Chris Todd

First in what will be a semi-frequent, somewhat occasional look at what's happening around Casa de Crow.

I should be working on my screenplay -- I've got a horror screenplay that's been half-finished for the last several weeks while I attended to some necessary home maintenance -- but instead I came up with an idea for a short story last week. I don't get many ideas for short stories and this one was vivid enough that I decided I needed to get it down on the page and out of my system. It's an existential horror story told as a fairy tale titled "Box: A Nightmare"; in some ways it's a reverse zombie story, even though there are no zombies in it. Hopefully all of that will make more sense once it's finished.

Then I'll be finishing the screenplay, which does have zombies in it -- definitely the slow-moving kind, and definitely the kind that want to come eat you -- but there are a few twists that will hopefully set it apart from all the other zombie films floating around right now.

Otherwise, I attended a workshop on horror writing taught by Joe Lansdale and Neal Barrett Jr. over the weekend. It was a fun afternoon, and interesting to listen to both authors talk about their writing and some of their experiences in the industry. I was surprised to learn how much of Bubba Ho-tep was semi-autobiographical. And, in the grand tradition of the Native Americans who let no part of the buffalo go to waste, I took a snippet that we did for a writing exercise and figured out a way to incorporate it into my short story.

And I finally managed to write my lengthy, somewhat rambling reaction to Alan Moore's Promethea below; I'd put off writing it in order to arrange my thoughts, but then I realized that could take a while and it'd be so much easier to just splash around a bunch of high-minded ideas with only a general nod in the direction of rhyme and reason. The short version: highly recommended, but not for everybody. I'm intending to have a review of Tzameti (13) up sometime soon, maybe along with a short piece looking at the new wave of British horror films as exemplified by Descent and Creep -- but don't hold me to that. Depending on what I watch over the next few days, I could be inspired by something completely different. I've been jonesing to watch The Gronholm Method (aka El Metodo) to see if it lives up to the reviews, and I've also got a copy of the "forgotten" Jean-Pierre Melville film L'Armée des ombres that's high on the list. Oh yeah, and Peter Jackson's King Kong has been sitting on my shelf for a month; may have to tackle that this weekend.

But tonight: "Alias." Yes, I'm an "Alias" addict. There will doubtless be a postmortem on that in a few weeks.

Never a dull moment. Hope everyone else is having fun.