Tag Archive: short film


In which the author goes to Iowa!

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March 3, 2026

I got accepted into the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, one of the top film fests in the world! They loved my NASA-scavenged film “Please Don’t Send Help,” and that means I’ll be flying off to Iowa for an absolutely unforgettable week of films and fun and fantastic new friends in April.

Incidentally, that’ll be roughly four weeks into my Pacifc Crest Trail thruhike. (Which I’ll start on March 21 this time.) That’ll interfere with my idealistic purist goal of doing the whole trail with zero interruptions, but… I’d never forgive myself for not going. By that point of the hike, I’ll be somewhere between Agua Dulce and Tehachapi: in that part of California, you’re less than an hour’s drive away from Los Angeles.

And then… A ridiculously cheap flight from LAX to ORD (Chicago), and a driver waiting to pick me up, and a free homestay program, and multiple screenings, and I can’t quite believe this even as I type it in, eh.

…and then a flight back to the desert, and a bus back to whatever town I’d departes from (I’ll leave my hiking gear with a local trail angel), and getting right back on the trail, huzzah!

Fun trivia fact: I’ll need to buy a pair of jeans and at least a couple of T-shirts before my flight from LA. Thruhikers typically have no more than two outfits, and the novelty of being a wild desert dweller – compass and all – will probably wear off fast. (I guess I’ll send those clothes – and festival swag – to my very patient Montreal-based friend just before my flight back. No use for them in a hiking pack.)

Also, as promised almost eight months ago… JDIFF was the last festival on my list to respond to me. Tallying it all up, there were 28 festivals on my big ol’ wishlist. I didn’t actually end up applying to the last three (Stony Brook; Norwegian; Nevada City) because by the time their submission window opened, I’d gotten rather smitten by the notion of repeating the PCT. That left a total of 25 film festivals.

The two in Quebec have continued my funny trend of being rejected (occasionally quite rudely) from my own province. Ah well.

Of the truly huge festivals I’d dared to apply to, JDIFF was my sole acceptance – and that’s already far more than I’d ever dreamed of! That single acceptance right there is worth all the research, all the paperwork, all the planning.

The organizer of one major festival sent me a personal rejection note, saying they’re intrigued by my piecemeal style and would like me to apply again next year, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

In October, I managed to string together a mini-tour of three almost back-to-back festivals (with a couple of days in Denver in between): Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival, ReadingFilmFEST in Pennsylvania, and Ridgway Film Festival in westeen Colorado. All three were fun in their own way, and Brooklyn resulted in my first-ever award! (Second place in the “comedy sci-fi” category for my “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace” short film.)

…I see now that neither Brooklyn nor Ridgway were in my July post. Huh. Let’s change that denominator to 27, then.

Fargo Film Festival in North Dakota has accepted a very squished, two-minute long version of “Please Don’t Send Help” for their two-minute category. (I very cleverly named that squishie “Please… Don’t Send Help.” (A brilliant disguise – I know, I know.) Alas, my travel logistics won’t quite work out – but I hope the audiences will enjoy it!

My biggest wildcard bet for the Tampere festival in Finland didn’t work out, but there’ll always be next year. I’ll spend most of my 2026 being a feral nomad, which isn’t very conducive to filmmaking (you really, truly need an actual computer – not a phone or a netbook – to put a film together), but I’ve got two never-before-seen films up my sleeve… They should make me a contender once more.

And, finally, there’s the JDIFF in Iowa. That makes for a total of five acceptances out of 27 festivals. According to my calculator app, that’s an 18.5% acceptance rate! That is… huge. Absolutely huge. The prevailing wisdom in the filmmaking community is that getting accepted just 5-10% of the time is rather successful, but 18.5%… I am speechless, I truly am. Speechless and honoured and grateful.

I always have a few big projects cooking in the background. If one of them works out as expected (which I’ll find out within two weeks), my free time will be severely constrained, though my sense of purpose will spike. That won’t leave nearly as much freedom for film festival trips or epic thruhikes, but we’ll see.

The future is bright, eh.

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My 2026 Bradbury writing challenge: weeks 1 and 2

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January 16, 2026

(The first 2/3 of this post are backdated from my notes in early January.)

Seeing as this is a brand new year and all – I’m going to use Ray Bradbury’s method of writing one new short story per week. (I’m less sure of his other method – reading 1 story, 1 poem, and 1 essay per day – but I will try.)

Potential downside: my to-be-sold story pile will balloon from 18 to 70.

Potential upside: multiple publications. Fame. Glory. Fans. Immortality. (Hey, I like to think big, okay?)

Onward, y’all. Ever onward.

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My self-imposed Bradbury challenge, week 1: I wrote a multilayered solarpunk story! Wasn’t easy… It took a lot of drafting and brainstorming – I hadn’t tried that subgenre before. Once I polish the final draft, it’ll be ~5K-6K words, possibly the longest story I’ve ever written. My longest thus far has been 5,300 words, with most others falling in the 1,000-2,500 range, and usually closer to 1,000.

Gonna try a simpler, less solarpunk-y story for next week.

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Self-imposed Bradbury challenge, week 2: last week’s story was wayyy outside my usual framework, so this week, I returned to my favourite subgenre: funny time travel! Wrote another story set in my connected storyverse and got great feedback from my beta readers, woo! Once I finish polishing the draft, the wordcount will be somewhere around 1,300.

In other creative news, I finally got a few film festival acceptances. Been a while, eh. One is the Big Bear, Little Festival in California. The other is Fargo Film Festival in North Dakota, for which I’d submitted the same film (“Please Don’t Send Help”) but squished from 2:46 to exactly 2 minutes. (That was a fun editing challenge!)

Big Bear is a small, first-time fest, and though I won’t be able to attend, I hope it goes great! FFF is famous for their hospitality, and there’s a possibility I’ll get to attend in person, though that’d be just before my as-yet-unconfirmed Pacific Crest Trail thruhike’s starting date. I’m currently waiting on a few rather important emails to help me finalize my summer plans… (A Finnish film festival; a Montreal university; the Quebec art grant bureau.) (My life is very strange.)

Onward. Ever onward.

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In which the author delves a whole lot deeper

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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 becomes a real filmmaker

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September 20, 2024

My big goal for 2024 was to become a sci-fi creator – ideally a published author, but open to anything. One of those “anything” side quests led me to create a short film, “Please Don’t Send Help.” A few months ago, fueled by a spike of optimism (and a bit of boredom – let’s be honest here), I submitted it to a couple of film festivals, and, well… I’ve just found it’s been accepted by the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival!

That film festival has been around for five years, it has 8,000 attendees, and it’s pretty selective when it comes to judging the submissions. This feels so unreal… The festival will take place in mid-October, less than a month from now: every film will be streamed online, but some will also be shown to the live audience in Brooklyn. I’m waiting for that update: if my film (all 2 minutes and 29 seconds of it) gets a live showing, I will be there – rubbing elbows, making friends, watching the audience watch my film, trying not to grin like an absolute maniac.

I’ve been riding the dopamine high from this announcement for quite a while now. My little film had cost me just $15 to make ($10 for the amazing voice actress + a 50% tip), though I did spend several weeks tinkering with it. And to have it accepted, and recognized – something I made with no film school experience of any kind – wow. Just… wow.

I played way too many video games growing up. (Some say I still play way too many video games.) Because of that, my overly competitive brain tends to view each and every hobby as a level progression, from 0 to 100. Everyone starts out at an absolute 0 in every skill, every hobby when they’re born, and eventually, through practice and hard work and luck, they level up. (A friend of mine is an amazing artist: she told me her parents encouraged her to draw since she was six months old, and she never stopped.)

When you apply that philosophy to filmmaking, level 100 would mean getting an Oscar. Level 1 would be pressing “record” on a camera and making a video of literally anything. I feel like this new development has propelled me somewhere around level 40, as far as this particular skill goes. There’s a lot more ground to cover, and I’m quite sure I’ll never reach level 100, but now I’m genuinely curious just how much farther I can take this, and how the world will view the rest of my ideas and my films.

Once I hear back from all the other festivals, I’ll post “Please Don’t Send Help” online for all y’all to enjoy as well – but it’ll be a few months. And now, I’m off to watch tutorials on making (and animating!) fun 3D objects in Houdini Apprentice for a particularly ambitious cut scene of my next short film. That should be interesting…

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