Literary Classics Award for The King of Average
Literary Classics International Book Awards, Rapid City, South Dakota announced The King of Average as a double GOLD award winner. It has been awarded two gold medals for Preteen and Middle Grade fiction. Children’s Literary Classics, an organization dedicated to furthering excellence in children’s literature, takes great pride in its role to help promote classic children’s literature which appeals […]
The Value of Fun for its Own Sake
FUN is FUN and Let’s Leave it at That As an expert in the field of Improvisational training, I want to express to all teachers, counselors and therapists how necessary FUN is in the process and how not to kill its value with “Lessons”. Children of the Night Workshop In 1989, I ran a workshop […]
The Reason I Wrote My Book
My own personal story was about surviving abuse by parents who struggled with mental illness and the cycle of their own abuse and the precarious way they clung to economic stability in the 1950s and 60s. It shaped my life and guided me toward entertainment and teaching. I feel proud that I’ve managed to marry […]
A Preview of The Benji Loper Caper
Chapter 1
Los Angeles Herald Examiner – early edition: May 18, 1985 Beverly Hills, California
Three armed men robbed exclusive Peter DeMeo Jewelers yesterday, walking off with an estimated 20 million dollars in jewelry. The brazen 5pm heist is the largest robbery on record for Beverly Hills.
Police are reviewing videotape and interviewing staff in an effort to identify the thieves. No one was hurt during the robbery.
Management says the store will remain closed until a full inventory is completed.
Pixar Personifies Personality and Paves the Way for My Book
Alliteration aside, I was happy to see the successful translation of personality traits in Pixar’s Inside Out. It is a triumph of story, character and metaphor and a dazzling piece of animation. It tells the story of Riley, an eleven year old girl, whose early life makes here a well-adjusted, authentic child. But as she […]
Viola Spolin’s Writing Game
One of my main missions in life has been to teach and share the work of my mentor Viola Spolin with the world. Now, as I move towards writing at this stage in life, I feel I should share tools I’ve picked up along the way. Viola Spolin was a genius. She was my friend […]
A Nod to Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth
It’s fifty years since I read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. The book endures as a modern classic in the vein of Alice In Wonderland, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Odyssey by Homer. A few years back, I wanted to re-adapt the stage play of The Phantom Tollbooth into a Story Theater format. A form developed […]
Bloom Where You are Planted
I ran away once to Boston for two months when I was sixteen. I hated where I lived. Who I lived with and my whole existence. Ever feel like that? Obviously, I wasn’t happy at home, what with chaotic family dysfunction, an unrequited mad crush on a girl and the usual teenage angst that everyone […]
Screams from Childhood
I’m busy picking my jaw up from the floor. I just found a review of a book by Martin Miller, the son of the famed Alice Miller, author of “The Drama of the Gifted Child”, the book that influenced my journey to connect with my authentic self and inspired me to write “The King of […]
Friends are my Salvation
My first Best Friend My very first best friend was Chip Sutton. How we became friends somehow escapes me fifty years later. The first thing I remember about him was his laugh. He laughed explosively, with a hoarse cough. I remember thinking it must hurt to laugh like that. Like having a whooping cough, but […]
