Productive day with good news

Brendan's talking to me and this is better than a casual conversation. Yesterday we established his date of birth -- February 2, 1956...sort of a joke on his part but it works and helps me clarify him. And he's now showing a playfulness in his character that I was afraid wasn't there. So I focused on establishing his buddies -- 2 of them Protestants living in The Fountain area of Derry -- and a health problem he has that comes into play, later. Overall, I'm up to 34,500 words and still have the feeling it's going to wind up being about 120K. Guess the end of the year is a more realistic goal for completion than I initially thought, since I'm also up for a storyboarding job for an ad agency and that will take some time, for sure...but boy, can I use the money.

Got some very good news -- "The Lyons' Den"...a script I wrote about a gay writer under a deadline who goes to an isolated cabin to work but winds up in the middle of political payoffs, scandal, murder and romance...was given Honorable Mention at the One In Ten Screenplay Competition. That's like 4th place for them, a cut above Finalist. It surprised me, because it was a last minute substitution for another script -- "Dair's Window." That one was a finalist in last year's competition but I wasn't aware of it till after I'd submitted it into this year's competition to give it a second chance. Then as I was setting up my Award-winner's page at Winning Scripts (see http://www.moviebytes.com/ws/WinningScripts.cfm?Author=Kyle%20Michel%20Sullivan) I ran across the e-mail 1 In 10 sent me last year; seems it came as I was in the middle of a lot of turmoil and I'd never opened it.

So I contacted them and they very kindly let me substitute LD for it. I didn't expect much...but that was my only other gay script and I figured I'd paid the entry fee so give it a shot...and now I have a total of 11 screenplays that have done well in competitions, 9 of which I can still offer up; the other two -- one's an adaptation of Beryl Markham's life from a biography of her, so I don't own the rights to the story, and the other is sold.

What surprises me most about "The Lyons' Den" achieving this is, it's really more of a play. A farce that starts off quietly, is locked into that one location, takes place in the space of 2 hours and builds to where there's lots of running around and slamming doors with the hero naked and talking to his 2 1/2 fictional characters (it makes sense in the script), guns firing, people being kidnapped and killed and 14 other characters of various trustworthiness bouncing all over the place all at the same time. But what the hell, I takes it where I can gets it.

Okay...time to end this. Mom wants to tell me about her bowel movement.