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.