Screenwriting

Long interested in film, I finally tried my hand at screenwriting by adapting my novel The Empty Quarter with actor/producer Todd Allen and screenwriter Bonnie Orr.  Bonnie and I later co-wrote the script adapted from Oblivion's Altar. 

Emmy-award-winning screenwriter-turned-novelist Alan Brennert adapted Not Between Brothers for NBC, and I modestly consulted with him. (An Emmy-Award-winning screenwriter himself, Alan has embarked on a successful career as a historical novelist.) Not Between Brothers was in development with NBC Studios/Kevin Costner’s Tig Productions for a four-hour miniseries.   

Credited as a “co-producer” of the ten-hour History Channel miniseries Texas Rising (2015), I wrote approximately 90% of the 14-hour second season, which remains in development. The show won the Wrangler Award for Best Limited Series from the Western Heritage Association and Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. I also appeared as an on-screen commentator in History’s Avenging the Alamo: The Road to Texas Rising, the one-hour companion documentary film to the limited series.

Since then, I have collaborated with several independent production companies on troubled scripts. Along my journey to fix my own projects, I’ve learned to fix other people’s problems. I see things. Not dead people.

My other credits include working  as a full producer on Gray House, a six-hour limited series originally written by John Sayles that is upcoming on Paramount, and  writing or co-writing a variety of feature-length films. I helped create the concept for a biopic for the Lifetime Channel based on the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, which also remains in development. I have also worked on other projects with Magnolia Pictures/2929, History, Lifetime/A&E and the Discovery Channel.

During the pandemic, I worked with Austin film director Ty Roberts on an international crime drama, The Falcon Thief. I’m very proud of our rich concept for what was basically a magazine article. Ty’s now off shooting his own script, a western, down in Argentina. He’s kind of wild.