Current Projects by Genre

Plays based on variations on a Christmas theme.

Rudolph, The Grinch who lived on 31^st Street in Bethlehem: As it sounds, it is a combination of Christmas stories.

Setting: A Greyhound bus on Christmas eve which gets stuck in the snow. Passengers putt on a quick Christmas story to show the Real Meaning of Christmas to two children on the bus.

The premise was written with a group of friends. I cannot take sole credit for it.

        Performed at Community of Reconciliation Dec 1998

. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas- Revised.  Written by request, it opens with a script based on the novel and teleplay of the original Dr. Seuss tale, then the ending is expanded to the Grinch wanting to know more about Jesus- the Reason for the Season, and creating a televangelist program.

        Performed at Community of Reconciliation Dec 1999.

Samuel:

Inspiration comes from the book of 1^st Samuel and the quote “Man looks at the Outward Appearance by the Lord Looks at the Heart.”  The story involves a young homeless boy who is teased at school.  It is revealed later that he is taking all his time, energy and food to his younger sister who is sick. When Samuel cannot return to school because of illness, the students in his class find out how special he is, they bring a doctor, food, and gifts to Samuel and his younger sister.

        Performed at Community of Reconciliation Dec 2000

God Who: Written the year of the attacks on the trade center,  (2001). this deals with the fear of modern life in the face of danger. Where is God when bad things happen? Takes place partly in Afghanistan and presents a look at danger from another side.

      Unperformed

Screenplays are another word for movies.  I began writing screenplays in 2002 with an adaptation of a novel entitled “Far From the Tree” and continued on.  I am now leaning (with the exception of CBL) to screenplays rather than novels because my target audience is much more likely to watch a film, be it via cable, netflix, theaters, whatever.

Mercy, Mercy Me A biopic based on the life of Marvin Gaye. You can read the first act (the first 20 minutes) HERE.

Rio’s Revenge. Based on University of Pittsburgh studies of Sociology and the Modern economy, Rio is the story of a Hispanic Family man, father of 1.5 children, who looses his job due to outsourcing, and discovers the factory reopened with cheaper working conditions in Mexico. Find out more HERE

Gifted One of my first serious attempts at writing a biography, this is the story of me as a young girl trying to develop an identity, and artistry while fighting ADHD in the classroom. It tells the true story of being gifted, which is under told. See the trailer: Trailers

Sugamama

See “Musicals”

Novels are always the easiest to start with.  They don’t require learning complicated formats like those used in stage plays and screenplays.  A novel is just a story built from paragraphs.  So most of my stories start out like this, but often morph into screenplays because of the vivacity and fun that the screen can provide. The later two that follow do have screenplays in the works, but I find myself sometimes unable to pull myself from the exciting truth in the original words which wont’ translate well to screen.

The Littles

My very first novel I started around age 9. It actually has 5 chapters, but was written on the very first version of Word Perfect (Before the invention of the mouse) and it is saved some where on an unknown 5.5 inch floppy disk (the kind that actually were floppy)  so I’ll have to do a lot of digging to pull it up again.  The drama centers around a young girl  who discovers a whole world of tiny people living in her doll house.  The heroine helps them through their many adventures.

The Cherry Tree/My Perfect Prince

My second novel, started at age 15, then lost for 3 years and joyously recovered.  when I rediscovered it at age 19, I discovered my life philosophies had changed a lot, so I kept the character- a first year college student named Summer, the same, but I altered her environment to make it more realistic.

Read More HERE

B. Wilks

My latest completed novel, last draft is dated 2006 about a musician trying to make it big. His main obstacles are an unfocused juvenile rock band, desire for a dedicated relationship, and a high strung singer with attachment issues.  Read the opening HERE

  In general, I dislike short stories because they always feel unfinished or incomplete. One of the following is a school project, the other is a potential novel that stayed a short story.

“Lost” is a fantasy/ sci-fi story about a young woman who used to be a cat and is having trouble adjusting to the modern human word. I wrote it as a class assignment because I was very tired of reading stories about man/woman relationships, which is all my peers were writing.  I felt like writing something different. So this is very different,

“Ham and Cheese” is the story of a foster child’s first day in a new home, and how the family and the girl have to adjust to each other. It was sparked by something I saw in my favorite game, the Sims, and I had probably intended it to be a novel or screenplay, but I got to a stopping point, and realized I didn’t really need to add anything else. The story was good and complete as is. You may read it HERE Ham & Cheese.

Biblical Inspiration Musicals

Glory: Inspired by the awesome, exciting takes of Genesis- Creation, Noah’s Ark, Joseph and the Colored Coat, Moses, and Jesus. It’s sort of a biblical highlights piece. It is intended not for the church, but for Broadway where modern stage magic can make all these miracles look almost as fantastic and awe inspiring as they would have looked in real life.  Read More-Glory:

Ruth

Ruth:Inspired by 1 Kings, it is an indictment of modern society and all the ways in which we fail to hold up to the Christian morals and values set up in the Old Testament.

The setting is New York City, and the main character is an African-American homeless woman named Ruth.  She tells of being disillusioned by her heroes, by the city programs, by her family and feeling lost with no one to help her.  She meets a business man named Timothy who vows to help her get on her feet.  Together they work to make a difference.Read More

Nehemiah,

See CBL

Urban/Contemporary

Charlotte

“Suga Mama”

Portier

Director Michael Deter (in plaid)

And writer Benjamin Ortez

Mya Addler, Deeter’s love interst.

SugaMama is an urban pop musical featuring the music of Beyoncé Knowles, Ginuwine, Destiny's Child, Amerie, Omarion and Bow Wow.

It was a lot of fun to write, an awesome challenge to fit some of my favorite songs into a firm narrative about a young wealthy African- American woman who couldn't break into show biz despite her money, a Director named Deeter who's best work seemed to be in the past, an eager hispanic writer named Benny Ortez who is desperate to have his work produced, and Mya Addler (voiced by Beyoncé) who is Deeter's love interest. From that point, the story is fairly predictable (as most musicals are ) The fun part is working with the music which includes Ring the Alarm, She's a Keepa, Like U, Freakem Dress and more.

My main problem is Christianity doesn't quite fit this story, it uses their voices more than my own.  The overall story is too simple. 

Read more, View first 11 minutes of footage from the Sims 2

As I have a long and complicated list of works, as you can see, I have also developed works that are intended to be part of a group.

Colors of Love

This is a massive set of unfinished works.  The intention here is to show the realities of love in different ways.  There is global diversity here ( An Arabic Love story, An American Love story, ) And physical disabilities, racial ethnic differences, because I hope this series will allow us the chance to love and appreciate those who are different from us, while still enhancing our similarities.

“Colors of Love deals with diversity.  Young couples, old couples, black           couples, white couples, Hispanic, American-Indian, Irish, people with disabilities.  The colors of love represent the colors of the Universe.  And God's love shines brightly through all colors.” Read More HERE.

Happily Ever After

This is basically an unfinished Cinderella short story and basic ideas to work on other fairy tales. The goal is to make them updated, more realistic, give the idea that romance and love sometimes involve real work, not just waiting around to be rescued. The essential elements of the stories remain the same, but the characters are given more depth. Read more HERE

Community Bible Live (AKA CBL)

This is a series of biblical plays, basically the whole bible, all sixty-six books, and when that is finished, I may add books of the apocrypha including the book of Wisdom and the Macabees and Judith and others. These are intended specifically for the church, and not the stage, so the productions are simple. Read all about it on the CBL website.

First production hopefully completed December 2008

Plays written for the stage and not intended for the church include the following:

The Great American ADHD Playwright

A self-reflective play written circa 2006 to describe the difficulty of what I am attempting to do, the difficulty of finding one’s own voice. It is short, about 15 minutes, and never produced. I wrote it during breaks and in class in 2006 or 07 and as of this date, it is not included on the website.

“True Beauty”

this play was produced at the Future Tennant Gallery in Pgh, PA, Jan of 2005. It is a ten minute play written specifically for this stage, timeframe, and limitations, so I consider it to be an inferior product, although it is one of the few projects that have seen an impartial audience’s eyes.

What I here refer to as genre blends simply means that the final preferred medium has not yet been selected. Great stories like Anne Frank, The Wizard of Oz, Ethan Frome, and more, are highly successful in all genres- these have been successful stage plays, films, and novels/journals. So the following material is written in one of many ways, usually novel- screenplay and I am not willing to completely push aside either form, so it stands as a genre hybrid.

Lynne & Lyndsey

Lydia Stolpe.

Magdalene

The Stolpes

This is basically an idea with much less written than the other two. It is included here because I couldn’t presume to tell you whether or not I intend it to be a novel or a screenplay.

This is also a family story, dealing with the difficulties of re-marriage.  The father, Dickey Stolpes an upwardly mobile black man is head of a fortune 500 company. His first wife, Dolores Bearden, (granddaughter of famed African-American artist Romeare Bearden) was his pride and joy for the first 15 years. As he got older, he found himself looking for something fresh.

His second wife is Magdalene, a white,  magazine editor younger than Dickey’s eldest daughter, Lydia. She meets the family when she comes to interview Dickey’s twin  teenage daughters- Lyndsey and Lynne who are two of the richest black women in America.

When Lynne becomes pregnant at 16, questions are raised about who was responsible for her lack of supervision.

Read More,See short story

Daneesha

Daneesha and Jaekwon

This is the expansion of the same story which began as colors of love, An American Love story.  While the other stories remained only ideas, this story became my favorite along with the novel B. Wilks in 2005-2006. I had to put it down while working on my studies and hope to one day finish the story.  like All in the  Family, it is about 100 pages of a short story of a novel, and 75- 90min of a screenplay. I am unsure how I will finish it.

Read More, Watch Trailer

Kalila, the overwhelmed mother of five daughters.

All in the Family

This story has taken up the bulk of 2006-2008. It began as perhaps a series of short stories based on the characters of five sisters and their mother who is a breast cancer survivor.  When Breast Cancer strikes Brie, the second eldest, the family is forced to pull together.  this story is in a 100 page novel and a full length (two and a half hour) screenplay which needs to be cut still and expanded. 
Read More

In my last year of high school, I amused myself by dramatizing episodes of my life into soap opera type episodes. Other than myself and my immediately family, characters included a self-centered theater king and his devious girlfriend,. The cliffhanger of the season was the kidnapping attack of  myself and my friend by the theater king and his girlfriend as well as our daring rescue.  In all, there were 27 short episodes. Spanning actually three years.   The last season is called “The College Years” and this is in fact how I got started writing screenplays. It began when my friend as a joke said my life is like a soap opera. At that time we were big fans of “Days of Our Lives”  so I just took that idea and ran with it. At some time, if  people are interested, I will post some of those episodes online.