Confessions of an Imagination Junkie

In 2010, my friend Steve and I founded OscarTalk, a website devoted to our reviews, commentary, and predictions related to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences' annual awards, commonly known as "the Oscars."

Run Hide Fight is a thoroughly satisfying thriller about the resilience of the human spirit.  A 21st century take on the Die Hard narrative, the film drops an ordinary person into a hostage situation and follows her courageous efforts to thwart a gang of modern-day terrorists. The film is suspenseful, exciting, and well worth a couple of hours of your time. The main character is Zoe (an outstanding performance by virtual unknown, Isabel May), a disillusioned and angry high school senior struggling to find a new normal following the recent death of her mother.  Unlike John McClane in Die Hard (be prepared for numerous comparisons here), Zoe is not a tough-as-nails, experienced law enforcement officer. She’s a fragile, grieving teen who’s lost her comfortable relationship with her father, Todd (Thomas Jane), her drive to excel in school, and her youthful faith in happy endings. It takes some skill to write a contentious protagonist and keep her relatable; writer/director Kyle Rankin does

When working for Nowescape, I often answered Quora questions about escape rooms on behalf of the company. While there, I occasionally stumbled across other questions to which I knew the answers and responded to those, too.

Over the years, I've written numerous one-off blog posts for clients in a variety of industries. Provided with a general topic, a few keywords to weave into the content, and a target word count, I research the topic and produce the requested content. 

For several years, I was the go-to freelance writer, copy editor, and blog coordinator for an Estonian escape-room booking system called Nowescape.  In some cases, I was provided topics to research and write blog posts and articles. More frequently, I was given posts written by guest authors, most of whom were not native English speakers, and asked to copy edit them. Once the content was written or edited and approved, I collected appropriate images and prepared the content for publication on WordPress. 

One of my favorite freelance clients was Lock, Paper, Scissors . This Australia-based company publishes print-at-home escape games for players of all ages. The brand voice is lighthearted, humorous, geeky, and incredibly fun to embody.  

The attached core values statement was written for a client. The client had general ideas for values, but no distinct list.  I took the non-specific notes provided and divided the ideas into seven values, then composed descriptions based on what I knew of the company culture and objectives.

So, you've already maxed out your FSA stocking up on toilet paper, the workday is over, and you've got nowhere to go and a bunch of time to kill? Fear not! It may be unsafe to go to the cinema, but these days, your best bet for gripping entertainment may actually be streaming directly into your home! In fact, with the advent of streaming and on-demand moving pictures (in both feature film and episodic formats), the cinematic medium has evolved to provide us some of the best storytelling ever committed to … I want to say "film" here, but someone is going to point out that most filmmakers no longer use film. We'll say, committed to film or 1s and 0s. Here are some recommendations to help you while away the hours as you adjust to your new, shut-in lifestyle. Best Show If you haven't watched Joss Whedon's Firefly yet, stop what you're doing and get on that. Seriously. Firefly is a sci-fi western, but don't let either of those genre labels deter you. My

Unfortunately for McG and Company, the more I think about Terminator Salvation, the lower its grade plummets. I was ready to give it a C right after watching it, even WITH the killer headache it gave me. Now that I’ve had time to think about, it has dropped two letter grades. While I was watching the film, I was adequately entertained – not blown away or anything, but not falling asleep either. At the same time, it could have ended at any time, and I wouldn’t have cared. Not a good sign.

The writers of this film should be ashamed of themselves.  The people who greenlit this project before they had a decent script should be ashamed of themselves. The entire X-Men franchise should be ashamed to be associated with this garbage movie.