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Every Story Has a Heartbeat

You've spent years with Stephen King's stories.

Have you ever wondered what your connection to them might reveal about your own?

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Stephen King is my favorite author. I've also had the pleasure of adapting two of his works into short films including the Dollar Baby, Luckey Quarter. You can click the video below to see when my wife and I met him at Simon & Schuster in NYC in 2003 after winning Simon & Schuster's American Gunslinger contest and the award-winning short film, Roland meets Brown.

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Please read the blogs for my full history with Stephen King. 

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I've long felt there's more to King's work than what gets the headlines - particularly the blood, guts and monsters. While they are no doubt real in his realm and a significant part of what he does, so is hope, faith, love and the scariest monsters of all: humans. I invite you to explore these with me in classes using the three King-based films above. Each of these films is offered as its own 16-week online course. We meet online once a week to look at the selected film through the lens of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Your will discover what lies beneath the surface for you with this film - in other words, why is it your favorite?  Why do you keep coming back to it? What do you have to reflect back to the film that keeps reflecting back to you?

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We have several students who are first-time authors that are now in the process of publishing work from these classes - more about them at Success Stories™. 

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Participants write one page per week and share with fellow classmates in a password-protected Google Drive. The most important writing you'll do will be the feedback you offer your classmates. As King says, there are two ways to become a better writer: read and write. We'll do both here. The things we create can change lives.

Cinema Therapy Writing Courses
Open to everyone. Get busy writing or get busy dying.

Stand by Me

The Shawshank Redemption

The Green Mile

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Belonging: Who helped you become yourself?

Hope: What keeps you going?

Compassion and loss: What do you carry that others cannot see?

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KING CON 2026

See you in Atlantic City!​

THURSDAY

10a - Vendor Hall - Table 1

3p - Dollar Baby Panel

4p - Keys to the Kingdom Panel

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FRIDAY

11a - Vendor hall - Table 1

2p - Film Screening: Luckey Quarter (Dollar Baby)

 

SATURDAY

10a - Vendor Hall

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KingCon 2024

The first ever KingCon was held in Las Vegas at the Linq Hotel in late October 2024. It featured rare books, incredible talent across the King stratosphere, Dollar Babies and feature films all derived from the works of King. For the latest information on KingCon 2026 and more, please join the KingCon Facebook page. 

Origin and Connection to Parkinson's disease

Yes, And...X is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to improving quality of life within the Parkinson's community. My father, Dan, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD) in 2001. We've been on the journey to figure out how to live our best since then. You can see more about our story, including a two month, 20,000 mile road trip to see all 30 Major League Baseball parks at the Boys of Summer website. As you may know, Stephen King is a huge Red Sox fan -- something we discussed when I met him back in 2004. We even planned to meet up at Fenway, but that sadly fell through due to scheduling. 

 

While researching the effects of improvisation and storytelling on PD during my doctoral studies in the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences program at UNLV, the theme of people with PD feeling imprisoned by the disease emerged. This led me to try framing our storytelling program with the Shawshank Redemption, calling it the Parkinson's Prison and the Hero's Journey to Escape! We've run this 16-week program several times and some of the students' writing that has come from it can be seen here. 

Connection is Medicine

Yes is acceptance.

And moves us into power.

X becomes the way.

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©2022 by Yes, And...eXercise!

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