Tag Archive: filmmaking


Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 4: the Colorado collage

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October 20, 2025

That very specific and unusual sensation when you’re traveling for more than 48 hours in a row (Ridgway, Denver, Quito, Manta) and you’re almost constantly in motion, across state lines and countries and continents and hemispheres. Untraceable and everywhere and nowhere…

Colorado was as fun as it was beauitful. Denver reminded me of Portland, only higher. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time there, but the parts I saw were creative and memorable. I had two days between film festivals, so I stepped wayyy outside my comfort zone, joined the Couch Surfing site (I didn’t even know couches could swim!), and got a free night stay in Denver. Major kudos to Tony, a cool Vietnamese-American guy who let me crash in his comfy attic. Going up and down on a metal ladder made the experience that much more surreal and entertaining.

If you ever travel across Colorado, I very highly recommend the Bustang bus: they accept cash, the buses run on time, and – unlike Greyhound – there’s zero smell.

My Couch Surfing request in Grand Junction didn’t work out, so I got an AirBnB room at the edge of town. The following morning, trying to be a good tourist and sidestepping the road construction, I fell into a ditch and got covered in mud. After a quick detour to the construction site’s portapotty and a very slow-motion clothes change (just like that Deadpool trailer with the phone booth), I emerged in my spare pants. (Later on, a washing machine reatored my jeans and sweatshirt to their original condition.)

That did leave a lot of mud on my boots, though… For the rest of that morning, until my 1:30pm bus to Ridgway, the locals kept giving me the stink eye. Haters.

My phone, which is almost but not quite waterproof, got quite a bit of mud into every single port. It was a bit touch-and-go there, but the phone camera came back to life fast, and the phone’s speaker and microphone went on strike before resuming their duties. One helluva mud ditch, eh.

On the upside, I met my first-ever supervillain-coded person! The locals know her as The Crusher: she collects all their unwanted electronics and gadgets (mostly printers) and then disassembles them. The valuable bits go to industrial recyclers, while the rest goes to the plain old recycling. That’s something I’ve always been curious about (see my 2020 lockdown posts), and it’s beyond exciting to learn someone out there has actually made a business out of it. May your salvage be ever fruitful, Crusher.

I noticed something odd while wandering around the downtown Grand Junction, muddy boots and all. That town of 71,000 people didn’t have a single diner that served an old-fashioned slice of pie. When I asked the locals, they got the “Mandela effect” look on their faces before saying that no, there aren’t any slice-o-pie places anywhere in town. How bizarre. Feels like that’s linked to the disappearance of third space, a la “Bowling alone.”

I settled for a giant chocolate chip cookie at some hippie-themed coffeeshop. It wasn’t bad. The barista was fun and flirtatious.

And then, at last, a bus to Ridgway – a dark-sky town of 1,000 people. They arranged a free hotel for visiting filmmakers, which is almost unheard of in our community. Fun little town. Lots of public art. (But no sliced pie. The mystery deepens!) Great mountain views. A truly dark sky. A stargazing party on a Saturday night: the brightest Milky Way I’d ever seen, and lots of locals with their telescopes, letting the rest of us look at the distant nebulas and planets. (Here’s looking at you, Jupiter.)

The festival itself was… It wasn’t perfect. It had many glitches during the film screenings. Its director was sick and unavailable for the duration, so maybe that was why. The award ceremony randomly got rescheduled and held 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. I hadn’t expected to win, and I didn’t, but it would’ve been fun to cheer for my new filmmaker friendos… As it was, we all sat through a full hour of local improv (they were enthusiastic, but that’s a lot of improv, y’all), after which everyone just got up and silently walked away. That, in and of itself, felt like some postmodern art performance. When some of my new buds explained the actual award ceremony had happened 90 minutes ago, I called them liars until finally conceding that yes, the facts did seem to fit their quaint narrative. Ah well.

But that was on sunday. On Saturday night, my short film’s screening had gone fairly well, and since I was the only filmmaker in attendance for that block, the Q&A section was entirely mine. That’s pretty rare, eh. I took the opportunity to edumacate the small but lively audience about all the cool public domain videos they could use for their own filmmaking experiments. The anxiety of small glitches had gotten to me, so I was in my “talking fast and gesticulating and grinning” mode rather than the “cool and suave foreign filmmaker” persona. For what it’s worth, the audience seemed to understand and appreciate my words. With any luck, I’ll get a do-over next year. Live and learn and improve.

After the non-award award ceremony, I used my political science skillz to corral all the remaining filmmakers into an afterparty at the hotel’s bar. (Great loaded fries!) That experience, with just the six of us sitting and sipping beer and talking about filmmaking, was the single best part of the festival for me. (Though, once again, the locals’ hospitality was wonderful.) We all headed back to bed once the bar closed for the night at 9pm. (Small town, eh.) Much fun was had.

And so my first-ever Feral Artist Nomad odyssey ends. Three back-to-back film festivals, two weeks, many new friends, an offer to crash at a new buddy’s place if I get into the Durango film festival. (I submitted my comedy sci-fi film just ahead of the final deadline. Toes and fingers crossed!)

…sometimes, I go two whole days in a row without thinking about her…

Typing this up on the bus headed to Denver – a long ride, but cheap, and with beautiful views. From there, a red-eye flight to Ecuador by way of Atlanta, and a night at a motel right across Quito’s bus station, and a looong ride to a beach town where my Workaway volunteer hosts await – because to hell with Canadian winters.

But that’s a whole different adventure.

Onward.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 2: memories of New York

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October 10, 2025

It’s 9am on a chilly Friday morning, and I’m about to bid New York adieu. The last 96 hours were eventful: an overnight bus from Montreal, followed by four days of mingling and touristing, as well as three nights of sci-fi films from around the world.

I love this city… In some other timeline, one where Amazon didn’t roll back its expansion, I would’ve moved here instead of Canada. So it goes. The subway, the busy streets, the grandiose and gorgeous monuments the locals take for granted – I’m not sure I could ever grow bored here.

I’ve done all the usual touristy things: the Grand Central Terminal, an overpriced lox bagel, several laps around Times Square, and hours upon hours of walking and gawking and taking pictures. (Hey, it’s a photogenic city.)

Elsewhere, one potential renter after another lies about their intention of renting my Quebec City apartment, and time passes. It sits empty, waiting. By now, I’ve figured out the landlord’s strange chain of communicaton, sending a message in triplicate each time another desperado messages me, aiming to rent an apartment they can’t visit, guided solely by the video tour I’d recorded and annotated in my pidgin French. With any luck, this latest candidate will comr through, or I’ll be on the hook for yet another month of rent on an apartment I have no intention to return to.

This film festival has remarkably more AI fanboys than last year. (And even one fangirl!) For the time being, they’re not in the majority, or even the plurality. When my film, “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace,” screened and when the viewers saw my note that I hadn’t used AI, there was some passionate applause – so I’ve got that going for me.

Last night was my film’s worldwide premiere. Not my first screening or Q&A, and not even the third. And yet the jitters never fully go away. Will they hate the film? Will they boo? Will they form a remarkably well organized mob and proceed to tar and feather me? (The odds of that are low, but never zero.) And then the film begins, and the audience laughs in all the right places, and seven minutes later, they cheer and clap. (And then they laugh some more once they see the Easter egg at the very end.)

Afterwards, a few of them walk by to tell me they liked it, to ask – with reverence in their voice – where they can find the story the film was based on, or whether they can follow me on Instagram. (But of course.) In turn, I encourage them to read Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel without a crew” and try to make their own low-budget films. I hope to meet at least one of them at the next year’s festival – as a fellow filmmaker, not as an audience member. (The odds of that are low, but, yet again, never quite zero.)

The dozens of short story submissions I’d sent out last month are coming home to roost. Only rejections so far, but that’s okay: I redirect them to other publications using my personal system. I’ve got time.

A small film festival from Stockholm emails me: they like my debut film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” and it’ll be part of their program. Neat.

An experimental musician who dabbles in 3D imagery performed at last night’s film festival as the opening act. Another short film idea – or maybe even more than that – popped up in my brain.

At film festivals, names and faces and tenses eventually blend together, mixing, combining, forming something better and stranger and new. Even more so when free beer is involved. (The free beer was great. The free gelato had been a lie. So it goes.)

During my final subway ride, in the tunnel by the exit, Wonder Woman plays the violin – one pop-culture tune after another. The violin has formed a blister on her neck. I help her apply two bandaids during a lull in foot traffic. I record a video I’m unsure I’ll ever watch. I leave a tip.

By the escalator, at the boundary between the artificial dungeon and the dull October sunlight, a street preacher practices his craft. “What part do I play in my own destruction?!” he shouts.

I board my bus to the next city, the next film festival, the next improbable adventure.

Onward.

Ever onward.

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Alternatives and paths not taken

Filed under: on stuff and sundry, wanderlust, writing — 2 Comments
September 26, 2025

This little town doesn’t want to let me go.

I aim to move from here to Montreal (or at least move my things) four days from now, at the very end of September. And yet… Uhaul is unsure whether it can rent me a one-way intercity truck. The person taking over my apartment lease broke every deadline and will technically move in before her application is fully processed. And the landlord, who outed himself as a xenophobic racist and sexist when I finally cornered him at the sketchy, unmarked office, has made every excuse in the book and blamed everyone but himself for his company’s rather impressive lack of customer service.

Splendid, eh.

I’ll get out of here one way or another, even if that means pulling a cart full of stuff all the way from here to Montreal, but damn, the escape velocity this move demands is really something.

I’ve lived in Quebec City for four years and one month: longer than I’ve lived anywhere since college. Too long…

When, somehow and at some point, I finally stash my things in a nice, heated storage unit in the big city, I will be technically homeless for quite a bit: a few days at a hostel, a couple of big, fancy parties (the kind that only Montreal can offer!), and then I’ll kick off my two-week film festival tour: a daisy-chain of three festivals in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. The first will involve crashing at my sister’s basement, while the other two provide free lodging to their filmmakers, huzzah! So many new friends, new experiences, new memories to bury the old…

That fortnight-long adventure will end on October 20th, after which (barring last-moment acceptance letters from the last two festivals in November), I’ll have absolutely nothing on my agenda for about four months, which means I’ll step wayyy out of my comfort zone and give Workaway a try. It’s a fun little setup: you find a host, pay for your plane ticket and insurance, work about 20-25 hours a week, and get a free place to stay and free food, as well as tons of natural beauty (or urban hustle, if that’s more your style). I’ve just sent an introductory message to an absolutely amazing farm in Ecuador, and if they actually reply… That’ll be amazing. (Giant-sized turtles! Organic fruit! Perfect night sky!)

And if they don’t, in fact, reply – well, my carefully curated list of favourite Workaway hosts (all based in South America, because these winters are getting to me) will set me up with more adventures.

Sometime around February, I’ll fly back to hit up more film festivals. Over the past few weeks, I’ve applied to about a dozen writer-in-residence openings and grants. (That involved typing up a chapter from my creative non-fiction proposal in record time, and then submitting it literally five minutes before deadline!) Frankly, no idea if I’ll get any of them. The odds are stacked against me, but aren’t they always? Can’t win if you don’t try. I figure that my list of film festival screenings (seven so far, with more on their way!) and published story credits has me firmly in the “emerging Canadian writer” category, and that ain’t nothing.

…but if I do not, in fact, secure any of those coveted writing/filmmaking opportunities, then there’s a very very good chance that, come April, I’ll open up my storage unit, drop off my stuff, pick up a carefully pre-packed backpack (tactics, eh), and fly out to San Diego to repeat my Pacific Crest Trail adventure. Unlike the one in 2022, hopefully it’ll involve a whole lot less yelling at my accountant every few days and a bit more fun. (Might even join a tramily!) In that particular eventuality, I won’t rejoin civilization until late August-ish, or just in time for the 2026 Worldcon. We’ll see.

I’m getting over the big breakup, but – as always – in my own way. For some reason, this month had quite a few deadlines for short story anthologies… So I went ahead and wrote a short story for each of them. All 10 of them. The grand total was roughly 26,000 words. Wordcount aside, this has been the single most productive month of my life, because my brain was in desperate need of a distraction. When you feed your subconscious mind 10 different prompts and tell it to get on it, the end result can be pretty amazing. I followed Charlie Jane Anders’s advice on writing: transmute your feelings into art, let them pass through you, and create something beautiful… Or something, in any case. Realistically, I expect at least three of those stories to get accepted. Almost certainly won’t get all 10. Five or more acceptances would be amazing.

Quite a few of my stories (three? four?) are coming out between now and New Year’s: the publishing industry’s schedule works in mysterious ways. I will, of course, share the links here with all y’all.

In another world, where my luck was a bit better, I would’ve finished the Continental Divide Trail thruhike right about now, give or take. That would’ve resulted in a very very different year… For one thing, my relationship would still be intact, though every bit as doomed. My short story portfolio would’ve been much smaller. I wouldn’t have attended the 2025 Worldcon, wouldn’t have written this essay that’s gone viral, and that, in turn, wouldn’t have opened some rather interesting doors for me… On the other hand, I would’ve had a whole lot more experiences and adventures and new friendos.

On some level, I’m pretty sure that all the stories I’ve written (and sold!) over the past four months have been an attempt to overcompensate, to do something worthy and productive after my much-anticipated hiking adventure ended far too soon. My life is quite a lot different now, because of everything I’ve done since my return from the desert, and my 2026 will be quite different as a result of that.

The other me, the one who (hypothetically) finished the CDT, would be gearing up to do the Appalachian Trail, aka every introvert’s nightmare (it’s where the entire east coast comes to hang out), and would be making a fair bit less art. Maybe. Possibly. Hard to tell for sure.

These last few days of September are filled with giddy anticipation: I want to fast-forward through the remaining time, to jump straight to September 30th, to get it over with, to start my new adventure. The type of giddiness and impatience that every nomad knows…

But meanwhile, I need to get ready for a little going-away party with my local friendos – one tonight, another one tomorrow. A fun way to pass these last few evenings, before embarking on my Feral Artist Nomad adventure of uncertain duration.

And so it goes.

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In which the author delves a whole lot deeper

Filed under: writing — 2 Comments
September 8, 2025

I’ve recently found myself burdened with an inordinate amount of free time and utter lack of responsibilities of any kind. I’m choosing to use this opportunity to tap into my creative side, to a point. Last week, I wrote two new short stories for upcoming anthologies. (There were quite a few anthology calls with September deadlines!) I’ve also submitted my earlier short stories to 14 different submission calls. (Huzzah for simultaneous submissions, eh?) And just now, mere minutes ago, I sent an application for my first-ever fellowship. It feels existentially terrifying, though I suspect everyone secretly feels the same way: fake it till you make it, put on your big-artist face, push on, and persevere. Or push on, in any case.

…two and a half years is a pretty good run for a relationship. She had promised to change. That was a lie. It was for the best…

As I wrote in my shiny new author thread on the Codex message board (you should join if you’re in the biz! It’s mighty active, and their archives are amazing), my filmmaking side and my writing side are in a constant competition. Funny, that, considering my foray into filmmaking had started out as a way to stay sane while querying literary agents. As it stands right now, my filmmaking forays outweigh my writing ones, even if you include the recent viral essay. It took very little time to procure a list of the five most recent screenings and honours. (No prizes yet, but quite a few “finalist” laurels.) And thus the fellowship application was for my filmmaker self, not the writer self. I have this interesting idea for a crowdsourced sci-fi-esque mockumentary, and all I really need is a big ol’ external hard drive and a few weeks of uninterrupted time with no cellphone reception. (An anathema to most Millennials, I know.)

…she was incredibly particular about her water. I always made sure to carry a bottle of her favourite brand in my backpack. Most times, she didn’t even touch it. Now I have 20 of the damn things left in my fridge. Forcing myself to drink them because when I break my lease and move out, it would be beyond foolish to pack them…

I’d sent out my very first agent query in March 2024. Completed my first short film in June 2024. My first screening: October 2024. My first red carpet with adoring fans shouting my name in the darkness: February 2025. My first viral essay (which opens up a lot of possibilities…): August 2025. Things are accelerating, and I don’t think there’s a way to get off this ride, much like a rollercoaster which takes your initial consent and terrifies you the entire way down, up, and down again, over and over, until you finally reach the end. There is no way to leave before the ride is done. No good way, anyhow. I hadn’t realized these aspects of myself had even existed. And now, as any self-respecting gamer, I want to follow that progression tree all the way to the end. How far can I proceed? Is there an end at all? A whole new universe – two of them, actually – both with a nearly infinite amount of shiny and delicious knowledge to consume, absorb, enact.

…she was the last reason for me to stay in this beautiful tiny town. The big city to the west has far more parties, and more cultural events, and a gigantic airport that would not require me to carpool twice and dedicate an entire day just to get there and back. I’ll break my lease any day now. I’m curious about spending November-January doing light Workaway labour in some tropical country, or more than one. I’m curious about many things…

I believe that certain actions permanently alter your personality. There is a version of you before and after losing your virginity. Before and after having your first drink, first drug, first communion. (If ever, that is.) This morning, I’d been the sort of artist who had never applied for a grant or a fellowship of any sort. Here and now, just a few hours later, I can no longer say that.

The future is terrifying.

But also fun.

Bring it.

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In which the author dreams of film festivals

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July 11, 2025

Ever since my early retirement four years ago, I’ve been trying to have one big theme, one grand adventure per year. Last year, it was my quest for a literary agent: that one took a while, and required writing a whole new novel on top of the existing one, but it finally worked. (I’m very very happy to be represented by Brandy Vallance of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency.)

This year… Well, this year is going to be even more ambitious. About a year ago, I made my first-ever short film, Please Don’t Send Help. I created it using NASA’s archival footage, a $15 budget, and a whole lot of editing, which I learned on the fly. (Pro tip: DaVinci Resolve is amazing free software!) That got me into the Brookly SciFi Film Festival in, well, Brooklyn in October 2024, and then a much bigger festival, Dam Short Film Festival in Nevada just a few months ago. And now I’m hooked, eh.

The theme for this coming year will be “never-ending film fest party.” I’ve made a few more short films since my first one: How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace, So Long and Thanks for All the Bandwidth, Species Spotlight: Humans, and Drive Me to the Moon. (Good titles are very important!) The last one is my secret weapon, which I’ll try to send out to the biggest festivals of them all. I used the other three, along with Please Don’t Send Help, as part of my shotgun approach to film festival applications: I submitted those four at the same time in hopes that at least one of them will get their sci-fi curator’s attention. And if they don’t – well, life goes on.

Below is the full list of festivals I’ve submitted my films to thus far. My main criteria were reputation, vibes, and hospitality. (There are some small-ish fests on this list that nonetheless have a stellar reputation.) I’ll revisit this post in about a year, once everything is done. I’m sharing my list in the interest of full disclosure: if any other newbie filmmaker is reading this, I hope they’ll find my strategy helpful!

These film submissions ranged in price from free to $50 per film, and I’m not gonna lie – this cost me a pretty penny. However, a) if this works as planned, then I’ll spend the entirety of October and March bouncing from one amazing party to another, and b) if I get in, there’s usually an alumni discount (i.e., no need to pay the submission fee again in the future), and c) this is an adventure, eh!

I don’t expect to get into all 100% of those (though it’d be neat to get into the one in Finland: Quebec sponsors their filmmakers’ flight to that one!), but I think I have a fair chance with quite a few of them. Time will show how this grand project will play out: hubris, glory, a bit of both? We’ll see.

And so:

FestivalLocationDate
Festival de Cinema de la Ville de QuebecQCSept 10-14 2025
Cindependent Film FestivalCincinnattiSept 18-20
Healdsburg International Short Film FestivalHealdsburg, CASeptember 26-28
Cordillera International Film FestivalRenoSeptember 25 – 29, 2025
Portland Film FestivalPortlandOctober 1-5
ReadingFilmFESTPAOctober 9-12
Tallgrass Film FestivalWichita, KansasOctober 16-19
Hamilton Film FestivalOntarioOctober 17 – 26
SPASMMontrealOctober 22 – November 1, 2025
Coast Film & Music FestivalLaguna Beach, CANovember 1-9
Yucca Valley Film FestivalYucca Valley, CANovember 7-9
Centre Film FestivalPANovember 10-16
Cucalorus Film FestivalNCNovember 19-23
Utah Film FestivalUTJanuary 1-5 hahaha
Lookout Wild Film FestivalChattanooga, TNJanuary 10-18
Dam Short Film FestivalNevadaFeb 11-16
Beaufort International Film FestivalSCFeb 17-22
Sedona International Film FestivalAZFeb 22-Mar 2
Tampere Film FestivalFinland!Mar 4-8
Sonoma International Film FestivalCAMarch 25-29
Fargo Film FestivalNDMarch 17-21
Cleveland International Film FestivalOHApr 9-18
Julien Dubuque International Film FestivalIowaApr 18-25
Atlanta Film FestivalAtlantaApr 23-May 3
Stony Brook Film FestivalNYJuly 17-26
The Norwegian Short Film FestivalNorwayJune 11-15-ish
Nevada City Film FestivalCA (the “Nevada” part is a red herring)June 19-22-ish

And now I wait… Yesterday, the first of these festivals got back to me: ReadingFilmFest has accepted Please Don’t Send Help, so I know where I’ll be around October 10th! One down, 26 to go, woooo!

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In which the author gets his daily steps – and then some!

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July 10, 2025

If my eventual cause of death isn’t “misadventure,” I will be very very surprised. For anyone in the distant future trying to make sense of my life and/or to create a facsimile virtual mind (good luck with that, bud), this here is a fine example of one of the core parts of my personality…

Quebec City’s bus drivers are on strike. Again. This time, the strike is 13 days long, timed specifically to coincide with the gigantic annual music festival, FEQ. I had been under the (very wrong, very misguided) impression that the strike had ended. That was incorrect.

When I got up, my plan for the day was fairly simple, as those things go: take a leisurely 90-minute walk (yes, 90) to the local Ikea, enjoy their 50% off Thursday dining hall, get a few tiny parts for my bookshelf (each move takes its toll, eh), then take the bus to the tourist sector, return a couple of library books, pick a new book, then rush back to the bus to take advantage of the 90-minute bus pass window, and head home. Easy-peasy, right? Wrong.

The 90-minute hike went fairly well: I got to experience a new (and not very impressive) part my city firsthand, with my own feet and nose and eyes. The Ikea visit was only partially productive, but their diner was fine as always. And then… Well, then I realized I could either walk 90 minutes back home, or 150 minutes (that’s 2.5 hours) to the tourist sector (aka Old Quebec), followed by a two-hour hike home afterwards. Reader, I chose option B.

I have two legs, high stamina, and way too much stubbornness for my own damn good. (Incidentally, this is yet another reason women usually live longer than men.) If I went home, I might as well have postponed all my library-related plans for 96 whole hours, assuming the strike ended on schedule. I support the drivers’ right to strike, but I also refuse to stay put. My 2022 PCT thru-hike is partially to blame: after you walk from Mexico to Canada, from that point on just about anything is in walking distance. It’s only a matter of logistics, really.

And, well, that’s how I got my 56,800 steps for the day, aka 28.4 kilometers or 17.6 miles. With a roughly 10lb backpack on my back. Also got a damn fine dose of vitamin D, and a bit of a sunburn on my face, but it wouldn’t be the first time. (Though, admittedly, the contrast between my arms (currently a nice shade of brown) and the rest of my body (Snow White’s long-lost brother from another mother) is mighty hilarious.

No regrets. Ever.

In creative news, my debut film (Please Don’t Send Help) has been accepted by two film festivals! One has asked me to postpone the announcement till later (secrecy makes everything more exciting), and the other one is ReadingFilmFest, an annual film festival held in the town of West Reading, PA. I’ve never been to Pennsylvania in my life, so it’ll be exciting to attend that fest in person in October. (Their generous assistance with lodging is much appreciated!) I’ll make another post soon about my rather ambitious plans to make a film festival circuit of my very own… ReadingFilmFest was definitely part of that list. One down, many more to go!

And now, time to lean back, enjoy a big cold beer, and play some Stardew Valley to unwind… Aww yeah.

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Losses and wins

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June 3, 2025

My desert adventure ended early. I wrote about it in depth on my trail journal. Short version: my legs got several injuries, the trail was a lot less developed than advertised (at least 10% included walking on the side of a highway…), and it was soul-crushingly lonely. It was considered normal to walk 3-4 days without seeing another human being. This year, in particular, there was a shortage of hikers, especially from other countries. (Probably due to the politics and the ongoing harassment of foreign tourists.)

The loneliness bit may have been partly due to bad luck. There was one experienced hiker (she’d done the Triple Crown (hiking all three major trails) twice) who managed to form a trail family of eight people around her by the time she reached the first town, 83 miles from the border. Impressive, that. Others ended up walking outside such bubbles.

The desert was beautiful, though… I’d never seen the Milky Way so bright, not even in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during my PCT thru-hike in 2022. Along the way, I explored the ghost town of Old Hachita – or what’s left of it. Those ruins were some grade-A Wild West Americana.

In the end, I made it 155 miles before calling it quits in Silver City, NM. The downtown Palace Hotel was incredibly hiker-friendly, and there were quite a few of us there. Many were recovering from their own injuries, most of them less serious than my own. It was a bit like a hiker-trash field hospital in that respect. My initial (and very very ambitious) plan had been to do the entire Triple Crown by completing the Continental Divide Trail this year, followed by the Appalachian Trail in 2026. But over at that hotel… Yeesh. Yeesh, I say. Multiple thruhikers (who had saved the CDT for last) I met would complain about how much they disliked the AT, and how they were forcing themselves to do the CDT.

I listened to their woeful laments, and nodded, and sympathized – and also asked myself, “Self, is that what I sound like?”

There comes a point when pursuing an overly ambitious quest becomes not merely eccentric or quixotic, but self-destructive, with not much fun along the way. A lot of that desert section was beautiful, and I met some unique and interesting people, but hiking on the side of the highway, alone, with coal-rolling trucks spewing exhaust in my face… That doesn’t count as a “National Scenic Trail” in my book.

…though to be fair, if my legs hadn’t decided to fall apart (should I have done more ThighMaster exercises beforehand?..), and if it had been just a bit less lonely, I might have carried on, if only out of sheer stubbornness.

Ah well.

The unplanned return back to Quebec was pricey: a flight from Silver City to Albuquerque (a very cheap, very tiny propeller plane; great experience!), from there to New York, and from there, an all-night bus back home. My apartment lease was still good until June 30th, so that’s where I’ve been for the past two weeks. No furniture (still in storage), only my sleeping bag, the contents of my hiking backpack, and a big bag of “welcome home” stuff I’d packed away for easy access. (The initial plan had been to finish the hike, get an AirBnB, and hunt for apartments.)

It makes no sense to hire a moving truck, move my stuff back here, and then move it back to my new apartment (just found one) on July 1, soooo here I am, trapped in the midst of strange logistics. Just an empty studio, a sleeping bag, a few books, my phone, and my laptop. (I use the phone as a hotspot when I need to do laptop-specific things.)

It’s a hilarious parody of a bachelor’s life (though fortunately, my girlfriend was glad to see me back early!), but on the upside, I’ve gotten quite a lot done. I’ve already finished a couple of new short stories, caught up on a lot of reading, and done some other productive stuff. If I’d returned to my TV, gaming computer, and unlimited internet, my productivity would’ve been a whole lot lower, eh.

I’ve got some good news, too. I always juggle a lot of different projects, and a few of them paid off:

My essay “A Hierarchy of Apocalypses” has been published in Phano, making it my first-ever non-fiction sale. (I’m not including my Kindle e-books.) Also, the pixel art the editor had picked to go with my essay is a thing of beauty.

“If Time Travel Were Possible…” (a short story set in my OTTO-verse) has been published in Black Cat Weekly, which also resulted in my first-ever fan mail!

“Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on!) has been published in Pulp Asylum. The title is a bit of a funny story: a couple of podcast hosts had a blooper moment when they mispronounced the title of that classic novel, and they laughed it off. But that got me thinking… Who would want to kill an actual train itself? Why? And how? And thus this story was born!

…and I have a few more waiting in the wings.

It’s a bit funny: in the short-story biz, an “emerging writer” is defined as someone who has three or fewer publishing credits. I guess that makes me an emerged writer, eh?

One particular cool piece of news is that my short film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” got accepted by the first-ever Worldcon Film Festival! Worldcon is the biggest annual sci-fi convention in the world, and this will be their first addition of a film festival alongside all the author-related events. This year, it’s held in Seattle, in mid-August. I’ll get to attend it for free for one day when my film screens, and it’ll be a fun experience, being there as a sci-fi creator, but not (or at least not yet) a published novelist. Just like with my one-day visit to the New York Comic Con last October, I’ll have to make the most of it!

And speaking of film festivals… I’ve got at least two dozen major film fests I’ve applied for. (Why yes, I do have a problem.) All of them are famous for their hospitality, hard to get into, and/or will get me sponsored by Quebec if I get picked. That’s mostly for the European festivals, but I really like my odds with the Finnish Tampere fest! We’ll see.

If even a few of those festivals accept me (and I submitted four films to each one, to boost my odds), that’ll result in more partying within a single year than in my entire life up to this point. All those submission fees have cost me a pretty penny (even with the carefully timed early-bird discounts), but a) parties! and b) unforgettable experiences and c) possibly new grand adventures stemming from those new connections?, and d) once you get accepted, you usually get a lifelong alumni discount, meaning no more fees ever again.

And so, while my dream of becoming an elite professional thru-hiker has gone bust, the upside is that I’d be able to attend my film’s screening at my dream sci-fi convention (that would’ve been impossible if I kept hiking), and I’ve used all this free time (and utter lack of distractions) to double-down on my artsy endeavours. Let’s see how this plays out, eh?

…there’s a distinct possibility that a year from today, I’ll be completely frazzled, drained of energy, filled with way too many conflicting and overlapping memories of far too many events (what folks in the biz call “the festival brain”), but that kind of fatigue will be a good problem to have – or, as I call these things, #GrigoryProblems

I hope all y’all are about to have a fun summer too!

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New short film! And more

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March 12, 2025

The best way to get absolutely fucked-up for less than $5 is by drinking a can of NOS. Twenty or so years ago, it was the most powerful energy drink on the market. It’s been surpassed since then, but it still has one helluva kick, with 175mg of caffeine and more than 1,000% of your daily dose of B12 and a few other things.

I’ve only ever tried NOS three times in my entire life.

The first time was in college: I spent the next 36 hours walking around campus, pointing at things, and giggling.

The second time was after college: I pulled an all-nighter and wrote a best-selling e-book on Taoism.

The third time… The third time was last week. I hadn’t touched the stuff in over a decade and wasn’t sure if it’d have an effect on me, but yup, it sure did. I stayed up most of the night, added the much-needed final touches to two short films, and created another, brand new short film from the components I’d assembled. (Public domain video clips, my amazing voice actress’s recording, public domain music, etc…)

And as a result, I’m very very proud to present my newest – and most ambitious! – short film: “So Long, and Thanks for All the Bandwidth.” When a routine experiment on a space station goes terribly wrong, the lone astronaut is faced with an amoral AI hellbent on uploading itself to Earth. With the fate of humanity on the line, the astronaut must destroy the AI – or suffocate trying.

And here’s the extra-fancy poster I’ve made for my film. (Thanks for the neon font, Canva!)

The best part? My budget was $24 USD – all of which went to my amazing voice actress. (You rock, Sarah!!)

Writing this script wasn’t easy for me, because I personally think the traditional three-act story structure is too restricting and too predictable. But nonetheless, that was an interesting opportunity to get out of my comfort zone. My beta viewers sure seemed to like it, and it deals with some of the biggest contemporary fears: untested technology, evil artificial intelligence, and personal autonomy… In the film, both the astronaut and the AI are women, which I think adds another, interesting dimension to the power struggle.

The entire film is seven minutes long, which is about three times as long as my debut attempt, “Please Don’t Send Help.” Heh. Together with my other two new films (“Species Spotlight: Humans” and “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace”), this makes four films total, or almost 30 minutes of sci-fi goodness.

If you had told me this just a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. I didn’t even start tinkering with video editing until May 2024. Incidentally, major kudos to my filmmaker friend from Dam Short Film Festival who recommended using the free version of DaVinci Resolve (the paid version is $400; the free version still has many neat features) – it has been an absolute game-changer for me. So, soooo much easier and more user-friendly, eh.

I really ought to be making the final edits on my second novel… But deep-diving into the r/Filmmakers and r/FilmFestivals subreddits is such a fine and fun distraction, eh. The movie industry isn’t a meritocracy by any measure: we’ve all heard about the nepo babies, or about key decisions being made based solely on friendship or sexual favours… But the parts that remain after you filter out all that stuff? Those parts are pretty damn meritocratic. As with any hobby, the more you learn, the more rewarding your experience will be – and I’ve been learning a lot…

Two things I aim to explore after I return from my gigantic CDT thru-hike (which is just six weeks away now!): how to apply for artist grants on provincial and federal level (because as a filmmaker attending festivals in the US, I represent Canada’s and Quebec’s art scene), and how film distributor companies work. Not the ones that charge you several grand to submit your film across all the festivals in the world, but the ones that will sign a contract, submit your film on your behalf (using their own existing partnership) for free, and will give you 70% of the net profit from screening fees, art exhibitions, etc, etc. This might be nothing. This might be everything.

I’ve been experimenting with FilmFreeway’s $10 promotions: you give them the moneys (it’s $20 if you don’t have their monthly $15 membership) and they include your film’s thumbnail image and synopsis in their daily festival briefing. Ideally, that means a really cool festival would learn about your film and offer you a full waiver: a 100% discount to submit your creation to their festival. (Though acceptance is not guaranteed.) In reality… Well, in reality you get roughly 200 offers ranging from 10% off to 90% off (usually around 50%) from festivals that aren’t on your wishlist, as well as a handful of full waivers from festivals that may or may not be scams.

Unfortunately, many festivals that send you partial/full waivers are scammy, or at the very least sketchy. They might not have any images in their gallery. Or they might be an online-only festival. Or their rules would contain creepy language implying they’ll show your film whenever and wherever they feel like it, “for commercial and promotional purposes.” (To clarify: the festivals that promise to use just a few seconds of footage are fine.) There are festivals that have 50+ award categories, and that are so impatient to scam you that they’ll straight-up say that a) you’ll get accepted and win by default, and b) you’ll have to pay $179 USD to ship a plastic award thingy all the way from wherever the hell they are to your home address. Hard pass, amigos. Hard pass.

So… Yeah. It’s pretty much Wild West out there. As of this writing, FilmFreeway has 14,568 film festivals. I wonder how many of them are scams (or sketchy) as opposed to genuine.

That said, I did find a few gems among the hundreds of kinda-sorta-not-really waiver notifications. A few small festivals (carefully vetted) offered full waivers. A few others offered waivers high enough (and with their fees low enough) that the grand total came to $5 or less. There’s a top-100 film festival in Scotland that now has two of my films. A small and cozy festival in Iceland. I won’t be able to attend them, but I’m a strong believer in the power of coincidences: if my films screen somewhere, and if someone loves them and contacts me, that could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, eh.

I’ve carefully made a list of 11 film festivals that I’ll send my short films to. All carefully researched, all with great reputations. They’ll be from late September through late March, aka in between my epic hikes. (When – not if – I complete the Continental Divide Trail – the next one will be the Appalachian Trail in 2026. Triple Crown, woooo!)

Two of the 11 festivals are in Canada: Hamilton and Montreal. Most of the 11 are quite big – either in the top-1% worldwide ranking, or close to it. I don’t expect to get accepted into all of them, but one can dream, right? I’m going to submit either all four of my films to each fest, or the three latest ones, without my debut “Please Don’t Send Help.” I love it, I really do, but it’s 2.5 minutes long, and I get the feeling that a lot of festivals wouldn’t even consider a film shorter than three minutes. (Though one of the festivals on my list (Fargo Film Festival) has a special category for 2-minute films: I made sure to squish my film to 1:59 just for them; let’s see what happens!)

The goal is to get in. Once I’m in, there would be – hopefully – alumni discounts for the following years. Combined with travel grants (toes and fingers crossed!), that would make the next festival circuit seasons a helluva lot more interesting. There’s a famous sci-fi film festival called FilmQuest in Provo, Utah, but it lasts 10 days, doesn’t help the filmmakers with any accommodations (some other festivals have fun little homestay programs), and actually charges filmmakers to attend the networking events, parties, etc. I’m sure there’s fun to be had there, but… after my first-ever experience (the festival which shall remain forever nameless) last October, I’m not willing to pay to attend events after I’ve already paid the high submission fee. So it goes.

I’ve made a spreadsheet (as I often do) to track all of my wishlist festivals, particularly their early-bird deadlines… I’ll send my films to them soon. Even with all my tricks, the submission fees alone will cost me roughly $1,000 USD. However: a) I’ve finally sold my goddamn condo, so I won’t have to worry about surprise special assessments ever again; and b) when I snapped and went on my “revenge vacation” in June-July 2021 (seven cities in 37 days, if memory serves), that had cost me roughly $10,000 (hey, you don’t get to judge me), so really, this is all quite relative, eh.

…ultimately, my big deep-dive into filmmaking – research and all – is an incredibly elaborate attempt to ignore the news. Sure seems like Trump and Putin are trying to monopolize access to the North Pole by annexing Canada and connecting the land masses. Trump’s flunkies keep spewing lies about the big bad fentanyl problem on the Canadian border (no such thing), and it sounds an awful lot like the PR campaign before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (If afterlife exists, I hope Colin Powell got his due. He knew exactly what he was doing when he gave that presentation to the UN.) Hopefully, nothing will happen. But if it does… Goddamn it, I’m so tired of moving. Maybe my fourth country will grant me a measure of peace.

Aaaand now I’m just typing for the sake of typing, and to postpone the inevitable return to the novel-editing process. Heh. I’ve already run out of all the possible distractions – I’ve even gone so far as to make posters, closed captions, and 30-second trailers for all four of my films. Bah, humbug. Back to the wordsmithing mines.

(If you’re reading this in the future, having googled certain film-related terms, I hope this was useful to you, friend.)

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Putting the “pro” in “procrastinator”

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February 27, 2025

I am very very well aware that I’m just straight-up procrastinating now, but come on, this is marginally useful!

I have just under eight weeks left till I fly out to New Mexico, so, obviously (obviously!) I spent today researching all the interesting film festivals (in North America and beyond) that have either no submission fee at all, or just $5 or less.

Once you filter out all the blatant scams, possible scams, the locals-only festivals, and the youth-only festivals (ye gods, that made me feel old), what you’re left with is a rather eclectic mix. I ended up sending off 13 free submissions and 20 dirt-cheap submissions, which cost me $93.36 USD. That’s an excellent deal, considering the really big film festivals I plan to apply for in April will charge $40 a pop. (I’m setting aside a special budget to deal with the one-time expense of applying to high-level festivals. Afterwards, the alumni waivers should take care of the costs in future years.)

The film festivals I’ve ended up submitting to are wild and fun and diverse. There’s one that’s just a county fair in California, presumably with a side room where they’ll project the films for the 120,000 or so attendees. There’s an adorable community-based festival in rural Japan. There are several brand new festivals that are doing this for the first time. There was a rather exciting call for sci-fi short films from this year’s Worldcon. (You know, the biggest annual sci-fi convention?) Looks like they wanted to add some pizzazz to their programming (which is mostly about books), which is why they’re soliciting any and all sci-fi short films for the low, low entry fee of $6. There won’t be any prizes, but maybe, just maaaaybe, if my film gets accepted, and screened, and noticed by someone in the industry… Considering I’d gotten into this hobby as a side-quest while waiting to hear back from literary agents (still waiting!), if this actually gets their attention, then that’ll be the single most roundabout way of doing this.

(I won’t be able to attend in any case, since I’ll be hiking somewhere in Wyoming when the Worldcon takes place in Seattle. Ho hum.)

One of the brand new $5 festivals actually included an automated message saying they’ll gladly provide free lodging at a volunteer’s home if the selected filmmakers choose to attend. That’s just over-the-top wholesomeness, and also makes me feel a little bit like a villain, since my very carefully curated schedule of big-name festivals will have something during that exact three-day slot. Sorry, guys.

This is all a giant fun side quest – a lot of these little festivals will take place during my CDT thru-hike, and I probably won’t be able to attend any of them, even if I do get picked, which is never a guarantee. Still, that’s 33 new mini-adventures that I’ve just set in motion. Who knows, maybe my quaint little sci-fi film will find true fans at one of those friendly and enthusiastic festivals. Maybe new friendships will be forged. Maybe one of the foreign festivals (there’s a really fun one in Germany!) will get intrigued enough to fly me out for a future event. I know, I’m getting way too carried away here, but there’s no harm in dreaming, eh?

If nothing else, my life is gonna get a lot more fun and random: in addition to the notifications from 10 or so big film festivals I’ll focus on, I’ll keep getting random notifications from the 33 festivals I’ve just joined. There’s pretty much no way to keep track of something like that, so every single week will be an exercise in randomness, with unexpected “thumbs up / thumbs down” messages dropping into ye olde inbox.

And hey, maybe my film will actually win an award of some sort! It’s an honour just to have it screened in front of live audience (twice so far), but if I do actually win something, somewhere… I have many many plans for that sort of eventuality.

What a weird little hobby.

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Dam Short Film Festival, or thoughts on my first-ever top-1% fest

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February 26, 2025

Short version: It was amazing!

Slightly longer version: It was amaaaaaaazing!!

Much longer version: The dictionary definition of “amazing” should refer – at least in passing – to the Dam Short Film Festival (DSFF) held in the beautiful Boulder City, NV. (Not far from Las Vegas.)

I had the absolute, incredible, mind-blowing honour of having my sci-fi short film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” screen at that beautiful festival. They accept only 23% or so of submitted films, and they’re among the top 1% film festivals in the world, out of about 15,000 or so. I first learned about the DSFF through an old friend of mine, Aaron, who lives in Nevada and occasionally volunteers. I’d never heard of DSFF before and I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was, “Well, that’s one goofy-named festival.” Heh. (The Hoover Dam has been a really big influence on that town’s history.) In the end, it was a matter of paying $50 for a submission fee in September – and I’m so very, very glad I did.

The notification email dropped on January 1: I was in! What a way to start the year, y’all. What followed was a frenzy of activity, since the festival began just six weeks later. Found a ridiculously cheap flight deal out of Montreal (thanks, Kiwi.com!), secured a couch to crash on (thanks, Aaron!), and started counting down days…

I won’t bore you with the minutiae and the many, many stories of fun shenanigans that happened in that desert town. Fun was had. Many many new friendships with fellow filmmakers were forged. Great vibes were shared. Much beer was drunk.

The staff, the volunteers, and the locals were so ridiculously, over-the-top friendly and enthusiastic… And there was so much variety among the films. Mine was an experimental 2.5-minute (not a typo; two-and-a-half minutes) short film made with NASA’s archival footage and a $15 budget. It aired alongside films shot on an iPhone in two days, films made with animated paper figures, Netflix-quality student films, and a film on sweatshops (Anuja) that’s up for an Oscar this year! Not every filmmaker was there, but there were still dozens of us, and we all rubbed elbows at the early-morning coffeeshop get-togethers and the almost-nightly afterparties. (Huzzah!)

While we were there, it rained for the first time in 10 months. Such a rarity in the desert… I’d spent 10 years of my life in Nevada, all over the state. I’m not sure if the others truly gathered the rarity of that event.

My film screened during the sci-fi block on Saturday afternoon. The theater was full: probably 250-300 people. It was incredibly nerve-racking. (Also didn’t help that I hadn’t eaten much beforehand…) It reminded me of the first time I did nude modeling: intellectually and logically, you know everything will be okay – but emotionally… Emotionally you’re a wreck, and you keep imagining wilder and wilder scenarios. (Incidentally, there was an excellent film from the festival that explored that very concept! Please enjoy The Bell Never Rings Again, a 15-minute masterpiece by Matthias Fuchez. Hurry, because I don’t know how long he’ll keep his film up for streaming.)

But I digress, eh. The nerves. Yeesh… After my film screened (without any booing or rotten eggs or riots!), there were a few more, and then it’d be time for the official Q&A on stage. I’d spent the entire day mentally rehearsing my answers to the most likely questions, trying to keep it my replies short as possible. (No one likes a microphone hog.) I sneaked out during one of the following film’s credits, went to the movie theater’s bathroom, and did the most stereotypical thing possible: splashed water in my face and gave myself a pep talk in the mirror. Long-time blog readers might know that one of my many, many online nicknames is “Grigorius of Tomsk, Devourer of Pop-Tarts, Victor of Many Battles.

Soooo, yeah, I stood there, in the empty bathroom, trying to psych myself up for the huge Q&A in front of hundreds of people, by staring my reflection in the eye and saying – repeatedly – “You are Grigorius of Tomsk, Devourer of Pop-Tarts, Victor of Many Battles. You got this!” And you know what? That actually helped! (It would be so very, very funny if there’d been a volunteer or just a random guy who stood just outside the bathroom, afraid to go in, wondering what the hell was going on. I guess I’ll never know!)

So, anyway… The Q&A. It was myself and the guy that did special effects for one of the other sci-fi films. Just the two of us on that big stage. Something went sideways during the planning process, apparently, and the entire Q&A ran for just three minutes, not 10-15 like I’d anticipated. Bah, humbug. Still, I got a couple of quick answers and didn’t make a fool of myself. That’s not bad, eh.

I’ll fast-forward here and say that I didn’t win the audience prize for the best sci-fi, but that’s alright – there will always be next year. The festival went above and beyond with their red carpet experience on the awards night. They ferried each filmmaker (or filmmaker team) in a fancy car, ranging from a famous pickup truck to a red Corvette (I got to ride in that one, wooo!), with an actual red carpet, a local pageant winner escorting you from the car, arm in arm, the local media doing a quick interview, and about a hundred people cheering and whoop-whooping at the top of their lungs as you made your appearance.

That was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal and over-the-top and brilliant and amazing. (The final afterparty was fun, too!) I say this with utmost honesty and without any exaggeration: that was the greatest week of my adult life. I am addicted now. I shall return. And also, now I’m spending a lot of time looking up other top-rated festivals, as well as those that aren’t in the top 1% but have rave reviews focused on hospitality and enthusiasm.

This festival gave me a ridiculous boost of self-confidence and inspiration. During the flight back to Quebec, and the days that followed, I wrote two new short stories from scratch (for upcoming anthologies) – and I have a great feeling about them! A couple of days ago (the festival ran February 12-17) I chugged my emergency NOS energy drink, sat down with no distractions, and knocked out three new short films. All three were made with found footage, and with sub-$50 budgets. Two of them were drafts I’d never gotten around to finishing, and the third one was something I’d gather the components for but never quite assembled. Well, they’re done now: just need to make a few more tweaks after my beta-viewers’ feedback, and voila – three new shorts I’ll bring to the festival circuit, right after I finish hiking from Mexico to Canada. (Again.) ((My life is very strange.))

I still can’t quite believe any of this is happening. If you’d told me this a year ago, I would’ve called you a damn liar. Making my sci-fi film was just a fun distraction while I waited to hear back from literary agents. (Still waiting!) There are some mighty interesting implications in the fact that it’s literally easier to break into one of the top film festivals in the world than it is to simply find an agent. (Not a publisher or a writing award – just an agent.) I suppose I may have to rebrand myself from “writer who dabbles in editing” to “experimental filmmaker who occasionally writes.” Heh.

Oh, and before I forget – I have my own IMDB page now, woooo! It’s pretty funny how you can add almost anything to your own trivia page.

So… I suppose I’m officially a filmmaker now. Got many many new ideas. Grandiose plans. Strange stratagems… Or, you know, the usual. This is a wild, unpredictable, amazing new chapter of my life, and I am loving it. Here is to many more film festivals, my friends.

P.S.: they’re still processing the red carpet pictures, but you can find the rest on my Instagram here, here, and here!

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