And Yet Even MORE Fesitval Submissions!

 So... I just submitted Muscles & Wine to:

- Filmmatic Comedy Screenplay Awards (Los Angeles, CA.)

-  Georgia Comedy Film Festival (Atlanta, GA.)

- Austin Comedy Film Festival (Austin, TX.) 

 Wish me luck! 

 

 

 

Today's Film Fest Submissions

And now I get to eat my words after that last post.

I just submitted Personal Demons to four new film festivals / screenplay competitions.

Killer Shorts (the one where the edit & chief of Bloody Disgusting is one of the judges), Film Basement Horror Film Awards, Anatomy: Crime - Horror International Film Festival and the International Horror, Fantastic and Action Film Festival and Awards “DROP”

 

Wish me luck!  

 

 

Dwindling Options...

 First, I find it incredibly frustrating when Film Freeway will show me film festivals that don't have a screenwriting competition... only short/feature film competitions.

I even checked a box for that in my search criteria, so why are they still showing me film fests with no screenplay competition option?

Maddening.

Second, I am starting to run out of film festivals that I haven't submitted to already.

I am getting a lot of this:

Ugh.

Part of me wants to submit Flatdog (which I am really proud of and everyone who's read it raves about it). But it was not written with Syd Fields' three-act structure and I have a feeling, for that alone, fests will toss it out after the first twenty pages. 

Ah well.

I still have at least three more screenplays I can conceivably put up on Kindle.

And one David Kemp novel.

I think need to start compiling David Kemp short stories and horror stories I've written into collections and throw those on Kindle as well.

But I am loving the fact that now there are 11 titles (I'm not including the out-of-print paperback of Shades of Darkness) under my name on Kindle. 
 

More Screenplays Published on Kindle and Tonight's Writing

 So, I published two more of my screenplays on Kindle.

The first is Dweller.  It concerns a serpentine (but mostly amorphous) creature that swims out from the depths of Lake Michigan and terrorizes Chicago.

The protagonist is a police detective named Ralph Henson ( a combination of Ralph Nader and Jim Henson,m two of my favorite people). 

Basically, it's an insane combination of Bong Joon-Ho's The Host (2006) and John Carpenter's 1982 remake of The Thing.  

I'm sure it will never get made, so I am publishing it on Kindle for anyone who wants to read it.

I wrote it from late 2008 to about spring of 2009.  

 

 

I also published the screenplay adaptation of Humansville that I wrote in 2011. 

After I got done writing MoMo, I decided to adapt Humansville into a screenplay because: 1.) it was an easy bit of writing for me to do,m 2.) I read in a volume of Screenwriter's Guide (from Writer's Digest... which, it looks like the last Screenwriter's and Playwright's Market they published was in 2009!) that, if you want Hollywood to get interested in optioning a book you wrote... make the deal sweeter for them and just adapt it yourself. That way, you save them time and money. They don't have to hire a writer to adapt your book, and they can pay you one fee that includes the rights to your book and your fee for adapting it (something you already did for free).

Anyhow, I just thought people might want to read the screenplay, as well as the book, to compare the two. Plus, well, if anyone important in Hollyweird actually does buy & read my book on Amazon, they'll then see that I already adapted it.

 

 

But I digress.

I've also decided (and I'll run this by my eternal guru, Timothy Scott) that at least two of the three novels involving my literary avatar, David Kemp, cannot be published in Kindle because they contain elements that may be... problematic... for a number of reasons.

Thus, sadly, it looks like (for now) the only David Kemp book I will be able to publish on Kindle is my first David Kemp novel, The Work. This was written in 2005 while I was finishing up grad school for the first time and living in my first apartment. It was very cathartic to write. Hopefully whoever reads it will find something cathartic in it for them as well.

Now, for tonight's writing.

I am on page 16 of Depravity.

I have fully developed both the protagonist and the antagonist, established the setting, the mythology and have gotten the inciting incident out of the way. 

But, man, this is what summer break is all about: writing until all hours of evening. What a joy it is to sit down at a desk, in front of a writing machine, and to create stories and characters (with lives). It's just such a beautiful thing to create art. 

And with that... 

Onward I write...  

MoMo: Survival Published on Kindle

 So... I did indeed publish MoMo: Survival on Kindle just now.,

I even created a series for it on Kindle.

This is the first sequel I ever wrote. And the thing is... I didn't even intend on writing a sequel to MoMo. MoMo's story was not necessarily conclusive, but was meant to only be one story.

But I love when happy accidents happen organically.

 In mid-summer 2011 (a few months after finishing MoMo), I decided to sit down and write what I thought should be the first scene or two for a sequel to MoMo. I wound up loving what I wrote (that sounds narcissistic, I apologize) so much and realized that there was more story to tell.

Oddly, enough, though, for a variety of reasons, I did not come back to this script and complete it until May of 2015 (when I was in a much better headspace, in all regards).  

Regardless, this was the last screenplay I completed without using an outline that strictly adheres to Syd Fields' three-act structure. 

This is also the final screenplay I completed before Personal Demons.

But, in the end, this screenplay means a lot to me because MoMo (the first pure non-horror screenplay I wrote) means a lot to me and it was just a good feeling to finish his story and give him a happy ending.

 

 

Also, I was having lunch with an old friend from high school (we've known each other now 32 years!) and he put into words something that I was already thinking. He said that putting my work up on Kindle (specifically, my screenplays) was helping to protect the copyright of the work. And I believe he's right.  Sure, I copyright everything I write with the Library of Congress. And I register everything I am actively sending out (to film fests and via query letter to agents & producers) with the Writer Guild of America, West (WGAw, which most people unofficially refer to as the "screenwriter's guild"). And that helps me sleep better at night. However, if any agent, producer, or any nefarious judge (at any of these film fests I submit my script to) has any designs on copying or appropriating my idea, well, I can just point whatever lawyer I engage to my Kindle page and say, "If the Library of Congress and WGAw isn't good enough for a judge and jury, let them look to Amazon and see the publishing date there."

Triple protection for your ideas and art is a wonderfully comforting thing.  

It Has Begun...

Tonight I have started writing (and am already on page 3) my 20th screenplay, Depravity.

It is my first serial killer screenplay.

Essentially, it was inspired by the art on death metal album covers... and my forever-idiosyncratic mind asking, "What would it have been like if Faud Ramses, in H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast, or The Killer in Mardi Gras Massacre, had been successful? If their rituals had been finished and the ancient beings they were worshiping actually appeared?"

I am wearing my Wes Craven tribute shirt and burning a candle I got off Etsy called "Summer Thriller"... won't lie: don't love its smell, but no matter.

Onward I write...  

Just Sent Circle M+P PERSONAL DEMONS

So, after talking about how Circle M+P (Circle of Confusion) requested Coil back in 2007 (they also requested my first werewolf script, Cubs, in 2009) I decided I would submit Personal Demons to them... again.

See, I submitted it to them in 2015 (right after I got done writing it) and received no response.

However, that was before Stranger Things and  It came out and changed the landscape ( I guess I was ahead of my time...?).

That was also before Personal Demons had all of its festival wins.

Anyhow, below is the query letter I just sent...  

"Dear Circle M+P,

 

I have recently completed a supernatural horror screenplay entitled Personal Demons that I would like to submit for your consideration.

  

Personal Demons tells the story of a group of horror-obsessed teenagers in a sleepy Rocky Mountains mining town who have decided to hunt and kill a demon that has crawled from a nearby cave and murdered one of their friends.  In preparation for their hunt the group must grapple with everyday high school problems (parental concerns, school intervention and religious differences) that threaten to tear them apart.

 

This script infuses my love of 80’s horror (Monster Squad, Ghostbusters, Night of the Demons, Evil Dead and Pumpkinhead) into a story concerning unique and brash characters, which I fashioned partially after students I have taught during my tenure in education… and partially after myself.

 

Personal Demons is a bit of grounded horror that, while visceral and chilling, plays out in a very fun way, similar to its contemporaries (such as It (2017/19), Final Destination and the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things).

 

Personal Demons just had its 19^th festival accolade. Most recently Personal Demons was an official selection at the Independent Horror Movie Award (2025), Dunwich Horror Fest (2025), Underground Indie Film Festival (Apopka, Florida; 2025) and The Thing in the Basement Horror Fest (Seattle, WA.; 2025). Personal Demons also won Best Feature Script at the 2024 Independent Horror Movie Awards (Summer Edition).

 

The completed screenplay is 96 pages long. I also have a succinct but comprehensive video pitch for the script available here.

 

Currently, I work as a college English professor and my work has appeared in Dark Moon Digest, Midnight Times, Shadow Voices and Damnation Magazine.

 

If any further information or materials are needed, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Erik D. Harshman"