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I love costuming and prop building, but if I were to be honest, I’ve been a little disheartened with cosplay and costuming in recent months.   As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been suffering from pretty heavy depression since my surgery and car accident.   Then my former writing partner killed the Butch G. Cat project and flushed nine years of my life down the toilet.  All added up, I’ve felt the weight of the world on my shoulders in recent months.    

I’ve been unable to wear my Stormtrooper armor since the car accident as it is just too uncomfortable.  I have finally finished my chiropractor appointments this past week, so hopefully I can get back into it soon.   

At the last appointment with my psychiatrist, she said I needed to find my spark.   So I decided to set out and find it again.   

While browsing the 501st forums, I stumbled across a Havoc Trooper. This is a character from The Old Republic video game set over 3,000 years before the events in Star Wars: A New Hope.   I fell in love with this on first sight.  Over the next few weeks I will be fitting it and detailing the paint further and making it my own.

I think I may have finally just found my spark. I haven’t been this excited about costuming in a while.

I am also on the last chapter of Don’t Make Me Come Down There.  Hopefully the end of this slump is around the corner.

Yours healthily,

CWC

When I present or speak on panels at conventions, usually I’m talking about zombies or Star Wars or other pop culture items close to my heart. This year for Phoenix Comicon I plan to do something very different.  

When submissions open, I plan to submit a proposal to do a presentation/Q&A session on “Creating with Bipolar Disorder and Depression”. It is a topic I am very passionate about and have substantial experience with.  I would like to share my experiences with a new audience.  I know I will be putting myself out there a lot more than I have done in the past and will be wearing my heart on my sleeve.  Hopefully my experiences will resonate with the audience.  I will not be discussing medications or offering medical advice. That is what doctors are for and the last time I checked, I wasn’t a doctor. What I can talk about is my journey as an author and how my life has been before and after my diagnosis and treatment.  

Creating with Bipolar Disorder and Depression is not easy and there are few resources available that address this aspect of the illness.

Fingers crossed that this is well received.

Yours nervously,

CWC

My silence in recent months was not planned.  

In late September, I was rushed to the emergency room with severe abdominal pains.  Words like colon cancer, emergency surgery and high white blood cell count were thrown around and suddenly my life became finite.  It became clear that I only have a set amount of time left on this earth.  That maybe I won’t get to grow old with my wife or see my daughter grow up to be a woman and possible parent of her own.  And it scared the shit out of me.

My wife and I are no stranger to death, having lost siblings, parents, grandparents and friends, but I’ve never faced my own mortality like this before.   To be frank it was terrifying. It was just me and my thoughts. It was not a great place to be.  It was a mind full of regret, despair, anger and fear.

It ended up being a fluke occurrence, I did have to have surgery to remove a full obstruction to my lower intestines, but the experience has spurned me on to being the best person I can be. Be that as a husband, a father, a friend, a son, a brother and yes, as an author.   I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator and suddenly I was faced with the harsh reality of being out of time.   I want to make the most of the time I have here.  I have a wonderful life. A wife and daughter I love very much, many, many friends and a promising writing career. 

I am back into writing “Don’t Make Me Come Down There” and am all in until it’s finished.  This will be my defining work.   It has every part of me in the story, the characters and especially the dialogue.  I look forward to releasing it to the world next year.

When my time is up, I want to look back with no regrets, with my elderly wife beside me and my grown up daughter. I will not settle for less.  

Yours relieved,

CWC

A friend of mine, local filmmaker Jon Bonnell, recently allowed me to take a look at his new script “The Evil Breakfast Dead Club”. I had worked with Jon on a promo trailer for the film, so I was excited to finally see the finished script. 

There are many things that go together, peanut butter and jelly, gin and tonic, Captain and Tennille, The Breakfast Club and The Evil Dead.

Yes, you read that right.

Sometimes the best crossovers are the movies you never saw coming.  Although if you really think about it, pairing up the definitive 80’s brat pack movie with the definitive 80’s horror movie, not only it makes sense, but it makes you wonder why it hasn’t happened sooner. 

Hijinks are rampant when a group of sexually charged teenagers doomed to a Saturday detention retreat to a cabin in the woods and uncover the Necronomicon, the fabled Book of the Dead.    When an ancient evil spirit is released, the five students find themselves in a fight for their lives as one by one, they are attacked.  Everything you would expect from the Evil Dead is present, demonic possessions, severed limbs, ancient English chanting.  Coupled with the witty dialog from one of the most beloved films of the 80’s, The Evil Breakfast Dead Club delivers a horrific journey that is strangely familiar and horrifyingly fresh.    Some of the most undignified deaths greet the group as the ancient evil slowly dispatches them.  Head milkshakes, decapitations and a well-placed plunger keep the gore flowing.

The art of parodying involves paying reverence to the source material while taking it in new and humorous directions.  Basically, it’s the same but different.  Most parodies fail when they drift too far from the source material.  The Evil Breakfast Dead Club works because it takes the best moments from the source material and combines them with hilarious and unexpected results.  Many parodies fail when they neglect the films they are lampooning and the end product ultimately becomes unfamiliar.   The Evil Breakfast Dead Club stays true to both films, but without simply being a shot for shot rehash of either.

I laughed out loud at the irreverent dialog many times and the quick witted banter leads you to a false calm before a scare sideswipes you.

Later in the script, one of the characters asks “What are the signs of demonic possession?”  He is told “Changes in personality.  Preoccupation with sexual activity. Changes in personal hygiene, personal dress, swearing, abusive, threatening… This is every teenager on the planet” and this sums up the film nicely. 

The Evil Breakfast Dead Club is a satisfying nod to era of filmmaking held near and dear to many.   It is about to enter preproduction and I eagerly await the finished film. 

Cheers!

The last forty-eight hours or so have been a little surreal. On Monday night I posted the Star Wars Haiku blog I had been working on for a few days.  By the end of today, it had been viewed thousands of times and has been mentioned on dozens of websites across the world, including the official Star Wars website.  I’ve received hundreds of emails and comments of encouragement (and a few “you suck” posts). 

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to check it out. It was a fun little project and a nice change of pace from my other projects.   

I’m already taking notes for The Empire Strikes Back and I’ll hopefully start that in the next week or so.   In the meantime, I have deadlines to meet and need to get back to my other projects.   Watch this space and we’ll return to a galaxy far, far away very soon!

When Star Wars made bank

A sequel was then ordered

Here we go again!

Yours virally!

CWC