Colony Mars: The Dahlgrin Dilemma

YA SciFi

Earthling families have been terraforming Mars for centuries but when a boy discovers the Martians’ underground world, he must keep it secret or be declared Mars Mad by the Overlord and sentenced to The Edge.

The 2018 PAGE Awards

Judge A: "COLONY MARS is a high-concept futuristic sci-fi action / adventure with a fun YA angle to it a la THE HUNGER GAMES and a smart, striking conceit for the genre mildly reminiscent of MOON. In a future where Mars is colonized, it follows a young boy who’s declared Mars Mad by his colony’s leader, and he uncovers a race of people living secretly under-ground, exposing a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. As far as sci-fi goes, this could be a big studio, big budget movie but could also be pared down fairly easily to a more modest production. Raj is a terrific hero and the YA feel of the project works and could make this a big tentpole, popcorn summer blockbuster. Raj’s interactions with his parents and friends give his thread the endearing heart we want in a pro-tagonist. The redemptive B-story for him and his dad and the Mars Mad outcasts and Martians brings their victory home triumphantly."

Judge B: "... You’ve done a fine job setting up Raj as an outsider. He’s laughed at and not necessarily trusted by others, who think he’s a thief. He’s also 'tainted' via his relationship to his father, who was labeled as a 'Mars mad' enemy of the state. The depiction of Dahlgrin’s authoritarian rule is certainly original. He’s almost a comic figure yet he rules by fear and intimidation. By the end of your story, it’s clear he has genocidal tendencies."

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

***

The Bus to Lo Siento

Drama

(violence, language, sexuality)

Top 10% (of 600) in the 2013 Oaxaca FilmFest.

A man attempts to deal with the atrocities committed by him and to him as a child soldier in the 1980s Guatemalan Civil War all the while being pursued by a powerful figure who wants him dead.

Pitch-Concept

The Bus to Lo Siento was inspired by the experiences of a Guatemalan man, a former friend. He read the script and told me he really liked it, that I didn’t need to change anything. I also met a Maya man in Ottawa, who had gone through those times and spoke of seeing a “pile of Maya skulls.”

 

From To The Roots, Jose Marti: “There is no more painful chapter in the history of modern Guatemala than the events of 1980–1983. At the human level, it is a tale of wholesale slaughter and genocide by the new death squads, the coun-terinsurgent security forces, this time carrying out illegal violence themselves, without the facade of legal constraints. That this holocaust was almost unknown and unimagined in most Western countries, certainly in the United States, is a testament to the ‘great silence’ about Guatemala—an indif-ferent, at times complicitous [sic] silence, perhaps because the victims were overwhelmingly Indians.”

 

siento, sorry; also, I feel.

 

My friend was born in 1964 and General Lucas began inducting boys as “Military Police” in 1980.

 

He never revealed much—I did a lot of research on my own about this “war”—but he did tell me about their being forced at gunpoint to learn “skydiving,” equals jump out of a plane then pull that rope; and about the time they were taken to the jungle and forced, at gunpoint, to go bring back anything that moved. All these animals and bugs were put into a barrel of boiling water without having been gutted or skinned and they were forced to eat it. They were told, “If it moves, you can eat it.” I asked if he’d ever been forced to eat humans and he turned his face away.

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

 The Soul Eaters

Supernatural Thriller with Martial Arts

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

BEING WRITTEN

Colony Mars: Tourist Season

YA, SciFi, Action Adventure

(a sequel to Colony Mars: The Dahlgrin Dilemma)

The inhabitants of Mars, descendants of Earthlings from centuries ago, are surprised to learn that

Earthlings on several space ships

are begging for permission to land.

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

Maureen Joins 'Hood Watch

(a sequel to Maureen Tries Online Dating)

Senior, Thriller, Horror

It’s all fun and games until retired ED nurse Maureen

finds out, while volunteering undercover,  that there’s

a lot more going on at that strange new

women’s shelter than just organ transplants

and transgender surgeries for illegals. Lots more.

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

Off the 'Skids

Horror

Wanting to help his grandmother increase

production of her famous zucchini-raspberry

muffins, science prodigy Dr. Razzy Luong, takes his

gene-altering genius one step further by attempting to add the extremely fast-growing duckweed to the combo.

But he accidentally swats at a mosquito while

rolling pollen into the Petri dish. Oops.

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

 Skin Eater

Thriller

A  teenage wannabe comedian stumbles upon the lair of a racist serial killer who has unleashed a genetically modified substance that attacks the melanin in skin.

Pitch-Concept

Let’s say we have this small-town, white supremacist gym teacher hottie who develops a mite that’s attracted to the melanin in skin; and he’s also screwing one of the other teachers, the wife of Detective Dupuis. Let’s say he goes out this Halloween night and infects some little non-white kids with these mites. High-school student, Swartzie, a wannabe comedian, who thinks painting racist slurs on Janey’s house every Halloween is funny, recognizes Mr. Mooney. Not so funny when your wacko gym teacher finds out you know the truth about him, is it, Swartzie? Not so funny when you overhear that Mr. Mooney plans to infect someone you like and he finds out you know and how you know. While chasing Swartzie to kill him, Mr. Mooney “accidentally” gets locked into a faulty tanning salon with a broken vial of those little buddies…

I came up with this idea years ago. I used to be a typesetter and for eight of those twenty years, I typeset scientific journals, one of which was about mites, creepy little things that live on our bodies. I managed to contact a scientist who was one of five world experts on mites. He told me that the nastiest mite lives on wheat. He said we’re lucky it lives on wheat because if enough of those little guys got onto a human body, it would mean a quick and painful death. I squealed with delight. “And by the way,” he added, “it will be mites that destroy the human race, not a virus.”

sherrill@crowecreations.ca

Maureen  Tries Online Dating

(adapted from the novel of the same name)

Senior, Thriller, Horror

Honorable Mention

Fall 2022

Diverse Writers Outreach Competition

Retired ER nurse Maureen makes one stupid little decision about her latest online-dating-site prospect, and she ends up in a kettle of fish.

 

Pitch-Concept

She knew there were tunnels under the city of Ottawa, but nobody knew there was an actual underground sea as well, way below the Ottawa River.  A sea with a very different pop-ulation of not only human settlers (recovered homeless addicts), but critters that had evolved entirely differently from Surface critters over billions of years.

 

Potty-mouthed Maureen eventually makes friends with the humans down at the Seaside and Topside levels—especially with Xavier, a Vodou Master, a very handsome Vodou Master—all seniors, but she also makes friends with an hilarious and extremely intelligent octopus named Don (PoseiDON), who signs and translates for pretty much everybody. He’s got connections.

 

Together, they manage to prevent Surface humans from de-stroying their world, and keep the very dangerous Termants, who run things down there, in an all-important good mood.

sherrill@crowecreations.ca