Travis Heermann's Blog

Best Director – Sully Storms Milwaukee

So this weekend I traveled to Milwaukee, the great land of Wisconsin, to attend the Milwaukee Twisted Dreams Film Festival.

I did have cheese curds.

Twice. And it was glorious both times. Once deep fried, as per tradition, and once in something called Belgian Poutine.

I should have taken photos of the spectacular fall colors, but I was too awestricken.

Our little demon detective didn’t know what he was in for at the Times Cinema in Milwaukee. There were clearly sketchy characters about.

But he settled in next to me and we watched a great slate of short and feature films over the weekend.

Sully was shocked to discover that we had been nominated for two awards.

Best WTF Scene (if you’ve seen it, you know which one)Best Director

Those other three shorts also had some serious WTFery going on.

I wasn’t expecting anything at all, given how strong all those other shorts are. I really loved all of them, but then this happened.

It was an incredible surprise to be honored like that in front of fellow filmmakers and horror fans.

It’s also an incredible feeling to be recognized for the tremendous amount of work that went into this project, basically a year and a half of my life. I’ve been writing for a long time, and in my experience, such moments are few and far between. It definitely encourages me that I’m on the right track and should be doing more such projects. I don’t know what the next one will be yet, but there will be something. (Fiction fans, don’t worry, I’ll never stop writing books. It’s just a sharing of creative focus that I’ve been doing for a while.)

I’m so grateful to Milwaukee Twisted Dreams for screening it and to the jury for honoring me for all that work.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

I had a great workation with the family in San Francisco this week. Feel free to peruse my photo collection.

Haight-Ashbury

Yes, that’s right. The place where the Summer of Love was born. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane.

I was delighted to stumble upon Borderlands Books, a bookstore that’s legendary among science fiction and fantasy writers. It was first of several iconic bookstores we visited.

Golden Gate Bridge

I had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of times back in 2018, but this was the first time I walked across. Its grandeur as an engineering marvel cannot be overstated.

Alcatraz

The notorious prison is now a national park, full of ghosts and nesting sea birds. Because I was wearing my Chicago Cubs cap, one of the rangers took me aside and showed me Al Capone’s cell, #181. Six years after the prison was closed in 1963, a group of Native American activists took over the entire island and occupied it for 19 months.

If these walls could talk…

Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf

Sea lions moved into Pier 39 back in the 1990s and they’ve been there ever since.

Chinatown

Of course, there was dim sum to be had, and pork egg fu young.

Japanese Tea Garden

In the middle of Golden Gate Park lies a gorgeous garden setting created my Japanese immigrants, before it was yanked out of their hands when they were put in concentration camps in WWII. Its gorgeous, but what it lacks, I felt, was the many centuries of history that imbues such gardens in Japan. This one has lived only a century.

Muir Woods

The grandeur of nature in its most profound display. Holy crap.

The pale streaks in some of the images are not ghosts. They are an artifact of a cracked camera lens on my phone.

Lombard Street – The Crookedest Street in SF

The streets in San Francisco are insane, as you may have seen in movies. The grade on Lombard St. is like 27%, so steep that on the other side of the hill they turned the street into switchbacks.

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

Ah yes, some fun tourist kitsch. But no less cool for all that. And a surprising number of figures, way more than I have photos of here.

Murals

San Francisco murals and street art are just breathtaking, from Castro to the Mission District to Balmy Alley.

City Lights Books and the Beat Poets

A literary pilgrimage of sorts. How could an occasional poet visit San Francisco and not walk in the steps of the beat poets, visiting the Vesuvio bar and City Lights Books and sitting in the same chair as Kerouac, Bukowski, Ginsburg, Burroughs?

San Franciso

I had a great workation with the family in San Francisco this week. Feel free to peruse my photo collection.

Haight-Ashbury

Yes, that’s right. The place where the Summer of Love was born. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane.

I was delighted to stumble upon Borderlands Books, a bookstore that’s legendary among science fiction and fantasy writers. It was first of several iconic bookstores we visited.

Golden Gate Bridge

I had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of times back in 2018, but this was the first time I walked across. Its grandeur as an engineering marvel cannot be overstated.

Alcatraz

The notorious prison is now a national park, full of ghosts and nesting sea birds. Because I was wearing my Chicago Cubs cap, one of the rangers took me aside and showed me Al Capone’s cell, #181. Six years after the prison was closed in 1963, a group of Native American activists took over the entire island and occupied it for 19 months.

If these walls could talk…

Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf

Sea lions moved into Pier 39 back in the 1990s and they’ve been there ever since.

Chinatown

Of course, there was dim sum to be had, and pork egg fu young.

Japanese Tea Garden

In the middle of Golden Gate Park lies a gorgeous garden setting created my Japanese immigrants, before it was yanked out of their hands when they were put in concentration camps in WWII. Its gorgeous, but what it lacks, I felt, was the many centuries of history that imbues such gardens in Japan. This one has lived only a century.

Muir Woods

The grandeur of nature in its most profound display. Holy crap.

The pale streaks in some of the images are not ghosts. They are an artifact of a cracked camera lens on my phone.

Lombard Street – The Crookedest Street in SF

The streets in San Francisco are insane, as you may have seen in movies. The grade on Lombard St. is like 27%, so steep that on the other side of the hill they turned the street into switchbacks.

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

Ah yes, some fun tourist kitsch. But no less cool for all that. And a surprising number of figures, way more than I have photos of here.

Murals

San Francisco murals and street art are just breathtaking, from Castro to the Mission District to Balmy Alley.

City Lights Books and the Beat Poets

A literary pilgrimage of sorts. How could an occasional poet visit San Francisco and not walk in the steps of the beat poets, visiting the Vesuvio bar and City Lights Books and sitting in the same chair as Kerouac, Bukowski, Ginsburg, Burroughs?

Ronin Trilogy Facelift!

Thanks to a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, we now have new covers for the Ronin Trilogy. Coming soon!

New Short Story! “The Palaces of Ganymede”

I have a new short story to share with you! Call the genre slipstream because it contains elements of both fantasy and science fiction.

Where is the music of Ganymede coming from?

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, larger even than Mercury and Pluto, covered in a crust of water ice over a hundred miles thick, covering oceans of liquid water hundreds of miles deep.

And there’s something intelligent there, something powerful enough to manipulate gravity itself.

Gen33 is an expendable clone sent to investigate this “music” of Ganymede, but Gen is not prepared for what awaits.

You can find it here!

Tokyo Blood Magic Review – MEAN REVIEWS

There’s a new book review show burning up the YouTubes, Mean Reviews: No Stars Given.

It’s fun and silly, a fresh take on book review shows. The first half of the show is about Tokyo Blood Magic. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/live/lQCB5QHSLD8?feature=share

Kickstarter! Ronin Trilogy Renovation

We’re giving the Ronin Trilogy a facelift!

All new editions!

Trade paperbacksEbooksAudio booksLimited Edition Hardcovers!

And with Stretch Goals we’re aiming at new, fan-driven fiction in the Ronin universe.

Please help us kick this project into the stratosphere!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/travisheermann/ronin-trilogy-renovation

And the Winner Is…

Last weekend, our devilish little short film Demon for Hire screened at the Days of the Dead Film Festival in Atlanta.

We were nominated for five awards:

Best ShortBest First-Time FilmmakerBest Costume DesignBest Production DesignBest Story

Lo and behold….

I’m incredibly grateful to the festival organizers and everyone who came out to watch it in the “Let’s Get Weird” Shorts Block.

It was truly an epic weekend and an incredible experience.

Demon for Hire to Screen at Days of the Dead Atlanta

Woohoo! Sully’s march through the film festival world continues!

Demon for Hire will be screening at the Days of the Dead Film Festival Atlanta, January 27-29, 2023.

Our little demon is scheduled to appear in the “Let’s Get Weird” Shorts Block at 6:30 on Saturday night.

If you’re a horror fan and/or in the Atlanta area, come and see us! We’ll be there, along with one of our cast members Dylan LaRay and Assistant Director Thomas Fowler.

Demon for Hire – How it’s Going

Whaddaya know, I’m a filmmaker now!

All these festival placements are starting to make me think it’s real.

Demon for Hire had its World Premiere on October 9 at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon, and I must say, sitting there in the audience, it was beautiful. It was incredibly gratifying to hear a live audience laugh when they were supposed to, go eww! when they were supposed to. We must have done a few things right in the making of this little beastie.

And now it’s just been selected for its second festival appearance, the Days of the Dead Film Festival in Chicago over the weekend before Thanksgiving.

And let’s not forget its screening at Mile High Con 54 in just a couple of days during my Hour with the Guest of Honor at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday in Main Programming.