At 66 years old, I challenged myself to reach a big fitness goal. That meant creating the right mindset as well as increasing my physical endurance. — Step-Aware to Intrigued by a Goal I wasn’t obsessed with my daily step count. Yes, I had a Fitbit. Yes, I had the step reader on my iPhone. But I wasn’t obsessed with it like my younger brother was. …

Learn from the Best of the Disney Renaissance — What would the world be like without animation? What would it be without the adventure, excitement, humor, and fantasy of it all? From Blue Skies Animation to Pixar to Disney Animation, this genre is wildly popular with plenty of opportunity for aspiring and established writers. How do you plot a…

A Story of Covid-19, Persistence, and Love — My Facebook post from last week (October 29, 2020) had over 130 shares. It involved Allan Scott and The Queen’s Gambit recently released by Netflix to wonderful reviews (with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes- as of this publishing date.) Facebook and other platforms have been dumped on a lot lately, and…

Interview with Directors, Amy Ferris and Debra Engle — On October 26, Story Summit Writer’s School Directors, Amy Ferris and Debra Engle, announced their new live, online school with a compelling curriculum for the 4th quarter of 2020. …

Written in 90 Minutes: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 — Originally written in 1935 and published in 1938 in the Parisian Review, this piece became the classic prelude to his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel published posthumously, A Death In The Family. Time Magazine called James Agee’s prose-poem , Knoxville, Summer 1915, “the most ecstatic piece of writing ever composed about an American…

The producer of the original Top Gun — Trigger Warning: abusive behavior, aggressive language It was 1983. A blizzard had seized Anchorage, Alaska. Through the glass of the theater, I watched a limousine pull up into the night. In hurtling snow, the driver opened the door. …

“I feel the need, the need for speed” — Producer Don Simpson had a golden-goose knack for finding non-fiction articles and making them hit movies. He had done that with The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (Saturday Night Fever) and Flashdance by construction worker-by-day, erotic-dancer-by-night, Maureen Mawder. In 1983, when he sent over his latest acquisition, Top…

It’s free and it’s on zoom : Sunday, June 12 at 8 pm EDT — Sarah Elkhady is dedicated to expanding human consciousness, worldwide. The power of her message grows every day through IG and YouTube. She largely goes by this handle: “The Alchemist”. I met Sarah through my research on “Make Us a King”, a novel on Merlin, the iconic magician. In interviewing Sarah…