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Selected Wendy Appearances
Roanoke Writers Conference Nov 2024 |
Now that I live in North Texas, I'll join the N.Texas Writers Coalition. And I'm presenting about writing fiction vs writing screenplays at their writing conference. It's a free event the group does at the Roanoke Library (in west Ft Worth) on November 9. Check it out! North Texas Writers Coalition |
Glasgow WorldCon
Aug 2024
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Traveled to Scotland in August and was on 3 panels at the Science Fiction Worldcon in Glasgow. Including a fairytale updates panel with a guest of honor, Terri Windling. Wo0t! There were hundreds of us on panels, about 7000 attending. Last time I was there & on panels was in 1995... |
Granbury Writers Bloc
July 2024
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Joined the local writers group when I moved up here, and now they asked me to do the presentation for the monthly meeting. Saturday, July 27. I discussed "That Story Would Make a Good Movie -- Or Would It?" |
Big Move!
Sep 2023 |
After retiring last December from my day job (yay!!!) I spent a year getting my beloved Austin Hyde Park house ready to sell. Then I moved to one of the most charming small towns in America (per some article I read): Granbury, Texas! Just 40 miles southwest of Ft Worth and 20 miles from the Dinosaur Capital of Texas (Glen Rose). Now I plan to travel & write! |
Taos Toolbox
June 2023
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Wo0t! I got accepted into this Master's Level SF/F writing workshop in Albuquerque in June. Taught by Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress, both amazing award winners. And by George R.R. Martin (yes, the GoT guy). There were 18 students, lots of talent there. It turned out to be the 2nd-to-last workshop they did, too! |
Writer Residency
Oct 2022
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Got to do a 2-week writing retreat at the amazing Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Way up in the trees of the Ozark Mountains with 8 other writing women friends! The townspeople were so sweet to us -- treated us almost like natives! Writing and adventuring, so fun! |
Art Fair
Dec 2021 |
Hancock Neighborhood Christmas Fair, Saturday, 11 December, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Local folks share & sell their art, gifts, and I was on deck at the literary table from 10 to 11am. FreshPlus at 43rd St. |
Writing Wkshop
Oct 2019 |
Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. Texas Chapter Annual Retreat. Hunt, Texas, in early October, and I taught a class on "Drawing on the Power of Dreams for Your Fiction and Screenplays." Saturday at 3:30 pm |
Con Panels
Aug 2019
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ArmadilloCon 41 at the Omni Southpark in Austin: 2-4 August. I attended Saturday 3 August, spoke on panels, hung out with friends. Haven't done programming in years! |
Retreat April 2019 |
To Vermont in April for a long, focused, writers retreat. This is the year I got more focused on my fiction and screenwriting. I've worked on updating a piece or doing a new piece each month so far! |
Workshop July 2016 |
Cascade Writers Conference and Workshop. Met new friends in Tacoma and workshopped with the first 4000 words of my novel in progress, THE FOUR LAST THINGS, with Claire Eddy of Tor! We had some group writings, and mine did well on those too! |
Retreats
Mar, Aug, Nov 2014 |
My awesome writer buddies kept me busy during my freelance time in 2014 with Galveston, San Antonio and New Braunfels workshops and retreats. Most of the time, I coordinated and presented some writing craft sessions. |
Workshop
2014 |
I presented "Writing Fiction Vs Writing Screenplays" to aspiring writers at the Austin Screenwriters Group to kick off the new year with the "Bootstrap Basics." Kat Albert, Jill Chamberlain and I covered the ground rules of screenwriting. |
Panelist
2011 |
The Pflugerville Community Library hosted a Sci-fi/Fantasy Readers Meetup with me and 6 other local writers at a meet and greet. We also judged a costume contest. Amazingly, someone had a copy of Snow White Blood Red at home and brought it in for my signature. |
VH-1 Pitch
2011 |
During the Austin Film Festival, I was selected for the VH-1 Pitch Lab because of getting to the top 10% in the screenplay contest. People have always told me Heaven & Nell should be a series, so I created a TV series bible and had my 3-min pitch. They didn't go for it, but told me I did a good job, so yay! It was a good exercise, and now I have the documents for future pitching. |
Regional Premiere
2011 |
DEEPER AND DEEPER, the erotic suspense movie that I did story development for (and was Associate Producer), had its Austin premier in the Violet Crowne Theater. Bright Shining City Productions arranged photo ops and fun! And it was a different experience seeing the film on the big screen and not on my mac! |
Conference
2010 |
I taught a short (2 hour) class on screenwriting for a good cause--A Room of Her Own, the new Texas chapter. They raise money for stipends for women writers so they can take a year off to write. I was also part of the readings by the instructors at Bookwoman that same night. Read more at http://www.aroho.org/tex/ |
Retreat & Conference
2009
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I was accepted in the Master's Class in Screenwriting at the Hawaii Writers Retreat in Honolulu. Also I attended the Hawaii Writers Conference over the Labor Day weekend (which turned out to the final year for HWC). I workshopped with Margaret Jennings South and reconnected with screenwriter Diane Lake. |
Breaking News! (and some archives)
Final Draft's Big Break contest 2024 gave PRIMA, the script I wrote for Mauriusz, a quarterfinalist award. It's an interesting story that I purposely overwrote to make the themes and tone clear, so... hah!
Screencraft SciFi and Fantasy Content 2021: My screenplay THE LILITH CODE was a quarterfinalist!
Emerging Screenwriters 2019 Contest:I entered my screenplay THE LILITH CODE in the Action category of the new Emerging Screenwriters Contest, and it was a semi-finalist. Cool that it's a more flexible story than I thought.
Story Pros 10th & 11th Annual Contests:
My screenplay THE LILITH CODE was a finalist and THE CUNNING MAN won the 2017 science fiction/fantasy genre track. In the 2018 contest, The Lilith Code was an SF/F semifinalist. WooT!
New Job was kinda Science-fictional:
August 2015 I transferred from my original Dell department to the ultra-cool Internet of Things group, where I manage the product messaging. What's cool is how many times my messaging words for this buzzy, abstract field are specifically quoted by analysts and media! ---And then Michael Dell laid me and thousands off in 2016-2017.
Won 0.0035% of an Emmy:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt started a web TV series called HitRECord on TV that used the creative input from tens of thousands of creators, and they paid us for it! Yes! I contributed 18 words used in JGL's monologue at the beginning of "The Other Side" episode. And the series won a 2014 Emmy!
Two 2014 Contests Placements:
Was a 2nd-rounder in the 2014 Austin Film Festival with PRIMA, and THE LILITH CODE was quarter-finalist in The Big Break screenplay contest.
New Story Published!
Daily Science Fiction featured my flash fiction story "The LevoGyre" in its 7 July 2014 eNewsletter. Now the story lives on its website. Yay, for getting back into writing, finishing and submitting fiction! (Screenplays are still important, but doing fiction again now too.)
My First AFF Two-Fer:
Been submitting 2-3 scripts each year in the contest at Austin Film Festival and 2013 was the first time I got two that made it to the second round (i.e., top 10%). Wo0t! to CUNNING MAN and LILITH CODE!
My Social Media Sites:
Linkedin: Networking for my creative marketing professional persona
Facebook: Day-to-day posts, some political rants
Twitter: Mostly humor related content (I write comedy; this helps me remember my jokes)
Bright Shining City Productions finally convinced me to do a rewrite of a script (third time to ask me, after about half-a-dozen writers had tried). I crushed it! It's a melodrama about an ailing, arrogant composer, his younger, ex-ballet-dancer wife, and her lover who returns to propose to her. At a table read, people cried; it was awesome! The movie, MORAL OBLIGATION, but my name for it is PRIMA, is in pre-production now (Jan 2013) seeking funding.
"Little Red" was reprinted in a new anthology, Happily Ever After, edited by John Klima (Electric Velocipede) and published by Night Shade Books. It came out June 2012. Its original anthology, Snow White Blood Red, was out of print for only a year then Prime Books reprinted it.
Associate Producer Gig
I took a development job (meaning: getting the script story into shape and assisting with casting) in 2008 on an indie movie with Bright Shining City. The psycholological suspense screenplay, DEEPER & DEEPER, was written by local playwright and indie-award -winning actress, Cyndi Williams, from a story by Mariusz Kotowski. It starred Emmy-award-winning David Lago, and post-production finished October 2009. I got quoted a lot on the "Behind the Scenes" documentary! The movie did well at festivals, and I take pride in its First Place for Suspense/Thriller at the Indie Festival. And it gave me my first IMDB listing!
San Diego Film Festival 2007 Networking
Because I was a reader/judge for the American Screenwriters Assn screenplay contest, I got to attend the conference and film festival. Networked with some of the classiest people in the screenwriting craft industry, and hoped to get some business going with some of them. And I did indeed get notes (great ones!) back on HEAVEN & NELL from Andy Cohen, producer with Grade A Entertainment.
HELLO OFFICER is Filmed by Big Plume Productions
The short script I dashed off in an hour earlier this year completed filming in the Clarksville area of Austin 2005 Oct 15-16. We ran about 3.5 hours of film for what will be a 10 minute short! Producer/director was Angela Lee of FilmAustin.us. It was quite an experience -- especially since I was the Script Supervisor. More on the experience and some photos at my blog, here and here.
Best Little PitchFest in Texas - July 2005
My screenplay HEAVEN & NELL was one of the 10 finalists in the "First Fifteen Pages" contest at this event (didn't win, though). I got to pitch to 10 Hollywood producers and agents, and am sending scripts to six of them. Woo-hoo!
About Me, Wendy Wheeler
I'm a volatile mix of half-Texan + half-Canadian, but make no mistake: Soy una Texana! I was born with a clown face -- a big wide grin, round blue eyes, naturally yellow & curly hair, a roly-poly body -- that seems to give me amazing Kid-Fu. I earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Graphic Design & Advertising from the University of Texas, with most of a minor in Zoology. Ironically, my vocation and avocation is writing. My dayjob, though I'm retired now, was mostly writing high-tech marketing content & managing media/social media/events. But now I focus on my own fiction, screenplays, musicals and songs, teach classes, design games, create bookcovers, and more. Fun stuff is when I get invited to gigs and events, like doing freelance story development for local movie production companies. And I've marched for peace, done fund-raising and activist activities for the environment and human rights, etc.
What I have not done: illustrated cookbooks, painted tiles, or designed posters. That is a different Wendy Wheeler. |
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