Perdell Richardson had an idea for a new comedy web series, he brought me on board and together we wrote Top Flight Security. It's a show about a low rent security guard named Tre Johnson and his coworkers as they bumble around and get into trouble while they're supposed to be watching an apartment complex. If you know how I write then you know it gets DARK and does NOT pull any punches.
Starring: JD Whitherspoon Antionette Mia Pettis James Gill Feraz Ozel Phil Talsky Sayrie Jerrell Lee
The Scam is my only produced feature. It's the result of ten years spent on my belly, skulking through Hollywood looking, hoping, begging anyone who'd listen to take a look at my screenplays. For a more detailed glimpse of my pre-Scam career check out my story Sucker published in Linguistic Erosion.
Luckily I finally hit gold and a young director named Perdell Richardson came along and fell in love with my script. He along with producer Ella Thomas assembled a brilliant ensemble of actors and to my eternal gratitude filmed and produced my script.
Starring: Zachary Green Hennely Jimenez Gabriel De Santi Chauncey Jenkins Antionette Mia Pettis Tom Lindsey
ABOUT RYANPRIEST.NET
This is my webpage for my writing career. If you can't tell I'm not that big a writer and I don't pay my rent with my writing. I couldn't even buy my groceries for a month with the money I've made on writing.
So in a sense I almost feel like a joke having a webpage. I feel like a charlatan. Someone seeing a webpage for a writer expects some big star. I actually don't think anyone will ever see any of this. Maybe a family member will click a link and perhaps some bitter former rival or enemy will happen across it. But a fan? I don't think I have any. In fact I know I don't.
I also don't know what I'll do with this webpage. I have ideas, releasing a novel in serialized format, a new chapter every week maybe. That'd be cool. I even toy with recording myself reading my stories or a chapter from a book and releasing it like a podcast. Again that sounds like fun but the thought of going through all that for absolutely zero audience sinks my gut to the floor. Because I know if I started I'd have to finish. I'd be too embarrassed not to.
Even if I knew nobody was even reading it or downloading it I'd be forced to keep putting it out solely due to the fear that someone would happen across the non-finished project and taunt me with the failure. "Hey loser, what happened with the audiobook?" and that sort of thing.
The internet can be a dangerous place. All too often a website ends up being nothing more than a neglected, tombstone of someone’s failed venture.
Oh well, writing keeps me out of trouble and I can't think of anything else in the world that I find as much fun. So I'll continue to write but I just don't want to give anyone the idea I'm trying to pretend to be something I'm not.
BIOGRAPHY
( here's whre I talk about myself in the third person)
Ryan Priest is a writer who lives in Los Angeles California. He likes blah blah blah and went to blah blah blah and here's a grinning picture of him that makes him look like a cocky jerk....ugh I can't do it.
Here's the deal. If you want to know who I am then read my writing. You might not learn where I'm from, what I look like or how I'd react to you if we were to meet at the supermarket but you'll have a clearer picture of me than any set of random factoids could ever provide.
No this isn't fair. My writing is a controlled environment. I decide what gets seen and what does not. It's the cherry picked very best of me. It's the part of me that I think is important. Everything else is just what I'm doing to try to get by in a world where I wake up hungry and thirsty every single day.
There's so much manicured bullshit out there. I don't want to add to it so I'll just say nothing about myself. If you can't get enjoy something I've written without pegging me as the writer into some pre-existing stereotype based on what I look like, where I'm from or how I live then oh well.
If something I've written makes your skin crawl and you go looking for a picture of me to ask "Is he allowed to say that?" Don't bother. Everyone's allowed to say anything they want to and you're allowed to judge them for it. But if my skin color, my race, my religion, my hometown, my gender(okay I'll admit I'm male) makes you judge me differently then that really says more about you than it does me now doesn't it?
Latest News...
CONTACT
This is where you can contact me if you wanted to. You'll notice I don't have a comments section. The truth is some people can be vile and mean spirited. I see no reason to give those people yet one more forum to spread cruelty across the internet.
I'd love to hear from you, figure out who you are, how you came to this website. Email me:mail [@] ryanpriest.net. But I don't have a guestbook or twitter or any other type of public message board. Whatever happened to one on one communication?
Since this is the world we're living in, the more people click on my IMDB link and the more people like or friend me on facebook then the more marketable I appear to publishers and producers. The more marketable I can appear then the more opportunities I'll be afforded. Notice nowhere does actual talent or skill come in to the equation anymore.
This is my Imdb page. So far it only shows "The Scam" and that's about right. I have a few optioned pieces but lord knows if we'll ever see them produced.
Here's my facebook page. Don't laugh. I don't even have 10 friends. Oh well, popularity has never been my thing.
Yeah, so I don't publish a lot of poetry. I always mean to submit more but it's even more difficult to submit poetry than stories or novels. Like it or not a novel and a story have to follow some structure or another. If someone doesn't like a story you can tell yourself, "Oh he just didn't like the plot." or "She must not have resonated with any of the characters." But a poem? That's straight up art. You tried to bring beauty or understanding to the world and you failed. If they don't like your poem it's not that they didn't like the plot or the character, they didn't like you even at your most naked and unadulterated. At least that's how it feels.
I've never claimed to be the greatest poet. Still though, I am proud as hell of my published poems. Every publication is a step towards the goal of earning the epithet "writer" on my inevitable tombstone.
These are the publications that have published my short stories. If I'm going to be completely 100% honest anywhere on this webpage I'll do it here. I will state for the record that I am proud of each and every publication. Many have gone to different homes and been through a thousand varying submission processes but they each represent the same thing to me. Each one of these publications listed below represents at least one person who liked my story. Maybe not a hundred or even ten but there was on that day someone who thought my short story good enough for publication and subsequently thought, at least for the breadth of a story, that I was a worthwhile writer.
Novels
The Way of Open Hands Published by Wild Child Publishing
My debut novella The Way of Open Hands was released in 2010. It's about the strange world of traditional martial arts in America. It's also about the relationships we form when we're younger and the shape they take as we mature. But most of all it's about a man trained in the traditional Japanese art of karate fighting a young mixed martial arts cage fighter.
Publication Date: May 25, 2012
The Colonies is a cool collection of Sci-Fi stories put out by Static Movement. The separate short stories all deal in some way with the colonization of space. My short story Lifeboat is one of them.
Publication Date: April 02, 2012
It Was All Preordained is a collection of stories and poetry taken from the early 2012 run of Down in the Dirt magazine. It features my short story Over Sky. If you don't want to spend the money you can still read it here as it appears in the Down in the Dirt Magazine.
Publication Date: November 19, 2011
Monster Gallery features two of my flash fictions pieces The Last Monster and Shrink Wrapped Goblins. As well as work from several other writers all on the subject of monsters and all flash fiction.
Publication Date: November 23, 2011
Bleeding Heart Cadaver is another collection of shorts from Scars.tv. This one is special for me in that it features the favorite of my short stories Hope and Sand. It's not necessarily any better or worse than other short stories it's just near and dear to my heart subject wise. I wrote it when I was 21 and finishing it was the first time I really felt my individual voice come through.
Publication Date:April 9, 2011
Literary Town Hall and my short story The Death of Rita.
Copyright 2012 - Ryan Priest - Background image curtesy of ecobo.com