Sawney Hatton, Dark Fiction Author
Mad Stories for Mad People
Ever the trend-follower, I recently tried the AI chatbot ChatGPT for the first time, asking it to produce text for the prompt “Sawney Hatton bio.” While the results accurately stated that I am indeed an…
I recently unearthed this candid Q&A* I did back in the late ’90s with acclaimed indie director Larry Fessenden (Wendigo, The Last Winter, Depraved). He continues to be one of the most unique and intriguing…
Who doesn’t love discovering a lost piece of something precious? For an author, finding a lost ending to a book they wrote is like revisiting a place with great memories… that they didn’t remember. Many…
“Goddamnit, my glands! My mutherfucking glands!“ Sometimes it’s fun to rummage through old work. I recently rediscovered a short script that I believe I wrote back in high school (this one), maybe even junior high.…
I grew up on Long Island, New York in the 1980s/90s, a time when—despite all the picture-perfect middle-class suburban trappings—there was no shortage of salacious scandals and horrifying crimes being committed. It seemed there was…
This is a true story. We were visiting from L.A., my friend Chris and I. We sat on the covered wood porch, nursing our bottles of beer with his uncles Mike and Johnnie. It was…
I’ve long been an advocate for repurposed writing. After finishing my latest novella, part of an anthology of teen-led Noir stories to be published later this year, I realized it is the final work that…
EVERYONE IS A MOON is my definitive collection of short stories (at least, until I write a bunch more). While I’ve categorized the book as Dark Fiction as a whole, I don’t think that label…
A significant element of VENT!’s raison d’être (see previous post) was demonstrating that even the most lauded and famous filmmakers had difficult, even doubtful beginnings. Below are a few true origin stories I had shared on…
Way back in 1997, after I had completed producing my one and so far only feature film on a $60,000 budget, I launched a semi-popular website called VENT! It focused on the flourishing world of…