Welcome to the bibliography/index page for my television and radio work -- what there is of it. I've had very little success in TV, film, and radio.

Television:

• "A Private Place" (a.k.a. "Personal Space"): Story treatment sold to CBS-TV for "Twilight Zone"; never produced.

  When "Twilight Zone" was revived in 1985, I thought this might be somewhere I could break into screenwriting. I wrote a story treatment (i.e., an outline) for a fifteen-minute segment (at the time, the show was an hour with multiple stories per episode), and sent it to my agent, who sent it to CBS.

  In 1986 they bought it, at union scale -- in accordance with union rules, I was sent all the information I needed to join the Witers' Guild, which I found fascinating and slightly intimidating. Martin Pasko adapted my story into a final script, and midway through the second season I was told that my story was fourth in the production queue.

  But then the second season was cut short, to a mere eleven episodes, and the production for the third and final season was moved to Canada, with a new story editor (J. Michael Straczynski). All episodes were now in half-hour format, so a fifteen-minute story wasn't really what they wanted, and my story kept getting bumped back. It was never made. But it remains my only TV sale.

  The premise of the story was later (much later) used for my prose story, "Personal Space." The resemblance to the TV version is very slight.

Radio:

Short story adaptations:

• "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers":

  Early in 1990 I was contacted by the District of Columbia public schools; a teacher at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts wanted to adapt this story for his students to do as a radio play.

  I was paid a modest sum to write the adaptation, which I did, but it was neither a faithful adaptation nor a good one; it was done to the specifications of a producer/director who did not grasp the concept of alternate worlds, or really understand what the story was about, which made the adaptation tricky.

  After we finally had a script to his satisfaction (though not mine), I took the money and went home, and never heard from them again. I have no idea whether the show was ever produced; I am fairly certain it never aired.

• "The Drifter":

  My short story was bought, adapted, and produced by the Radio Pirates as a pilot for an anthology series, "Radio Free Tomorrow." To the best of my knowledge, it never aired.

  In 1992 I was contacted by a guy named Scott Dikkers, who was part of a group in Wisconsin known variously as the Radio Pirates, Jay Rath's Old Time Radio Pirates, or Pirated Productions. They had had some modest success doing radio humor, much of it political, and were hoping to move on to radio drama. They wanted to do a science fiction anthology series, and they wanted to adapt my short story "The Drifter" as their pilot, something they could play for radio station managers in hopes they'd pick up the series.

  I had no problem with this; the contract was reasonable, and the payment modest but adequate (given that I didn't need to do any work).

  The pilot was made, and in 1993 I was sent author copies of both the original rough cut and the final edit. I thought it was pretty good. (They had also sent me some of their earlier work to show me they knew what they were doing). Apparently, though, they found no takers, because I never heard from them again and the Pirates disbanded shortly thereafter. Some of their members went on to found The Onion.

Film & Video:

Short story adaptations:

• "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers":

  In 2005 I sold a film student a two-year option to adapt this story -- I believe he wanted to do it as his senior project. I got paid, but to the best of my knowledge the film was never made.

  In 2016 I sold an eighteen-month option to a pair of screenwriters to shop a script around Hollywood. To my amazement, they found buyers, plural, and the script was auctioned off early in 2018, with Warner Brothers buying an option, as described in the Hollywood Reporter and the Tracking Board. The option is still paid up and in effect, but beyond that I can't tell you anything.

• "The Drifter":

  In 1992 I licensed the video rights to "The Drifter" to a small producer to be used as a demonstration piece; distribution rights were specifically not included, and whether the video got made or not, all rights reverted on December 31st, 1993. I have no idea whether the video got made or not -- if it did I was supposed to get a copy, but I'm supposed to have received lots of copies of things that never arrived.

Novel adaptations:

• None have been made. There have been inquiries; in one case circa 2009 a producer got as far as negotiating a contract for The Cyborg and the Sorcerers, but then couldn't come up with the option money, and the deal expired.

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