About Me

Ok, so here we go. I have opened up my mind for you so that I can share these characters and stories that have been floating around in my head for years now. They are truly a part of me. It’s really crazy how much I care about what you, the reader think of the people and places that are part of my stories.

If you don’t know me, my name is Joshua David Ashburn, I write under the name Joshua David. So far I am unpublished professionally, but I hope in future blogs I can update and change the status on that:) I have one short story published out on the Amazon Kindle site entitled “The Survivors”. It was mainly my test run for whether or not I would like the Kindle Publishing platform.

I also have a novel out entitled Nowhere.

There are three reasons I think this will be a great platform for me to utilize:

First, I need the exposure. I need people to read me and let me know if what I write really cuts the mustard.

Second, I think it will propel me into writing more.

Third, I think it will be fun to present some of my stories in blog style so that my readers can read them in segments and await the additional episodes as I write them.

Outside of writing, I have a day job, which is something else that I’d love to update and tell you one day that writing has become my day job, but we’ll see. I work for the State of Texas, so that’s good. I have a gorgeous wife of almost twelve years, and we now have four children. We live in a small town, in a house that seems like it could be a writers house.:) It certainly invokes the imagination.

I have a degree in religion, I have a small record collection, I love camping, and I like helping people. I’ve never really done much in the way of social media and sharing my opinions on the internet, so you probably won’t find many opinion posts on here. I will, however, try to make a valiant effort to update my writing here and keep the momentum of the stories going for you. I have about twenty stories that are all in various stages of completion.

Most of all I want you to enjoy your visit to my posts and my blog site as a whole. Please let me know if there is something that needs attention or if you have any questions about any of my posts. Thanks for reading:)

STXIFF Awesomeness!

At the STXIFF event this weekend having a blast!

Free To Download This Weekend

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that Nowhere, The Survivors and Other Stories, and The Survivors short story will be available for free this weekend starting Friday September 6th and going until September 10th!

I’ll be at the 2019 South Texas International Film Festival this weekend and wanted to offer a great sale to celebrate.

I’ll be competing in the Pitch competition on Saturday and fingers crossed I’ll be coming home a winner!

Hope you all are doing great, take advantage of the free downloads while you can.

Joshua

Find the download links on my Amazon author site: https://www.amazon.com/Joshua-David/e/B00KR0BQA6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

I got the “Regrettably” email again this year, but already looking forward to next year.

So for the past two years I’ve entered the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting competition. This is one of the tops for screenwriting competitions and it’s certainly one of the most reputable and prestigious. Last year I only had Hypersleep Studies to enter, this year I had The Gazers and Hypersleep Studies. for 2020, I’m hoping to have three completed and ‘further improved upon’ screenplays to enter. My plan is to keep with this pattern until someone within the Teflon coated movie industry pays attention and realizes, ‘this guy’s for real’.

One take away is that it appears that both screenplays made it past the first cut off of the top 1,169 scripts. Or at least they word their email to lead one to assume that. That’s the top 15% roughly. It would be very nice to make it to that quarterfinal round next year, on at least one of my scripts. 🙂 That’s the top 5%, perhaps NeoYork will be the one.

I’ve got a few more competitions slated for this year, The Kapow! Intergalactic Film Festival is on the horizon in August, I’ll find out how A Brief Word on Hypersleep Studies does in that competition then. Then in September, as I said in my last post, I’ll be attending the South Texas International Film Festival for my script The Gazers. Who knows, depending on how Hypersleep Studies does in the Kapow! comp. I may be headed over to CA for mid September.

My plan for November is to clear my schedule (big joke) and try to storm through the rest of NeoYork as part of the 2019 Nanowrimo competition.

At some point between now and September, I’m hoping to have some concept art/ cover art to share on The Gazers. Trust me when I say that I’ll for sure send this out when I have it. I’m hoping to add this to my portfolio to share at The Pitch competition at the 2019 STXIFF. Lot’s of stuff booked for fall, lots of family stuff going on as well. And just as a general statement: I know how social media can be interpreted sometimes, just know that I’m not saying any of this braggingly, all this is just news that I’m clearing out of my brain, this is all the perfect world scenario of it too. I know that things are likely to change, you are reading my hopes and I hope the best for all of you reading this now. I know you all have dreams too, I wish you the best in your endeavors. This blog is just me sharing me and I’m going to try to be as humble and genuine as possible with you the whole way through. 🙂 I wish you all well and I’ll touch base when I have more news. Thanks for reading.

Joshua

Looking Forward to Attending STXIFF in September

Feels like time is running faster as of late, I figured it would be good to send another update out into the vacuum that is social media. 🙂

Hope all is well in your experiential universe, lots of big things are happening right now for me. I’m getting very excited about attending the South Texas International Film Festival in early September. I have to go pitch my screenplay “The Gazers” to a panel of Judges. The Gazers was selected as one of the contest finalist in this festival’s “The Pitch” competition. Man I’m really hoping to represent my screenplay well and hoping not to get tongue tied in front of industry judges. Wish me the best 🙂

In terms of current writing and just life in general, I’m trying to keep on track with what God intends for me and my family. So I’ve been in a sort of revolving door for writing this summer. I have 4 projects going all at once, which is what I broke out of back in 2018 when I wrote Hypersleep Studies. I haven’t made significant mind-to-paper progress this summer, but I have solved several problematic idea issues that bring all four projects closer to finish.

I tend to get confused when I can’t focus on one project, but I feel like it’s all very important in the end. I have to work out these plot hiccups before I can crunch out the first draft. I still think screenplays are my new passion in writing. The next screenplay you’ll likely see from me is a screenplay called NeoYork

 

The Gazers is a Winner!

Hey Everyone,

I hope all is well in your universe. I wanted to drop in and share some awesome news. First, The Gazers has it’s first official cover jacket. Hope you like it 🙂

Second, The Gazers won “Best Original Concept Feature Screenplay” in the April 2019 Olympus Film Festival. This was it’s first official win, I’m hoping it just continues to do awesome in all the festivals this year.

Lastly, and perhaps the biggest chuck of news is that The Gazers has been selected to compete in the 2019 STXIFF “The Pitch” Screenplay Competition. This is great news. I will be attending this film festival event in September to Pitch my screenplay in this competition! Looking forward to this for sure.

Anyway, back to writing, currently I’m working on Horntooth’s Farm some more and dabbling a bit in a new story entitled “A Time for Love”. I’ll keep you all up to date on progress as much as I can.

Up Next for April

Going to try to kick out my 3rd screenplay in April. I’m planning to use the momentum from the Camp Nanowrimo event to work through a screenplay for my novel Nowhere from 2016.

“The Gazers” is essentially done so I’m going to let it rest for April. Here’s hoping Nowhere comes together quick.

Awesome Sale At Junkyard Studio Photography!

Book this weekend to take advantage of this sale!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10161501874205162&id=863175161

 

3 More Scenes

So the screenplay for “The Gazers” is now sitting at 70 pages long with 16658 words and only 3 more scenes left to write!

Today I completed another big ‘hung up’ scene which is a big relief to be done with!

Hoping not to reveal anything major here but the last three scenes have been tough for me to get to the real heart of.  I was sort of examining them and it struck me as ironic that they involve 1) a major death 2) a major arch transition for one of the characters and 3) a very telling scene that sort of explains much of the underlying purpose of the story.

Jokingly, I realize on a psychological level why I procrastinated and saved these for last. However today I got to thinking and I really feel like subconsciously I must have realized that these were very important scenes to the overall story I’m telling here. That being said I now know that I could never have written these three scenes to ‘full effect’ without having first completed all the other material.

I feel like life flows much the same way. The ‘today’ you is a product of all the choices you’ve made in your past. And the ‘next year’ you will reflect how you live out this year. God is constantly presenting us with both the potential for joy and the potential for ruin and much of what we ‘reflect’ at the end of it all will be conditional to what we’ve done and decided along the way.

That being said, I hope your screenplay has a happy ending and I hope your last three scenes are awesome. 😉

Be well,

Joshua

6 More Scenes Before “The Gazers” is Complete

Getting down to the wire on completing the finished draft of my second screenplay. Hoping to wrap this one up in the coming weeks. It’s currently sitting at around 16,000 words and is approaching the 90 page mark. These last few scenes are mapped out, I just have to put them into the script. We’ll see if any new inspiration hits before the draft is complete.

After that, I’ll spend most of March reviewing it, cutting out any clunkiness and polishing any sticking points. Hope to have this one circulating by late March. Wish you all well,

Joshua