Short Changed

“As attention-getting as a knife to the throat,” says Hollis George, editor of End of the World.

“An exercise in paranoia,” comments Barthélemy Banks, author of Mumm and Mumm’s Curse.

Be afraid, very afraid. A screenwriter living in the Hamptons (Hollywood East) with his movie star wife meets up with an obsessive little man who becomes a stalker. Justin was used to obsessive fans, but this guy Robert Bagoné might just be a dangerous schizophrenic, multiple personality, serial killer nut job. But if you’re the “King of Straight-to-Video Horror Screenplays,” is that necessarily a bad thing?

Howard Lowell Osterman collected a few rejection slips from popular magazines before deciding he preferred the steady salary of a staff writing position with a newspaper. That led to other “writing gigs” with magazines and book publishers. “A good living,” Osterman tells it. “But in my spare time I kept cranking out sensational novels and short stories. My dirty little secret, I call them, usually working under pseudonyms to avoid conflicts with employers looking for a pound of flesh.” He has lived in New York, Chicago, and Daytona. He enjoys watching old film noir movies. He hopes one day to write a screenplay.