I Wrote a Letter to Santa

In my first post I said I'd let you know how I got back into writing horror stories after giving it up for most of my life. It's a long story, but it does involve writing a letter to Santa!

As I mentioned previously, I've been a working musician ever since my teen years. Since 1996 I've focused mostly on writing, performing and recording music for children, and along with that I've recorded a couple of Christmas albums. And yes, coinciding with this I always fed my dark side by reading horror stories and watching scary movies....

Back in 1991 I was a deejay on a radio station in Portland, Maine...yes, I was also a radio deejay for over thirty years to support my music and help pay the bills...and on Halloween I invited Maine horror author Rick Hautala to be on my show. We hit it off and became friends. Years later, around 2011 (I think) I saw on Rick's Facebook page that another of my favorite authors, Joe R. Lansdale, was producing a movie based on his novella, "Christmas with the Dead." I went nuts! Horror AND Christmas? I had to somehow try to get a song on the soundtrack of this movie.

I went to the movie's website, and there was a place where a visitor could write a ltter to Santa. I kid you not...I wrote to Santa and asked him to make my Christmas wish come true, and I wound up with not one, but three songs on the soundtrack! Through that experience I became friends with Joe and his family, and a couple of years later he told me that he would to see "Christmas with the Dead" as a stage musical. He asked if I'd like to do it! Imagine how I geeked out, being asked to collaborate with one of my favorite authors! I knew NOTHING about writing musicals, so I got busy educating myself. It took three years, but we finally ended up with a version that Joe, Keith (who wrote the screenplay based on his father's story) and I loved. It was going to go up in California when the pandemic hit, and it has been on hold ever since. One of these days it will be out there for all the world to see, but in the meantime....

Based on my work on the show, Joe encouraged me to get back into writing horror fiction. I wrote a few stories, sent them to him, and he told me he thought I had talent and to keep at it. And let me tell you something, all of the Lansdales are straight shooters...they don't BS and they don't hold back from telling you exactly what they think. With that kind of encouragement, I kept on writing...and I've now had five short stories published and I'm working on a novella.

The other thing that came out of working with Joe and Keith on "Christmas with the Dead" is that I realized I really enjoyed writing musicals, and I've kept at that. I've written a teen musical that has been produced by schools and community theater groups from coast-to-coast, and I'm now working on my third musical.

So that's the story of how I got here. Now that I've got that out of the way, in my following posts I'll start actually discussing horror movies and books, and I'll talk a little bit about the projects I'm working on.....

In the meantime, keep those horror fires burning!