Professional Profiles

WAYNE THOMAS BATSON   Writer
http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/

Wayne Thomas Batson is the Bestselling author of five adventure novels including the fantasy-themed Door Within Trilogy and the pirate duology Isle of Swords and Isle of Fire. His books The Final Storm and Isle of Swords reached Number 2 on the Young Adult Bestseller List. Batson believes his books appeal to so many kids and adults because, at a deep level, we all long to do something that matters, and we all dream of another world. "When my first book took me thirteen years to write, I realized (the hard way) that Seat-Of-Your-Pants writing just wasn't for me. Since then, I learned to outline my novels first, and my average is 3-5 months PER BOOK!! But paper and pen outlining is messy and disorganized. Plot elements get lost, pages get put in the wrong file, discarded scenes that suddenly might work after all are gone with the wind, and WHERE WAS THAT FOOTNOTE WITH THE COOL DIALOGUE?! So, as I begin an epic seven-book fantasy series, I knew I needed help. A few well-placed prayers and queries later, I discover SuperNotecard. Now I can outline multiple books at the same time and NEVER lose anything again. SNC has a cool, ultra-intuitive labeling, filing, and retrieving system that just can't be beat. SuperNotecard rocks because writers need to see the big picture, as well as, the gritty details."

EDWARD SAVIO   Writer/Director
www.edwardsavio.com

Edward Savio a screenwriter, novelist and director with over half a dozen script sales to major Hollywood studios, including SWISS FAMILY RUBINSTEIN, THE ROYAL PAIN, and BOOK 'EM. His books include "Idiots in the Machine" and the "The Velvet Sledgehammer". Edward is completing a feature length documentary entitled "Get a Job!" about his attempts to find the best job in the world. "Over the years I've tried many products to help kept my creative wheels on track. These programs were either foolishly complex, bare bones useless, or assumed all writers wrote the same way. What writers, filmmakers, ad people, anyone who takes piles of disjointed notes and turns them into brilliance need is SIMPLICITY and FLEXIBILITY in a powerful, easy-to-use package. With SuperNotecard I found that. Now I can focus on the writing instead of the program."

JONATHAN GORNALL   Writer
www.gornall.info

Jonathan Gornall is a freelance UK journalist, author and former feature writer and columnist for The Times of London. Microwave Man, his laughable semi-autobiographic memoir of a newly single fortysomething male (which for legal reasons he prefers to call a comic novel) was published by Penguin in 2006 and continues to bottom-feed in the Amazon ocean of sunken dreams. Jonathan also works as an investigative journalist specialising in medical and social issues, about which he has written for various UK publications including The Times, the Guardian and the British Medical Journal. "I kick myself for not discovering SNC before I wrote my last book, but the next one—a non-fiction medical mystery—is shaping up nicely under the auspices of this gem of a program. I have also started using it to compile the notes for the articles I write, squirreling away quotes, facts, references, interview transcripts and so on before they are lost forever in the bowels of my Mac. Finally, the moment comes when the fun research has to end and the dull business of writing can be avoided no longer. And yet SNC makes even writing fun! Each paragraph sits on a separate card and editing a long, complex piece that might spread over ten or more pages of a Word document is a piece of cake when I can see all parts simultaneously in a single view."

NANCY HAYFIELD BIRNES   Writer, Publisher, Editor
www.ufomag.com

Nancy Hayfield Birnes founded Shadow Lawn Press and cofounded Filament Books, a growing ebook publisher and electronic book club in partnership with eBook Technologies, Inc. and Premier Radio. She is the editor of two editions of the McGraw-Hill Personal Computer Programming Encyclopedia, and has written two cookbooks: Cheaper and Better and Zapcraft. Her first novel, Cleaning House, has been translated into six foreign languages and has been published in nine countries. She is currently a director and the editor-in-chief of UFO Magazine, an international monthly publication devoted to the study of things that go unidentified in the night. "I was in a comp-lit class at Princeton my senior year, staring down the barrel of my thesis, hardly listening to the lecture, when suddenly the professor went off on a tangent about Vladimir Nabokov's love of index cards. Index cards! In that instant, my life changed forever. I organized my thesis, which became my novel, and I was in bliss for a couple of years until 1981 when the computer and it's endless scroll of a text field complicated things all over again. But wait! In 1984 the Mac and HyperCard put things back into sensible order and life was fine until very recently. HyperCard is gone, but SuperNoteCard is here and there is great hope and rejoicing in the land of the organized! If Nabokov were here, he'd neglect Dolores and play with this program instead."

STEWART BRAND   Writer
sb.longnow.org

Stewart Brand is an extraordinary creative force. He founded/co-founded the Trips Festival (1966), Whole Earth Catalog (1968), Hackers Conference (1984), The WELL (1984), Global Business Network (1988), and The Long Now Foundation (1996). He's written several books including Two Cybernetic Frontiers (1974), The Media Lab (1987), How Buildings Learn (1994), The Clock of the Long Now (2000). Mr. Brand also started/co-started New Games (1973), CoEvolution Quarterly (1974), Uncommon Courtesy (1982), GBN Book Club (1988), All Species Inventory (2001), and Long Bets (2001) and Seminars About Long-term Thinking (2003). "SuperNotecard is just what I needed for starting a major nonfiction book. Everything that is headed toward text, from quotes to ideas to deathless prose bits, can be shuffled and reshuffled with ease toward emerging cogency and impact. I am at last freed from boxes of 5x7 cards grouped with rubber bands and paper clips."

DANIEL MARCUS   Writer
www.danielmarcus.com

Daniel Marcus has published around twenty short stories and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and placed in the Asimov's Readers' Poll Top 10. His non-fiction has appeared in Wired, Boing-Boing, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Dr. Marcus has taught in the creative writing programs at the U.C. Berkeley Extension and San Francisco's Writing Parlor; he's currently a member of the online faculty at Gotham Writers' Workshop and is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers' Workshop. "I have tried a lot of writing software over the years. The thing I really like about SuperNotecard is that it does not impose any structural paradigm or process constraints on the user. It is very easy to use and customize, and allows me to lay down the bones of a story in a way that complements my creative process."

ALAN SHAPIRO   Writer/Director
www.lakewalloon.com

Alan Shapiro has been making movies since he was 12, began his formal education at New York University Film School, and launched his career after winning Best Student Film at Cannes. Alan has written and/or directed numerous programs for television including: TIGER TOWN, CROSSING THE MOB, THE BLUE YONDER, and S.E. Hinton's THE OUTSIDERS. Shapiro also wrote/directed the feature film, FLIPPER, starring Elijah Wood & Paul Hogan, and another for Warner Brothers starring Alicia Silverstone called THE CRUSH. "I've always been primitive about the tools of writing. Because it's not about the hardware or software. It's about a good story. Period. However you get there. I type on a 1926 Smith- Corona, flesh out scenes on a legal pad, and structure my story with 3x5 cards on a corkboard. Until now. With "SuperNotecard for Scriptwriting", I can have my low-tech cake and eat it too. I can get my corkboard just right -- and email it to the producer. Save different versions. And so on. It's simple, elegant, powerful. I get to keep a foot in both centuries. For me, that's progress. "

DANIEL SCHWABAUER   Writer/Speaker
www.danschwabauer.com

Daniel Schwabauer is a novelist, playwright and speaker. His professional work includes radio scripts, short stories, newspaper columns, comic books, stage plays, non-fiction ghost writing, and scripting for the PBS animated series Auto-B-Good. His young adult novel Runt the Brave received the 2005 Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Children's Literature. "I've tried many outlining programs. SuperNotecard for Scriptwriting is the best. I use it extensively during the creative process on everything from brainstorming and outlining to writing first drafts. Its simple, visual interface provides a big picture view of your plot and never gets in the way. A powerful, intuitive, and truly useful program."

KENNETH S. RHEE   Professor/Writer

Kenneth S. Rhee is currently Associate Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business at Northern Kentucky University. Prior he was Chair of the Weatherhead School of Management Assessment and Development program at Case Western Reserve University. Professor Rhee has a BA in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, MS in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MBA from Boston University, and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University. "I've been using SuperNotecard since its inception. Although it had a different name at the start, the program has evolved to offer a lot of unique features that are essential for writers. Whether I'm writing a short story or a professional journal article, I found the program indispensable in my thinking and writing. Although the program has too many great features for me to mention individually, I found the ability to view and manipulate my writing visually helped me to build a story that is worth telling. I would recommend the program highly for a writer of any type."

GREG DEROCHIE   Writer/Director
www.formationfilms.com

Mr. Derochie's writing experience includes the feature film TIME RUNNER, produced by North American Pictures. His digital effects work is showcased in the Oscar nominated films SPIDERMAN, SPIDERMAN 2, STUART LITTLE, HOLLOWMAN, and THE LION THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE. Mr. Derochie has recently signed a production deal to direct the feature film SOLITARY based on his own script. His full credits can be viewed at www.formationfilms.com "SuperNotecard for Scriptwriting is fantastic for brainstorming and structuring screenplays. A simple but powerful digital version of the tried and true 3x5 card system used by writers of all kinds. Others have tried, but SuperNotecard succeeds."

KIM BARRY BRUNHUBER   Writer/Documentary Filmmaker
www.kimbrunhuber.com

Kim Barry Brunhuber is a Toronto writer, reporter and documentary filmmaker. His first novel Kameleon Man was a finalist for several awards. His TV pieces have aired across North America and Europe, and his articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa. "I consulted other writers, read countless software reviews, and demoed every scriptwriting and outlining program available for the Mac. When I tried SuperNotecard I finally found what I was looking for. And as a documentary producer, it didn’t take me long to realize how valuable it could be for plotting an hour-long piece in a way that would allow me to see the program holistically and rearrange every scene and clip easily according to its colour and deck. And as an added bonus, the support team responded quickly to every question I had, and even took suggestions for its next upgrades. My advice: demo everything out there to see what works best for you. But if you’re looking for an easy-to-use, visually oriented plotting program, SuperNotecard will probably be the last one you ever will try."

DENNIS FOLEY   Novelist/Lecturer/Instructor
www.dennisfoley.com

Dennis Foley started his writing career in Hollywood where he worked as a writer and producer for fifteen years. He has written for major motion picture studios as well as network television. And he has worn many hats as screenwriter, freelancer, staff writer, producer, consultant, or technical advisor on a wide variety of television shows, episodic series and motion pictures in addition to working as a screenwriter and novelist. Dennis is also a nationally recognized writing instructor and frequent guest speaker and lecturer at writer's conferences, workshops and college campuses around the country. His online writing courses can be found at the UCLA Writer's Program and Writers On the Net.