Tag: author

34 Random Facts About Myself

valmanwillLeave a comment

Hello. I turned 34 last week. My age feels both accurate and inaccurate. Like I don’t feel 34 while sitting on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt. But I guess I do feel 34 when I drive my minivan to pick up my kids from school. The heartburn and the back pain screams 34 haha.

Anyways, to celebrate my age I wrote 34 random facts about myself, one for each year I’ve been alive. You’re welcome.

  1. I was born in the same exact hospital that I birthed my first child in.
  2. Dinosaurs have been a special interest of mine ever since I was two.
  3. One of my earliest memories is giving myself the chicken pox. I was jealous that my mom counted all of my sister’s chicken pox and so I snuck into her room when she was asleep and tried to “breathe in her germs” hahaha! Unfortunately, it worked and I got WAY sicker than she had been.
  4. I wrote my first story at three or four. I drew it as a four panel picture on a Mac “Kids Pic” program. And it was about the chicken pox I gave myself lol. (“I got chicken pox”, “Then Mom gave me a bath”, “Then I felt better”, “The End”)
  5. I’m the middle child in my family. I have a sister three years older than me and a brother five years younger than me.
  6. I’ve always held my pencil “weird”. Resting on my middle finger instead of pinching it or whatever. My first grade teacher tried and tried to correct it but I still hold my pencil that way as an adult.
  7. When I was in second grade I was obsessed with Santa’s reindeer. I wrote them each individual letters instead of Santa that year.
  8. In third grade I purposely sat in the back of the class so I could write stories in my blue denim notebook all day instead of pay attention to the teacher. I filled that notebook and I still have it.
  9. At 9, I briefly took acting classes but I couldn’t sing worth a dime so I never got cast in any significant roles
  10. I started directing my own plays and performed them for all the other 5th grade classes. (This was the skit I had my friends do haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLdFZ4my9g )
  11. The only time I got a ticket or a pink slip in school was when I snuck under the fence to play in the creek next to our elementary school. My mom wasn’t even mad about it. She was more mad about the girl who tattled on me.
  12. In Jr. High, I had a red guinea pig named Joe.
  13. At thirteen, I wrote, directed and starred in a play I put on for my local church. It was a comedy called, “The Foot.”
  14. I was obsessed with the original Twilight Zone. I even threw a Twilight Zone party for my friends. That TV show would become a massive influence on my writing.
  15. Took 4 years of French in secondary school because I liked this guy in my class. Can’t remember a single word and speak fluent Spanish now lol.
  16. In high school, I wrote a full-length feature film with my friends. A low-budget student slasher. (What else?) It wasn’t very good or anything lol but it ended up being a creative catalyst for a lot of the kids who worked on that project, including me.
  17. I got shingles my senior year. How does that even happen? Haha. The haunts of giving myself the chicken pox
  18. One year I repeatedly got cast as a monkey in a few different plays. Type casting I guess.
  19. I studied Classical Acting at Southern Utah University until I ran out of money and had to move back home.
  20. One of my favorite hobbies when I was 20 was exploring abandoned buildings. One time the cops came and my friends and I hid ourselves inside an abandoned school. (oops)
  21. I lived in various areas of Peru for a year and a half. Lima, Trujillo, Salaverry, and Neuvo Chimbote.
  22. Twenty-two was one of the worst years of my whole life. Like the entire year. Birthday to birthday. Just horrific. I couldn’t think of a single good fact I wanted to say about this year. So I guess that’s my fact. Unlike the popular song at the time, I was not feeling 22 lol.
  23. Coincidentally, twenty-three was one of the absolute best years of my life. Even at the time I called it “The Golden Year”. I ended up meeting my soul mate when I was 23.
  24. I used to work in Accounts Receivable at a printer company and got in trouble for writing during work (Heh heh heh. It wasn’t funny to me at the time, but now it is.)
  25. I left my job at the printer company and went back to school. In my Intro to Educational Psychology class, the professor said that “the things we chose to do in our free time as children reflects as close to our true selves as possible.” That’s the moment I realized how much story-telling has been a passion throughout my life.
  26. When I was twenty-six, I began writing regularly and have not looked back since!
  27. The first time I had ever set foot in the Phoenix area, was when I stepped off the plane to live here.
  28. I found out my first story was going to be professionally published while I was in active labor with my second child.
  29. At twenty-nine I had this life-changing Beatlemania phase that… never went away lol.
  30. We moved into our first house the exact weekend that everything shut down for the pandemic.
  31. I have three spectacular kids and I’m not just saying that. I really love each of those three people so dang much.
  32. I published my first book on Amazon at thirty-two.
  33. I got my first screen-writing credit at thirty-three.
  34. At thirty-four, I still sit on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt haha

The Time I was Stung by the Most Venomous Scorpion in North America

valmanwillLeave a comment

And no, I’m not talking about the Scorpio who broke my heart in the 10th grade, but yeah, that freaking stung too, thanks.

The Arizona Bark Scorpion. Well, well, well… if it isn’t the little Satan bug itself.

First off, I have a really lovely house. I generally enjoy living in the sweltering desert of the East Valley. But what I don’t enjoy is being POISONED by arachnids in the comfort of my own home.

Our house was built on top of an old orange grove, which sure, it’s nice having a fruit tree in my back yard. But that also came with a neighborhood infestation of scorpions. And like, you can spray your yard all you want but those suckers crawl up the cinder-block walls. And if you have a neighbor behind you that cannot even be bothered to pick up his dog’s poop for months on end, you can rest assured that a handful of scorpions will find their way onto your property at night.

But no big deal, we bought a black light and we do a nightly patrol. And it’s been all cool, man.

And this one RANDOM afternoon.

My oldest had just got home from school and we were in the basement watching TV when suddenly my poor, worse-luck four-year-old SCREAMS and grabs his toe. So, as the kind-hearted and understanding mother that I am, I’m thinking, ‘Kid stubbed his toe and he’s being way over-dramatic about it’.

I try to assess the situation and calm him down. And right as I kneel down to get a better look at his foot. I feel this sharp prick on the side of my inner leg, just above my knee. So, I jolted away and looked at the carpet, legitimately thinking that I had just knelt on a pin. And then I saw that sucker… and when I tell you… the absolute GOOSEBUMPS that you get when you watch a spider scurrying away is NOTHING compared to the sight of a freaking Arizona Bark Scorpion slithering itself underneath your couch.

My scream was blood curdling. I yelled some curse words in front of the kids. I stood in the middle of the room on one leg, saying, “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”

“Call Dad!” my oldest yelled.

Dad! Right! An adult! An actual adult, not a pretend adult like I am. I called Daniel to report that half his family had just been stung by a venomous creature which was still alive and inside the actual house. I’m sure he loved getting that phone call lol.

Well, he didn’t know what to do either. WE’RE NOT FROM HERE, OKAY! WE DIDN’T GROW UP BLACK LIGHT HUNTING AMONGST THE CACTI! WE WERE NOT PREPARED FOR THIS EVENT! He told me to take our son to Urgent Care. And I agreed because children under six are more at risk for scorpion sting complications. SO AT LEAST WE KNEW THAT.

FUN FACT / PSA: If you or your loved one are stung by an Arizona Bark Scorpion, you can just call poison control. You do not have to spend hundreds of dollars suffering at an urgent care clinic. A tip that we did NOT get until we were already inside the patient room with the doctor. (Gee, thanks a lot)

FUN FACT / PSA: Probably don’t drive if a scorpion has just stung you on your leg. Because the venom will spread and spasm your muscles. And it will hurt like a b*tch. And you’ll be punching your steering wheel and crying the entire drive because you didn’t know life could be like this.

Yeah, I don’t know why but by the time we got to the clinic my four-year-old? Totally fine. Like nothing happened. Like as if he wasn’t just injected with a neurotoxin. (Thus the magic of children anytime you take them to a doctor’s appointment of any kind.) I, on the other hand, am trying to fill out patient paperwork while doing the freaking stanky leg at the check-in counter.

Daniel met us at the urgent care so that we could both get the news that no one was dying, it just sucked was all. But we still had a major problem. I SAW THAT YUCKY BUG CRAWL UNDER THE COUCH. THAT THING WAS STILL INSIDE OUR HOME.

Rather than listing our house for sell immediately, Daniel suggested we wait for nightfall and then find it via blacklight. So, we went out to eat at Red Robin lmao. That was both a genius and stupid decision, because after sitting for two hours the venom actually pooled behind my knee so walking to the van after dinner was like walking with an icy-hot bear trap clamped around my leg. But hay, this girl got her bottomless steak fries so, like, was it really that bad of a day though? #notasponsor

It was dark when we got home, so Dan was able to find it with the black light and kill it. On the floor of our basement. Why? How did it get there? I would also like to point out that this isn’t even the first time in my life I’ve been stung like this. When I was nine, I knelt down to color a picture and a WASP stung me on the knee. INSIDE on the CARPET. Buddies, WTF are you guys doing there? I refuse to kneel down now. I’m just going to squat every time.

I will say though, I am actually thankful that I knelt on it, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known it was in the house or why my kid was crying. The clout is also sorta cool, not gonna lie. Saw the Arizona Bark Scorpion episode of the Kings of Pain and laughed so hard thinking of how calm my preschooler was compared to these guys. I’ll post it below so you can feel like you watched a little reenactment.

I Was One of 100 Screenwriters Working on a Single Film

valmanwillLeave a comment

Literally, just a post of me trying to explain what exactly this is because everyone keeps asking lol.

One unassuming afternoon I got a message from my sister-in-law. “You should totally do this!” and a link to something called the 100 pages movie. Four producers were looking to recruit 100 screenwriters to each write one single page of a full-length movie. I thought that sounded like a really unique and fun idea, and serendipitously it happened to be “Sendtember”. The ONE month where I actually take chances and put my work out into the world. I felt like that was a cue from the universe to give it a shot, so I applied.

I got a follow-up email in the middle of the night that they were interested in my application and wanted to schedule a Zoom meeting to ask me a few more questions. After a bunch of technical difficulties with Zoom (of freaking course) we FINALLY were able to meet and it turned out that they only had one question for me:

“Would you like to be one of the writers for The 100 Pages Movie?”

And I was like, “Yes, I woooooullllld! YEEEEEEssssssss!” That’s exactly how I said it. Here’s video proof:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx_CTetuwJU

Being accepted also meant that I was required to meet them in Nashville so that I could take part in the behind-the-scene docuseries, sign paperwork, meet the other writers, and receive whatever page number I would be working on. So that was a bit hectic, trying to organize a last minute business trip. But also SUPER COOL.

I’ve only ever been to online writing conventions, so being surrounded by a hundred other passionate creatives felt FREAKING INVIGORATING. Sharing all our projects with each other, dropping writerly lingo like “scrivener” and “NaNoWriMo” and “Save the Cat”. We were all so hyped and energetic, (even though most of us admitted that this was too much excitement for us little introverted artists and we were going to pass TF out after the event haha)

The producers had gathered a really diverse team of writers. Some of the writers were professional daytime-authors and some of the writers had very little to no experience with writing. Some of the writers were local, some of the writers were from other countries. The oldest writer was in her late eighties and the youngest writer was 14 years old. But every one I met at the event was just… UNBELIEVABLY nice. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a nicer crowd than the screenwriters working on this project.

“SO HOLD ON. WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS PROJECT? I’M CONFUSED.”

Okay. Here’s how it works.

Every single day a new writer adds a page to the script. No one knows where the story is going, it just develops one page at a time. Each of us have an assigned page number. (I’m 85 BTW, which turned out to be a freaking nightmare. But I’ll save that for another post.) You have one day to finish your page and then you hand it to the next writer. Everyone has access to the entire script UNTIL you’ve completed your page and then you are left in the dark, baby. You do not know how the movie develops after that.

So for example, I wrote page 85. So I read the script every single day (what writers 1-84 decided to add to the movie) and then on day 85, I continued the story from where they left off. 15 writers after me finished the movie.

Does that make any sense? Maybe Marcus Johns explains it better than I do:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CzcMzd_vys4

In short (lol), it was a really cool project. I def have a TON more to say about the process and the actual day I wrote. But because most of this project is a secret while they film and promote the movie, I’m going to save those details for another post. Mainly, until I can get a green light from the producers to be able to discuss what the script is actually about.

Overall, what I can say is that I feel really blessed to have been a part of this unique project. I so SO wish I could astral project 10 years ago and visit myself when I was depressed and unfulfilled working AR at a printer company. I would whisper in my ear, “Hey, you know your favorite vine about the guy who thinks his friend’s shower is like ‘a dang spaceship up in here’? … That guy hires you to write a movie for him.”