This time-line highlights the milestones of the past eighteen years in my writing.
This is where it all began. I was in grade six, and for the first time, I studied creative writing in English class. Not content to merely stay within the constraints of a few pages, I wrote my first two major works at this time. Unfortunately, the handwritten pages languish somewhere in the basement of my parents' house, collecting dust and mildew, having slipped through my fingers like the ashes of time.
A cliché-ridden adventure set in the 1920's. It follows the story of two men attempting to make the first trans-Atlantic crossing in their trusty bi-plane, while outrunning gangsters who are after a cache of diamonds hidden in the tail assembly of the plane.
An intergalactic trader is caught off guard by a supernova and crashes onto a primitive planet populated by a deeply religious people who reject the existence of what they cannot see. He is befriended by a heretic, who helps him fix his ship and protects him from the reactionary church elders.
I think I learned everything I needed to know about writing in high school. Studying the use of metaphors, pathetic fallacy, foreshadowing, juxtaposition, symbolism... reading the great works of Salinger, Beckett, Shakespeare, Bolt, and others.
A short teleplay, based on the Twilight Zone-ish short story by Conrad Richter. Dr. Hanray, a leading nuclear physicist, visits his hometown, now converted into a military base for the express purpose of constructing nuclear weapons, which he invented. Through a slip of time, he meets his parents and tries to convince them to not let his younger self become a scientist. I added a Common Man figure to the original story, who served as a narrator, and bulked up the ending, increasing the poignancy of the consequences resulting from the choices the young Dr. Hanray made.
My final year of high school. Perhaps the most creative year at this time. And not surprisingly, English was my favorite class, with the highlight being a project of writing a book of ten poems.
Click here to read "Increase in Entropy".
My university years were probably my best, where I expanded the scope of my experience. I became involved in everything, from student councils to student variety shows.
A well-known University of Toronto Calculus professor escapes from a mental institution and impersonates a pharmacist to escape from the police. Among the customers he 'helps': an extremely shy man looking for condoms, a woman named 'Okei Wai Wut', and a flasher.
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After a long dry spell, I began to write again after a technological innovation: I bought a laptop computer. Now, with powers of cut-and-paste and a 486 processor, the constraints on my creativity had diminished.
What if things had happened differently during the first Borg incursion into Federation space? What if the Federation had been destroyed and the Enterprise was on the run from the relentless advance of the Borg?
Click here to read an excerpt.
This was the year where my writing took a dramatic turn.
An X-Files/Simpsons/Twin Peaks cross-over that has Agents Mulder and Scully going to Springfield to investigate who shot Mr. Burns.
The lives of cops and criminals in Hong Kong, between 1996 and 1998. My first full-length novel, written in three weeks while vacationing in the British Colony. My first real attempt at writing dramatic fiction.
Click here to read an excerpt.
The Simpson family get shot in space and promptly get lost.
What the twisted minds of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino would come up with for a Christmas movie: a disgruntled department store Santa Claus goes from town to town, killing drug dealers. Starring Tim Allen and the Vancome Lady from Mad-TV.
This was the year I wrote my first feature-length screenplay.
On a dark highway outside of Washington D.C., a car belonging to two FBI agents crosses the median and collides with a tanker truck, leaving no survivors.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Your atypical philosophical Internet romance. First part of the Trilogy of Loss.
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The story of three people finding the strength to challenge the status quo in their lives set against the backdrop of a Federal election. Second part of the Trilogy of Loss.
Twelve hours in the life of a homeless man. Third part of the Trilogy of Loss.
An ode to a statistics professor set to music from "Evita".
A musical about job-hunting for graduate MBA students set to music from "Evita".
A musical about corporate downsizing and outsourcing set to music from "Evita".
Work on the unfinished Baywatch orphanage grinds to a halt when a ghostly apparition is seen. Luckily, the Scooby Doo Detective Agency shows up to investigate the mystery.
What if Timothy McVeigh had been carjacked on his way to Oklahoma City?
After his second release from a State Hospital, Carl Childers gets a job as a security guard in an all-night drug store.
Pembleton and Bayliss investigate a vigilante shooting stemming from a convenience store robbery; Falsone and Munch investigate the murder of a recent parolee.
Mulder and Scully investigate a series of unexplained deaths that resemble spontaneous human combustion; an old flame shows up at Spender's doorstep after her research colleagues start turning up dead and she is pursued by several men in black...
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Hana-bi Movie Review (movie review)
This review won an Honorable Mention in The Well's 1998 Online Writing Awards.
For an up-to-date listing of publications, check out the MediaCircus Sightings page.