The first is Crossroads (or The Piano of Death), the play that Astolat Arts premiered this past February at the West End Studio Theater in Portsmouth and at the Democracy Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m very excited to be bring this one to life again. It’ll run on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. from June 22 through July 1.

The second is a short play, as yet untitled, that I am writing for An Evening of Grand Guignol, which runs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. from July 6 through July 15. The evening will also feature plays by John Herman and by Bryan White of Cinema Suicide. And if you don’t know what Grand Guignol is, you should. Check out the Wikipedia entry or GrandGuignol.com.

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Part of the reason I closed Geek Force Five down and decided to go sans blog for the first time since 1999 was to explore the possibilities of what my online presence could be. If I wanted to become known as a writer of fiction and drama, rather than a pop culture blogger, what did that look like? 

The truth is that there isn’t much out there in the way of a model. Many author Websites look just like echristopherclark.com looks like right now. They announce events, they link to places where you can buy the author’s work, and they might contain a representative story or two. But there is little life to them. They blind you with the gloss of traditional publishing’s marketing juggernauts or, if they happen to be author-run, they reek of the seeming disdain that legitimate, serious writers too often have for the big, bad Internet. 

The question I’ve been asking myself is why a storyteller’s Website can’t be as exciting to visit as that of a musician, or a filmmaker. And the answer, I think, is that it can be. 

That’s what I’m working on right now, an online presence that honors the type of creator that I think I am, but that keeps intact the fun of the sites that I’ve built before. 

Stay tuned. 

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I should also note that I’ll be directing a play as part of that evening of theater. The play I’m in charge of is James Patrick Kelly’s “Bad Dogs.”

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Please come out and see me read if you’re in the area, then stick around for the open mic that follows.

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The acting bug that I caught last fall has returned with a vengeance. This September, I’ll be returning to the stage at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, New Hampshire alongside my Evening of Steampunk and Robot Theater co-star Elizabeth Locke in a new play, At My Window, written by the talented Kathleen Cavalaro, who is also responsible for the gorgeous photo above.

The play will be directed by Brian Kelly and runs from September 2 through September 18. More details can be found on the Website for the Players’ Ring.

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On Wednesday, June 15, 2011, Sam Coffin Dies Laughing, the 48 Hour Film Project for 2011 by the Purple Finch Moving Picture Society, was released to the world. I had a number of small acting roles in the piece — see if you can spot them all — and also received writing credit for a small bit of “Shakespeare-like” dialogue uttered in the film. It was a blast, as Purple Finch projects always are.

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On May 28, 2011, alongside 22 other authors and an illustrator, I helped create Overfly, a new novel, in just 24 hours. It is available at the preceding link in a variety of electronic formats, and though many of my co-writers have identified the chapters they wrote, I’m going to let you guess which one is mine. And yeah, that’s a sneaky way of getting you to read the whole thing, but writers are sneaky bastards, so deal with it.

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In February 2011, as part of the RPM Challenge, I resurrected my one-man band Pop Bubblegum Trash. I’d last recorded music under that moniker in 2000, but I had a story I wanted to tell in songs, and A Dream Is But a Shadow is the end result.

Written and recorded in 28 days, A Dream Is But a Shadow is the story of what happens when an angry young man finally gives in and gives up. It follows a fellowship of six women across the fractured landscape of that young man’s mind as they attempt to save the he that they call He from Himself. Drawing on pop culture both high and low, it’s exactly the sort of album you’d expect from the guy who runs Geek Force Five.

The album is available for download exclusively through Bandcamp, and it runs $3 for 10 songs. Click here to get yours.

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