My newest short story is called A Coyote at Beckett’s. It’s about Sam Shepard (actor, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, fiction/non-fiction writer) performing with my Irish band in Santa Barbara (true!) and the ramifications of that performance (fiction!). I’ll be reading it this month (June 2026) at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was a finalist for …
This information is found on numerous sites on the internet. I just wanted to reinforce its significance. One of the most important reasons Pixar’s work touches so many people is their belief in the importance of good storytelling. Pixar knows that visual beauty means nothing without: 22 Rules of Storytelling Here are Pixar’s …
Screenwriter Clay Frohman brought this movie to my attention to show that—even when a director has finished the movie he wrote and spent millions on—it can be a complete nothing for an audience. Sometimes an editor is the only one with enough insight and distance from the writer and director to make an actual satisfying, …
Danger, Will Robinson. This is a time for slowing down and reading, lots of wonderful books out right now. Just finished Ann Patchett’s novel Dutch House, Ta-Nehisi Caotes’ The Water Dancer, and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing. Rich reading, all of them. Different times, places and people. My 2021 short story, called Clouds, won …