Two weeks, two new countries

I'm happy to say that my plays have found their way to two new countries this month. Last week, The Grammar Junior School in Nicosia, Cyprus performed The Enchanted Bookshop. And today, Yokohoma International School in Yokohama opened their production of Freaky Tiki. These represent my 26th and 27th countries.

I couldn't find any photos from the show in Cyprus, but Facebook had several from the one in Japan.

I've got to say, the set and costumes look fantastic. Of course, that giant lobster suit is always a hoot!

The Force returns

I didn't get any writing done today. And that's okay, because I spent the day doing something much more rewarding.

I went to the Arizona Thespian Festival and presented my playwriting workshop, The Hero's Journey: Playwriting Lessons from Star Wars. Talking to students is always great fun, but this year it was even more fun than usual.

Why? Well, that's kind of a funny story.

When I first gave this talk--at the Colorado Thespian Conference back in 2016--over 100 students showed up. It was a madhouse. There weren't nearly enough chairs so kids were standing in doorways, they were sitting on tables, they were sprawled on the floor. But the energy was high and our conversations were lively, a real two-way street.

Fast forward to 2023. After several unsuccessful attempts, I'd finally gotten approval to present the workshop at the Arizona conference and I had high hopes that I'd get a similar attendance to the one in Colorado.

Well, I didn't. Only about 20 students showed up.

Don't get me wrong. Every student is important, and I'd happily give the talk if I had an audience of one. But I'd asked for a large room, seating maybe 100 to 120 people, and those 20 students chose to sit so far apart from each other that it was impossible to have a productive dialogue.

The next year, more kids showed up. Around 30, I'd say. The conversations were livelier. But the kids were still lost in the huge, cavern-like space.

So this year, I asked for a small classroom. (There was no festival in 2025 because the organizers moved the event from November to January.)

Well, when I showed up at the Phoenix Convention Center this afternoon, I was disappointed to see that they'd given me a large classroom again.

But then the kids started filing in. And filing in. And filing in. By the time I was ready to begin, close to 50 students had arrived. If I'd been given one of the classrooms, we would have been spilling out into the hallways.

The second session just as crowded.

That was the good part. The bad part was that, as with the previous two conferences, my room was right next to a very loud dance class.

Good thing I have an equally loud voice.

Fortunately, nearly all of the kids sat near the front of the room so it was much easier to have a conversation. They also asked very smart questions. Instead of trying to understand the Hero's Journey better, they questioned its very structure. 

For example, when I talked about the Save the Cat moment, an event near the beginning of the story in which the hero does something small but heroic to win the audience's sympathy, one student wanted to know if that still applies when the hero is a bad guy (echoes of Joker, perhaps, or The Wolf of Wall Street).

Another student wondered how things change if the hero doesn't succeed in achieving their goal at the end of the story (The Empire Strikes Back or Zodiac).

Still another student asked about alternative templates. She felt the Hero's Journey didn't fit the story she was working on and wondered whether there was another template she could use.

I answered these questions the best I could. But they got me thinking that instead of covering two movies in depth, maybe I should focus on one movie and use the rest of time to explore one or two counterexamples for each of the story beats.

Oh, one last thing. I've had a lot of great interactions with students over the years but one of my favorites was the time a student came up to me after the workshop and told me she first fell in love with theater because of the fun she had performing in The Enchanted Bookshop.

Well, the same thing happened again this year, only this time the play was The _urloined Letter.

Tomorrow I'll get back to writing. But I'll be doing it with a newfound excitement because I know--now more than ever--who I'm writing for.

Fear of Clowns to be published

Just five days into the New Year and I've already got my first acceptance. Heuer Publishing just informed me that they'll be publishing my ten-minute comedy Fear of Clowns.

This is an old one. I wrote it in 2011, and it received its world premiere at the Millibo Art Theatre in Colorado Springs the following year. The play went on to get productions in Maryland, New York City (my only off-off-Broadway show!), and even London. (These photos are from the Maryland production.)

But then I didn't know what to do with it. Submitting a ten-minute play to contest after contest is incredibly time-consuming, barely worth the peanuts in licensing fees it might earn.

I figured the only way to make any money from Fear of Clowns was to get it published. But Pioneer Drama Service doesn't publish ten-minute plays, and I didn't have an in with anyone who does. So I set the script aside and forgot about it.

Then a year ago, I realized that Heuer, who already publishes my full-length plays The Last Radio Show and Kill the Critic!, has a ton of individual ten-minute plays in their catalog (yes, sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake).

The key to their success in this often challenging market? Simple. They offer their customers a package in which they can license an evening's worth of ten-minute plays for one low fee. The plays don't even have to be from the same playwright.

Fear of Clowns may be over a decade old, but its story is timeless. The play was inspired by that old joke about a man who visits a psychiatrist for his depression. The good doctor tells him to see Pagliacci, the world-famous clown who's sure to make him laugh. The man sighs. "But I am Pagliacci," he says.

For this play, I flipped things around. A clown visits a psychiatrist, but instead of depression, he suffers from a very unusual fear: he's afraid of people.

It's a very funny play, but it's sad too, and in it, I do some things with the offstage sound effects to heighten that sadness.

I've got one other ten-minute play that might be worth submitting to Heuer. I may write more. But first I want to see how this one does. If it does well, it may just open up a whole new (old?) field of playwriting for me.

Fear of Clowns probably won't come out until this fall. But if you'd like to take a look at it ahead of time, email me. I'll be happy to send you a free perusal copy.

A look ahead to 2026

Like I said in my last post, my playwriting career is on fire. Nine years after it was first published, The Enchanted Bookshop is still pulling in over 100 productions a year, while three of my last six full-length plays are also huge hits. And it look like my royalties for the 2025-2026 should be about 30% higher than the were the previous year.

So the key to 2026--and getting closer to my ultimate goal of matching my old engineering salary with my playwriting salary--is to keep doing what I've been doing. And that means write, write, and write.

Here are my specific goals for the New Year:

1) Finish five plays.

Last year, I wanted to finish six and only finished four. This year, I think I'll again finish four but I'll shoot for five. Manifestation and all that.

Of course, if I threw in a couple one-act plays, I'd easily reach that goals. A one-act only takes me a month or two to write compared to three to four months for a full-length. But my full-lengths are the ones putting up the big numbers so for now my plan is to focus on those.

Five full-lengths. It could happen.

2) Publish five plays.

Last year, I wanted to publish six and only published five. This year, I really do think I'll publish five.

I've already got one in the editing queue at Pioneer Drama Service (Mouse in the House). I'm waiting to hear back on my ten-minute comedy Fear of Clowns, which I submitted to Heuer Publishing in July. I'll submit Survival Island! to them as soon as they make a decision on Fear of Clowns. I'll be submitting my latest full-length comedy to Pioneer this month. And I'll be ready to submit my airport comedy Thirty Minutes Till Boarding to Pioneer shortly after it receives its world premiere in March.

So I could hit that goal just with what I've already got written (or nearly written).

Of course, if any of those get rejected, I'll be a setback. But I'll still have time to complete one play and get it through the submission and editing cycles before the end of this year.

Keep your fingers (and toes and eyelashes) crossed!

3) Brush up my Shakespeare.

I've got to be honest. I've never been a big fan of the bard. And it's not for lack of trying. I saw many, many Shakespeare productions over the twenty-some years I lived in Colorado Springs. TheatreWorks did a particularly good job with them through their end-of-summer Shakespeare in the Park program.

And I've always recognized old Will as a great writer. As a writer myself, I really need to know him better. It's just that I've always struggled with the language.

But this year I realized that if I really want to "get" Shakespeare, then I've got to put in the work. And I finally want to.

First up is Twelfth Night. I've got the PBS recording of last summer's production in New York's Central Park queued up on our DVR. I've got a copy of the original text. I've got a good modern language translation. Now all that's left is to go through them, side by side, until the story and the characters--most of all, the language--come alive for me as they have for so many others.

I can't wait to dive in.

4) Post more frequently.

I've tried multiple ways to market myself beyond what my publishers do for me. But almost none of them have been successful.

About the only one that has been is this blog. I frequently receive emails through the links I provide in my posts and on my contact page. I also see my comments about my plays quoted in newspaper articles and promotional materials put out by the theaters producing those plays.

Sure, I've kept this blog going for 15 years. And I've fulfilled my original vow of writing at least one post every month. The problem is that I tend to write them in clumps. I'll put off writing for weeks at a time, then dropping three or four posts at one time.

I believe this feast or famine mentality is making is tough for my readers to keep up. So I'm going to do better. I'm going to make time to post as soon as I have something to post about.

I hope this ups my readership. I know it'll up my readers' sanity.

5) Don't sweat the small stuff.

I always throw in one touchy-feely goal each year, and this time I want to focus on how I react to setbacks, both major and minor. Like a lot of people, I get stressed out when things don't go my way. I worry about what's going to happen. And I spend too much mental energy thinking up ways to counter them.

Of course, most of the time, things turn out fine anyway.

So I want to start shrugging off those setbacks as soon as they hit. I'm sure this'll help with my stress levels as well as my health. And those are two very good things.

A look back at 2025

In January, it'll be two years since I went full-time into writing. And it still feels too good to be true.

Not that it's all fun and games. Writing is hard. Really hard.

Sometimes, when I'm struggling to come up with a new idea for a play or to fill a gaping plot hole I've dug for myself or to breathe life into a dull, cliched character, I'm tempted to chuck it all and deliver pizzas for a living.

But then there are those times when the ideas flow, when all the pieces fall into place, when the characters take on a life of their own, and I'm reminded once again that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.

So I've got to keep reminding myself that the goals I set at the start of the year don't really matter. Only the writing matters.

Which is especially important this year because I fell short on almost every goal.

Here are those goals:

1) Finish six plays.

Nope. I knew this was an aggressive goal when I made it on New Year's Day. The most plays I'd ever written in one year was five. But that had been the previous year, and I figured I could ride the momentum train and crank out one additional play this year.

As a matter of fact, I only finished four: Mall Madness, Thirty Minutes Till Boarding, A Fine-Feathered Murder, and Mouse in the House.

It wasn't due to a lack of trying. Except for holidays and the few vacation days I took, I wrote for four hours every weekday of the year. If I happened to miss the mark one day, I made up for it on the weekend. So I wrote a lot.

And I didn't waste a lot of time brainstorming. After finishing a play, I almost always locked in on another play within a week or so.

The fact is it's taking me longer to write plays. Thirty Minutes Till Boarding was a monster. With forty characters, a ninety-minute run time, and a ton of interactive vignettes to juggle, it took me almost four months to get the play just right.

My current play too is taking a while (and no, I'm going to tell you what it's about just yet). Although it's a comedy, it goes a little deeper than most of my plays, with complex relationships and an intricate plot that I'm sure audiences are really going to dig.

So yeah, I'm not quite as productive as I'd hoped. But I feel like my plays are richer and more mature than ever, and if failing to meet an arbitrary goal is the price I've got to pay, I'll do it. Gladly.

2) Publish six plays

Close but no cigar. I only published five, the same number as last year, which was a record-breaking year. Those plays were: Route 66, Too Many Ghosts, The Worst Fairy Tale Ever, Mall Madness, and A Fine-Feathered Murder.

If Pioneer had accepted Survival Island!, I would have made it. But that's okay. Five plays in one year is still pretty amazing--and enough to keep my career moving forward. I'll take the (almost) win.

3) Get a picture book accepted for publication

Swing and a miss. This goal is a perfect example of how much priorities can change in twelve months. 

When I started writing this post and looked back at the goals I'd set for myself, I was shocked that this one had even made the list.

I mean, it feels like it's been years since I've seriously pursued picture book writing. But looking back in my email folder, I see that I submitted Okie and Firecracker to my agent in September 2024. And since the book publishing industry is so slow (much slower than the play publishing market), I figured at that time that I still had several more months to wait.

Well, those months have come and gone and guess what the response has been. Crickets. Not only haven't I heard from the publishers that my manuscript was submitted to, I haven't heard from my agent.

I suppose I might submit another manuscript to him some time, but I've had exactly zero success with the three I've sent him so far. So getting a picture book published just isn't a priority for me anymore. Not when my playwriting career is on fire.

4) Foster gratefulness

Kinda sorta. This was my touchy-feel goal for the year. And of course that means it's impossible to quantify.

How do I feel I did? Okay, I suppose. When I got frustrated with major setbacks or the little annoyances that plague everyone in their day-to-day life, I did try to remind myself of all the blessings I enjoy: good health, a loving family, enough money to pay the bills (almost). But it wasn't always at the forefront of my mind.

I still think gratitude is immensely important. It's just not going to be a specific goal for me going forward. There are too many other areas in my life that need improvement (as my darling wife will be happy to tell you).

5) Spend more time with Honey

Success. If I had to choose only one goal to meet this year, this was the one. As I explained last year, Honey the Wondermutt is getting up there in years (she'll be twelve in January), and I want to make the most of the years we have left.

However, she's not a playing dog. She never really understood Fetch (when I'd throw something to her, she's usually try to bury it so that I couldn't take it away ago). And she really doesn't like toys.

But she loves her daily walks (we call them her daily sniffs, because she spends more time sniffing around bushes and trees than actually walking). And she really, really loves it when I give her belly rubs.

So that's what I did. Could I do more? Sure, and I will. But I'm happy with the times we shared this year, and I look forward to at least a few more years before she passes over that fabled rainbow bridge.

The early mouse gets the cheese

Every time I write a new play, I hope for two things. One, that it'll get published. And two, that it'll get picked up quickly, with schools and community theaters falling over themselves in their rush to be the first to produce it. (Okay, that's only a slight exaggeration.)

Of course, step one comes before step two. But not today.

And that's because I just received an email from a teacher in Ontario who's interested in licensing Mouse in the House for a production in March.

That is, like, crazy early. Pioneer accepted the play only four days ago. Heck, I haven't received the contract yet.

How did she know about it? I'm glad you asked!

She found it on the New Play Exchange, the digital library owned and operated by the National New Play Network.

As soon as one of my plays get accepted for publication, I'll post it in two places. The first is the Plays tab of this blog. There I list all of my plays from newest to oldest. Since this list is only intended to whet your appetite, each description is brief, providing the genre, cast size, length, and a one-sentence synopsis. Nothing more.

The second is the aforementioned New Play Exchange. Here I generally list my plays from most popular to least popular, although I usually slide my newest four or five plays to the top.

This list is much more comprehensive. You get a longer, more detailed synopsis. You get a full cast list with character names, descriptions, and number of lines. You also get a direct link to a script sample as well as the page where you can license the play on the publisher's website.

What makes this database especially powerful is that you can search for exactly the criteria you're interested in. Genre. Cast size. Setting. Even keywords such as "single set" or DEI. They're all searchable.

The only drawback? To use the database, you've got to buy an annual subscription. But it's dirt cheap--just $12 a year--and well worth it since it gives you access to the largest online database of plays in the world.

It's a no brainer if there ever was one.

So, yeah, this blog is still the best play to learn when I'll be releasing a new play. But if you want to scan a list of all my plays, then I urge to cough up that $12 (if you haven't already done so) and bop on over to my New Play Exchange page.

Mouse in the House to be published

It may be a week before Christmas, but I already got what I wanted most. Pioneer Drama Service just informed me that they'll be publishing my 35th play, Mouse in the House. And unlike the creature in that C. C. Moore poem, this one is definitely stirring!

The play is a wild farce in the spirit of my full-length comedies Bringing Down the House or It's a Madhouse! It has a cast off of 33, slightly smaller than those two plays. And it requires only a single living-room set.

Here's the synopsis:

To solve their financial woes, Jeff and Quinn are forced to sell the charming Victorian home that Quinn inherited from her parents. Unfortunately, just as their open house is about to start, Quinn spies a mouse in the upstairs hallway.

Their realtor Moira is mortified. She wants to hire an exterminator to get rid of the mouse before any potential buyers see it. Kindhearted Quinn, however, insists that no traps, cats, or poisons be used. And so, unknown to the others, each of the three calls an exterminator specializing in "humane" methods.

One uses kazoos, one uses Viking weapons (Quinn didn't say anything about war hammers), and one dresses in a mouse costume in an attempt to get rid of the rodent. The result? Pure havoc as the exterminators prove better at chasing off the potential buyers than the mouse!

How did I come up with the idea? Well, that's an interesting story in itself.

When I brainstorm ideas for new plays. I usually start with the location. I ask myself: what setting is fresh and new (for me, at least) and offers a lot of potential for humor?

That's how I came up with Freaky Tiki (Hawaiian resort), It Happened on Route 66 (1950's diner), and Whole Latte Love (coffee shop). But after completing my last play, Mall Madness (1980's food court), I was stuck. I couldn't think of a single setting that met my requirements.

Then one day, I was watching the Netflix series No Good Deed and as soon as I saw that it was set during an open house, it hit me. I don't always need a unique location. A unique situation can work just as well. And an open house is one situation that's rife with possibilities.

I tossed around the idea of having a murder occur at an open house, but that seemed a little too dark for me. So then I imagined what else could go wrong during that open house. I thought about the couple having their pet hamster get loose, or their pet snake. But everything began to click when I realized the only really good idea is to have a mouse running amuck in the house.

And not just any mouse. This mouse would be their neighbor's super-talented movie star mouse (think Stuart Little if that film had featured a real live rodent instead of a CGI figure).

It was a natural. All I had to do was throw in a few crazy exterminators, a money-hung realtor, a pair of obnoxious HOA officers, a confused pizza delivery person, and I had my plot.

Oh, one more thing. Mouse in the House wasn't its original title. I actually submitted it to Pioneer as Eek!

Personally, I loved the title. To me, it instantly created a picture in the mind of what is was about--and a funny one at that.

But it immediately ran into problems. When my editor Brian received my email featuring the one-word subject line of Eek!, he freaked out, thinking I'd found a mistake in the script they'd just released (my one-act comedy, A Fine-Feathered Murder). Needless to say, he was relieved to learn that subject line was merely the title of my latest play.

Then when I received the acceptance email today, Brian addressed the title again. He said that when the staff there started reviewing the script, some of the readers thought it might be a ghost story or a mystery.

It made a lot of sense. To me, "eek" always meant someone had seen a mouse, but a quick Google search showed that, yeah, some people use it for ghosts as well. And Merriam-Webster simply defines it as an interjection "used to express surprise or dismay". Which I guess includes everything you might be scared by, from spiders to zombies to public speaking.

So I agreed to dump that title. Fortunately, Brian already had another one ready to go: Mouse in the House.

I liked it. A lot. It tells you what the play's about. And it makes it clear that the play is a comedy.

I still have a couple months to see if I can come up with something even better. But for now, Mouse in the House it is. Look for this furry farce to receive a spring release.

No, not that kind of spring.