Walker Canyon: Letting a new novel manuscript out of the crib
It’s a big day! After 18 months from idea to edited manuscript, I started sharing my new novel, Walker Canyon, with beta readers today.
Walker Canyon is a character-driven upmarket Old West family saga dealing with family trauma and the dark individual motives that propelled the American Dream and fueled American expansionism, exceptionalism and capitalism. My sense is that it’s for book club fiction fans and readers of classic Westerns and modern upmarket takes on the Western genre. I hope I’ve created something that’s like the novel version of Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe (Yellowstone, 1883, 1923).
The pitch: When three generations of the Walker family flee the Reconstruction Era South to pursue a silver rush in the last untamed corner of the Western frontier, the youngest son must overcome a loveless marriage, his abusive father’s manipulative control and a curse he comes to understand as “the legacy of reticence” to find his own way with a Chiricahua girl struggling to balance her love for her people and the White Eye settler across the final years of the Apache Wars.
It’s been one heck of a journey to this point. Here’s just a little of what went into this story:
📖 13 months of outlining, writing and editing
📖 Traveled to Silver City, New Mexico, and throughout the Gila River Canyonlands to research the setting
📖 Read a half dozen classic Western novels and watched 30+ Western movies (OK, this “research” was pretty fun)
We’ll see where this one goes and if it can find any traction with publishers, but I can say this without a doubt: This is my seventh novel manuscript, and I poured my heart and soul into this one at a deeper level than I’ve ever done before. I let it rip. I went to places that hurt and were painful to look at.
I love it, and that’s enough. But I hope, one day, a lot of people will love it, too.
In the spirit of sharing, here’s the first scene:
Walker Canyon
Part 1: 1873
Chapter 1: Silver City
Wagon wheels did not yet creak along the rutted trail. Nor did goats and children bleat complaints at the hot sun. Men were yet to whip their mules and curse the day’s grievances. Women had not begun to stare into the bleak, lonely distance.
Nighttime was a reprieve. The few hours of peace for westbound settlers, when they renewed their resolve to face another day of drudgery that obscured the razor’s edge they walked between survival and death.
Birds had not yet begun to sing on the banks of the Rio Grande, but Tad Walker was awake, tending hot coals in the fire pit he had labored to dig out of hard, rocky earth. Ma slipped out from her wagon undetected, arms full of supplies she had secretly purchased in Santa Fe days earlier. She was tired, but her smile softened her sun-baked, wrinkled face. She loved a good surprise. She loved more her son showing care and attentiveness to his wife.
Tad took sugar and butter and eggs from Ma and began to mix them as she had told him. He aimed to make Zelda a 1-2-3-4 cake for her 20th birthday, limits of the dusty trail Pa called Cooke’s Wagon Road be damned. Ma managed to work a cup of milk out of the pair of malnourished goats, stubborn beasts that had persevered across the width of the continent, from the cotton farm they abandoned in Alabama when the post-war South turned into something Pa could no longer abide. She scooped out the lumps and handed the milk to Tad. He folded it with the other ingredients to form a sweet batter. Ma watched carefully, concerned.
“You don’t want me to do that? It takes a practiced hand.”
“I want to do it myself. It’ll be specialer that way.”
She hovered anyway. “Well, you’re doing just fine. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out in a dutch oven, though.”
Ma greased the cast iron pot with lard to keep the cake from sticking. This was the part she fretted, the part of the plan she came up with, that would be her fault if it didn’t turn out. “You need even heat to make a cake. If that fire is full of hot spots, we’ll have a burnt birthday cake on one end and a wet mess on the other.”
“It’ll be fine, Ma.” The woman had raised three children, serving three square meals every day and feasts on holidays. And yet, somehow, Ma believed she had never cooked a single thing right. Tad poured the cake batter into the cast iron pot, which Ma covered with a heavy lid. She set it down carefully onto the bed of embers, then Tad grabbed a shovel and began to cover it with the sand and gravel that had taken him an hour to dislodge.
The first hint of gray lit a small range of desert foothills to the east. The songbirds were ready for their cue. A symphony arose from the willows and grasses populating the river wetlands that surrounded them. As they sounded the sweet alarm, men began to stir from their wagons. Most had a long day ahead, south and west away from the river into hard desert country. They would drive west along the Gila Trail to Arizona or some even as far as California. The Walkers had learned these settlers stories over weeks and months as allies in makeshift caravans traveling down the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis. A few were turning west straightaway with the Walkers, down the junction to Silver City — New Mexico territory’s newest boom town.
“She’ll be up soon,” Tad worried.
“That cake shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.” Ma surveyed the busying campsite, then looked far out to the west. She pointed at the tallest peak in the large mountain range that would be their guiding star to Silver City. “When the sunlight touches that peak, dig out the pot and slide the cake onto the platter. If I know Zelda, she won’t be the first to rustle up. There’s time.”
Almost as timely as the birds, little Erasmus crawled out of the wagon where he slept with his parents, Asa and Clara, and his older brother Harry. Erasmus had never been much of a sleeper. Only seven years old and small for his age at that, he was also light on his feet with a knack for sneaking. For all those reasons, not the least of which were his peculiar facial features, the family had always taken to calling him Mouse. “Whatcha cookin?” Mouse whispered in Ma’s ear as she squatted by the fire pit.
“God almighty, Mouse!” Ma started. “You like to scare me to death.” Tad shushed them both. Uncle Demus, Pa’s brother who slept on a ratty bedroll under a rattier buffalo fur, pulled the dusty cover over his head and grumbled his displeasure at the bother.
Clara and Asa, the middle of Ma’s three boys, followed Mouse from the back of their covered wagon, inside which Tad could see nine-year-old Harry still fast asleep, sprawled out across the now open space.
“Morning, brother,” Asa said. “How goes the surprise?” He was tall and lean like Tad, though his little brother had outgrown him in the last couple years. Hair a thick auburn-brown like Ma’s, he was the only Walker boy to escape Pa’s bright red hair, dry and bristly like the desert.
“Fine, I reckon.”
Asa held his hand over the filled in fire pit, testing its heat. Clara offered everyone a morning embrace as was her custom. “Well, it smells mighty fine. I’m sure it’ll be a powerful success,” she said.
By the time the sun’s first light struck the western peak, Ma’s prediction had come true. The cake was ready and the entire family, save Zelda and Harry, partook in the morning’s activities.
Uncle Demus joined Pa and Abner readying the mules, fixing them into position to lead the three Walker wagons. “Why do I gotta fix up Tadpole’s mules?” Abner complained. Past 30 years and the oldest of Pa and Ma Walker’s boys, Abner lived with the entrenched belief that being the eldest and heir entitled him to doing the least and commanding his brothers about like a prince.
“Tad’s busy doing woman’s work, which I can’t seem to break him of.” Pa glared back at his youngest, who was worrying over the cake. Abner chuckled, thinking he was in on the joke. “You won’t be laughing after I pop you in the mouth. Yer fixing up Tad’s mules cuz I told you to fix up Tad’s mules.”
Melinda breastfed baby Lilme, whose Christian name was Wilhelmine, after Ma, from the back of her and Abner’s wagon. She and her eldest, Georgie, whom she could not believe was now three and no longer the baby at her breast, sat watching the commotion over the dutch oven. Crowding the fire pit, Ma and Clara fussed over Tad as he slid the cake onto Ma’s old silver platter, one of the heirlooms she refused to part with for the great Walker migration from the green foothills of Northern Alabama to the desiccated, dry desert of New Mexico. To hear them squawk, you’d like to believe the cake had stuck to the cast iron and turned to a ruined mess. But from Melinda’s vantage, a perfect disk, browned just right, slid onto the platter. It smelled lovely, too, as was evidenced by Nicole silently drifting from the periphery toward the treasured sweet.
“Nicole, don’t you dare think about touching that cake with those grubby fingers,” Melinda warned. “Go wash up by the river. I can’t bear to look at your dirty face.” Nicole was Abner’s daughter from his first wife, who Abner married in his rogue days hiding out with hillbillies in the Ozarks to dodge conscription in the war. The wife died in childbirth. Melinda didn’t intend to be cruel to Nicole, but the truth was she found it a challenge to love another woman’s child like a mother. That Nicole was a mute did not endear her any more to Melinda. She always intuited sass and ill-intention in the girl’s mannerisms. Those feelings steered Melinda to an alien meanness, which took on a wicked cruelty with the knowledge Nicole could never smart talk her back. It had only gotten worse since Lilme was born.
Clara gave Nicole a hug and invited her to help with the arrangements. Thank God for her sister in law, Melinda thought. Clara’s beauty was only topped by her saintliness, as far as Melinda was concerned. Nicole was 13 and should be learning all the ways of women, so Melinda was truly grateful for Clara, who had always wanted a daughter to sew with and teach to paint but instead got two roughhousing boys. Whatever Melinda’s misgivings about her stepdaughter, she could appreciate the love Clara poured into Nicole through those warm eyes, dark and sparkling as desert night.
Zelda emerged from the covered wagon she and Tad had shared with Ma and Pa for months on the long drive west. Despite the unwelcome closeness to her in-laws, she always managed a good sleep. She appeared bleary eyed, stumbling a bit as her limbs sought upright equilibrium. Yet, her golden straw hair was pulled back neatly and she wore her finest dress. It was her birthday, after all. She expected to be celebrated, and so she intended to look worth celebrating.
“What’s all the commotion?” she said. Just then, her nose turned to the direction of the still-steaming cake. “And what is that delightful scent?” Holding the platter as if it was a crown being presented to a queen, Tad revealed the cake. “Is that for me?” Zelda touched her heart, feigning surprise.
Tad began to sing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and the rest of the Walkers joined along, even Abner and Pa, who took a break from the mules. Properly feted, Zelda smiled ear to ear. Tad’s grinning face hid more complex notions as he set the platter down before Zelda. Look how beautiful she is. If only she could smile and be this happy more than once in a moon. He tucked the nasty thought away as Ma presented Zelda with a knife to cut the cake.
“Happy birthday, Zelda. I’ll have you know that Tadpole made this cake all by hisself.”
“Is that so?” Zelda teased. They had been married less than a year, and they still struggled to meet on firm ground. Playfulness did not come easily to her, though Tad thrived on it, and so Zelda tried.
“I watched him make the whole thing myself,” Clara said, lying only a little. “He mixed that batter better’n an old house slave.”
“My husband, a house slave? Now that arrangement, I would enjoy.” Zelda sliced the cake and handed it out in handkerchiefs Ma had set next to the platter. Miraculously, Harry appeared just in time to nab the first slice. Clara lovingly smacked her boy’s hand as he tried to take the first bite before everyone was served. There was just enough cake for every Walker, all 13 of them save the baby, to receive a slice. It did not escape Ma’s attention that Zelda preserved for herself the largest, but she supposed that was alright, given that it was her birthday cake. No one in the family took a bite, waiting for Zelda.
“Well, you gonna dig in or let us all stand here and starve to death?” Melinda — blond, blue eyed and big boned, a giant of a woman from pure Swedish stock — wore a smile as big as her substantial milk-swollen bosom.
“Alright, alright. It’s just so pretty, I can’t believe it. I can barely bring myself to disturb it.” But that she did, as Zelda set aside her ladylike airs to inhale a substantial mouthful of cake. At first, bliss. She closed her eyes and tossed back her head in ecstasy. Tad turned to Ma with the dumb grin of a boy who just caught a frog. He had pulled it off. He had done the impossible, pleasing the unpleasable, through sweets, one of the only safe paths to navigate Zelda’s prickly demeanor. But then she stopped chewing; her face soured. The other Walkers had begun to eat, singing the cake’s praises and thanking Ma and Tad for the gift. But Tad and Ma both watched Zelda as she spat the wet ball of chewed cake to the ground.
“What is it, darling?” Tad kneeled next to her, a gentle hand on her knee.
“Did you use goat milk in this?”
Tad looked to Ma, his brothers, their wives, to anyone who could save him. The weight of another day in Zelda’s infinitely capacious doghouse fell onto his shoulders, shrinking him.
“Blast it, Tad. You did. You did use goat’s milk. You fool of a Walker, you know goat milk makes me ill.” She tossed the rest of that largest, perfectly good piece of cake into the fire pit and stomped away toward the wagon. She did her best to hide the tears streaming from her face, which were the reason she fled so quickly. She hated to be seen crying, which was a severe challenge on the open trail, sharing a covered wagon, given that she cried so often.
“Griselda, stop. It’s my fault. I gave him the milk. I ruined it.” The words tumbled from Ma’s lips as she sought some way, any way, to save her youngest from this embarrassment.
Zelda shouted back, now hidden inside the wagon. “He should know how to take care of his wife. I’ll be sick all day.”
The sound of her sobs carried over the campsite. Families from adjacent camps looked over to see what the fuss was about. A great shame fell over Tad as he felt Pa, Ma, his brothers, their wives, bursting with pity. Only the children seemed unperturbed, used to infantile outbursts among each other. Harry carefully picked Zelda’s discarded piece of cake out of the fire pit and knocked off the ash. “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt,” he sang.
The family broke back to their usual morning tasks, leaving Tad to his disappointment. The smell of coffee and cornmeal pancakes soon wafted in the air, mixing with Zelda’s waning sobs. Gifted with a more expressive heart than any of the Walkers by blood, Melinda found a quiet moment to wander over to Tad as she burped Lilme, who had remained quite peaceful through the morning ordeal. She touched a hand to Tad’s shoulder. “She’s not worth a darn when she’s like that, Tadpole. She ought to learn to treat you right, praise you for good intent instead of punishing every mistake.”
Only a few feet away, Zelda’s sobs grew loud again. Though he was thankful for Melinda’s support, Tad raised his finger to his lips to shush her. He didn’t want Zelda’s recovery from her state of melancholy to take any longer. Melinda, however, was unconcerned with such consequences. She turned to the wagon and spoke even louder. “Well, what if she does hear? Serves her right to know where she stands. It’s the second best birthday present she’ll get today.”
Melinda smiled at Tad, touched his boyish cheek, and walked away to chase after Georgie, who as per usual was tagging along in Harry and Mouse mischief. The older boys were poking at an agitated scorpion with a stick. Tad made his way to the wagon, where he carefully opened the cover. When Zelda didn’t yell at him to go away, he knew enough time had passed. He slid into the wagon to start the painful, slow process of repair.
“You know my parents always made me eat food that made me sick,” she whimpered.
“I know, darling.” He laid down next to her and stroked her wet cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s just harder to do everything right out here like we did back east.”
A Thanksgiving Feast: 2 Short Stories Published in 1 Week
As if Thanksgiving wasn’t already good enough, it’s been especially giving this year as not one, but two, of my short stories were published during the holiday week. These things get accepted months in advance and you often don’t know when they’re going to get released out into the world. But here we are, in feast week for Jay Hodgkins short fiction.
First up came “Eyes in the Woods,” PERFORMED in the NoSleep Podcast’s Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 19. I say performed because NoSleep is, well, as the name implies, a podcast, and the narrator, actors, composer and whole production team really did an incredible job bringing this story to life.
I have to admit, I hadn’t read or thought about this story in a while, and as I listened to it, I got goosebumps and felt the hair raise up on my arms a couple of times. Spooky! Give it a listen for free at the link above.
Then a couple of days later came “White & Gray & Tie-Dye,” which was published in the December 2024 issue of Black Sheep Magazine. There’s unfortunately no way to get this one for free, but we’re here to support art and artists, right? It’s available for sale on Kindle or in print on Amazon at this link.
If you can afford the extra couple bucks, I say go for the print. The magazine publisher and illustrator, Wayne Kyle Spitzer, is quite talented and seems to have a ton of fun leaning in to hard sci-fi, fantasy and horror art. It makes the whole thing fun. And as with the voice performers and music of NoSleep, it’s quite the honor to have my words paired with someone else’s art to really elevate the whole story experience.
Happy Thanksgiving to all, and I hope you have room for a little Jay Hodgkins short fiction feast week during your holiday.
The Weirdest Thing I’ve Ever Written + Script Swag!
Of all the many things I’ve written (novel and graphic novel manuscripts, short stories, feature screenplays, TV pilots, corporate sustainability and investor reports, newspaper and magazine features, etc.), I’ve never written a short film script. So I decided to remedy that during a down week this summer, and it came out … weird.
Possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever written. So weird I honestly considered banishing it to the backwaters of my ‘Old Writing’ folder, never to be seen again. Just read this madness:
A serial killer seeks a cure for loneliness when he develops a special relationship with the severed hand of one of his victims, only to discover it points him in the direction of true love.
Yes, that’s a logline for TAKE MY HAND, the rare horror comedy romance musical short film. Alas, the discomfort of weird is often hiding the fact that weird is our creative self at its most original. So…I submitted the script to a couple of film festivals. The first results back?
- Semifinalist — Creative Screenwriting Shoot Your Short Screenplay Competition 2024
- Semifinalist — Filmmatic Short Screenplay Awards Season 9
Hey, nothing like the good feels of others embracing your weird. Given the nice early reception, I submitted TAKE MY HAND to a few other competitions, and we’ll see where it goes from there. It features a small cast in one location, and I could honestly see teaming up with filmmaker to produce this one myself and send it on to film festivals.
Contest season never stops, and here are a few other accolades that have come my way this year:
- Semifinalist — DAN OVERLAND (comedy feature), Richmond International Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2024
- Quarterfinalist — DAN OVERLAND, Portland Screenplay Awards
- Quarterfinalist — AEVUM (sci-fi drama TV pilot), Emerging Screenwriters Drama Screenplay Competition 2024
- Quarterfinalist — AEVUM, Filmmatic – Inroads Fellowship Season 7
- Quarterfinalist — AEVUM, Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards Season 9
Swag and Pitch Season
I’m a writer, so I spend a lot of time writing. And I edit. And I submit to contests. And I spend time worrying how to get my projects published or made. On that last point, I decided I’m going to get off my couch and do something about it this fall, and I’ll be pitching my paranormal horror feature screenplay THE TUNNELS at the Richmond International Film Festival in September and Austin Film Festival in October.
To get up on a stage and pitch producers, filmmakers and other industry folks, you gotta look good. So I’m going to look good in Jay Hodgkins screenplay swag. Behold: New threads for film festival season!
Out of the Lab with a New Horror Novel Manuscript
I’ve been quietly but quickly whittling away in the lab the last couple of months on a new horror novel manuscript that fits into a subgenre called “liminal spaces horror” that’s niche but very popular at the moment.
So what is a liminal space? You can find any number of descriptions of physical or emotional liminal spaces, but let’s go with the Wikipedia definition, which catches both the physical and emotional state of being:
A place or state of change or transition; this may be physical (e.g. a doorway) or psychological (e.g. the period of adolescence). Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of “in-between”, capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people. The aesthetic may convey moods of eeriness, surrealness, nostalgia, or sadness, and elicit responses of both comfort and unease.
Wikipedia
The physical liminal space in my manuscript is a network of steam tunnels underneath a university campus. The emotional liminal space is the period of transition of my main characters, three college friends a few days from their graduation confronting both their past together and the uncertain future.
Ok, so the liminal space trope is fun for me as a writer to explore and nerd out on, but what’s this story actually about? Here’s the pitch I’ve just started sending to literary agents in hopes we can get this thing represented and ultimately published!
Steam doesn’t move like an animal’s breath. Sounds don’t hunt prey. The past can’t haunt you, not literally. But there are forces at work in the U Tunnels that will make you see things you’d rather forget.
When three soon-to-be college graduates seek one last adventure together in the steam tunnels under campus, they’re confronted by disturbing secrets from their past and discover the truth behind a student’s suicide their freshman year. Lost in the labyrinthine tunnel system and looking for an escape, Jeff, Amanda and Boner keep stumbling into surreal scenes that hold a haunting familiarity. Amanda relives emotional challenges faced after transitioning gender in school while Boner is confronted by generational trauma his family endured under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But it is Jeff’s past that pursues them all, slowly revealing the responsibility each must bear for the girl’s death.
At a tight 50,000 words, U TUNNELS is like the movie PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN meets Stephen King’s IT — a carefully crafted, slow burn of a revenge plot carried out by a woman who’s already dead. The target audience is young and new adults as well as any fan of liminal space and psychological horror. It would appeal to Stephen Graham Jones readers or those who have discovered Stephen King horror classics and wonder what’s next. Comparable titles include Jones’ THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS and NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS, THE MIDCOAST by Adam White, and ALL THE WHITE SPACES by Ally Wilkes.
One Last (Quick) Shout Out for Infinity Canvas
When I complete a new script, one of the first things I do is submit it to a few screenplay contests to 1) get a sense of how it stacks up against the work of others and 2) get feedback and notes to improve the script. It takes a while for contest results to trickle in, but the season for my feature-length sci-fi screenplay INFINITY CANVAS finally arrived — and it’s a good look.
I’ve mentioned here previously that it was named a finalist at FilmQuest Fest and a semifinalist in Stage 32’s New Voices in Animation contest. In the past couple weeks, it’s also earned a spot on The Short List for Barnstorm Fest and was a semifinalist at ZedFest.
I’m stoked for the accolades, which landed INFINITY CANVAS on Coverfly’s The Red List as a Top 20 sci-fi feature of the month in January.
I’ve also mentioned previously that I originally wrote INFINITY CANVAS as a graphic novel, before adapting it into a screenplay. On that front, I finished working with the incredibly talented Bohdan Kravchenko on illustrated sample pages to submit to literary agents. A couple of the finished pages are below, and I’m completely in love with them. Here’s to hoping an agent — followed by a publisher — feels the same way.
Infinity Canvas Gets More Flowers — and Art
It’s always fun to roll out a new screenplay competition laurel. The one above was earned by my feature-length sci-fi screenplay INFINITY CANVAS. The competition is still under way and I’ll find out if I made it as a finalist on November 22. Either way, it’s a nice follow-up for INFINITY CANVAS after it landed as an official selection and a Top 50 finalist at FilmQuest Fest.
I’ve been spending a lot of time marketing INFINITY CANVAS recently because, well, I love it. It’s based on a short story I wrote that was nominated for Best of the Net by Thirty West Publishing, so I’ve always had a sense there’s something special there. I love it so much, in fact, that I adapted that short story into a feature-length screenplay and a graphic novel.
Recently, I pitched the graphic novel to a literary agency and just when I thought they were about to offer representation — after they read the full manuscript and we exchanged several emails — they said they didn’t think they could sell it to a publisher without art. Well, that just begged the obvious next step.
So I found the best graphic novel artist I could find for this project and convinced him to partner with me as the artist for the graphic novel. We’re working on art for 10 sample pages right now, and I’m unbelievably happy with the early results. Here are a couple of the initial sketches (we’re hoping to have 10 completed sample pages before the new year).
First up, Monica and Lily — a woman and her daughter abandoned by their husband/father for a supposedly utopian metaverse — roam the apocalyptic Philadelphia streets seeking to create something beautiful out of the bleakness.
Next up, Daniel — the husband/father now living as an avatar in the metaverse — tries to find meaning in his virtual existence and cope with the grief of abandoning his family.
I’m looking forward to sharing the final art once it’s finished!
Sharing Is Caring: Dan Learns MJ Was a Prince Impersonator in DAN OVERLAND
I’ve started religiously following screenwriter Michael Jamin‘s podcast and social media posts about screenwriting and advice for writers. It’s a great resource for any writer trying to break into Hollywood. One of his themes is to “put your work out there.” Just put it out. Any way you can. So I’m going to take that advice with regular posts moving forward I’ll call “Sharing Is Caring.” Here, I’ll throw a few of my favorite pages from my scripts into the void and see what happens. At a minimum, I will entertain my mom. (Hi Mom!).
Kicking things off, three pages from my feature-length comedy screenplay OVERLAND DAN. Here, the titular Dan — a paraplegic war vet who has taken on a second act as a “motivational doer” — discovers our protagonist Michael — a sad suburbanite — used to be a Prince impersonator. Let me know what you think, and feel free to share these pages with anyone you think might be interested.
Infinity Canvas an Official Selection and Finalist at FilmQuest, a Mecca for Fantasy and Sci-fi
I’ve always been a fan of hard sci-fi. Star Wars nerd? Guilty. Dystopian sci-fi like “1984,” “Brave New World” or “The Matrix.” Most definitely. Even emphasis-on-sci sci-fi like “The Martian.” But as a writer, I’ve tended to lean more toward fantasy. I’m not a big fan of rules and fantasy has none, really. Sci-fi, on the other hand, demands you respect science or at least scientific theory. Sci-fi fans delight in the mix of real scientific possibilities inflicting chaos on fictional realities.
So it was with some trepidation that I wrote INFINITY CANVAS, first as a graphic novel manuscript and then adapted as a feature-length screenplay. It’s about a father and daughter who navigate surreal virtual worlds, apocalyptic Philadelphia streets and a repressive tech corporation’s surveillance state to reunite years after the father abandoned his family for a supposedly utopian metaverse. I felt I could pull it off because I’ve worked for years in the climate and clean energy space (the “real world” in the script is a near-future climate dystopia), and I took a keen interest in the metaverse as the popularity of the idea took off during the COVID pandemic (the evil corporation offers lifetime contracts to live in its immersive metaverse, which people do to escape the hopelessness of their world). That said, there was a lot of tech to parse, and you never know how you’ve done until you hold the finished product up to the fire.
Fortunately, the screenplay did not come back scorched from the judges at FilmQuest Fest, one of the premier sci-fi and fantasy film festivals in the country. In fact, it was just named an official selection of the festival and one of the Top 50 feature screenplays. I’ll find out if it placed in the Top 20, Top 5 or is the grand prize winner after the festival kicks off on October 26.
I must say, as someone who has spent a significant number of his childhood and adulting hours reading and watching sci-fi, it is a pretty cool feeling to have this little moment of validation from those who know good sci-fi best.
Now Signed With Literary Manager Eric C. Jones
“Excited” is just too bland a word. Elated? Ecstatic? Revelrous? Take your pick. I was feeling them all when Eric C. Jones of the Tobias Literary Agency offered to represent me as my literary manager for screenwriting work.
I queried Eric with my one-hour TV pilot THE BAD NEWZ in early July and he got back to me about two weeks later with a request to meet. Shout out to Melessa Sargant and the Scriptwriters Network for helping me prepare for the meeting. My feature HAPPY JACK won TSN’s 2022 Hollywood Outreach Program, and Melessa has made herself available to help in any way possible ever since. I thought my call with Eric in late July went well, but you just never know if you and your work is going to be just right for an agent or manager.
So when one week later, sitting on the shore of Lake Tahoe during a camping trip with my brother, I saw Eric’s email extending an offer of representation, suffice to say I was jubilant. Maybe it was just the thin mountain air, majestic mountains and the workings of a double IPA, but I was a little emotional, too. Every step in this process to become a published novelist and paid screenwriter is a challenging one. The odds are long. It’s one hell of a journey.
What’s next? Well, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are certainly muddying the waters, but when things clear, Eric and I will hopefully find happy homes for my scripts with producers/production companies who are going to be hungry for new work. Or, hopefully, someone will see the same spark in my work Eric did and hire me as a writer for a new project. It’s exciting to even put that hope in words. The journey might be long and hard, but I’m still making my way.
Good News for The Bad Newz
THE BAD NEWZ went on a hot streak this spring and early summer in film festival and screenwriting competitions. With the awards, it vaulted into the top 18% of all projects listed on Coverfly and also made Coverfly’s The Red List as one of the top 20 television pilots for the month of July.
In the past few months, THE BAD NEWZ placed as a semifinalist in the Scriptmatix Fellowship, Richmond International Film Festival, Your Script Produced Season 4 and Scriptmatix Pilot Season. It placed as a quarterfinalist in the Inroads Fellowship (Season 6).
HAPPY JACK continues to do well on the contest circuit, too. On the heels of a quarterfinalist placement in the 2023 Scriptapalooza Screenplay Competition, the script is now in the top 19% of all projects listed on Coverfly and made The Red List as a top 20 fantasy feature for the month of August.
Jay Hodgkins 