Welcome!

This is the place where women tell their stories. They’re not invisible. Not just love interests, wives or girlfriends with no real role to play. Not just damsels in distress. These women don’t show their strength by copying male strength, with bows and arrows, or light sabers, or Ninja skills.

These are women, and girls, who live their lives with female strength. With brains and guts, with trickery and imagination, with compassion and friendship, with laughter.

These are women and girls from pre-teens through middle age and into their seventies. Women of all stripes, including an African-American woman of 40, a Latina who went for a ride with the Kiowa out west, and an Asian girl who conquers the solar system on a mechanical leg.

THESE ARE THE WOMEN YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.

In the links below you will find these stories:

MODERN-DAY STORIES

• “Tattoos Tanning Pawnshop Nails Payday Loans”: A prostitute’s attempt to save a young girl escalates into a war against a sex trafficking gang. Tattoos Tanning June 2018
• “Exit, Pursued By A Harpy”: A young schizophrenic girl is forced to visit the big city to find a missing mental patient – and the girl is way, way off her medication.                  Harpy June 2018
• “Monteggia Fracture”: A hard-drinking housewife runs an underground railroad for the hunted survivors of domestic violence, until her own husband begins hunting her down.  Monteggia Fracture June 2018
• “Nickel Bucket”: a stage hand helps launch a Shakespearean theater group and invites all her actor friends — who bring all their romantic baggage with them. Nickel Bucket June 2018

• Twenty Twenty: A young lawyer joins the White House for Trump’s last year in office and witnesses all the horrors first hand – as the FBI begins circling around her. Twenty Twenty

STORIES FROM A CENTURY AGO

• “The Sun And The Stars”: In 1880 a Mexican girl stumbles into a job as U.S. Marshal in a New Mexico town, tames the territory with her own unique methods, and has a sweet, complicated love story with the local sheriff – who is married. (NOW UNDER OPTION)
• “Sledgehammers and Dynamite”: In the 1880s a female reporter shocks the world with her daredevil exploits, but she struggles to find a place in a world designed by men. This was a semi-finalist at the 2017 Fade In Awards for screenwriting under its original title. (NOW IN PRE-PRODUCTION)
• “Alice Blue”: Alice Roosevelt was the Scarlett O’Hara of the 20th century, a wild and funny teenage celebrity, helping her father win the Nobel Prize, sabotaging politicians she didn’t like (including her husband), trying to put the father of her bastard child in the White House, and waging a Lannister-like feud with her cousins Franklin and Eleanor. True story. Alice Blue Sep 2018
• “Lilou the Conqueror”: this silent film follows a French girl as she races across WWI battlefields as a courier – and then as a spy. No dialogue and no title cards! Lilou the Conqueror June 2021 
• “The Queen of Sodom”: The tiny world of a Kentucky preacher’s daughter is transformed when a gay bartender and a mobster invade her town to open a gay speakeasy in the 1920s.   Queen of Sodom June 2018
• “The Man Who Built Chicago”: A young African-American mother saves her children as the titanic Mississippi flood of 1927 leads to a massive clash between blacks and whites – which the blacks won. The Man Who Built Chicago 2019 2.0
• “Mary Chapel”: A widow and her partner build the elopement capital of America in the 1930s, and are overcome by horny teenagers, angry parents, and their own love-hate relationship.   Penny June 2018
• “Man On A Train”: Two detectives hunt for a Mafia witness on an overnight train.  (NOW IN PRE-PRODUCTION)
• “Ararat”: A WWII nurse runs a camp full of traumatized refugee children, and needs to try to heal them before the Army shuts down her camp and scatters them across Europe.  This was a semi-finalist in the Screenplay Awards in 2014 under its original title. Ararat June 2018

HISTORICAL ADVENTURES

• “The Drinking Gourd”: an African American woman risks her life to keep the Underground Railroad running before the Civil War, and faces entirely new challenges once the war is over. Drinking Gourd 2021

• “The Sweet Blue Mother”: For centuries her tribe was sure that the South Pacific was an empty wasteland of water; one girl hops in a boat and sets out to prove them wrong, or drown in the attempt. Sweet Blue Mother

• “Victors, Fill Your Glasses”: The Greek men marching against Troy hope for glory, but for the Greek women it all begins with adultery and soon spirals downward into one murder after another. VICTORS

• “Gwenllian”: An English king sentences a Welsh princess to life behind bars, because he’s afraid she will give birth to a warrior prince — and then she escapes. A mostly true story. Gwenllian June 2018

• “Dassin And The Golden Sea”: Wakanda was a real place in Africa centuries ago, packed with scholars. Two spies plot to take down this wealthy empire, and inconveniently fall in love along the way. Dassin 903

• “The Forge”: A midwife gallops across middle America as a spy for George Washington, hoping to run a few more missions before the Tories catch her and hang her.           Forge June 2018

SCIENCE FICTION

• “Spanner Head and Her Sisters”: a hundred spacecraft are chasing a ship across the solar system, hunting a rebellious girl who defied the dictator of the Martian colony.    Spanner Head June 2018
• “The Empress Wu”: When the first manned mission to Mars is a disaster, the crew, facing their own deaths, must use their last frantic days to build a base camp so the next crew doesn’t die also. The Empress Wu June 2018
• “The Oort Cloud”: Spanner Head, a pilot based on Mars, discovers her father is still alive – but he’s a hundred billion miles away and a fleet of pirates is blocking her way. Oort Cloud 2020
• “Rhymes With China”: An engineer who just wanted the human race to go away, finds herself standing on a billion-dollar ice shelf on the north pole of the moon — with the entire Russian mafia coming to take it away from her.  Rhymes With China July 2018
• “The Monsters From the Outer Rim”: A hundred thousand human embryos are launched into space, to be hatched and raised by androids on new planets; facing hunger and hostile species, the children learn to walk and talk all at once – and then hit puberty all at once. Monsters June 2018
• “Nash Rambler”:  A wrong turn on the highway leads a schizophrenic girl into a dark, twisted forest in which time and reality are turned upside down, and she slowly realizes she’s there for a pretty amazing reason. Nash Rambler 19 Sep

AND IN THE SPIRIT OF DIVERSITY…

We do have scripts which have male leads.

• “Weak Sister”: In the roaring Twenties Kansas City was the wildest, most mobbed-up town in the country, with liquor and women on every corner; stumbling into this den of sin was a skinny, nearsighted Mama’s boy who turned into a tough political fighter, kept the prostitutes at arm’s length – and became President of the United States. Weak Sister
• “Pagliaccio”:  The greatest actor of the last century was an old man who persuaded the FBI that he was insane – while he ran the most powerful crime syndicate in the world. The true story of Chin Gigante, boss of the Genovese family. (NOW IN PRE-PRODUCTION)

• “The Engineer”: Silent-era legend Buster Keaton battles the Hollywood Code, the studios and his own demons as he fights to make movies his own way. The Engineer 2021

• “Vandalism”: A German soldier, surrounded by hostile armies, realizes that the only way to keep his wife and daughter safe is to lead his tribe on a 3000-mile march – and to destroy the Roman Empire. Which he does. Vandalism Aug 2022

(Come chat with me on @hellodollyllama – let’s tell these stories!)

Also, “The Orion Spur”. Here are the first ten episodes of a complete TV series about a Latina who is born on a space vessel exploring the Milky Way on a 14-year mission, never setting foot on a planet until she’s a teenager. She becomes a nurse and kills pirates in her spare time. Orion Spur eps 1 to 10 jan 2022

We also have an essay coming, about the pivotal role women have played in Hollywood, ways to protect and empower them, and the current trends away from blockbusters and franchises, and toward smaller screens, original ideas and better writing.