Well, hush my mouth

THE JOHN MILIUS SCREENWRITING AWARD

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the FEATURE FILM category of the TalNexus SmashCut Screenplay Competition will be honored with The John Milius Screenwriting Award.

John Milius is one among the few iconic screenwriters of the last 50 years.

From Robert Duval on the shores of Vietnam “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like, victory.” in Apocalypse Now, and Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day.” as Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact, to that touching moment at the graveside in Saving Private Ryan when former Pvt. Ryan asks, “Did I live a good life?”, Milius is responsible for some of cinema’s most iconic moments as …

Continue Reading

Novel Research: It ain’t all glory.

Today, my wife Alisa and I were out and about in the woods of East Texas, doing research for my next project (which I can’t really tell you about…I want y’all to be surprised when you read it…I’m sure you understand).

Here are a couple of pix that might contain hints.

 

 

 

Then again, they might not:

…

Continue Reading

A New Unit of Measurement

I was happily showing my 24-year-old son, Cameron, the draft ms of By the Hands of Men, Book Four:  Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen.  

All 109,000 words and 367 pages.

He took a look at and, apparently unimpressed, observed: “Looks like you’ve got about a quarter of a Martin there.”

So, in case you’ve ever been looking for a way to quantitatively describe a book, there’s your unit of measurement.  A Martin.

That’s my boy.…

Continue Reading

“I found myself ‘finding’ ‘creating’ and ‘needing’ time to read.”

Awfully kind praise from novelist and blogger Connie Huddleston:

I needed to read an adult book.  I chose a very good one. I found myself “finding” “creating” and “needing” time to read.  Being an historian, I have studied The Great War, now called World War I; however, that front line horror of war is hard to tell. Griffis brought the story right to me with words that created characters whom I quickly came to enjoy so much I had to read. Set in a military hospital, very near the front line, The Old World is actually the story of a group of about six characters and their existence, their human drama, during the war. The story delivers fear, horror, love,

…
Continue Reading

Antifa: A New KKK for Woke DemocratsToday!

 

LibProgs have gone insane over the realization that half of America voted for the wrong candidate.  This election belonged to the Democrats.  The 1000-year Reich Reign Of Enlightenment was within their grasp.  The Living Constitution would be beaten into compliance with whatever principles (okay, whims) were agitating the Dems at the time.  Smart Science™ would be supreme, with jail time for Climate Change deniers…er, dissenters…ah, hell, call them what they are, heretics.  Journalists would once more return to their rightful places at the seats of power––no, not providing their faces as seat cushions, but it’s not an unreasonable guess.

And history would have been rewritten to reflect higher truths.  From the NYTimes with their trendy “Sex in Communist …

Continue Reading

The Paper of Record Just Recorded They’re All Right with Racism. Really.

Or: “The black people were surprisingly good last night…”

 

One of my personal failings (well, the only one I feel like admitting) is I have a strong fairness impulse. It was the whole Martin Luther King thing, judge people by the content of the character not the color of the skin. My father, who had grown up in the deep South surrounded by virulent racism, introduced me to the concept, mostly by the way he lived his life, treating everyone he met with the same courtesy, fairness, and respect.  It was what made me a nascent liberal as a young man.

That belief in fairness was the same thing that drove me away from Liberals. Growing up, my experiences with

…
Continue Reading

I’ve always liked donkeys

Don’t know why.  Maybe it’s something about their faces.  They seem to take life very seriously.

Some “Saint Christopher’s” wild donkeys my wife and I ran across during a bike ride outside of Las Vegas.

Turns out in Texas (where we moved and are enjoying a great deal), there are places with more donkeys than local forage for them.  Rather than euthanize them, the state allows people to adopt these donkeys.  Basically, you are fostering the donkey on your land.

Since I hate the idea of animals suffering (see my first By the Hands of Men novel for more on that)…

 

…once we get some good green East Texas acreage, I plan on adopting.  Since they’re herd animals, it …

Continue Reading