You know, it’s kinda hit me that I’ll be directing my second short film in less than a week. Unbelievable!
I keep going over the lists of things we need to create the set and provide costumes, as needed, as well as props and (in this case) posters. The whole film takes place in a dorm room.
Logline: On Halloween night, a young female grad student trying to meet a midnight deadline and avoid dealing with a stalker gets a scare that will change her life.
I think it qualifies as a story of psychological suspense.
Wish me luck! :)
For what it’s worth, we are looking for PAs (production assistants). No experience necessary. If you’re anywhere near Baltimore and want to participate, please send an email to my 1st AD Wes Throneberry. His email is wesshimoda@hotmail.com.
It’ll be an all-day shoot, but you don’t have to stay the whole time. But who knows. We might wrap early. You just never know.
Featured excerpts and more!
The Scallop Plot by Judy Foreman
Prologue
It was magic hour in Provincetown Harbor. The wind had died down to a soft breeze. The scattered clouds were turning a gorgeous lavender. The whale watch boats bobbed gently at the pier, disgorging their last contented sightseers. The bars were getting noisy, happy hour in full swing.
But the tense, middle-aged man slouched in the stern of the Vacker—which meant “beautiful” in his native Swedish—was distinctly not happy. He popped open a beer—his third—and stuffed the last, now-cold, bit of calamari into his mouth.
Olaf Svensson had spent the day alone, as always. But fuck it, he was not exactly a people person, and sour as his own company was, even to him, it was better than trying to talk to people who knew less about the world than he did.
He had taken the day to sail around the waters off Provincetown.
The area, teeming with bluefish and sea bass, was the perfect site for an offshore wind farm.
Now in his sixties, graying though still with the body of the swimmer he once was, Svensson was mostly unknown in America but had become famous in Europe for trying to develop Sweden’s offshore wind farms.
That work had once been part of Sweden’s famous green plan.
But then the anti-wind protests had come, at first with critics crying that Sweden’s beautiful coast would be marred by the huge turbines and all the helicopters flying overhead to de-ice them.
Others called his projects “fashion,” mere virtue signaling for wind energy fans. And then had come the big fear: that all those turbines in the water off Sweden’s Baltic coast, the coast facing Russia, might make it harder to detect any incoming Russian cruise missiles.
Agonized, he watched his dream collapse, his investors back out.
After years of fighting, he reluctantly terminated the leases he had so painstakingly won.
His projects doomed, Svensson had slid into a deep depression, drinking heavily, buying sex, living on ice cream and pizza. If he had had any friends, they might have gently noted that this depression was actually not new, that he should seek help. But there were no friends, and his despair festered.
He had grown up poor, or as poor as anybody could be in Sweden’s egalitarian society. His parents had run a small chain of mom-and-pop grocery stores, and he had learned as a teenager how to order goods, stock shelves, and sweet-talk customers into buying more than they’d come in for.
The mere thought of his father made him shudder. He still had the scars on his back from the endless, terrible beatings. He had only one eye, not a great thing for a sailor, or anyone else, for that matter.
The so-called accident had happened when he was three. His father had given him a pocketknife. Why on earth his father had done that, no one knew. Olaf, of course, played with it right away and within minutes had flailed around and jammed the sharp blade into his left eye. He’d lost the eye and had had a glass eye, and an attitude, ever since.
Once out of the house, no longer having to look at his mother’s sad and perpetually bruised face, he had been a quick study, cruising with a vengeance through college, taking easy courses, then going on to business school. Along the way, he’d tried marriage. But the bitch had abandoned him for another guy, leaving him lonely, childless, and angrier than ever.
But so what, he figured. He was smart. And determined. And before long he was among the first to catch on to the world’s burgeoning energy crisis.
He’d paid close attention in the 1970s as the oil embargo, long gas lines, and the world’s insatiable appetite for oil crippled countries around the world. But where others saw crisis, he saw opportunity.
He prided himself on being that rare breed: an environmentalist-businessman, driven—or so he liked to think—in equal parts by a genuine desire to save the planet and make money in the process.
Lots and lots of money. Doing well by doing good.
Now, as evening fell, the bitter man in the stern of the Vacker shook his head to emerge from his reverie. He put on his sweatshirt and opened his fourth beer.
For several years, his memories of the torpedoed Swedish projects had made him sad. But now they only made him mad. And more stubborn than ever. Now, as his depression morphed into fierce determination, he contemplated his new project, Provincetown Wind.
The waters off Provincetown offered perfect conditions for wind power: consistent strong winds and a shallow ocean floor. This time, he swore silently, he really would impress the young woman he had secretly fallen for—the one who haunted his dreams, the one he admired more than anyone else on earth, the one young enough to be his granddaughter yet worshipped enough to be his wife: Greta Thunberg.
He would make his millions. Nothing would stop him this time.
Not the law. Not ethics. Nothing. He had a secret plan to make sure his idea would become reality.
It had to.
Author bio
Judy Foreman is a former Boston Globe health columnist and the author of three works of nonfiction from Oxford University Press.
In 2022, she published her first novel, CRISPR’d, from Skyhorse Publishing. A Wellesley College grad (Phi Beta Kappa), she spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil and has a master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics, also at Harvard Medical School, a Knight Science Fellow at MIT, and a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
She has won more than fifty journalism awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award and a Science in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers. She lives outside of Boston with her husband.
Hold on For Dear Life by Annelise Osborne
There had been a morning, not so long ago, when he had counted to thirty-seven in the dark. The floor beneath him had been cold metal. He had not known whether anyone was looking for him yet, or whether the city was simply continuing without him, the way it always did. He had thought about Jack. That had been the first coherent thought: that she was going to be furious at him for making her worry. He had almost smiled, there in the dark. Almost.
The call came on a Tuesday morning in spring.
Charlie was at his desk in a small office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the kind of place that didn’t announce itself — no logo on the door, no row of monitors visible from the street, nothing that would tell a passing stranger that anything particular was happening inside. The office had been chosen deliberately for exactly that quality. They had learned, the hard way, what visibility cost.
He almost didn’t answer.
The number was international, Philippines country code, and he didn’t recognize it, and the morning had already asked several things of him that he hadn’t finished answering. But something made him pick up.
“Charlie?” A woman’s voice. Clear despite the distance. “This is Rosa. From Manila. We met at the meetup in Singapore — you spoke about cross-border payments.”
He remembered her. A small gathering near Clarke Quay, thirty people, and afterward she had found him and asked a question so specific and so correct that he had talked to her for twenty minutes while everyone else drifted toward drinks.
“Rosa,” he said. “Of course. How are you?”
“I’m good,” she said. “I’m calling because I tried it. This morning.”
He went still.
“USDA,” she said. “I sent money to my mother. In Cebu.”
He didn’t speak.
“She received it in four minutes,” Rosa said. “Four minutes, Charlie.”
A pause. He heard her deciding whether to say the rest of it. She said it.
“Usually I use a remittance service. It takes three days. They take eight percent.” Another pause, smaller. “Eight percent is a week of groceries. For my mother.”
Outside the office window, Williamsburg was doing what it always did — moving, building, entirely indifferent to what was happening in this particular room on this particular Tuesday morning. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Someone walked past with coffee. The city continued without ceremony, as it always had.
Charlie pressed his hand flat against the desk.
“I’ve been sending money home for six years,” Rosa said. “Every month. And I just — I wanted you to know. Because when you spoke in Singapore, you said the technology existed to make this instant and nearly free, and I thought…” She stopped. He could hear her composing herself. “I thought that was the kind of thing people said. At conferences.”
“I know,” Charlie said quietly.
“But it worked,” she said.
“It worked,” he said.
A brief silence. Comfortable, somehow, in the way that silences were comfortable between people who had said the true thing and didn’t need to say anything around it.
“Thank you,” Rosa said. “Tell your team.”
She hung up.
Charlie held the phone for a long moment. Through the glass wall of the small conference room he could see Jack at her desk, head down, working with the focused precision she had brought to everything since the beginning — since a dorm room at MIT, since a napkin diagram with arrows that didn’t make sense, since the long accumulation of late nights and hard decisions that had eventually, improbably, produced something real enough to cross an ocean in four minutes for almost nothing.
It had cost a great deal to get here. More than any of them had anticipated when they started. More than the market, at its most brutal, had seemed willing to let them survive.
But they had held.
Not because holding was easy. Because letting go would have meant letting go of something they had decided was true — and the market’s opinion of that truth had turned out, in the end, to be temporary.
Author bio
Annelise Osborne is a capital markets executive, author, and thought leader at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets. Former Moody’s SVP responsible for $400 billion of rated structured finance securities. Author of From Hoodies to Suits (Wiley, 2024) and debut novel Hold On for Dear Life (Amazon KDP, 2026). 2025 Stevie Award winner for Thought Leadership. Global speaker at Consensus, Davos, and the Global Blockchain Business Council. MBA, Columbia Business School.
Q&A from your host, Debbi Mack!
Q - What is your writing process?
A - I tend to outline after I get the germ of an idea. I try to plan out the key moments of the story in terms of the main character’s feelings in that moment, how revelatory that moment should feel. I also start with a type of ending in mind. All of this is subject to change, based largely on where the characters lead me. So, I start with a bare outline and improvise from there.
One nice thing about writing a series is that you get to know your cast of characters really well. You know which ones to use in various situations your protagonist deals with. On the other hand, writing a standalone novel lets you start with a fresh slate, which can be both intimidating and freeing.
Any time I tackle a new story, I’ll do enough research to feel comfortable describing the main character and the situation she (and it’s usually, but not always, a she) finds herself in. I don’t try to do too much research, because there’s a point of diminishing returns, where you’re just going down a rabbithole and not writing. I try to do enough to make the story feel real. Otherwise, I just start writing, and research further as needed.
I also tend to keep a fairly tight schedule and get in a little writing every day.
Q - Is there a specific author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?
A - I could give you a long list, but I’ll limit it to these:
The Nancy Drew mysteries—typical female mystery author response, I know. But I used to love these as a child. Along with the Cherry Ames books, which a few of us remember. Clearly, they led me to a life of crime fiction.
Everything Ross Macdonald wrote. But if I have to pick one, I’ll make it The Ivory Grin, which is about as representative of his writing as anything. He wrote the sort of thing I tend to write about—broken families, secrets and lies, hidden agendas—so I get lots of inspiration from his work.
Finally, Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott. Because it taught me to take everything one step at a time.
Q - What tips would you give to aspiring writers?
A - Don’t aspire. Just write. Even if it’s just a daily journal. Write and keep writing.
But if what you really aspire to is be a published author, be prepared to have your work critiqued by others. That’s all part of the deal. And not everyone will love your work. Not everyone loves mine, but I’m not trying to appeal to everyone.
The people who “get you” will want to read you. The rest you can forget about.
Q - What are three books you’ll never part with?
A - Um, wow. I ask myself that a lot, because I tend to hold onto books. I could start a whole library at this point.
Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury. My Dad bought it for me at Powell’s Books when I was on vacation in Portland, Oregon. And it’s a fantastic read.
Screenplay by Syd Field. This may be the single most helpful book I’ve read about story structure. Especially if you’re just starting out, and the 12-Step Hero’s Journey is just a bit too much to absorb all at once.
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton. Because … Sue Grafton. I also own a used book club edition of that one.
Q - What are three fun facts about yourself?
A - 1. I worked my way through college in a variety of interesting jobs. Among other things, I was a substitute schoolbus driver. That’s how I learned how to drive a stickshift. It’s also how I met my husband.
2. I was once a volunteer EMT (emergency medical technician) with the Hillandale Volunteer Fire Department of Montgomery County, Maryland.
3. I have survived several life-threatening situations. So many I’ve stopped counting.
Q - If you could choose a superpower, what would it be and why?
A - I’d like to be either a magician or a miracle worker. Who wouldn’t want to perform miracles or magic?
Q - If you were hosting a dinner party, which three authors, past or present, would be your dream guests and why?
A - Dorothy Parker, Terry Pratchett, and George Orwell. I admire all of them and can’t imagine the conversation we’d have.
Q - What projects are you currently working on?
A - Right at the moment, I’ve released my third Erica Jensen novel, Past Imperfect, as an ebook, but hope to have it out in print as soon as is feasible. In this book, Erica ends up investigating the mysterious death of someone she worked with during her deployment. Erica’s a Marine veteran, weaning herself off opioids and lingering PTSD, who manages to stumble over a body now and then.
I also write screenplays—scads of them—as of this writing, still unproduced. But I’ve written and directed one short film which I hope to finish post-producing soon. I’m also planning to shoot my second short right now.
I also have two ongoing projects. Well, three really.
I have two podcasts: the Crime Cafe podcast, where I interview crime, suspense, and thriller writers. The other one is Dark and Twisted Alleys: A Film Noir Podcast, in which crime and horror author F.R. Jameson and I trade witticisms and criticisms about a different film noir once a month. I’m also adding film reviews and essays to the lineup.
I’m also gathering an extraordinary collection of video from the public domain, which I upload to YouTube periodically. Now and then, I cut it up into segments and blog it as the Saturday Matinee.
Q - Would you like to share an excerpt from your work?
A - Sure. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Past Imperfect, the latest in the Erica Jensen mystery series:
muring inside. The only other sound was that of distant traffic from the main road.
Q - Where can readers learn more about you and purchase your books?
A - You can find me various places:
My website: debbimack.com
My blogs: https://www.debbimack.com/project/blog/
https://debbimacktoo.wordpress.com/ (a blog about movies)
https://debbimackblogs.com/ (an indie author’s writing journey)
https://randomandsundrythings.wordpress.com/ (bits and bobs)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbimackwriter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbimacktoo/
Book buy links: https://www.debbimack.com/books/ (links to all my books)
Or you can buy direct from me here: https://payhip.com/debbimack
About the Host
Debbi Mack is a New York Times bestselling author of the Sam McRae and Erica Jensen mystery series, and two standalone novels, along with several short stories. A retired attorney with degrees in journalism, law, and library science, Debbi hosts the Crime Cafe podcast and co-hosts a podcast on film noir. As a screenwriter, she’s written and directed a short film and is in pre-production on a second one with Charm City Filmmakers in Baltimore. Originally from Queens, NY, she now lives in Columbia, MD, with her husband and at least one cat. Check out her website: debbimack.com.
What’s New and Interesting?
Well, um, all I can say is that I’m one person and I can only read so much, so fast.
But here’s what’s out this month.
A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston
Codebreakers by Stella Sands
Don’t Cross Mo Ellery by Birdie Horne*
Don’t Look Close by Jaima Fixsen
My Killer Family Reunion by Dinesh Thiru
My Sister Is Going to Kill Me by Nina Simon
Nearshore by Steve Hawk
Saint Delilah by Isabelle Spotts
Ten Seconds by Robert Gold
That Night by Gillian McAllister
The Book of Chuck by LaToya Watkins
The Butcher Legacy by Alaina Urquhart
The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey
The Hardest Ones to Fool by Christina Li
The People’s Historian by Dave Zirin
The Tailor by Tim Sullivan (you can pre-order the ebook now)
Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd
Tuxedo Park by Thomas Kenniff
You’ll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner (the paperback edition is available for pre-order)
These just out!
Natural Selection by Clare Edge
Not a Word by Linwood Barclay
Queens of the Crypt, Vol. 1 a graphic novel by Dom&Ink
To All the Men I’ve Killed Before by Katy Brent
Wicked Wanted Widows by Vanessa Lillie, Kimberly Belle, and Cate Holahan
A quick peek at September!
The Soufflé Also Rises by Lauren Johnson
A Game of Cat and Killer by Jiro Akagawa with Haydn Trowell (Translator)
A Rainy Night in Georgia by J. Tom Morgan (with John Capouya)
Adam, Mine. by K. Ancrum
An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino
Ashes at the Altar by LaDarrion Williams
And many more!
Two more announcements!
Just a reminder that if you're in the Baltimore, MD, area and are interested in participating in filmmaking, just email your interest to my 1st AD Wes Throneberry. His email is wesshimoda@hotmail.com, and you can copy me at debbi@debbimack.com
I’d also like to invite your contributions to this newsletter. Do you have a new release coming in the Fall of 2026 that you’d like to promote? A chapter from your novel? A giveaway? Or a short story you’d like to see featured here?