#Gainesville Florida Writers

[jolenes-book-journey]

Richard Gartee Author From Alachua County Florida

Richard Gartee Author is from Alachua County Florida. He recently agreed to participate in the Jolene’s Book and Writer’s Talk Podcast where we talked about his latest book – Orgone Gizmo. Here is a quick summary from the transcript of the podcast. Richard Gartee, an experienced author, discusses his latest novel, “Orgone Gizmo,” which spans the latter half of the 20th century. The protagonist,…

[yourcomedyminute]

YOUR COMEDY MINUTE WITH LISA BUCK #StandUp #Comedian #Writer #Wilmington #NorthCarolina #Hurricane #Florida #England #DisneyWorld #Orlando #Gainesville #Virginia #Georgia #DC #Australia #Nub #Story #DrinkTooMuch #Start #Catalyst #30Rock #Material #SteveMelia #Meet #Curiosity #OpenMic #Singing #TakenOffStage #NotGood #Singer #Instagram #Foul #Language #BeYourself #NotLikeThat #YouTube #Set #Birthday #Cakes #Theory #Masks #Washing #Hands #Disgusting #Whole #Life #Child #Kids #Candles #Restaurant #Pie #Spit #Nasty #Dog #Hump #Food #Cake #Pizza #Bartend #Double #Triple #Shift #Hotel #Room #Tray #Rich #People #Fries #Props #AlexVitunac #Tuna #Mentor #HeartOfGold #Realm #Negative #Nasty #Mean #Doing #Well #Booked #SupportEachOther #Philadelphia #Eagles #Twinsies #WashingtonRedskins #NewYearsDay #ClintonPortis #Mother #Family #Punched #Face #Broke #Nose #Wife #Mocked #Lawsuit #Lost #Escorted #Out #Boxing #Stadium #Security #Favorite #Hate #Describe #NotClean #Dirty #WashYourMouthOut #Mother #Preacher #SpeakOfTheLord #Father #Jesus #TikTok #Craigslist #Classifieds #Vinyl #Records #Music #MissedConnections #CasualEncounters #Inch #Knee #ManSeekingWoman #Picky #Kmart #Ford #Taurus #ModelsOnly #Flooded #Bidet #Temu #Husband #Contractor #Shoulder #Surgery #Flooring #Molding #Painting #Clay #DanceMom #Wrong #PaintCans #Kick #Tools #Nervous #Panic #Freakout #Paid #Gig #Professional #YuriTolochko #Blind #Barbie #Mattel #Greed #Handicap #Pretend #Deaf #Dog #GasStation #Very #Drunk #Motel #Burrito #Inappropriate #Bartending #Hearing #Impaired #People #Guys #Sitting #EagleEyeCherry #SaveTonight #Favorite #Song #Filming #Movie #Lead #Character #Live #Stream #Humor #Comedy #Funny #LisaBuck 

If you would like to be a guest on Your Comedy Minute please contact me

[mikevaccaro]

Things to Do in Florida That Do Not Involve a Beach or Theme Park

Florida sits in the southeastern US, surrounded by miles and miles of beach and water, except for the Panhandle or northwestern part of the state. Thus, many Floridians enjoy going to the beach. They also enjoy visiting theme parks like Busch Gardens, Disney World, or Universal Studios. However, the Sunshine State offers more than beaches and amusement parks. Residents and tourists can also enjoy landmarks, national parks, and museums.

In Florida, individuals can visit Fort Pickens near Pensacola or the Northwestern part of the state. The Army built the fort in the 1800s to defend the state against enemies along the Gulf Coast. By 1821, the Army extended the fort to protect Pensacola Bay and surrounding areas. Four years later, in 1825, the military added a navy yard and a depot to protect the new territory, assets, and resources. The fort still contains cannons and other artifacts from the 1800s.

Moving out of the Panhandle and to Central Florida, visitors can stop by Everglades National Park. The park is the nation’s largest subtropical wilderness, extending from Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida to North Miami. The park is a diverse ecosystem with over 2,000 land and marine plant and animal species living in the park’s extensive wetlands. It offers visitors a first-hand opportunity to see a pristine, untouched natural habitat. In addition to nature, the park is the setting for other events. For instance, in April 2024, the national park hosted a dark sky event, where attendees stargazed without artificial light.

Visitors can explore other natural wonders in Florida, such as Devil’s Millhopper. This site is an enormous sinkhole in the college town of Gainesville, Florida, home of the Florida Gators. Florida sits on a water table, making it susceptible to sinkholes. Sinkholes occur when the ground collapses inward, causing everything to cave in. In the case of Devil’s Millhopper, the limestone collapsed, creating a crater in the ground. Visitors can hike down the sinkhole easily and challenge themselves on the way back up. Alternatively, it is a great spot to picnic.

Next, individuals can visit the Perez Museum of Art (PAMM). PAMM resides in Miami and houses an eclectic collection of international and modern art, especially from artists from the Caribbean and Latin America. In addition, the museum educates the community through its public and educational programs, exhibitions, and permanent collections. The museum offered PAMM Story Time: Fabric and Folklore, A Celebration of Haitian Heritage for children, Teen Takeover Masquerade, where teens create masquerade masks, and Art Date with Buen Provecho Collective, where attendees make art and music.

The last stop is in the southernmost part of the state, Key West. Follow US Highway 1 through the Florida Keys to reach Key West and Ernest Hemingway’s home. Visitors can tour the stately home built in the 1930s. At the time, the house with a pool and gardens was luxurious, costing the writer approximately $20,000. It also contained a boxing ring, where he boxed amateur fighters. A stroll into the home gives visitors, much less Hemmingway fans, a chance to glimpse the writer and his influences.

[dustedmagazine]

Wharflurch — Shittier/Slimier (Gurgling Gore)

Writer and theorist Maggie Nelson has indexed the mysteries of affinity and attraction among subjectivities in this way: “Our diagnosis is similar, but our perversities are not compatible.” This reviewer suspects those terms are reversed with respect to his relations with the music of Wharflurch: our perversities are compatible, but our diagnoses are different. The array of unpleasant textures and weirdo sonic flourishes characterizing the band’s viscid death metal are appealing, but the causal factors contributing to the music’s creation are likely anathema. One suspects that the humidity, heat and socio-cultural rot that inform existence in Gainesville, FL, have a good deal to do with Wharflurch’s moldering, malodorous variety of doomy death metal. The tunes are great, but living in Florida? Nope, can’t do it.

So, for any number of reasons, Shittier/Slimier seems an apt title for this new release from Wharflurch. The LP collects a number of tunes recorded as demos in 2022, cobbled together and sequenced by chief band member Myk Colby. Chatter on the web indicates that the other players who participated in the creation of Psychedelic Realms ov Hell (2021), a strong and satisfying slab of death metal grotesquerie, have left the band. Colby seems to have released Shittier/Slimier as a sort of placeholder, keeping Wharflurch’s name and gooey, gristly sound alive (is that the right word?) as he reconstitutes a body around the music.

Shittier/Slimier is engaging and entertaining, even when some of its ideas get a bit oblique in their orbital patterns. Psychedelics are even more assertively present on this record than they have been on previous Wharflurch releases. Tracks like “Enochian Curse” and “Headless God” undulate with the velocity and vibrations of hallucinogens’ peak rush. Some of us don’t roam those psychic territories anymore—and some of us preferred the distinct chemical fry of synthetics when we did. But the vibe of Shittier/Slimier is decidedly fungal, and that works very well. Hot. Humid. Rotten. Shrooms thrive in those conditions. The pace of decomposition also increases. Yuck.

The music’s atmosphere is overripe, pungent, fluids bubbling up through discorporating membranes. Wharflurch tunes into that awfully sweet spot, at which the horror of death and decay inverts, opening spaces in which annihilation becomes pleasurable. Like Lautréamont, or the best of Stuart Gordon’s images, when Wharflurch is at its most effectively demented, the band makes death metal that is repugnant and full of relish.

Jonathan Shaw

[make-broken-extinct]

Okay!

Now

I don’t wish to alarm you.

But…

The last Yellowman was supposedly sighted in a public park in Gainesville, Florida the other day.

The local police were called after it was spotted devouring an entire feral cat.

He wounded two officers and there was a standoff of some sort before the DOCtors showed up and took him away in an unmarked van.

Yelling something about hardware stores, a missing writer near a lake, sherbet lemon, manticores and what he called a “perfect me”?

Apparently he’s being kept under secure watch at their Gainesville field office.

Don’t ask how I know.

There is no detainment centre that can hold a Yellowman

[sebastianravkin]

Fuck book banning in 2024

A great way to fight book banning is to celebrate books! Here are a list of book festivals coming up in the rest of January (link to the 2024 year of book festivals with description of each provided at end).

FLORIDA (January 25 - January 28, 2024)

ZORA! FESTIVAL - Eatonville

SUNSHINE STATE BOOK FESTIVAL - Gainesville

FLORIDA STORYTELLING FESTIVAL - Mount Dora

ILLINOIS (January 25 - January 26, 2024) 

LIONS IN WINTER LITERARY FESTIVAL - Charleston

CALIFORNIA (January 31 - February 02, 2024) 

RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FEST - Rancho Mirage

FRANCE (January 25 - January 28, 2024) 

ANGOULÊME INTERNATIONAL COMICS FESTIVAL

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (January 31 - February 06, 2024)

EMIRATES AIRLINE FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE

[spinstrackingsystem]

Ray Shavers “Country Living” at Country radio now: Download Available

Ray Shavers was born in Gainesville, Florida. He spent some of his childhood there until the family moved to Cottonwood, Alabama. He attended Cottonwood High School and played tuba in the marching band. He says this was the only time his instrument was bigger than he was. Ray was also learning to play guitar by watching his father play all the old country classics. By the time he was 16 years old, he was playing lead guitar, fronting bands, in a few bars around Phenix City, Alabama and that’s when he started writing his first songs. Ray entered and won several song writing contests and he appeared on a TV show called “Nashville Review” and was interviewed on local News Stations. In 2005 Ray won “Most Promising Entertainer of the Year” & “Song Writer of The Year” from the Georgia Country Gospel Music Association where he was supposed to perform at Dollywood. He couldn’t go due conflict of his grand opening of his music store “First Cut Music” located in Turin, Ga. where he sold music gear and taught guitar lessons to more than 35 students at that time. Meanwhile, he performed in several bands around Peachtree City and Newnan Ga. His song writing skills were getting noticed.In 2010, he had 10 of his songs recorded by two other an artists. In 2011, Ray had his first song “Caterpillar Man” debut at #81 on the major charts and went all the up to #31, at the same time it hit #4 on the Indie Charts as well. Read the full article

[newmusicweekly]

Ray Shavers “Country Living” at Country radio now: Download Available

Ray Shavers was born in Gainesville, Florida. He spent some of his childhood there until the family moved to Cottonwood, Alabama. He attended Cottonwood High School and played tuba in the marching band. He says this was the only time his instrument was bigger than he was. Ray was also learning to play guitar by watching his father play all the old country classics. By the time he was 16 years old, he was playing lead guitar, fronting bands, in a few bars around Phenix City, Alabama and that’s when he started writing his first songs. Ray entered and won several song writing contests and he appeared on a TV show called “Nashville Review” and was interviewed on local News Stations. In 2005 Ray won “Most Promising Entertainer of the Year” & “Song Writer of The Year” from the Georgia Country Gospel Music Association where he was supposed to perform at Dollywood. He couldn’t go due conflict of his grand opening of his music store “First Cut Music” located in Turin, Ga. where he sold music gear and taught guitar lessons to more than 35 students at that time. Meanwhile, he performed in several bands around Peachtree City and Newnan Ga. His song writing skills were getting noticed.In 2010, he had 10 of his songs recorded by two other an artists. In 2011, Ray had his first song “Caterpillar Man” debut at #81 on the major charts and went all the up to #31, at the same time it hit #4 on the Indie Charts as well. Read the full article

[newmusicradionetwork]

Ray Shavers “Country Living"

Ray Shavers was born in Gainesville, Florida. He spent some of his childhood there until the family moved to Cottonwood, Alabama. He attended Cottonwood High School and played tuba in the marching band. He says this was the only time his instrument was bigger than he was. Ray was also learning to play guitar by watching his father play all the old country classics. By the time he was 16 years old, he was playing lead guitar, fronting bands, in a few bars around Phenix City, Alabama and that’s when he started writing his first songs. Ray entered and won several song writing contests and he appeared on a TV show called “Nashville Review” and was interviewed on local News Stations. In 2005 Ray won “Most Promising Entertainer of the Year” & “Song Writer of The Year” from the Georgia Country Gospel Music Association where he was supposed to perform at Dollywood. He couldn’t go due conflict of his grand opening of his music store “First Cut Music” located in Turin, Ga. where he sold music gear and taught guitar lessons to more than 35 students at that time. Meanwhile, he performed in several bands around Peachtree City and Newnan Ga. His song writing skills were getting noticed.In 2010, he had 10 of his songs recorded by two other an artists. In 2011, Ray had his first song “Caterpillar Man” debut at #81 on the major charts and went all the up to #31, at the same time it hit #4 on the Indie Charts as well. In 2013, Ray got signed by his first record label and released his Christmas song called “St.Nick”. In two weeks it hit #1 on Reverb Nation. When Ray asked his record label what that meant , they told him “well son ,there are 4.5 million artists on Reverb Nation, and you just hit # 1! And They said they had never had anybody do that before! Ray moved to Newnan, Georgia, home of Alan Jackson, just south of Atlanta. Ray says he hears a song in everything he does in his every day life. His lyrics are relatable and sounds like pure country , but in Ray Shavers unique style. Each song he writes is different from the last and Ray says that’s what fires him up to keep them coming. Ray is no stranger to the stage and has opened shows for Lee Roy Parnell, Craig, Morgan, John Anderson, and John Michael Montgomery. He met his lovely wife, Rebecca, (Harris), Shavers, at a songwriter showcase. They began singing together that very night and sings all the harmony parts on his songs to this day. Their harmony comes so natural to them, and it is obvious to their listeners how much they love performing country music and each other. Ray Shavers has written hundreds of songs and is excited to share them with real country music lovers. In 2022 Ray met with world class producer, Bill McDermott, at Omni Sound Studio and recorded 10 soon to be released Ray songs. recorded his latest album. Ray says he was blessed to have him produce his album. Songs from this project are soon to be released. Ray hopes you enjoy listening to his songs as much as he enjoys weighting them! And here in 2023 y’all hang on it’s gonna be a fun ride! Additional Artist/Song Information: Artist Name: Ray Shavers Song Title: Country Living Publishing: Ray Shavers Music Publishing Affiliation: BMI Album Title: Country Living Record Label: Country Sides Radio Promotion: James Williams Promotions James Williams 615-264-3456 james@williamsproductionsandpromotions.com Read the full article

[airplayaccess]

Ray Shavers "Country Living" at Country radio now: Download Available

Ray Shavers was born in Gainesville, Florida. He spent some of his childhood there until the family moved to Cottonwood, Alabama. He attended Cottonwood High School and played tuba in the marching band. He says this was the only time his instrument was bigger than he was. Ray was also learning to play guitar by watching his father play all the old country classics. By the time he was 16 years old, he was playing lead guitar, fronting bands, in a few bars around Phenix City, Alabama and that's when he started writing his first songs. Ray entered and won several song writing contests and he appeared on a TV show called "Nashville Review" and was interviewed on local News Stations. In 2005 Ray won "Most Promising Entertainer of the Year" & "Song Writer of The Year" from the Georgia Country Gospel Music Association where he was supposed to perform at Dollywood. He couldn't go due conflict of his grand opening of his music store "First Cut Music" located in Turin, Ga. where he sold music gear and taught guitar lessons to more than 35 students at that time. Meanwhile, he performed in several bands around Peachtree City and Newnan Ga. His song writing skills were getting noticed.In 2010, he had 10 of his songs recorded by two other an artists. In 2011, Ray had his first song "Caterpillar Man" debut at #81 on the major charts and went all the up to #31, at the same time it hit #4 on the Indie Charts as well. Read the full article

[jolenes-book-journey]

AI Assistant or Authorial Apocalypse? The Future of Fiction is a Human-Machine Dance

Forget robots churning out bestsellers – the truth about AI in fiction writing is far more nuanced. While AI can’t replace the human touch that breathes life into characters, it’s emerging as a powerful tool for brainstorming, research, and even co-writing alongside human authors. Science fiction has long depicted a future where robots write our novels and compose our symphonies. But is AI truly…

[plentyreviewsonline]

SCREAM - SHREVEPORT, LA Scream is regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. It was a box office blockbuster, the start of a franchise, and ultimately a cinematic game-changer. It's regularly put on Top 10 and Top 5 lists of the horror movie genre. The story on the screen took place in California. There was never any "Ghostface" killer out there. So what's the Shreveport tie? While horror master Wes Craven's name is tied to the movie, he was only the director. The writer of the film was a man named Kevin Williamson, who is also known for horror films I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty, and Cursed. When Williamson was getting ready to work on a new project in 1994, he found inspiration in the coverage of "The Gainesville Ripper", a man known as Danny Rolling. In August of 1990, Danny Rolling terrorized the community of Gainesville, Florida when he killed 5 college students over the course of three days. Not only did Rolling kill the students, he posed their bodies to be discovered after he left. Danny Rolling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father was a Shreveport Police Officer. Once Rolling was arrested for the crimes in Gainseville, police in Shreveport reached out to authorities in Florida about an unsolved Shreveport triple murder. Police in Shreveport saw similarities in the Gainesville crimes to the 1989 murders of the Grissom family. 55-year-old William Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter Julie, and 8-year-old son Sean were all killed in their Shreveport home. After Rolling was convicted of the Gainseville murders, he gave a written confession to the Shreveport murders. The horror classic Scream is based on a true Shreveport horror story. (at United States) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnhrZ4IONL9/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shiraglassman]

Hey! You wrote Knit One, Girl Two?! I read that years ago and I loved it! I still think about it sometimes (if the fact that I recognized the title immediately tells you anything) 😊 You're an amazing writer, and I hope you're doing well!

omg thank you so much <3 I'm glad you ran into me again! We just released it in paperback finally and although I'm sad I won't get to sell it at Pride like I'd hoped (Gainesville canceled, which is for the best... Florida is a mess right now), I'm still pretty excited about the new format.

@theirmajestythehighcouncil

[dangertoozmanykids101]

'What It Feels Like...'

*links are in blue.

The title of this article is "What It Feels Like: Changing Your Sex, Having Narcolepsy & Being Attacked by an Alligator." It was published in Esquire Magazine on Jan 29, 2007. I stumbled upon it because I wanted to read Jimmy Kimmel's essay about being a narcoleptic.

I'm narcoleptic. I've mentioned it several times randomly here and there. It's not that big a deal. I don't really know any different and until my early 20s I had no clue other people didn't struggle like I did/do to stay awake, because everyone experiences being tired. Right? But narcolepsy is different than just being tired. Unfortunately Jimmy Kimmel's essay is a bit bland compared to many of the other essays collected here. Of course, narcolepsy is not a really exciting disorder filled with whizbangs and whistles, but this does now inspire me to write my own essay.

It's difficult to pick a favorite essay from this collection, but I am super impressed how fascinating I found several essays when I had no prior interest at all in the topic. Who would've guessed that the 'stealing home base' essay would be one if my favorite essays in this collection, even thoughI have zero interest in baseball.

Well, aside from Charlie Sheen in Major League.....

The women in League Of Her Own.....

Amd Tim Robbins with Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. Mmmmmm......

Here are the essays in this article that I linked to, listing just the essaytitle and summary or just authors. SERIOUSLY these are super interesting AND will especially be great for writer research. The first essay alone has me going back to make changes to an progress fic where Loki is falling.

What It Feels Like...to Parachute from Space

By Joe Kittinger, 74, retired Air Force test pilot, who has held the world parachuting record, 102,800 feet, since 1960, as told to David Pfister.

What It Feels Like...to Change Your Sex

By Amanda Kent, 49, marketing manager, as told to Bryan Mealer

What It Feels Like...to Be a Dominatrix

By Storm, 24, TV producer, as told to Genevieve J. Roth

What It Feels Like...to See Music

By Sean Day, 41, college professor, as told to David Jacobson

What It Feels Like...to Steal Home

By Rod Carew, 57, baseball player, as told to Mike Sager

What It Feels Like...to Be in a NASCAR Crash

By Mike Harmon, 45, Race-car driver, as told to John Korpics

What It Feels Like...to Survive a Fire

By Phil Barr, 21, student, Bates College, as told to Daniel Torday

What It Feels Like...to Be in an Earthquake

What It Feels Like...to Have Size DDD Breasts

By Anonymous, 30, recruiter, as told to Aimee E. Bartol

What It Feels Like...to Have Narcolepsy

By Jimmy Kimmel, 35, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live, as told to Brendan Vaughan

What It Feels Like...to Be Paranoid

By Mark Twain, writer, adapted from the account of the 1868 San Francisco earthquake in Roughing It

What It Feels Like...to Be a Kleptomaniac

By Anonymous, as told to Kevin McDonnell

By Ian Chovil, 49, consultant, as told to Tyler Cabot

What It Feels Like...to Be Attacked by an Alligator

By Don Goodman, 59, director of the Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, Gainesville, Florida, as told to Jeff Klinkenberg

What It Feels Like...to Surf the Biggest Wave on Record

By Mike Parsons, 38, professional surfer, as told to Daniel Torday

What It Feels Like...to Be Trapped in a Submarine

By Allen C. Bryson, 85, machinist on the USS Squalus, which suffered valve failure on May 23, 1939, and sank off the coast of New Hampshire. Twenty-six men drowned immediately; thirty-three were trapped on the ocean floor for thirty-nine hours. As told to Ted Allen

@caffiend-queen @nildespirandum @redfoxwritesstuff @wolfsmom1 @emeraldrosequartz @latent-thoughts

[myhauntedsalem]

Horror Movies Based on True Events

Open Water (2003)

When a couple goes scuba diving in Open Water, their boat accidentally leaves them behind in shark-infested water. It’s based on something that really happened to American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind by a diving company off the Great Barrier Reef. By the time the mistake was realized two days later, it was too late, and they were never seen again. A shark attack seems not to have been the cause of death, however, as the couple’s dive jackets were eventually found. The jackets weren’t damaged, which suggested that the Lonergans likely took them off, “delirious from dehydration,” and drowned.

Borderland (2007)

When three friends head to a Mexican border town to have some fun in this movie, they get mixed up with a cult specializing in human sacrifice. The concept loosely stems from the life of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a drug lord and cult leader who was responsible for the death of American student Mark Kilroy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The iconic baddie Freddy Krueger kills teenagers via their dreams in Wes Craven’s franchise-launching film. Craven told Vulture that the idea stemmed from an article he read in The Los Angeles Times about a family of Cambodian refugees with a young son who reported awful nightmares. “He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time,” said Craven. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Black Water (2007)

Set in the swamps of Australia, this movie sees a group of fishers attacked by a humongous crocodile. It was inspired by an actual crocodile attack in the Australian outback in 2003 that killed a man named Brett Mann in an area that his friends said they’d “never, ever” seen a crocodile before.

Dead Ringers (1988)

In David Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists who do messed up things with patients and ultimately die together in the end. Cronenberg adapted the movie from Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s novel Twins, which was inspired by the lives of actual twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. TheNew York Times noted that the Marcuses enjoyed “trading places to fool their patients” and that they ultimately “retreat[ed] into heavy drug use and utter isolation.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

The movie follows a cop and a priest who team up to take on the supernatural. It’s based on self-proclaimed “demonologist” Ralph Sarchie’s memoir Beware the Night, in which he tells supposedly true stories, such as the time he found himself “in the presence of one of hell’s most dangerous devils” possessing a woman.

Poltergeist (1982)

In Poltergeist, a family’s home is invaded by ghosts that abduct one of the daughters. The film was inspiredby unexplained events, such as loud popping noises and moved objects, that occurred in 1958 at the Hermanns’ home in Seaford, New York.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s essential film traces a woman who embezzles money from her employer and runs off to a mysterious hotel where she is (58-year-old spoiler alert) murdered by the man running it, Norman Bates. Bates is said to have been based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who was convicted for one murder in the 1950s, but suspected for others. He also was a grave robber, and authorities found many disturbing results of that in his home, including bowls crafted from human skulls and a lampshade made from the skin of someone’s face.

Scream (1996)

The classic ‘90s slasher flick uses dark humor to tell the story of a group of teens and a mystery man named Ghostface who wants to murder them. But the real story ain’t funny. The movie was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, real name Danny Rolling, who killed five Florida students by knife over a span of three days in August 1990.

The Conjuring (2013)

The movie stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghost hunters helping out a family in a haunted 18th-century farmhouse. The hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are real people, as is the Perron family that they assist. Lorraine was a consultant on the movie and insists that many of the supernatural horrors really happened, and one of the daughters who is depicted in the film, Andrea Perron, says the same. She recalled an angry spirit named Bathsheba to USA Today:“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.”

Annabelle (2014)

The creepy porcelain doll from The Conjuring gets her terror on in this spin-off of The Conjuring. The ghost-hunting Warrens have claimed that there was a real Raggedy Ann doll that moved by itself and wrote creepy-ass notes saying things like, “Help us.” The woman who owned it contacted a medium, who claimed that it was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle who had died there.

The Disappointments Room (2016)

Kate Beckinsale stars in the movie as an architect who moves to a new home with a mysterious room in the attic that she eventually learns was previously used as a room where rich people would cast off disabled children. It was reportedly inspired by a Rhode Island woman who discovered a similar room in her house that she says was built by a 19th century judge to lock away his disabled daughter.

The Exorcist (1973)

Two priests attempt to remove a demon from a young girl in this box office smash. The movie was based on a 1949 Washington Post article with the headline “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Director William Friedkin spoke about the article to Time Out London: “Maybe one day they’ll discover the cause of what happened to that young man, but back then, it was only curable by an exorcism. His family weren’t even Catholics, they were Lutheran. They started with doctors and then psychiatrists and then psychologists and then they went to their minister who couldn’t help them. And they wound up with the Catholic church. The Washington Post article says that the boy was possessed and exorcised. That’s pretty out on a limb for a national newspaper to put on its front page… You’re not going to see that on the front page of an intelligent newspaper unless there’s something there.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

The movie follows the abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of her aunt, and it was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965. The 16-year-old girl was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood children, as entertainment. They ultimately killed her, with the cause of death determined as “brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock induced by Sylvia’s extensive skin damage,”

The Possession (2012)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in the movie as a couple with a young daughter who becomes fascinated with an antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Of course, the box turns out to be home to a spirit. The flick’s “true story” basis came from an eBay listing for “a haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” containing oddities such as two locks of hair, one candlestick, and an evil spirit that caused supernatural activity. The box sold for $280 and gained attention when a Jewish newspaper ran an article about its so-called powers.

The Rite (2011)

In The Rite, a mortician enrolls in seminary and eventually takes an exorcism class in Rome, where demonic encounters ensue. The movie was based on the life of a real exorcist, Father Gary Thomas, whose work was the focus of journalist Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of an Exorcist. A Roman Catholic priest, Thomas was one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in America in 2011. He served as an advisor on the film and told The Los Angeles Times that in the previous four years he had exorcised five people.

The Sacrament (2013)

In the movie, a man travels to find his sister who joined a remote religious commune, where, yep, bad things happen. It was inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to partake in a “murder-suicide ceremony” using cyanide poisoning.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is about a man who is driven to insanity by supernatural forces while staying at a remote hotel in the Rockies. The movie Derives from Stephen King’s book of the same name, which was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, where plenty of guests have reported seeing ghosts. The Stanley wasn’t actually used in the movie, however, because Kubrick didn’t think it looked scary enough.

The Silence of the Lambs(1991)

The Oscar-winning film tells the story of an FBI cadet who enlists the help of a cannibal/serial killer to pin down another serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who skins the bodies of his victims. FBI special agent John Douglas, who consulted on the film, has explained that Bill was inspired in part by the serial killer Ted Bundy, who like Bill, wore a fake cast. Ed Gein is also believed to be an inspiration, what with the whole skinning thing. And per Rolling Stone, 1980s killer Gary Heidnik was a reference for how Buffalo Bill kept victims in a basement pit.

The Strangers (2008)

Three killers in masks terrorize the suburban home of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in this invasion thriller. Writer-director Bryan Bertino has said the film was inspired by something that happened to him in childhood. “As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it,” he said. “At the door were some people asking for somebody that didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 & 2003)

Ed Gein also reportedly inspired elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its remake. The movies are about groups of friends who come into contact with the murderous cannibal Leatherface. The original film memorably features a room filled with furniture created from human bones, a nod to Gein’s home.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976 & 2014)

The original film follows a Texas Ranger as he tracks down a serial killer threatening a small town, and the 2014 sequel of the same name essentially revives the same plot. Both are based on the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, when a “Phantom Killer” took out five people over ten weeks. The case remains unsolved

Veronica (2018)

The recent Netflix release follows a 15-year-old girl who uses a Ouija board and accidentally connects with a demon that terrorizes her and her family. The movie’s based on a real police report from a Madrid neighborhood. As the story goes, a girl performed a séance at school and then “experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her,” according to NewsWeek. The police report came a year after the girl’s death when three officers and the Chief Inspect of the National Police reported several unnatural occurrences at her family’s home that they called “a situation of mystery and rarity.”

[iandeleonwrites]

Ian’s Case: A Personal Statement for Grad School Admission

Personal Statement, Ian Deleón

“He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed.”

It was more than a decade ago when I first read those words. Written by the American author Willa Cather, Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament has always felt to me like an intimate account of my own life penned by a woman one hundred years in the past. 

That is a feeling which makes me proud; that my personal whims, fears, and desires, could find their echo long ago in a story about a young man and his pursuit of a meaningful life. Because of it, I felt a pleasing sense of historicity at a time when I was struggling so much with my own. 

I grew up in Miami Beach. Literally not more than a block away from water for most of my life. My father had emigrated from Cuba with his family in 1980. My mother had come on a work visa from Brazil a few years later. They met on the beach, had an affair, and I came into the world in May of 1987. 

My life was marked with in betweenness from the very beginning. My parents’ relationship did not last long, so I grew up traveling between houses. I had two families. I was American, but I was also Cuban and Brazilian. I even have a Brazilian passport. I spoke three languages fluently, but I couldn’t dance salsa or samba. I felt at home with the working class immigrants and people of color in my neighborhoods, but I often had to work hard to prove I wasn’t just some gringo with a knack for foreign tongues.  

[A quick note on Paul’s Case––If it happens that the reader is not familiar with the short story, let me briefly summarize it here:  A disenchanted youth in turn of the century Pittsburgh feels increasingly alienated from his schoolmates, his teachers and his family. His only comfort is his position as an usher at Carnegie Hall, where he loses himself in the glamour of the art life. Having no drive or desire to become an artist, however, the dandy Paul makes a spur of the moment criminal decision and elopes to New York City. There, he is able to live out his fantasies in a financial masquerade for about a week’s time, until the authorities back home finger him for monetary theft. Learning that his father is en route to the city to collect him, Paul travels to the countryside and flings himself in front of a speeding train, musing about the elegant brevity of winter flowers.]

When I first encountered Cather’s short story I was blown away by the parallels I saw between my own life and Paul’s. In 2005, fresh out of high school, I was living mostly with my father as my mother had relocated to faraway West Palm Beach. I was an usher at the local concert hall, a job I cherished enough to volunteer my time for free. I became entranced by the world of classical music, opera, theater, and spectacle––often showing up for work early and roaming the performance spaces, probing high and low like some kind of millenial phantom. 

In school, however, I had no direction, no plan. I had good enough grades, but no real motivation, and worst of all, I thought, no discernible talent. I probably resented my father for not being cultured enough to teach me about music, theater, and the arts. No one in my family had ever even been to a museum, or sat before a chamber orchestra. And it didn’t seem to matter to them either, they could somehow live blissfully without it. 

Well I couldn’t. I began to mimic the fervor with which Paul immersed himself in that world, while also exhibiting the same panic at the thought of not being able to sustain my treasured experiences without a marketable contribution to them. But here is where Paul and I take divergent paths. 

I was attending the Miami Dade Honors College, breezing my way towards an associate’s degree. I took classes in Oceanography, Sociology, Creative Writing, Acting and African Drumming. I was experimenting and falling in love with everything. 

But it was my Creative Writing professor, Michael Hettich, who really encouraged the development of my nascent writing talent. Up until that point my ideas only found their expression through class assignments, particularly book reports and essays on historical events. My sister had always felt I had a way with words, but I just attributed this to growing up in a multicultural environment amongst a diversity of native languages.  

As a result of that encouragement I began to write poetry, little songs and treatments for film ideas based on the short stories we were talking about in class. Somehow, thanks to those lines of poetry and a few amateur photographic self portraits, I was admitted to the Massachusetts College of Art & Design for my BFA program. 

There, I attended classes in Printmaking, Paper Making, Performance Art, Video Editing, and Glass Blowing. I was immersed in culture, attending lectures and workshops, adding new words to my vocabulary: “New Media” and “gestalt”. I saw my first snowfall. I had the dubious honor of appearing at once not Hispanic and yet different enough. I was overwhelmed. I felt increasingly disenchanted and out of place in New England, yet my work flourished and grew stronger. 

It was during this time that I developed a passion for live performance and engagement with an audience. I also worked with multi-channel video and sculptural installations. Always, I commented on my family history, grappling with it, the emigrations and immigrations. I even returned to those early short stories from Miami Dade, one time doing an interpretive movement piece based on The Yellow Wallpaper. Most often I talked about my father. He was even in a few of my projects. He was a good sport, though we still had the occasional heated political disagreement. We never held any grudges, and made up again rather quickly. It would always be that way, intense periods of warming and cooling. A tropical temperament, I suppose. 

I continued to take film-related classes in Boston, but my interests gradually became highly abstracted, subtle, and decidedly avant-garde. I had no desire to work in a coherently narrative medium. This would eventually change, but for now, I let my ambitions and aspirations take me where they would. 

I returned home to Miami for a spell after graduation. I traveled the world for five months after that. I moved back to Boston for another couple of years, because it was comfortable I suppose, though I was fed up with the weather. 

Finally, I wound up in NYC. Classic story: I followed a charming young woman, another performance artist as luck would have it, a writer too, and a bit of an outsider. We were quickly engaged and on the first anniversary of our meet cute we were married on a gorgeous piece of land in upstate new york, owned by an older performance-loving couple from the city. Piece of land doesn’t quite do it justice, we’re talking massive tracts, hidden acres of forest, sudden lakes, fertile fields, and precocious wildlife. As they say in the movies, it really is all about location, location, location. 

Nearly all of our significant personal and professional achievements in the subsequent years have centered around this bucolic homestead. After meeting, courting, researching and eventually getting married there, we soon decided we would stage our most ambitious project to date in this magical space––we would shoot...a movie.

We hit upon the curious story of an eighteenth century woman in England called Mary Toft. Dear Mary became famous for a months-long ruse that involved her supposed birthing of rabbits, and sometimes cats. The small town hoax ballooned into a national controversy when it was eventually exposed by some of the king’s physicians. My wife and I were completely enthralled by this story and its contemporary implications. Was Mary wholly complicit in the mischievous acts, or was she herself a sort of duped victim...of systematic abuse at the hands of her family, her husband, her country? 

We soon found a way to adapt and give this tale a modern twist that recast Mary as a woman of color alone in the woods navigating a host of creepy men, a miscarriage, and a supernatural rabbit. 

Over the course of nine months, our idea gestated and began taking the form of a short film screenplay. This was something neither of us had done or been adequately trained to do before. But we knew we wanted it to be special, it was our passion project. We knew we didn’t want it to look amateurish––we were too old for that. So we took out a loan, hired an amazing camera crew, and in three consecutive days in the summer of 2017 we filmed our story, Velvet Cry. It was the most difficult thing either of us had undertaken...including planning our nuptial ceremony around our difficult families. 

It was an incredible experience––intoxicating––also quite maddening and stressful. But it was all worth it. Because of our work schedules, it took us another year to finish post production on the film, but throughout that process, I knew I had found my calling. I would be a writer, and I would be a Director. 

Perhaps I had been too afraid to dream the big dream before. Perhaps I had lacked the confidence, or simply, the life experience to tackle the complexity of human emotions, narratives, and interactions––but no longer. This is what I wanted to do and I had to find a way to get better at doing it. 

In the intervening months, I have set myself on a course to develop my writing abilities as quickly as I could in anticipation of this application process. I know I have some latent talent, but it has been a long time since I’ve been in an academic setting, and in any case, I have never really attempted to craft drama on this scale before. 

I’ve read many books, listened to countless interviews, attended online classes, and most importantly, written my heart out since relocating down the coast to the small college town of Gainesville in Central Florida with my wife in June of 2018. It was through a trip to her alma mater of Hollins University that we learned about the co-ed graduate program in screenwriting a few months ago. After all the debt I accrued in New England, I didn’t think I would ever go back to college, though I greatly enjoyed the experience. But what we learned about the program filled me with confidence and a desire to share in the wonderful legacy of this school that my wife is always gushing about. 

Our Skype conversation with Tim Albaugh proved to be the deciding factor. I knew instantly that I wanted to be a part of anything that he was involved with, and I had the feeling that my ideas would truly be nurtured and harnessed into a craft––something tangible I could be proud of and use to propel my career. 

I continue to mine my childhood and adolescence in Miami for critical stories and characters, situations that shed light on my own personal experience of life. I’ve found myself coming back to Paul’s Case. No longer caught up in the character’s stagnant, brooding longings for a grander life, I’m now able to revisit the story, appreciating the young man’s anxieties while evaluating how it all went so fatally wrong for Paul. There was no reason to despair, no cause for lost hope. I would take the necessary steps to become the artist I already know myself to be. The screenplay I am submitting as my writing sample is a new adaptation of this story, making Paul my own, and giving him a little bit of that South Florida flavor. 

I will close by reiterating how I have visited Hollins, and heard many a positive review from the powerful women I know who have attended college there. As a graduate student, I know Hollins can help me to become a screenwriter, to become a filmmaker. This is the only graduate program to which I am applying––I have a very good feeling about all this.

I want to be a Hollins girl.