you hoping to get a hand solving and therefore closing an open case. He was expecting the same for National Parks. He was wrong.

According to Paulides, he asked Yosemite for their data and they told him they’d be happy to put a list together. For $34,000…

In the end he filed a Freedom of Information request to get his hands on as much data from as many National Parks as he could. Fair enough. However, it was soon thereafter he received a call from a lawyer from the National Park service to tell him they don’t keep a list, but instead rely on the memories of their staff to keep track of these cases. They don’t keep files. They don’t keep lists of people who have gone missing in their parks. He can’t have a list because one doesn’t exist.

Now the dogged investigator was really interested.

Hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours later, Paulides found 411 cases of missing persons in US National Parks. And the rangers were right, some of the similarities were indeed creepy. Some of the people were never heard of again. Some came back. Their stories are stranger still.

Here are a few of these unusual cases…

STEVEN KUBACKI

February 1977. 24-year-old Steven Kubacki was cross-country skiing through the snow near Lake Michigan. Upon reaching the edge of the lake, he removed his skis for a short rest. When it came time to go, his tracks were gone and he got lost.

His footprints were found leading up to the lake and it was presumed he’d committed suicide in the icy waters. He had not.

Lost in the snow, the last thing he remembers is getting tired, dizzy, and blacking out. When he came to, he was in a grassy clearing in a forest in clothes that were not his. It was spring.

Baffled, he headed for the nearest town and asked a local where he was. The answer left him more confused. He was in Massachusetts. SEVEN HUNDRED MILES from where he’d gone missing. Perhaps more bizarrely, he knew the name of the town he was in. He had family there. An aunt. He went to her and she asked where he’d been. Steven had no answer. The aunt told him that he’d been missing for 14 months.

KEITH PARKINS

1952. Ritta, Oregon. Two-year-old Keith was playing outside his home in the Oregon winter. When he went missing, a search party was formed and, because it was winter, a trail was soon found. However, after a while the little footprints just… stopped. There were no animal or adult prints nearby, nothing to suggest the boy’s life was in any imminent danger, just… nothing.

Nineteen hours later, Keith was found, face down in the snow on a frozen pond. He’d been out overnight in the snowy winter weather, and yet, miraculously, the boy was alive. The pond was 12 miles from where he’d gone missing. 12 miles over two mountain ranges, fences and creeks. At night. A toddler.

JAMES McGROGAN

2014. Vale, Colorado. While split-snowboarding along a popular trail with friends, James disappeared into thin air. Equipped with GPS, James set off ahead of his friends and told them he’d meet them at the next stop. When they arrived at the next stop, James was not there. Nor was he at any of the other stops along the trail. What’s strange is, there were no prints leading away from the trail. (See “thin air” above.)

Five days later, over four miles away, at the bottom of a frozen waterfall, James McGrogan’s body was found. The area had been searched multiple times and despite the fact James was wearing a helmet, his skull had been crushed as if he’d been dropped from a great height. While he was still wearing his ski-suit, he was barefoot. His boots were never found.

DANNY FILLIPIDIS

February 2018. Danny told friends on a ski trip in New York that he wanted to go for one more run down the mountain before taking a lunch break. By 4PM, Danny had failed to return. Naturally, his friends were worried by this and alerted authorities. A search party of over one hundred people was hastily assembled but sadly, Danny was nowhere to be found.

Six days had gone by when his wife got a strange phone call. The voice was faint, the line muffled by static, but the voice was Danny’s. He was confused and after a short time and making little sense he ended the call. His wife quickly called back and pleaded with him to call 911. Thankfully, he did just that.

Unable to give information as to his whereabouts and only able to describe his surroundings, it took police a while to find where he was calling from. When they got there, they found Danny bewildered, still in his ski gear. He had with him a brand new i-phone, suggesting he could have called home at any time. In the intervening days, Danny had had a hair cut.

He was found in California. 3000 miles from where he’d gone missing.


Those odd stories are actually quite typical of cases from the files of the Missing 411. David Paulides noted a few similarities between the cases.

Many of the younger children among the 411 are found after days of failed searching, at distances miles from where they vanished, distances which they could never have traveled due to the terrain. The children showed barely any injuries and their clothes were strangely neat, even when the weather during the interval had been inclement.

Although in most cases people literally vanish into thin air and are never seen again, in the handful of cases where missing persons are found alive, they are in a state of numb confusion, at a great distance from where they had disappeared. In these cases they cannot account for where they have been or what they were doing for this lost period.

There is an overlayed map of missing persons and cave systems which does seem to line up pretty well, but that would only explain part of the mystery. Theories abound, from aliens, to Bigfoot, to space-time wormholes, but nobody, not even Paulides and his thousands of hours of study, has any real notion as to what is going on with the so-called Missing 411.

Since his initial study, the total of number of missing individuals is now over 1400.

But it was more than subconscious influence that drew my attention to this. After doing the research to write this post for you, I found similarities to my Jane Doe story I was previously unaware of.

Stranger than fiction indeed...

Want more info on JANE DOE: A NORTHWOODS STORY? Here you go!

It was supposed to be a quiet camping trip. There weren't supposed to be lights in the sky. Nobody was supposed to go missing. Nobody was supposed to die...

Here's a short sample from my UFO/First contact thriller...

Joe turned back to the grill and shuffled the foil-wrapped corn around as Alex and Wilt belted out an enthusiastic rendition of Bob Dylan’s Stuck Inside of Mobile. Joe wondered how true it was they would surely return. Little Annabelle coming along would certainly change everything, and he couldn’t help the swell of nostalgia that rose in him. He loved these trips and couldn’t share in Alex’s certainty they’d return. If anything, Alex was probably just saying it to make him and Wilt feel better, knowing how much they loved it up here. The heat from the coals warmed Joe’s face and the fire crackled in the background.
    Joe could hear the fire. They had stopped playing.
    ‘Hey, maestro, where’s the music?’
    Nobody replied.
    Joe turned to look at his friends. They both sat slack jawed, gaping at the woods across the lake.
    Wilt pointed. ‘It’s back.’
    Joe went cold. He reluctantly turned to where his friends had fixed their astonished stares. It was back. He still thought it could be a helicopter or ball lightning, but through the trees across the lake the pulse of a yellow light pierced the darkness. For a minute or so, time stood still. The buzzing and chirping bugs backing Alex’s playing all night had lost their voices. Wilt stood. Alex put his guitar down, then rose to his feet. Joe checked for signs Wilt and Alex were as nervous as he was.
    Alex looked over at him. ‘What do we do?’
    Joe had no idea. Part of him wanted nothing more than to be back in Boston. In O’Malley’s, watching the Patriots with the guys from the firehouse, preseason or not. But he was curious about what the light was. So was Alex.
    ‘Let’s go. Have a closer look at it,’ Alex said, that same excited gleam in his eye.
    Wilt’s shocked response came out in a thick Boston twang. ‘What? Are you fuckin cuckoo?’
    Alex looked at Joe.
    ‘Joey?’
    He doubted Wilt would go for it. It was a chance to find out once and for all what the light was. It could have been anything. Ball lightning. Experimental government craft. He just wanted to prove to Alex it wasn’t little green men.
    ‘It would be interesting to find out what it is...’
    Joe wanted an adventure. He always did. But what he really wanted was to debunk the whole thing. Then they could get back to reality and fishing and screwing around like they were back in their teens.
    Alex smiled a little and turned to Wilt. ‘What do you say, buddy?’
    Wilt saw Alex’s grin and smiled a little himself. He glanced over at Joe as he stared at him.
    ‘I say I must want my fuckin head examined.’
Alex gave a small cheer of victory, Joe quickly wrapped the food he was grilling, and they left the roaring fire behind. Instead of heading for the Beast and back to their favorite Boston bar and the Patriots, they headed for the rowboat and the light.
They should have picked the Patriots.

Wilt’s huge fire was a match light in the distance as they reached the far shore of the lake. Joe stopped the recording he had been making on Wilt’s cell and handed him his phone. Alex led the race through the woods toward the pulsating light, filming on his own phone all the way. The light flashed its green glow through the trees as Joe dragged Wilt ever closer to the next lake. Nobody spoke. It was difficult to judge the distance through the trees, but it looked as if the light was about halfway across the second, smaller lake as it hovered silently above the calm waters.
    ‘It’s fuckin huge.’ Alex’s voice trembled as he spoke.
    He was right. Now they were closer, it was clear whatever they were looking at was more than just a light. It was a craft. A metallic, saucer-shaped flying machine. The color, like the lights, was nothing Joe had ever seen before. Silver, gray and blue all at once. Looking now it was hard to say if the craft had lights or was made of light. Either way, Alex didn’t care. He continued on, turning back every few steps to check the others were still behind him. If Wilt had suggested there and then they go back, Joe would have gladly obliged. Unfortunately for all involved, he didn’t.
    For as long as Joe could remember Alex always had a genuine fascination with the unknown, but it was clear to see even he was terrified. In all the time he and Joe had known each other, Joe had never seen him afraid. They had to deal with some pretty hairy situations with their work - they dealt in life and death on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Joe had seen this guy do things that would turn your hair white. When he’s on the job, he’s all business. Now he trembled. His face was chalky. Joe should have seen it as a sign to stop. To turn back, get in the Beast and drive back to Boston as quickly as possible. To the bar where the rest of Ladder Company would be watching the game.
    Joe wanted to stop. Pick a tree to hide behind. Turn and go back, as far away as possible, and yet, he couldn’t. He had to go on. He had to know what this thing was. He gulped uncontrollably, even though his mouth was as dry as the soft ground beneath his feet. Perhaps it was the unknown element of this that was the source of fear for Alex. It had dawned on him this wasn’t a game. Now he had Annabelle to think about. When you’re unsure of what’s going on around you, instinct is a pretty reliable survival guide.
    The men were all in good shape (as members of Ladder Company, they had to be), but by the time they cleared the trees at the edge of the second lake they were breathless. Joe and Wilt stopped alongside Alex and stared at the glowing object some two hundred yards away. Wilt continued filming. The saucer was a hundred feet across, suspended silently fifty yards above the water’s surface. The friends all gaped as it rose slowly. When the idea came it could be leaving, Joe was shocked his overriding emotion was sadness. That was short-lived as the disc dropped back to its original position, bobbing like a buoy on water. Again it rose and fell, like it was putting on a show, then, the third time, when it dropped it stopped just feet from the surface of the lake. Huge circles expanded across the water from the center as if something massive had breached the flat calm.
    Alex whispered, ‘Guys, I don’t like this. I changed my mind. I want to go back.’
    No sooner had the words left his lips than the object rose to twenty yards above the surface, then, in the blink of an eye, it was in the air above them. Just like in Joe’s dream. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and the air was thick with electricity. Joe had felt faint, now his knees gave out from underneath him. Somebody caught him at one side and the other shouted, ‘Run!’ He would struggle to tell for sure who did what.
    They raced back through the woods. Joe’s legs felt empty as though he’d just run a marathon, energy sapped, he was in the slow-motion sprint of a nightmare. A beam of white light pierced the canopy and fell upon Joe. He did his best to zig and zag, to remove himself from the beam’s intrusive scrutiny. He felt weight lifting from him. A lightness came. Time slowed and sounds faded, and he looked down to see shadows growing beneath twigs and stones. They were levitating. That was the lightness he felt. Then it was gone. Unable to get a fix on him the beam had moved on.
    The sounds of breathless endeavor rushed back, feet pounding the soft earth, lungs gasping for air. As they dashed through the trees, the beam flashed from one of them to the other. Wilt overtook Joe, gripping his phone. Joe peered over his shoulder to see Alex dodging the beam. Round Alex’s feet, twigs and leaves floated then fell as the light passed over them. Then the beam was gone.
    Joe looked up to see Wilt clear the woods. He was halfway between the trees and the rowboat, feet spraying pebbles across the beach as he raced for the sanctity of that roaring fire and the cabin across the water. Then, the bright white beam fixed on him.
    Joe watched on, awestruck as small stones levitated around Wilt’s feet as he ran. Joe was a few yards behind, and Alex a few behind him, then, just as Wilt reached the boat, he let out a bone-chilling scream. He was frozen, paralyzed by the beam. Joe stopped dead and Alex ran into the back of him, throwing both to the floor. There was a blinding flash and a roar like thunder. They looked up.
    The boat rocked lightly back and forth, and gentle waves lapped the beach.
    The disc was gone.
    So was Wilt.

THE EVENT is available NOW from Amazon!

On the morning of 19 April 1995, a Ryder rental truck packed with explosives was parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At 9:02am that bomb was detonated, killing 168 and leaving hundreds more injured. The powerful explosion blew off the building’s entire north face and the blast damaged or destroyed over 300 buildings in the immediate area.

Forensic evidence quickly connected anti-government militant Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols to the attack. McVeigh was already in jail, having been stopped a little more than an hour after the bombing for a traffic violation and then arrested for unlawfully carrying a handgun. Before he was scheduled to be released from jail, he was identified as a prime suspect in the bombing and charged. The same day, Terry Nichols, an associate of McVeigh, surrendered in Herington, Kansas. At least, that’s the official story…

One of the first responders on the scene was police sergeant Terrance Yeakey. He was nearby on a routine traffic stop when the explosion shattered the morning quiet. He raced to the scene, working tirelessly for three hours, dragging eight people from the aftermath, later receiving a key to the city of El Reno for his efforts. Yet his superiors were unhappy. Terrance had submitted a 9-page report of events that went against the quickly established narrative. A report that included multiple explosions and unexploded bombs. So who was right?

Discrepancies

Timothy McVeigh was arrested near the scene of the bombing roughly 90 minutes after. Why was he stopped? He was driving a car with no licence plates. If you imagine the planning this event must have gone through and this oversight seems baffling to say the least. Weak? There’s more. According to the official story, the target of the attack was the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who McVeigh blamed for the tragedy of the Waco Disaster, yet not one ATF agent was injured. That’s because, on the morning of the attack, they weren’t there. Well, two claimed they were, but with hindsight, that looks like a mistake.

Two men from the ATF claimed not only to be in the building, but to be heroes. Their story falls apart under little scrutiny. One of the “heroes” claimed that he was trapped in an elevator shortly after the explosion after it descended in freefall. Oscar Johnson, an elevator mechanic upon inspection of the buildings elevators said, “No elevators were in freefall. No possible way.” He also rubbished the claim that the agent climbed out of the elevator car to join rescue efforts saying that the locking mechanism had not been touched. If there had been anyone in there, they would have to be rescued just like everyone else.

Witnesses reported bomb squad vehicles parked across the road from the building at a church two hours previous, again lending credence to the idea of advanced knowledge.

Multiple witnesses reported seeing 2 or even 3 men park the Ryder Truck in front of the building, who left in a brown pickup. An APB was issued for said vehicle and more witnesses came forward saying whenever McVeigh was spotted before the bombing he was never alone. Sketches were made of a mysterious John Doe 2. In spite of all of this, after what was at the time the worst terrorist attack on US soil, the search for John Doe #2 was quickly abandoned.

One FBI agent admitted on record that all fingerprints collected at the scene were not run through databases and an OKCPD officer said that he and colleagues had been held back from assisting recovery efforts and saw, “men in FBI raid jackets dismantling video cameras off the side of the building”.

One of the strangest things in the whole story of the Oklahoma City Bombing was the recovery of a random leg. During the blast 8 victims lost left legs, yet a ninth was recovered. The owner of the leg was never found.

Multiple local news reports from the morning of the bombing reported more than one device - “another bomb” “other devices” “another explosion” - and even one scene where a truck was seen and discussed, the job of which was to, “transport the explosive device away from this populated area.” The rescue operation was even shut down for 20-30 minutes to account for this. Was it these devices Terrance Yeakey had seen during his own rescue endeavours?

By the afternoon, news media were changing their story. As if that weren’t enough to call the official story into question, there’s more…

The Bomb

According to the final report, one truck bomb was responsible for the devastating damage. That bomb changed from a 1200lb ammonium nitrate fertiliser and fuel oil bomb to 4800lb bomb, to 7000lb of fertiliser and nitro methane.

Even so, a truck bomb is essentially an air blast. This air blast was going up against 8 feet of reinforced concrete. The damage recorded was wildly inconsistent with similar or even much larger bombs of its kind. Another point raised was ammonium nitrate fertiliser bombs release a noxious nitrous oxide - breathing that cocktail in such large concentrations would have led to first responders being hospitalised. No such hospitalisations were recorded.

Furthermore, there was evidence of explosions inside the buildings. Footage from OK County Sheriff’s office minutes after blast shows the north side parking lot littered with paper and debris. The location of these papers meant they would have to have travelled against the blast wave. Debris from the Murrah Building was found on top of buildings on the other side of the street, and piled against the foot of the nearby records building, again, travelling against the blast wave. Could this have happened as part of the collapse of the north face? Of course. But when you look at the damage caused by an air blast, this seems unlikely.

Survivors reported explosions and shaking inside the building before the truck bomb went off. Three separate seismographs recorded 8-10 seconds of activity, suggesting the possibility of two blasts, and two separate energy spikes. A member of the OK Geological Survey stated the activity could not be put down to floors collapsing, nor could the last 5 seconds be the result of an air blast.

On 23 May 1995, barely a month after the attack, going against advice from structural engineers that it could be rebuilt, the Murrah building was demolished, despite body recovery being incomplete. Any remaining evidence was destroyed with it.

Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison in 2004. On June 11, 2001, Timothy McVeigh, at the age of 33, died by lethal injection at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. His body was cremated quickly - without autopsy, going against standard procedure for executed prisoners.

Sgt. Terrance Yeakey

On the morning of 8 May 1996, at 7am, Terrance Yeakey’s car was found. The inside of the car was full of blood, razor blades, and a knife. The car was locked, the windows rolled up.

Between 6-7pm that same day Terrance’s body was found. His wrists and neck had been slashed. He had rope burns on his neck and handcuff marks on wrists. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the head. An immediate search of the scene recovered no firearm.

His death was ruled a suicide.

According to the official story, Terrance had inflicted the wounds on himself in the car, locked it, walked a little over a mile, climbing a waist-high barbed wire fence in the process, and shot himself in the head.

But even the gunshot wound was called into question. The wound was at a strange angle, inconsistent with suicide. The bullet entered the temple region above his right eye and exited below his left cheek. There were no powder burns.

No autopsy was performed.

So What Happened?

We may never know. It is known the paperwork for the Whitewater scandal, a failed real estate investment venture involving then-President Bill Clinton, was stored in the Murrah Building. Shortly after the blast, a team in blue, unmarked jackets collected boxes of files from the wreckage. Could that simply be coincidence?

Another strange connection is links to the intelligence community. Operations were underway to infiltrate groups posing threat to the US government. McVeigh’s behaviour in the build up to the event bears the hallmarks of “Sheep-Dipping”, a term intelligence agencies use when they pretend to remove someone from the military, secretly turning them into a covert operative. If that sounds far-fetched, it’s worth keeping in mind his death certificate stated his occupation as “US Army”, that despite a 9-year gap since his military service and the fact he’d held other jobs since… and just to muddy those waters further is the involvement of Dr Jolyon West, dubbed “Mr Mind Control”. West has connections to Patty Hearst, RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby. West visited McVeigh on multiple occasions prior to him waiving all his appeals and requesting to be fast-tracked to federal execution.

Even without that twist, what with the numerous discrepancies between witness reports and the official story, and the tragic end of Terrance Yeakey, the terrible events of the morning of 19 April 1995 do carry the tell-tale signs of a false flag.

In 1994 and ‘95, the US Congress failed to pass an omnibus crime bill that would expand federal jurisdiction to crack down on the second amendment and create new agencies with the alleged aim of increased monitoring of US citizens. In the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the bill was repackaged as the “anti-terrorism effective death penalty act.”

The act was signed into law one year and five days after the attack.

Of the 168 killed that dreadful day, 19 were children in an employee day-care centre.

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“Going Wide!”

I was looking into the idea of ending my Amazon exclusivity and “going wide” i.e. publishing on many platforms. The process can be frustrating and really time consuming: formatting, covers (different places use different dimensions), uploading, tax shizzle… and on and on. That’s per online store you want to put your book on. Considering that Amazon represents roughly 70% of the ebook market, the question that comes to most self-published authors without a massive audience is the same one: Is it really worth it?

Then I found someone who uploads to all of the stores for you. A one-stop shop, if you will. Fast. Less hassle. So I thought I’d upload a tester, just to see how the whole process worked.

And one of those frustrations came to bear. It’s fine. We can deal with it. It’s all in one place. Overcome this one hurdle and that’s it… But I got locked into this Catch 22 nightmare that I couldn’t undo. So I contacted help. Help took an age to reply, and basically told me to use the help pages on their site. I had thought of that. It didn’t help. That’s why I contacted them. The tall and short of it is, no “going wide” for me just yet. Just need to bide my time until this whole lockdown situation calms down and their help peeps are back in the office.

Sorry to disappoint those waiting for this. The best things come to those who wait, they say. Let’s hope so!

Screenplay

So my super-secret screenplay project is moving along nicely. The first draft is done and in terms of page-length, tone, and lots of other stuff,  I feel like it’s in really good shape. Maybe my best ever first draft. So why the secrecy?

Screenplays are funny things. Unless you are commissioned by a studio to write something, you have to write it first, then try to sell it. Between first draft and finished movie, so many things can happen, including not selling it - i.e. nothing at all. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself at this stage or jinx anything. I probably won’t mention the screenplay again unless there’s major news (at which point you won’t be able to shut me up about it - you have been warned!).

I will say this: because of the subject matter and amazing source material I’m working with (it’s an adaptation, see) I do feel this one has a chance of making it to screen. A real chance. Fingers crossed.

Writing Life

There’s an old expression about best laid plans going to shit (or something). Life gets in the way and so on and so one. I found out kinda out of the blue that I need to move house. Major ballache. (Boxes are piling up around me as I speak.) Just saying because obviously there might be some disruption to post frequency and maybe post/newsletter length. Hopefully things will move quickly and smoothly, but fair warning.

That’s all for now. Keep it weird, folks.

Marc

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