Jeff Strand's Blog, page 26

The Movie Of The Book About The Movie!

I’ve been talking about writing a screenplay adaptation of one of my books. Now I can blab that the book was The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever, which was optioned by Scott Winlaw and Craig George (who will be producing and directing together) of Binge Bros. Productions!

There’s an official press release and four pieces of concept art on their website. Check it out HERE.

January 14th

I’m back! Actually, I’ve been back from the cabin since Thursday night, but I wasn’t able to get WordPress to work on my computer. In fact, I still can’t. After a few days of trying (by which I mean a few minutes a day for a few days, not a few solid days of effort) I discovered that it works on my Chromebook. The Chromebook was supposed to be my “Writing Only” device, but I guess I’ve added “website updates” to its functions.

I got quite a bit done on Secret Project #1 and Not-Secret Project: Hazel, my next novel. The drive home was supposed to be five and a half hours, and my wife and I ended up making the heroic sacrifice of skipping our trip to the alligator farm in favor of getting home early, getting fully unpacked, and getting a good night’s sleep so we could wake up early in the morning and back to work.

A car accident (not us) caused a half-hour delay. We had no idea how ironic “Well, that kind of sucked” would turn out to be, because we would end up being stopped in traffic (dead stop, engines off, desperately wishing there’d been a more recent pee break) for three and a half hours. Less than a mile ahead, there’d been an accident that involved a semi flipping over and then being struck by several of the cars that had been driving behind it.

At the time, we couldn’t whine about it too much, because we didn’t know if there’d been any fatalities, and you don’t want to complain about a long traffic delay and find out that there’d been, y’know, human lives lost. There weren’t (though we drove by the semi and that thing was TRASHED) so I guess now I can whine about it all I want, though I’m less inclined to do so now that I don’t desperately have to pee.

Anyway, I’ll back with regular blog updates now.

January 7th

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Don’t be alarmed. I survived my encounter with the Moss Man. He ignites pretty easily.

I’m at a cabin in a Florida state park. There’s no wireless internet, but thanks to the magic of the year 2020 my computer is tethered to my cell phone’s data plan and I’m not required to live like a primate.

I’ve been taking an “I’m going to work on whatever the hell I want” approach for this week. Part of the time that has meant working on my novel Hazel, which is what I’m supposed to be working on. But I’ve also been working on a SECRET PROJECT that I have to admit may be of LIMITED INTEREST to many of you but others will be all like OH YEAH I’VE GOTTA READ THAT. I know when I want it to come out, but I’m not committing to a damn thing yet.

Heard back from the movie producers, who were “extremely pleased” with my screenplay. I am, of course, perfectly aware that in this biz it could be “We’re extremely pleased with your script…now change everything about it!!!” If you’re wondering which of my novels I’ve adapted, all will be revealed on Monday, January 13th.

 

January 2nd

The screenplay is officially off to the producers! Looking forward to some hot “addressing the feedback they give me” action in the upcoming weeks.

They’re ready to send out a press release…but I’m heading out of town tomorrow morning with potentially spotty internet access, so we’ve decided to hold off for a week so that I can click “Like” more quickly on the social media comments.

Yes, in what has become an annual tradition, my wife and I are heading down to a cabin in Florida to escape the “cold weather” (I put this in quotes in case somebody is reading this while gazing out at snow). It’s truthfully not going to be THAT much warmer down there than it is in Atlanta, but we didn’t know that when we booked the trip. I’ll take whatever extra warmth I can get.

I guess it’s a semi-vacation. I’ll still be writing, but I’ll be writing in a cabin in Florida. I’m bringing Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live to read and also Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling, which doesn’t come out until this summer but which I get to read early because I’m super famous and well-connected and sat across from Todd at Scares That Care.

I’ve got tentative writing plans for the first half of 2020. The definite one is a novel called Hazel (though the title itself may not be definite). Beyond that, I know what I’ve got planned, yet I also know how often those plans change, so if I say too much too soon I’ll look like a damned liar. But there’s cool stuff ahead, kids!

 

January 1st

Welcome to 2020! I spent much of today hacking away at my screenplay with a machete, cutting large chunks of delightfully amusing dialogue that I couldn’t bear to leave out when I was transforming the novel into a script. It’s still too long, but it’s not ridiculously too long.

I’m not mourning the missing jokes. They’re all still in the book. And, truthfully, even when I have to cut stuff from a book, where it’s gone forever, I shed a quick tear and move on. Both I Have a Bad Feeling About This and Stranger Things Have Happened  are missing a lot of jokes from the first draft I delivered to the publisher. Some cuts I agreed with and some I didn’t, but once they were gone I really didn’t spend much time whining about it. There were plenty of jokes left in those books, and there are plenty of laughs left in the script, even though I had to chop, chop, chop away at it since we’re not making Avengers: Endgame. 

Expect the big reveal of WHICH book I adapted soon. (The information is actually out there on the Internet…somewhere…)

 

December 31

Well, here in the Eastern time zone, it’s just about the end of 2019. I spent much of the day working on the second draft of my screenplay (down to 155 pages from 164), and tomorrow night it’ll be off to the producers.

2019 was a productive year. Four new novels:Ferocious, My Pretties, Clowns Vs. Spiders, andWolf Hunt 3. Sales success varied (My Pretties did extremely well, while many of the reviews expressed surprise that Clowns Vs. Spiders was actually a good book!) but they were all well-received.

I was surprised by how well Five Novellas did. Expectations were low, low, low, and I went out of my way to make it clear that none of this was new material, including purposely giving it a generic title. I may try a collection of all-new novellas in the future…

Expect a lot of new stuff in 2020. A new horror/suspense novel early in the year, and a book many people have been awaiting for a long time. Plus a super-scary novel that, if all goes well, you won’t see anytime soon.

Maybe some movie news? I’m not allowed to officially talk about anything except the adaptation of my book Disposal, but several books have been optioned (I’m only writing the script for one) and my role is basically to sit here and wait for updates.

Stay tuned…

December 28th

I finished the first draft of the screenplay adaptation of one of my novels (I’m not allowed to blab which one yet) this morning. I decided not to worry about the length with this initial pass, a fact that is obvious, since this draft would make a two-hour and forty-four minute movie.

So, yeah, I’ve got some cutting to do.

December 24th

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In the summer of 2017, I moved from Tampa, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. But I’d already committed to playing a small role in Lycanimator, so two weeks later I drove back down to Florida to portray the evil Dr. Cleighton.

My part involved a) sinister dialogue, and b) a lot of screaming. I honestly never realized I was so good at screaming. I also had to pretend to be dead of a recently torn-open neck–yes, it’s a spoiler, but I want you to brace yourself so that you’re not too heartbroken at the sight. I assume my fans will be outraged and call for the extermination of lycanimators across the nation. I hope they will take a deep, calming breath and realize that it’s just a movie. I did ruin a perfectly good shirt, though.

Anyway, the movie hits DVD in April 2020. Am I any good in it? That’s for audiences to decide, but, no, probably not.

More Lycanimator updates in the months to come…

 

 

December 21st

A double dose of book mail today! First was the (now sold out) Thunderstorm Books collector’s edition of My Pretties. Cover art by Frank Walls.

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And Laughing at Shadows, a horror/comedy anthology that contains my story “Captain Pistachio’s Charming Rampage.” The actual book won’t be available until March 2nd, but you can pre-order it HERE.

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The short film Hostile is in the “picture lock” stage, so if you watched it on mute, that would be the final product. Music and sound effects are presumably not far behind.

 

December 15th

Director Brett Kelly filmed Hostile today, based on my short story. Look at the props!

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And here’s a shot from the actual movie:

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The movie will probably only be three or four minutes long. Film festivals love really short flicks because they can squeeze more of them into the programming. “Gave Up The Ghost,” at 20+ minutes, got rejected from most places it was submitted; it would hog up too much time in a short films block!

I’m not sure what plans are in store for it, but I’ll share ’em here!

Yesterday was my birthday. If you forgot it, that’s okay, you have until the end of the year to buy one of my books to celebrate the occasion of my birth.