Awards from Portland Comedy Film Festival

 Just got this email and my laurels (below the email):

"Hi Erik,

Thank you for submitting to the Portland Comedy Film Festival Fall 2026.

Your screenplay, Muscles & Wine, has been named a finalist for the
Best Dark Comedy Feature Screenplay Award.

Your personalized certificate and both versions of the award finalist
laurels are available through the direct Google Drive links below.
Each link opens one individual file. To save a file, open the link and
use Google Drive's Download option.

 

If you have any trouble opening or saving these files, please email me
back. I will be happy to help.

Please help us spread the word by sharing the news on social media.
The complete list of award finalists is available here:

https://filmfestivalcircuit.com/event/portland-comedy-film-festival-fall-2026

Award winners will be announced on Monday, September 21, at Clinton
Street Theater in Portland, Oregon. Attendance is not required to win.
If you attend the event, your certificate will be presented to you on
stage during our live awards ceremony.

Tickets and complete event details are available on the event page linked above.

Thank you again for supporting the festival with your submission.
Congratulations, and have a great week!

Mikel Fair
Film Festival Circuit CEO"

 

  

Awards from Austin Comedy Film Festival

 Just got my awards certificates and laurels from the Austin Comedy Film Festival.

So, I am an "awards finalist"... not sure if that means I am still in competition for a bigger award... and, if I don't mind said "bigger award", will I still be an Official Selection?

I guess I should ask these questions.

But I have some laurels to show off in the meantime. 

Makes me feel good! 

 

 

 

MUSCLES & WINE's SECOND Festival Win!

So... my bromantic, feel-good buddy comedy screenplay Muscles & Wine just had its second festival of the summer!
It is an official selection of the Portland Comedy Festival!
This is seriously gratifying!
This means I might actually be a good screenwriter!
But not only that, but I can write comedy as well as horror.
I honestly never thought anything I wrote was funny before... and I did not know if Muscles & Wine read as funny as I thought it did in my head.
But here we are!
So incredibly grateful and thankful! 

What a great way to end the summer!

 

 

Tonight's Writing

 I wrote in Depravity for a little over two hours tonight.

I am on page 33 and just reached the first "plot point" and am on the cusp of act II.

Man, I love this screenplay.

It is my hop[e to still be writing it into Spooky Season and to hopefully finish it around Halloween.

I also came up with a new idea for a stage play.

It is an idea I have been tossing around for a while in my head.

I always had problems with it being a novel (something I have to work on) and only saw it as a screenplay because that was the only other logical option (other than, perhaps, a novella). 

Regardless, I think it will work quite well as a stage play.  

My first "Christmas Horror" Screenplay is Now Up on Kindle

 Okay, so a few things...

1.) This was my first attempt at Christmas horror. At the end of the day, it's basically Stephen King's Cujo but with a Christmas twist.

2.) I put quotes around "Christmas Horror" because I broke the cardinal rule in my (and many other people's) book about Christmas Horror: Christmas has to be integral, irremovable aspect of the story. Sadly, you can take out the Christmas element here and you'll still have a nature gone awry (Cujo rip-off) story.

3.) I started this script just before Christmas of 2024. Christmas celebrations and time with family took over and I drug my feet on completing this script until sometime in February or so. 

4.) Because it was not written entirely before (or around) Christmas, I feel like I lost focus a bit. The script is only 61 pages long. This is around the time when I found that my screenplays were not reaching feature-length (90 pages/minutes). I want to find organic ways to make this script into a feature, but I don't want it to seem as if I am padding out the running time and, thus, destroying the story's momentum and pacing. 

5.) As I was putting in my prompts to have Google Gemini create a poster / cover for this script, I asked it to show a rabid reindeer attacking a house adorned with Christmas decorations. Gemini told me that it couldn't portray an animal afflicted with rabies... Weird. So I told them to create a psychotic Christmas card from my prompt (I think I changed "rabid reindeer" to "demonic reindeer"... somehow they interpreted that meant "zombified"... I dunno). Anyhow, the only thing I liked about the "psychotic Christmas card" was the reindeer. SO I had them put the reindeer from the "psychotic Christmas card" into a normal Christmas card. Hopefully it work. I like it. 

As it stands, I think this could make a good straight-to-streaming film. 

Also, I just realized that I accidentally left the Google Gemini watermark (that annoying star at the bottom of my image) and I need to edit that off of there before I add the book to my Kindle Library.

At any rate, soon my first attempt at "Christmas Horror" will be available for all to read.

 Enjoy!

 

 

Not Tonight...

 I had ambitions to post Run, Run Rudolph and Painsville, but that will not be happening for two reasons: 

1.) It is clear that I have to re-read the script in order to edit them (Run, Run Rudolph needs some revisions for the story to make sense; Painsville has some problematic language... mind you, that language is in the script so the reader/viewer can identify the antagonists as the bigoted wastes of life that they are, but I can one of my own antagonists using it against me).

2.) I have adulting to do (new patient paperwork for a doctor's visit, research to determine how I will vote in the August 4th election, etc.) and I just don't have the time and focus to re-read those scripts, make the necessary adjustments and publish them just now. 

What's more, I don't think I will have the time, effort and concentration to do any writing tonight.

Perhaps next week.  

PETCARE Screenplay published to Kindle

Today I am going to publish at least two more of my screenplays on Kindle.

One of them I am unsure about.

It is titled Petcare and it is another one of my attempts at writing a short horror script intended for the (now long-defunct) Masters of Horror show.

Anyhow, I am unsure of this script because it contains horrific acts of domestic violence, including child abuse. 

Obviously, the script is aggressively against all of those abhorrent acts and (as is the case with most of my stories) the wicked do indeed get their comeuppance (in the most gruesome of ways). But the road leading to that retribution is tough to read and visualize. 

I don't know.

We shall see if I choose to publish it.

On the one hand, I want people to read this story.

On the other hand, I do indeed work in academia and do not want someone reading this script, missing the point and forming a witch hunt against me. That would be a constant worry for me.

I think I will let my buddy Tim (a proud parent) be the judge. 

After all, there's no rush.

I am writing many more scripts that will eventually land on Kindle.

And I have a full library on there now, even as I write this.

But in preparation for its eventual publication I have done a second draft (and taken out some problematic lines, as well as fixed some formatting issues and taken out some unnecessary plot devices that, in retrospect, didn't work... I also had to update a lot of the script, as it was written nearly 20 years ago!) and designed a one sheet for it (seen below). My buddy Tim even helped pick out the image for the poster.

Anyhow, my first Christmas horror script (Run, Run Rudolph) will be available soon, as will my first attempt at backwoods redneck horror (think Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, X (2002), Wrong Turn (2003), etc.) Painsville should be available later on today.