Do You Believe In Ghosts?

 

I write ghosts and inexplicable occurrences into my books and screenplays, and I’m not going to brag or apologize for it. I just do. I never started out to write about ghosts and I’m not a freaky ghost-loving fanatic, but those things just seem to creep into most of my books whether they were included in the character list, the original storyline, or not. I’ll be writing a perfectly sweet little story and the next thing I know something moves the curtains or there is a tap at the window that can’t be explained.

When I was a child, I was very frightened of ghosts. Even as a teen, I remember being told to say out loud that I did not want any ghost to present themselves to me. Apparently, the spirits that surround you will protect you from anyone coming through if you let your parameters be known. I was not open to messages or visions from the other side. At all. I believed in ghosts and I was terrified of an entity using my belief to gain access to me.

My grandmother was a believer and when my grandfather died, she felt him in the bed with her for the nights afterwards. I grew up hearing these stories. When she died, my aunt tried to contact her with a Ouija Board and a message came through for me that only my grandmother and I knew about. That’s probably the one moment that made me a believer.

Over the years, I’ve had a few occurrences, including the vision of my recently deceased dog going around the corner in our house a few days after his death. I saw him along with my daughter who was ten at the time. “Did you just see Sammy do down the hall?” I asked her. Needless to say her eyes were wide with disbelief and we still talking about seeing our dog in the house. One could say it was imagined except for the fact that we both saw him.

I wrote my latest book series about a woman whose mother used her telepathy as a child to do ghost readings. Bryndle Moody is all grown up now and has a YouTube show called Moody Paranormal Investigations in which she investigates ghosts and films her findings. She’s a medium, which is different from a psychic, although she is also psychic. And she’s newly blind. When she inherits a house on the Oregon Coast with a ghost whose presence allows her sight, she never wants to let him go. But his request is to investigate his death in 1850 to let him pass on. I turned this story into a series and I’m hoping the Netflix exec who has this on their desk sees the potential.

For the series, I drew upon stories my book readers tell me about their experiences with ghosts. I hear a lot of ghost stories because people know I’m a believer. I have even seen a few photos of ghosts on people’s phones and the stories I’m told are incredible.

I once visited my sister right after a demonic entity had entered her bedroom in a dark corner near the closet and we had to sleep with crosses around our necks. Needless to say, the visit wasn’t as chill as I’d hoped, and I went home tired from lying awake in her King bed staring at the bedroom corner all night.

I watch ghost shows to scare myself and also to get the terminology for my books. Just last night I was watching Jack Osborne’s Portal to Hell show and in between snorting and shaking his head at the heavily dramatized findings and scary background music, my husband asked me what EVP was. I was able to knowledgeably inform him that Electronic Voice Phenomena is when a spirit speaks through an electronic device like in my book and screenplay The Dream Jumper’s Promise. Then, he asked what a MEL Meter is and I was able to tell him I used one of those when I went ghost hunting in underground Seattle in the middle of the night a few years back. We got some incredible readings on our Mel Meters to record electro-magnetic changes near the site where a bank teller died at the bottom of a staircase. We had a laser grid set up to record ghostly presences moving around that night but came up empty. However, I was at the end of the line of people, almost in the shadows and I fully expected a tap on my shoulder only to turn around and see no one there.

It's fine if you don't believe in the afterlife, ghosts, mediums or don't enjoy reading about any of these things. Enough people do and are intrigued. I do care that there will come a day when science supports the existence of alternate realities and ghosts existing alongside us and I hope to live long enough to say I told you so to many people who think I’m a wee bit nuts.

People thought the world was flat until a journey proved otherwise. I look forward to the unequivocal evidence someday to prove ghosts are real. Scientific statements that prove my dog was lingering in my house after his passing or that the tap on my shoulder as a child to alert me to not step off the curb when a car was coming was a ghostly presence. And until then, those ghostly characters will continue to creep into my stories when I least expect them, often taking over the hero’s journey and making me wonder if I have a ghostly muse, dying to have her story told.

KIM HORNSBY is the bestselling Amazon Author of The Dream Jumper's Promise, Book 1 in a Supernatural Suspense series. An awarded author and screenwriter, Kim lives in the Seattle area and writes stories for women about overcoming tragedy, adversity and coming out the other end. Some are funny, scary, romantic, suspensey but all are hopeful.

Find her on Amazon Books.

www.twitter.com/kimhornsby

He Came Through My Bedroom Window

 CHAT is the story of a woman who meets a man online in a chat room, takes the conversation off the public chat to private and develops a lovely and interesting relationship with him over a few weeks.

Over the course of the 12 minute film, we see them chatting back and forth on their laptops. The flirt factor ramps up until one night, they're drinking and talking online and he makes a request of her that she's not comfortable with. 

This type of thing happens a lot. Especially since the pandemic started and relationships went online from IRL (in real life). In the script I wrote, Julia, the shy accountant, goes along with mild flirting realizing it can't go anywhere because David lives across the country.

Or so he says.

I write Suspense. I like to write stalker behavior. I once had a man pursue me from afar, writing letters, showing up at my place of work as a singer in a band, watching me. He eventually revealed to my boss that we were having an inappropriate relationship and I'd taken advantage of the fact he was disabled. He tried to get me fired. I'd never spoken to this man in person. I'd seen him in the audience. He was persistent. My boss was a friend and was horrified the man followed me around and called me "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" a song I sang in my act that he apparently liked.

I still have the letters.

Years later, I would live as a newlywed in Whistler BC in Canada with my amazing husband when a man he fired threatened to cut out my tongue with a broken Coke bottle in retaliation. We hoped it was an idle threat but got the RCMP involved. The thought of having my tongue cut out was horrifying to say the least and not just because I earned a living as a singer but the idea that another person could violate me this way...

I'm especially sensitive to this type of terrorism because at the age of 22, I lived in a basement apartment and one summer night a man came through my bedroom window after me. The police assumed he was drunk from a street festival a few blocks away, had been watching me through my windows and decided to drag a neighbor's hose around the house to reach my bedroom window. I was reading in bed when I saw spray hitting the wall, then lower to my bed and me. It was coming from behind me. I turned to see a hose and a man's hand holding that hose. I jumped out of bed to see him coming through the window. He'd taken the screen off the window in preparation for this while I was in the other room. 

He was a young man in his early twenties, blonde hair, thin, with a bandana tied across his lower face. Our eyes met as he advanced towards me, hose in hand. I reacted, thank God. I said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" four words I remember so clearly decades later. But, because I was terrified and my mouth had frozen up, they came out slurred almost like I was deaf and this was as clearly as I could speak.

I had no idea until that point I couldn't speak properly and am still not sure why that happened but in the short moment when he heard my words, his eyes widened in surprise and I took that moment to shove him back out the window. The hose was still in his hand and it went out the window with him. I never looked to see where he fell. I slammed my window, locked it (at least I thought I did) and ran from the drenched room where he'd knocked over a precious lamp of my grandmother's and a mirror and things were broken and on the floor from the struggle of getting him out the window.

I ran into the living room, grabbed the phone and called 911. I gave my address and stayed on the line with the operator but then, the light went out in the bedroom, putting my apartment in darkness. My heart jumped into my throat. Had the window not locked properly? Oh God! He was coming for me. The operator told me to pick up something heavy to throw as he came through the door and get ready to run out the front door. The police were only blocks away. I reached for a clay teapot on my coffee table and waited for him to come through the door.

He didn't. A knock on the door a minute later revealed the police had arrived. Checking the bedroom with them revealed the lamp had shorted with the water. The window was locked just as I'd thought. A police dog followed his scent a few blocks but when he crossed a busy street, they lost him. 

That summer, I slept with all windows shut and locked, drapes closed. Every blonde man I saw on the street, I looked into his eyes to ask "Are you him?" I still sit with my back against the wall in public. 

I hope he got older and realized what a horrible thing this was. I hope he never tried this again with someone. I hope he grew out of what the (men) police officers called "probably drunken mischief".

These incidents are likely why and how I wrote CHAT. And why I write Suspense with stalkers where the woman takes charge and the stalker loses big in the end. It's my way of taking back the power, continuing on with those 4 words that might have saved my life that night. 

What are you doing?

Even writing this blog has my heart racing and nausea close to the surface. I'm not reading it back or editing the page for that reason so there may be typos.

If my story speaks to you, please consider joining our crowdfunding campaign and supporting our film that has one woman being targeted and winning in the end. The story is meant as a cautionary warning that tables can turn at any moment and you might lose at your own game.

CROWFUNDING SITE for CHAT with more information:

www.bit.ly/ChatFilm

KIM HORNSBY is an awarded author and screenwriter in the Seattle area where she writes novels and screenplays from a desk overlooking a tree-lined lake. 

Find more about Kim on her website

www.bit.ly/KimHornsby

The Road to Filmmaking

I do lots of things associated with writing but never considered I might produce one of my stories to a short film.

I also can't imagine becoming a lion tamer. That's how outlandish it seemed a year ago when I was looking for a filmmaker to take my script CHAT and make a short film. I wrote it contained (few locations) with a small cast so it would be an easy shoot and was sure I could give this script to a deserving creative and get a free pass to watch the filming. Win win.

Several filmmakers read it. I was surprised that only one woman came forward. She was interested in directing and would have been awesome but was a very long plane ride away and she wasn't offering to take the whole package, just direct the film.

I needed someone to produce my award-winning script and that meant casting, money, finding crew, heading up everything because Indie Filmmaking is a big deal with lots of moving parts. Another director reached out to me who lived closer and was a friend with production experience and loved the script. Giving it to him meant a woman would not direct but as a producer, I'd be involved in a BIG way.

I  mulled it over for several months waiting to see if I got any traction from CHAT's contest placement at Austin Film Festival. There was interest but nothing more concrete than the final realization that I wanted to produce this myself with Brad Johnson directing. 

I'd produced stage plays, convention shows and had done a fundraising campaign for a friend's dog's surgery. And had managed a HUGE campaign to achieve USA Today Bestselling Author status. I felt ready to take this on.

November 2021, Brad and I started casting CHAT with both of us producing, him directing. You know when you fret over buying something big, pull the plug, buy it and the relief and excitement takes over? That's how I felt. I knew I'd made a great decision once Brad and I started working together. 

We cast CHAT, brought on an AD who would be able to catch us if we fell, added a top shelf DOP, Sound Director, Composer (all women) and a Gaffer who worked on Emmy winning films as well as a PA who was overqualified for the job. We would've felt unworthy of all this talent but were too busy moving forward with production.

Cut To: February 2022 and the project had cast and crew, the fundraising efforts at Seed & Spark were ready to go. I'd designed what I hoped would be a successful crowdfunding campaign, appealing to the fact that no one needed to join our team but there was fun to be had during the process and you might want to get on board the Chat Train. I knew this feeling from pledging to about 20 other Indie Films over the last year and feeling excitement to be involved. What had us push back the fundraising campaign several times was making a video to promote the film. Brad and I did not have a camera, it's a pandemic, our DOP was not available, it being football season and her being the videographer for the Seattle Seahawks and then when we did find a wonderful person with a camera, we didn't like being outside or what we said on camera. Take Two had us filming at Brad's house with a generous friend who borrowed equipment and took the day to help us. Then took the next day to edit and work on the video splicing it together with the concept trailer another generous friend had made. When the video was finished, Brad and I still wished we'd done a lot differently but it was time to launch this thing or pull the plug.

www.bit.ly/ChatFilm

In the meantime, on a personal note, my husband's battle with cancer took a turn for the worse and he had to begin chemo again. Luckily, my ducks were in a row for the most part. And like he said, I couldn't just sit around and stare at him as he began chemo again. While he slept or rested, I worked on CHAT. I tell you this with nervousness at revealing we didn't shut things down when my husband was hospitalized, but by February, this project was so much bigger than just me. Had this happened in November, I would have postponed the project. But things were ready to go, Brad was storyboarding, the location was secured, actors were ready to go and crew was already planning their contribution to the project. 

Our crowdfunding campaign reached 32% of it's goal the first week which is AMAZING!!! We hope to reach at least 80% in 30 days at which time our supporters will be charged for their pledges. If we don't reach 80%, no one will get charged and the possibility of filming will be lost this year. Crowdfunding is a risk. I'm living with a sense of fear and hope about many aspects in  my life right now but like my sister said recently, I function well under pressure.

If you're considering a contribution to join TEAM CHAT find us at Seed & Spark, a reputable crowdfunding site made by women screenwriters for filmmakers. You'll see photos of the cast, information about budget, and our mission statement about making a film to highlight online predators.

Even $10 helps and believe me, we appreciate every dollar! Also, by hitting FOLLOW, you'll get updates weekly on how we progress as we head into our first day of the film shoot May 20th.

Or Tweet/Post this on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram:

My friends are making a film in Seattle!
Be part of their impressive little circle by giving a dollar or two so you can put film supporter in your bio!

@Chat_shortfilm #filmmaking #giveback

RT please https://seedandspark.com/fund/chat#story

Thanks for reading and we hope you'll take the CHAT train with us all the way to Film Festivals and help build awareness of online predatory behavior.

www.bit.ly/ChatFilm

Kim Hornsby

Beginner Class on how to use Kindle Direct Publishing - Amazon

 This page is less of a blog today and more of an ad. Sorry regular followers!

Hollywood movie makers love ADAPTATIONS from Intellectual Property. That means if you wrote and published a book, article, comic and turned it into a screenplay, their ears perk up.

Especially if that book was Gone Girl or you're Nora Roberts or some other publishing heavy weight. I teach authors how to write screenplays so I figured I could go the other way and teach screenwriters how to publish!

 I am both a bestselling author and a screenwriter. I adapt my books to screenplays and only once have I written the screenplay then turned it into a novel or novella (shorter novel). I find it hard to go that way because writing novels takes a long ass time and having discovered the process of screenwriting, I'm now spoiled to see a finished product quickly.

Publishing is a learned skill and if you aren't represented by a Literary Agent and have a publisher, you can self publish, or we like to call it Indie Publishing to sound more cool. That process is easy. Getting sales is the hard part.

I'm going to teach a class on March 26th 2022 to anyone who is interested in learning how to publish on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP, the ebook forum. You can essentially publish anything as long as you have a nice book cover and it isn't dark web stuff. 

eg) If you wrote a short story based on your screenplay, you could publish that on Kindle and sell it for .99 which is as low as they go on that site. Again, sales are the hard part and in my experience, when promoting a script adapted from IP, they want to see sales' numbers. That's not to say you won't make big sales or the producer you talk to will need big sales numbers. 

I write Christmas romance novellas (24K words to 40K words) to sell at Christmas mostly and offer them for .99. I happen to make most of my money with these lovely little stories. My full novels aren't as lucrative unless I put some bank in to advertise, which is a whole other class.

In this one hour class I'll show you on Zoom, through screen share how to: 

-Set up a publishing account on Amazon - Kindle Direct Publishing

-I'll show you how to answer all publishing questions asked during the process like pricing, opting in to Select and Digital Rights Management, making the process as easy as possible.

-I'll touch on how to make a book cover or use KDP's easy cover creator

At the end of the hour, you'll know how to publish something.

-I'll give you handy links if you want to learn more or access cover creators to save yourself some time and effort.

FYI, Amazon has tutorials on all this but I'll be live to answer questions after the class.

If you DM me on Twitter @KimHornsby I'll send you the link. Because I'm getting a lot of action on this, don't worry about thanking me in the DM's. Feel free to retweet or tell friends. The more the merrier. I don't want to post the Zoom link publicly for obvious reasons.

This class is FREE but at the end I will mention my Seed & Spark Campaign for a short film I wrote that I'm producing/shooting in May. 

We need FOLLOWERS and we need FUNDS so if it sounds exciting to be a film supporter/investor, jump into the CHAT FILM team. No pressure. Our campaign will just have gone LIVE and we'll need lots of buzz the first week to get that ball rolling.

    

        Kim

      KIM HORNSBY

Stories For Thinkers & Dreamers

       Screenplays & Novels

         KIM'S WEBSITE

The Short Film CHAT is Greenlit

I'm making a short film.

I couldn't be more excited to announce that in May 2022, we will be filming a script I wrote and am now co-producing. We'll film in Seattle with an all-star team and hope to take the finished product around to film festivals, maybe even Cannes and Sundance!

I wrote this script of 19 pages (19 ish minutes on film) during the beginning of the quarantine in 2020 and after entering it in screenwriting contests, found it resonated with people. It's the story of a woman who meets a charming man online only to discover she's in over her head. CHAT is a cautionary tale to warn people about the dangers of strangers met on the internet.

I'm an awarded screenwriter, USA Today Bestselling author and a former producer of stage shows. Producing is not a new profession to me and I'm thrilled to be learning the ropes of film production as we move forward with my production partner, Brad M. Johnson of Daisy If You Do Productions. He will also direct the project. Madeline Down will be our cinematographer, coming from the videography group of the Seattle Seahawks and brings an exciting plan to the project. Luke Zwanziger, a Portland filmmaker will be our Assistant Director as well as editing the film. We added Meredith Wylegala to our team as the Sound person, are securing our Covid Safety Officer, looking for the perfect locations, and preparing to launch an awesome fundraising campaign March 1, 2022.

With the cast ready to go, the director working on scene shots and a director of photography we could only dream about, we are heading towards a May shoot. In the spirit of name dropping, our lead, Eryn, has been on Grey's Anatomy and is in Amazon Prime's The Scottish Play. Our male lead, Josh, was on Devious Maids, Washington Spies and is chilling in the role. Antonio is finishing his MFA in acting at UW and in Beauty and the Beast onstage in Seattle. We can't wait to see what these three bring to the story! 

Although we have some funding in place, we hope to reach our goal of $13,500 needed to pull this off through a fundraising bonanza. Stay tuned for the link to our Seed & Spark page where you can find more information on how to get involved and call yourself a film investor! And a patron of the arts! Be a part of this amazing production and keep track of all that is CHAT!

Seed & Spark is a completely safe, credible crowdfunding site that focuses on Indie Film and has been around for years. It has an 88% success rate, much higher than Indie GoGo, Go Fund Me or other crowd funding sites and has contributed greatly to Indie films being made all over the world.

More information as it's available but stay tuned for our March 1st Seed & Spark page where you can take the CHAT journey with us.