What motivated you to become a writer?

My aunt passed tragically at age 29 and my family’s invincible spirit was stilted for good. As an eight- year-old, imagination became my refuge, and journaling whimsical stories became routine. On Sundays when the family gathered for dinner, I was urged to share stories aloud. My first big hit, Ten Tall Tails was, yes, a collection of animal tales. As I narrated each work, their laughter and applause eased the pain and penned a soundtrack that underscored my resolve to always write on.

Starting on a blank page is not easy- where does your creativity come from?

Suffering haunts me. One day I saw a photograph of a very, old farmer riding a horse drawn cart down Main Street in a nearby town. With his scruffy hound perched at his side, he brandished a sign with a message, “Build the School.” He was at the end of his journey and wanted to donate his many acres of land to the city so a new school would be constructed. “Too many of our kids are leaving,” he was quoted in the article. “We need to build reasons for them to stay.” The city council instantly saw this moment as an opportunity to grab his land for the much-wanted mall development project they had been drooling over for years. But he was determined to fight back. I wanted so badly for him to win this uphill battle that I began writing my own ending to his unjust tale. This effort eventually became one of my screenplays called, Harmony People. Almost all my stories are based on a real-world event and my attempt to write a better ending to someone’s unfair suffering.

 
Do you write projects knowing that so many other factors need to happen to get it to screen and does that come into your project creation?

I am not influenced as I write by anything other than the certain and inevitable direction the story must take. If the story is good enough, the other factors will fall into place. My screenplays, since I had no contacts or relationships in Hollywood, opened many doors for me and I was invited, based solely on the merit of my submissions, to meet individuals at Orion, Sundance, Sony, Imagine… and also many celebrities. I still believe in the raw potential of a good work.

 
What is your dream for this project and what other ancillary revenue do you think it could generate? Please include script title in reply.

The story of mine that most needs to be told is A Dolphin in the Sand. When I moved from Indiana to Arizona in 1976, I was hypnotized by the magenta landscape and free flowing Salt River that poured through it. I began shadowing a Tempe journalist who led me to a group of desert renegades fighting to preserve the fate of this, America’s only, desert river. One day I drove by the entrance to a massive and gaudy housing development under construction. Out front a fountain was being erected: a huge brick water pool and at its center, a metal dolphin leaping skyward; water spewing out of his gaping mouth. The painful absurdity of a dolphin captive in the desert was superseded only by the tragic water waste this fountain would soon produce. That metaphor remains pivotal to the message of my screenplay, A Dolphin in the Sand. It is the story of those renegades and their monkey wrench antics as they battle to preserve nature’s rights. As a Telluride IndieFest Best Screenplay winner and a project that over the years has on and off gathered many promising Hollywood attachments yet no final deal, it remains my most well scripted, and in today’s anti science climate, my most important work. Those of us fighting to protect mother nature will always be pitted against the illogical actions and ballsy greed of our opponents. I believe this work if packaged to include brave, relentless environmentalists with the values of folks like Pitt, DiCaprio, Streep, Redford and others leading this uphill surge, it would have not only a timely appeal but also a determined cult following.

 
How has your experience been with screenwriting contests for this project so far?

This project has won a Telluride IndieFest Best Screenplay award. I have entered no other contests.
 
If you could stand in a room full of investor partners looking at many projects what would you like them to know about you and this project?

A Dolphin in the Sand embraces the zeitgeist of the nation today. More relevant now than when originally written this story metaphorically points out the urgency of our need to creatively act on behalf of our planet. Having the right story, in the right place, at the right time, with the right players is the machinery of a story’s mainstream success. This story’s time has arrived.

Do you have any website links for your writing, credits, background, etc., that you would like to share?

I stopped off in Sacramento on my way to Hollywood and stayed. Under the business name, WhiteSpace Communication, I produced corporate documentaries in 16mm and 35mm, and developed educational, training and marketing materials for organizations and high-tech start-up companies. Clients included Software Dimensions, Teichert, The Sacramento Zoological Society, Crocker Art Museum, UCD Med Center, Marc Turtletaub, then CEO of The Money Store, for whom I wrote and produced a short company documentary via Mering and Associates ad agency along with projects for Intel, Hewlett Packard, Cherrington Corporation, Software Dimensions and other local firms. WhiteSpace was my main income and the fuel that fed my addiction of writing and shopping my screenplays. I simultaneously taught Screenwriting, Writing for Public Relations, Creative Writing, Advertising Copywriting, Video Production, and other courses as a part time faculty member of the U.C. Davis Department of Rhetoric and Communications. And I wrote a nationally syndicated column, Software You Should Know, while often writing special features for print media like The Sacramento Bee, Parent’s Monthly and others. My local identity was synonymous with terms like Copywriter, Scriptwriter, Documentary Producer, Creative Director… Eventually though, the time-consuming nature of keeping my business afloat coupled with the addiction of chasing my Hollywood dream gave way to the more immediate need to be a better parent. I accepted a high school teaching offer in 1994 and taught Journalism, Creative Writing, Contemporary Literature and produced a newspaper and yearbook for the past couple of decades while my children grew up with me and I graduated into my recent role as a brand new grandparent. Now retried and time rich, I am again devoted to my incessant yearnings as a screenwriter and the need to assure that A Dolphin in the Sand gets its rightful chance to be told by a cast of unintimidated players.