An Island of Stories

I left you all with a cliffhanger on Friday!! Well, all’s well that ends well. I am sticking with the Nellie Bly story (yay!)…. BUT, I am making an interesting plot twist. Instead of the film being about Nellie, it is going to be focused on one the patients that was there during the time she came through Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. I’m not going to say much more than that until I finish up writing, but I feel extremely good about this new direction. In fact, I think it will be better. I am still going to do the prequel short based on this undisclosed main character early next year. I think it’s more important than ever for me to find my voice through a short before taking on the feature – and that’s what I hope to accomplish with this next one. I still plan to start preproduction on my feature before the end of 2014. First things first though – and that’s the writing. Another great reason to take this direction is that I will have a lot more creative freedom with the narrative. This person may have existed, but not much is known about her. She is a blank canvas in a setting of which I am now very familiar. Many thanks to James, Meg and Wendy for the conversations over the weekend about this new approach. Not sure what I would do without such great (and knowledgable) sounding boards.

This past weekend I went to visit my sister Christy in Columbus. I love hanging out with all of them…her little family is so sweet. Her home is nestled in a very beautiful part of the woods with a lake in her backyard. It is peaceful and welcoming. The girls and I watched lots of movies, ate popcorn, and played. Christy’s third child, Owen, is due in just a few weeks!! My first nephew. My heart could explode!

Upon my return to Atlanta on Sunday, I went with some good friends to see the Hunger Games, followed up with a tour of the set of President Snow’s House (the Swan House)! A lot of the Hunger Games were filmed in this city. The Swan House being one location, and the Goat Farm Arts Center (District 12 set) was another. It’s crazy watching a big Hollywood film seeing things that you’ve walked through a million times. The Goat Farms Art Center is one of my favorite places in Atlanta. It is kind of an artist commune, and very hard to describe visually. It is literally a farm-type structure right next to downtown. Very odd and wonderful. The Swan House is giving tours of the many sets they provided for the film – you can buy your tickets here. They have a lot of photos from the production up as part of the tour. It is worth every cent.

For Thanksgiving, James’ mom and dad will be coming down from Cincinnati! We can’t wait to host them and stuff them alive. Looks like a little snow might fall tonight and into Wednesday morning – eeeks!! That makes me really excited. Doesn’t sound like it will stick, but will be fun none-the-less. I hope your Thanksgiving is full of love, comfort and dreams. I will be taking advantage of this time to get some writing done!