Introduction

I am the author of the upcoming book My Heart Has No Home: A Grief Journal, a moment-by-moment account of my experience grieving the sudden death of my wife, Amy K.W. Heil – what I felt, how I healed, and what I learned.

I want to identify as a screenwriter, but as with most of my 25-year IT career, I find myself collecting multiple hats in my literary pursuits. I have always loved playing with words, and remember at the age of four referring to my elbow as my “ell bone” – because my arm was ell shaped. Growing up, I read constantly (200 books one summer for a library contest), engaged in creative word usement with my siblings (many nouns were verbed), and actually enjoyed writing essays in school.

In high school I began to see myself as a writer, thanks to a creative writing class – where I wrote my first story by imagining it as a movie – and encouragement from my favorite English teacher.  In college, I tried to become a geophysicist, but ended up with a job writing press releases and a B.A. in Linguistics (perhaps the acme of word and language geekery), after which I stumbled into IT.  Even then, I still often found myself crafting with words as a technical writer.

Along the way, I dabbled with short poetry, flash fiction, short stories, a novelette, and a novel, and starting a non-fiction book on sustainability.  Then in 2007, I discovered and fell in love with screenwriting, which became the focus of my writing life.  Well, except for the long poem I published in 2016.  And the memoir I ghostwrote in 2017.  And the graphic novel project I started in 2019.  And that playwriting class.  And now this new non-fiction book.

Projects

My Heart Has No Home: A Grief Journal

  • Type: Non-fiction book
  • Genre: Death/loss/grief
  • Description: When my wife died, I began to post on Facebook about what I was going through in grieving her.  The book compiles those posts along with reflections as I look back at them.
  • Status: Text complete, working on pre-publication details

Red Devils

  • Type: Feature screenplay
  • Genre: Monster-in-the-water horror thriller
  • Logline: Two families vacationing on a yacht must survive an attack by hordes of ravenous jumbo squid while an old secret comes to light that turns them against each other.
  • Status: Completed, listed on blcklst.com

Confession

  • Type: Short film
  • Genre: Hitchcock-style drama adaptation of a scene from Richard III
  • Logline: A ruthless CEO, having schemed his way to the top of his family’s company, faces the specters of all those he’s squashed and eliminated to achieve his success – before everyone comes after him.
  • Status: Development

Monkey Puzzle

  • Type: Feature screenplay
  • Genre: Supernatural thriller
  • Logline: When an obsessive young woman loses her job, her new preoccupation with an elusive botanical society uncovers a terrible occult plot.
  • Status: Second draft, rewrite in progress

What It’s All About

  • Type: Short film
  • Genre: Supernatural drama comedy
  • Logline: When a young woman struggling with her grandfather’s death finds herself trapped in the apartment next door with two strangers, she must overcome her anger to work with them and get out.
  • Status: Development

Murphy’s Slaw

  • Type: Short story
  • Genre: Supernatural humor
  • Logline: Fiona Murphy tells the story of her complex and contentious relationship with coleslaw and its interaction with Murphy’s Law.
  • Status: Seeking publication

Nevermore

  • Type: Graphic novel adaptation of a parody of Poe’s “The Raven”
  • Genre: Parody
  • Logline: The raven spills the beans on what really happened that dreary December night.
  • Status: Fundraising for art

Rubbish

  • Type: Feature Script
  • Genre: Family sci-fi comedy
  • Logline: Two teen siblings, one a slacker, the other an overachiever, must overcome parental misunderstanding and their own conflicts to prevent aliens from using Earth as a garbage dump.
  • Status: Third draft, rewrite in progress

Reversing

  • Type: Feature script
  • Genre: Family drama
  • Logline: In the face of her failing marriage, a retired woman sets out to discover what happened to her older sister, who died at age 3 – and uncovers a terrible tragedy buried in the past.
  • Status: Script preparation

Voices from the Void

  • Type: Graphic novel sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness”
  • Genre: Lovecraft-style sci-fi thriller
  • Logline: Marisa, a young Latina who feels responsible for her sister’s death, seizes a chance to redeem herself by investigating a friend’s murder, but his trail leads inexorably to the conclusion that the past is a lie – and conceals an alien secret.
  • Status: Script rewrite

 

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