One of the coolest parts of filmmaking is that it is a very collaborative medium, so you get to work with tons of talented folks on all the various parts. On our upcoming horror anthology, BOUQUET OF SHADOWS, we have a couple ringers on our team for the writing part. One of them is a horror writer from Minnesota, named Paul Walther.
Paul has had stories published in tons of magazines, both paper and online, and in 2008 his story "Splitfoot" appeared in the prestigious annual anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by genre legend Ellen Datlow. It was also one of five nominees for best short story of 2008 by the International Horror Writers Guild.
"Splitfoot" is a real doozy, and I fell in love with it the minute I read it. An amazingly creepy, ambiguous nightmare of a story that starts smack dab in the middle of a really bad situation and features characters and setting so well-drawn that you get sucked right into the nightmare. For horror geeks, like me, it's heaven!
I took a chance upon reading it and looked up Paul's website, www.paulwalther.com (which besides being a cool author site, is also responsible for making me a fanatical reader of Cake Wrecks and the adventures of Action Squad). I ended up writing an e-mail to Paul, asking if he might be interested in collaborating on a low-budget short horror screenplay, and weirdly enough-- he was! Woo Hoo!
Now it's several months later and Paul is about halfwayish through that script, and it's shaping up quite nicely. It tells the decidedly un-heartwarming story of a bunch of hardened-but-not-necessarily-real-bright criminals, a farm where they are attempting to make a last score before disbanding, and a BAD THING that may or may not be happening. It is going to star our version of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt-- Kristin Beckett and Tom Szymanski, and I am REALLY excited about how it's turning out.
Paul is a hell of a writer, with a voluminous knowledge of horror literature and an inspired way with character, inference and suspense. If we don't mess it up by shooting it funny, I think this section of the anthology is gonna RULE!
Check out Paul's site, if you are interested. It's got a previously unpublished story, his entire bibliography, a guestbook, etc.
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Does this mean that Kristin and I have to adopt 3rd world babies? Because I don't have the money for that... or the time. I'm working on a model of Buckingham Palace, entirely made out of toothpicks. If I had a kid, it would take me years to finish!
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