About Matt
...an author, screenwriter, videographer and storyteller.
He is a two-time finalist in the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship and a recipient of a Walt Disney Screenwriting Fellowship.
He is the author of five novels (six if you count that weird little novella he only makes available to terminally strange) and half a dozen screenplays.
He wrote and directed the independent film Baby's Breath (2003) with his wife as producer, and in 2023, his short film We Walk From Here was accepted into the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival.
Matt is...
Pitch
It is 1998. Almost a decade has passed since Travis Lembeau’s life was nearly destroyed by alcoholic pitching prodigy Nicholas “Pooch” Shepherd. Today, both men have gotten on with their lives. Travis is married and working at the local newspaper, and Nick Shepherd, no longer calling himself Pooch, is in recovery, ten years sober, who teaches baseball to at-risk kids.
It would seem that the terrible days of Pooch are long gone … but sometimes, the past is never where you think you left it.
Through a quantum anomaly, the demon that Nick used to be—the vicious Pooch circa 1989—claws its way across the portals of time to stalk Travis and harass his family. At first Travis fears that Nick has fallen off the wagon and returned to his violent ways. But Nick is still very much sober and has an even greater reason for concern: If this thing really is Pooch—if Pooch has somehow come out of the past to torment the present—then every atrocity Pooch commits will leave a trail leading back to Nick.
Working together and apart, and enlisting the aid of a mysterious time-traveling transient, Travis and Nick set out to send Pooch back to where he came from … before Pooch destroys everything they love.
Strays Book ONE of The Glaring Chronicles
There are 500 million cats in the world, but some of them are not what they seem. Part of a secret order called The Glaring, these mysterious changelings move freely among us, sometimes as common cats, sometimes in more human form, marking our movements as we go about our lives.
An ancient evil known as Jackal has waged an eternal war with The Glaring, threatening the human world that it protects for centuries. In order to defeat Jackal, The Glaring must enlist the aid of two unlikely heroes from the human world:
Sarah, a teenage runaway fleeing a life of horrible abuse; and Kyle, an awkward alcoholic misfit who is reluctantly enlisted as her protector.
Sarah doesn't know it yet, but she possesses a healing light so brilliant that no evil, not even Jackal, can resist it. The only chance the Jackal has to carry out his wicked plans is to keep Sarah in the dark about her power, weakening her spirit until she breaks.
With nothing to protect her but a teenage alcoholic and an army of shape-shifting cats, Jackal's rise to power seems almost assured.
Jackal Book Two of the glaring chronicles
In Strays, the first book of The Glaring Chronicles, we met Sarah Smallhouse, a teenage runaway, and Kyle Winslow, an awkward alcoholic, two reluctant outcasts who fell in with a secret order of feline changelings called The Glaring.
Moving freely among us, sometimes as common cats, sometimes in more human form, these mysterious creatures mark our movements as we go about our lives, ever vigilant to threats from an ancient evil known throughout history as Jackal.
Now, in Jackal, Book II, Sarah and Kyle join forces with three shape-shifting cats to rescue the enigmatic leader of The Glaring, who has gone missing for over a decade. Little do they know that this leader has been captured by Jackal's minions, to be used for the creature’s diabolical purposes.
Combining their skills and talents with those of their Glaring companions, Sarah and Kyle believe they are more than a match for their enemies ... but are they really playing right into Jackal's hands?
Youngblood Book Three of the glaring chronicles
t is a time of shadows for The Glaring and their human counterparts. Young Sarah, the human charge of our shape-shifting felines, has been captured by Jackal and is being held in captivity with Youngblood, The Glaring’s weary leader. Molly and Tom, Sarah’s two staunchest protectors, languish on the terrifying “Death Row,” awaiting execution in the most horrible way possible. And young Kyle, the reluctant warrior who may hold the secret to defeating Jackal, has fled from the group to pursue his own selfish interests, abandoning his friends in their darkest hour. As Jackal grows stronger and its plan nears fruition, can this makeshift tribe of heroes come together in time to face an evil as old as the universe itself?
