
– What are your expectations for 2026?
Maybe the question should be “What are my hopes for 2026?” I would love for at least one of my many award-winning scripts to enter into production.
ALTA CALIFORNIA, for one, is a script that has won over 200 national and international awards. Its subject is particularly appropriate now given that Governor Newsom’s recently signed a bill requiring the true history of the Mission Era and its effect on California natives be taught in schools. As an immigrant, from Wales, I am surprised how many Californians cannot name one person, other than Junipero Serra, the “Good Padre,” from the Mission Era.
Then there’s my six-episode teleplay, young-adult fantasy adventure series, “The Boy Who Earned His Magic.” In it I use the relatively unexplored world of the differing characters, peoples, languages, myths and dramatic landscapes that make up my adopted country, the United States.
– What projects are you currently working on?
Whenever I receive a serious, professional critique of my work, I review it and make changes commensurate with the criticism.
At the end of the sixth episode of “The Boy who Earned His Magic,” there is a mystery, a forward: one of the characters had not returned home. And so, to my seventh episode.
Then there’s the continuation of “The Mongrel,” pilot for THE COMING MORROW. At the end of the pilot, Johnny Z, the mongrel, is captured! What now?
I am constantly reading and reviewing various prompts. For example, a story from Irish mythology prompted my mystery THE SCRIPT, A CELTIC HORROR TALE. There are other stories from Celtic mythology that are worth reviewing.
There could be other projects. As an elder in the writing community, I am continually seeking and creating. We live in very challenging times. I believe it is the task of the artist/writer to confront those challenges.
I am definitely not planning “to go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas)
– What would you ask event organizers in the film industry to do in order to support the creativity of highly talented independent artists like yourself?
Unfortunately, I see so many requests for scripts that seek to replicate a recent hit.
A cursory glance at some of these “experts” is revealing. So-and-so will read your script and talk with you for an hour. Cost $290! I fell for this and realized, in the case of two of these, the person hadn’t even read the script!
I had a career as an academic. I rose to the rank of full professor in a university. Some student’s work was not easy to read, but I always read everything and tried to offer some positive advice and hope. That’s what I ask.
I have won about 400 festival awards through FilmFreeway, ISA, MovieBytes, Wild Filmmakers, etc. I would really like to believe that someone reading one of my scripts has an avenue by which he/she can guide my script to a producer/agent/director and say, “You might want to read this!”
– What vision or desire currently guides your artistic choices?
As mentioned, in my “previous life” I was an academic teaching the works of dramatic writers, Celtic literature, humanities, critical thinking, philosophy, etc.
Variations of the earlier works often guide my decisions. “Ghost Town, N.M.,” for example, is a comic variation on a Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Pirandello’s Wife” is an example of my seeking the truth hidden behind an accepted untruth. When teaching Pirandello’s plays, I dutifully trotted out an accepted biographical “truth”: the playwright’s wife, Antonietta, was placed in an asylum for the last 40 years of her life. Reason? She inherited her father’s “gelosia suprema”/intense jealousy. I wondered if this was an acceptable rationale given details of her “lived experience.” And so was born PIRANDELLO’S WIFE, a stage play at first which later developed into a screenplay.
Questioning, questioning, aways questioning. Questions range from those about a character’s existential quests (Alta California), his/her wants desires, etc. to those involving the reworking of a character’s dialog/line over and over.







