HorrorHound Film Festival

 Just got this... my rebuttal after the rejection letter:

"

Dear Erik D., Thank you for submitting your project Flatdog to the Fall 2026 HorrorHound Film Festival. After careful review by our panel of judges, we are unable to include your project in this fall's festival lineup. Each season, we receive far more submissions than we have room to program, making the final selection process incredibly competitive. We sincerely appreciate the opportunity to experience your work and thank you for trusting us with it. Occasionally, a selected project must withdraw from the festival. Should a programming slot become available, we may contact you to see if your project is still available. Please note that we are only able to fill openings with projects that remain eligible and have not been withdrawn from consideration. Thank you again for sharing your work with us. We truly appreciate your support of HorrorHound Film Festival and hope you'll consider submitting future projects. We wish you continued success and all the best on your creative journey. Sincerely, R. Zoe Judd Executive Director HorrorHound Film Festival Flatdog Not Selected Project was not selected to be included in festival. You can contact Fall HorrorHound Film Festival by replying to this email or sending an email to rzoe@horrorhound.com.

Okay, so... this is weird.

Apparently, I submitted my 2008 (which I heavily re-wrote in 2015, just before pitching it at my first PitchFest that summer) screenplay Flatdog to HorrorHound.

I am guessing that was entirely by accident.

How did I determine that this was accidental?

Because in all my record keeping (and my record keeping is precise) I had written down that I'd submitted Personal Demons to HorrorHound.

Which is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, I was getting rather depressed and somewhat anxious that perhaps Personal Demons' winning streak was over (it's had 4 rejections thus far in 2026; If I'd submitted Personal Demons to HorrorHound, and it hadn't been selected, this would have been its 5th rejection in 7 months). 

However, I maintain that, if I'd submitted Personal Demons, as intended, I probably would have placed somewhere, if not been an "Official Selection" at HorrorHound.

This is also interesting because, lately, I have thought about submitting Flatdog to some film fests and screenplay competitions. After all, I am running out of places I haven't submitted Personal Demons to. Furthermore, I was so proud of the re-write I had done on it in 2015. However, this latest rejection tells me that, well, maybe hold off on wasting a bunch of money on film fest submissions for Flatdog. It may not be ready just yet. 

But who knows. I may submit it to a few places just because. 

But now I want to talk about horror cons that have their own film fest.

The horror con I've gone to the most (Days of the Dead) has (or had... I honestly don't know) a film fest. I submitted Personal Demons in 2023 and got an Honorable Mention.

Now, HorrorHound is both a magazine and a horror con (that's always in Ohio... one of those cities whose name starts with a "C"... I dunno). 

Their magazine I think I bought one issue of it once... but never really read it.

And their con... apart from sometimes being jealous that their line-up is pretty sweet (they do tend to get a large concentration of big name guests), I've never had much desire to go. Often their "big name" guests are either people I've met before (like Peter Weller, who wound up cancelling), people I've been desperate to meet (like Nancy Allen... who wound up cancelling), people I've met a million times (like Pauly Shore, Heather Langenkamp, Melinda Clarke, etc.) and people who never do cons and whom I am desperate to meet (like Lisa Schrage from Prom Night II: Hello, Mary Lou... and Brian Yuzna!... who has not left my list of top 3 favorite directors since I saw Return of the Living Dead 3 when I was 14 years old). 

Anyhow, in March of 2024 my buddy and I went to the Chicago  Days of the Dead. It was a Hellraiser reunion and Clive Barker (!) was there on his con farewell tour before he sequestered himself at home to write.

The professional photo op Barker and I took is below. Everyone (including Doug Bradley) got a kick out of my Monster Squad-esque shirt, re-written in adoration for Barker instead of Stephen King.  

That was the same weekend that HorrorHound had Brian Yuzna.

Now, it was a no-brainer for me. Sure, I would have loved to gush at Brian Yuzna for nearly an hour and tell him how much his oeuvre has inspired and influenced my work. 

But I couldn't pass up the chance to meet one of my favorite authors, filmmakers, painters and just all-around amazing human beings (Barker). 

Anyhow, I was in line to get some stuff autographed by Barker when a guy came barrelling into the con (it was also snowing outside and about 20 degrees or lower... my kind of March weather!) and told everyone that he had just come from HorrorHound (I guess he went there for Friday and then drove into Chicago early Saturday). 

Anyhow, all he could talk about was how inept and unorganized HorrorHound Weekend was and how this con (Days of the Dead... the con we were at) was the best con to attend, because of its organization, its smooth running mechanics, and the way the con owners treat their volunteers and their celebs.  

I'm not talking trash on HorrorHound (please remember, it was that guy who rushed from one con to the other who made these statements about each con, not me), but it's interesting information to note.

If the HorrorHound film fest is still around next year I will most definitely submit Personal Demons to them. And if it doesn't at least place, or get an Honorable Mention... then I might have some unkind words for HorrorHound.

Until then...  

 

 

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...