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

I Was in a Movie!

This is me. Right here, at the table. Look how focused I am!






I'm not sure if I'll be up for an Emmy Award next year, this time, but my acting skills look amazing in this TV movie, from what I've seen, which is only this photo.

The Producers

In early June 2019, I drove all the way across the state of Washington to be an extra in a movie by two women producers. One is JD, my agent/literary manager and the cracker jack who sold my Christmas Romance screenplay recently to a company who will film in the next months, the other, Robin, is a producer who bought the option to make The Dream Jumper's Promise into a feature film. (Both really want to make that movie and I absolutely love them for that!)
So when they had a shooting schedule for their TV movie about a barista falling for a guy who builds houses for poor people, I really wanted to be any part of it they might tolerate. I didn't write the screenplay but I still wanted to be on set.

I got in the car the day before my casting call and drove across the state on my adventure. I was getting over bronchitis, still coughing and hoped that my hacking cough would settle down by tomorrow. There wasn't much that was going to stop me from being in this movie, or at least supporting these two #womeninfilm because I was so excited I was creeping them both on social media for on set photos every day.

Stopped at a Rest Stop to show how flat E. WA is

I checked into my Air B&B, settled in for the night with takeout dinner and watched Always Be My Maybe on Netflix, a film that made me laugh out loud a lot.
The next day, I woke and got ready for my big day on the set of Home Sweet Home, a few miles away. It was a lovely sunny day in Spokane Washington, something that was beneficial when you have scads of electrical equipment outside a coffee shop while you film inside.
Snafoo: Pulling on my jeans, I realized they no longer fit. I'd recently gained a few pounds and although the jeans were stretchy, they weren't that stretchy. Dang. My other pants were white, a movie no-no color. I covered the front with a long top, did my hair to try to get some height from my increasingly thinning dome and realized I'd forgotten hair spray, something my wispy, thin hair cannot go without. Another dang.
I left the little cottage I'd rented and set out for the drug store for hairspray and Ross's Dress for Less to buy jeans. I'd seen the clothing store when getting takeout the night before. If I skipped a Starbucks run for caffeine, I'd have enough time to buy jeans and get to the meeting place for extras to sign in at 10:15.
Pulling in to Ross's parking lot, I realized my jeans had stretched enough on the drive that I could fasten them closed so I got back in the car and went for hairspray. Once I had my hair sorted out, I still had time for coffee. I believed. One grande latte later, I was on my way to the set of the movie.
Our meeting place was a big church parking lot but upon arrival, I didn't see anyone out and about. Nobody with a clipboard, no movie looking people. I drove around looking for signs of actors, directors, wardrobe people but nothing.

Outside the coffee shop 

I was right on time. Where was everyone? After checking my emails to see if I got the location wrong, I saw someone who looked like movie crew enter the church. They were inside the church? I hadn't gotten the memo.

I parked and ran through the parking lot to the church door, now ten minutes late for being slightly early. Inside, I found a big room with a kitchen and people and snacks and clipboards and I realized this was Command Central for the movie. I checked in with Suzanne, the casting director, and ran back to the car to get my clothing choices for the day so the wardrobe lady could choose. I thought I was dressed exactly like the photos sent the night before as a guideline however, I had a rip in the sleeve of my cute green jacket in the back and had to change, which was perfectly fine but slightly embarrassing to arrive on set looking like a hobo with a ripped jacket.

Working the camera

Once I got changed, I went to the makeup room for face powder and then we were shuttled in a van to the coffee shop where the stars were waiting. Shots were set up, and I was eventually moved inside the coffee shop to a table where I could watch and listen to the Director, DOP, prop people, Assistant Director, actors. Inside I could really see how a movie is made. Most of the extras had worked on a zombie show called Z Nation which shot in Spokane, so it was interesting talking to them about their experiences as zombies and towns folk.

Observation: Those poor actors have to say the same line 20 times over and over sometimes, not because there was anything wrong with their execution the first time, but to get the correct lighting, positioning, camera angle. I realized that movie making is more about lighting than acting. The real diva of the day seemed to be the camera and its need for good lighting.

When my day inside the coffee shop was done and the extras were shuttled back to the church, we gathered up our stuff, signed a bunch of paperwork, said our goodbyes and headed off to real life.

Ben Elliott, the star

I didn't get a chance to meet the female lead that day. Natasha Bure stayed quiet and in character, plugged into her phone and music when not working. I did meet the two male leads, one being a lovely young man from Spokane named Gabriel who plays the suitor who is all wrong for the girl and the other being the polite young man, Ben, who plays the guy who gets the girl. When I sat down beside Ben on the curb, he got up to offer his chair, which was a gallant gesture. Chivalry is not dead. I didn't need his chair but it was nice of him to ask.

Producers JD & Robin, Stars Natasha Bure & Ben 

Home Sweet Home is a movie about a young man who builds houses through his church and meets a somewhat superficial barista woman who pretends to be handy with a hammer to get on the build site to meet this man. It's a cute story, written by a fellow Seattle author and screenwriter, Lesley Ann McDaniel, and with a distribution deal, it's scheduled to be released Valentine's Day 2020. I, for one, can't wait to see what the rest of the story holds. I know the coffee shop scene pretty well but it'll be fun to see the movie in February and watch the story unfold.

If you ever get a chance to be an extra on a set, you'll be surprised how long it takes to film a page of screenplay and what goes in to making a movie. The camera is the star, the diva, the one they pamper, not the actors, and not the extras who are sitting on the periphery watching the pieces of the puzzle fall into place to make a story. But together, we all contribute to make the story come to life to bring it to you on the screen. Let me know in February if you think my performance is Emmy worthy.
I'll just be happy to not end up on the cutting room floor!


KIM HORNSBY is the bestselling Amazon Author of The Dream Jumper's Promise, Book 1 in her Bestselling Supernatural Suspense series. With 9 published novels and several screenplays circulating Hollywood, Kim lives in the Seattle area and writes stories for women about overcoming tragedy, adversity and coming out the other end triumphant.

     Find her on Amazon Books

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