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Featured Collection
Welcome to some featured items from my portfolio. Explore my projects to learn more about what I do.
Look to the Stars
When the tolerant, idealistic Empire that long guaranteed the peace of Mana is on the verge of defeat by dark forces obsessed with purity and segregation, a sister and brother set out on a quest across three continents to rescue their diverse world. Sora, a famous warrior mage, seeks to rally uncommitted nations of humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, and mixed forms to fight together before all perish divided; her brother Mars, a bumbling scholar, has an even more audacious goal: to find an ancient relic that will call down the legendary dragons said to live on the three moons. Between bickering and saving each other’s lives, the siblings accumulate a party of unlikely heroes, from a gigantic foul-mouthed pirate to a cynical halfling thief, a knife-spinning sandfolk nomad to an out-of-her-depth princess-diplomat, a magic-wielding feral child to a gentle priest with a brutal past. But what they find at the end of the world is not allies or dragons—it is contact with a high-tech, spacefaring civilization hiding in orbit around their planet, fleeing an even greater interstellar danger and seeking refuge on their world …
Look to the Stars is Game of Thrones meets Battlestar Galactica, an unprecedented mix of epic high fantasy and adventurous, idea-driven sci-fi. Featuring unforgettable and nuanced characters, pulsating adventure and humor, gritty and realistic emotions, complex lore and history and intrigue, and mind-bending ideas, this series will reshape the literary and fantasy/sci-fi landscapes, first in print and eventually on the screen. Currently in production by J. Scott Howes & M.J. Kolsky. Coming soon!
Look to the Stars is Game of Thrones meets Battlestar Galactica, an unprecedented mix of epic high fantasy and adventurous, idea-driven sci-fi. Featuring unforgettable and nuanced characters, pulsating adventure and humor, gritty and realistic emotions, complex lore and history and intrigue, and mind-bending ideas, this series will reshape the literary and fantasy/sci-fi landscapes, first in print and eventually on the screen. Currently in production by J. Scott Howes & M.J. Kolsky. Coming soon!
Corona Boys
June 2020. Covid has shut down the world. Chicago is entering its 12th week of lockdown. Shops are shuttered, schools empty, offices vacant. Even beaches, parks, and playgrounds are closed.
“What a kid supposed to do?”
- Sheila Cummings
This innovative coming-of-age tale shows two boys--Leo and Ja'Sir--who run away from home in the midst of the pandemic. In doing so, they bring their families together and restore their community in ways they never imagined.
Told with piercingly beautiful imagery, awash in sound and music, restless with the movement of childhood itself, this movie commemorates a dark time in a spirit of joy.
The film is being made by our family and friends, on weekends and holidays, shot on an iPhone, at free locations, with mostly used equipment bought off Amazon. Nobody involved in its production has ever worked professionally in film.
It is a labor of love. An act of hope. A testament to the power family, the creative arts, and community, commemorating a time of loneliness and sorrow, when so many of us were cut off from these things that animate our lives with feeling and purpose.
It is nearly finished and will be available soon. The opening 10 minutes of the film are available on this website.
“What a kid supposed to do?”
- Sheila Cummings
This innovative coming-of-age tale shows two boys--Leo and Ja'Sir--who run away from home in the midst of the pandemic. In doing so, they bring their families together and restore their community in ways they never imagined.
Told with piercingly beautiful imagery, awash in sound and music, restless with the movement of childhood itself, this movie commemorates a dark time in a spirit of joy.
The film is being made by our family and friends, on weekends and holidays, shot on an iPhone, at free locations, with mostly used equipment bought off Amazon. Nobody involved in its production has ever worked professionally in film.
It is a labor of love. An act of hope. A testament to the power family, the creative arts, and community, commemorating a time of loneliness and sorrow, when so many of us were cut off from these things that animate our lives with feeling and purpose.
It is nearly finished and will be available soon. The opening 10 minutes of the film are available on this website.
Award-Winning Fiction
J. Scott has published fiction and poetry in Ploughshares, Southwest Review, and The Best Young Writers in America; been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, the Nelson Algren Award, and the David Nathan Myerson Memorial Prize; and won the Bocock-Guerard Prize for Fiction at Stanford University. He is also an accomplished poet.
https://pshares.org/authors/joshua-howes/
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Young-Writers-Artists-America/dp/0439376181
https://pshares.org/authors/joshua-howes/
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Young-Writers-Artists-America/dp/0439376181
Community Filmmaking
Independent, community-based filmmaking is a challenging yet rewarding endeavor that requires creativity, determination, and the power of collaboration. J. Scott Howes considers himself a community filmmaker, which means that he makes films in cooperation with primarily local, often non-professional fellow artists and actors, drawn largely from his immediate family, friends, and local arts communities.
J. Scott has won multiple screenwriting awards, including the NYU First Run Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay (2010) for "Jackson Parish" and a National Golden Brad (Drama) for the feature "A House Divided." His short films "Rock, Paper, Scissors" (co-dir. Liam Brady), "Jackson Parish" (dir. Edward McDonald) and others have shown at film festivals nationwide. "Jackson Parish" was a Finalist in the Johnson & Johnson Lens on Talent competition and shown on BET.
As a writer-director, J. Scott creates innovative films in the drama, thriller, and psychological horror genres, which typically depict ordinary lives, especially of children and families, often with a touch of comedy, utilizing a stylistic palette of painterly beauty, rapturous music, and rapid movement, in homage to filmmakers such as Wong Kar-Wai and Martin Scoresese.
J. Scott has won multiple screenwriting awards, including the NYU First Run Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay (2010) for "Jackson Parish" and a National Golden Brad (Drama) for the feature "A House Divided." His short films "Rock, Paper, Scissors" (co-dir. Liam Brady), "Jackson Parish" (dir. Edward McDonald) and others have shown at film festivals nationwide. "Jackson Parish" was a Finalist in the Johnson & Johnson Lens on Talent competition and shown on BET.
As a writer-director, J. Scott creates innovative films in the drama, thriller, and psychological horror genres, which typically depict ordinary lives, especially of children and families, often with a touch of comedy, utilizing a stylistic palette of painterly beauty, rapturous music, and rapid movement, in homage to filmmakers such as Wong Kar-Wai and Martin Scoresese.
Freedom, Work, & Wealth: A New Liberal Paradigm
As a longtime political thinker, activist, and organizer, J. Scott has put a decade of ideas to paper and created a single blueprint for a progressive resurgence that is both forward-looking and true to classic liberal ideas. As a queer man, spouse of an immigrant of contested status, father of multiethnic children, member of a multiracial family and community, and proud lifelong Democrat, J. Scott brings a personally-inspired, historically-informed, non-professional layperson's common-sense guidance to building an enduring FDR-style progressive majority that wins in all fifty states and governs for decades, making middle-class prosperity, stability, and healthy freedom of choice available to all again.
To begin, the Democratic Party needs to shed the divisive, narrow rhetoric of identity-based politics that alienates voters of all backgrounds and ditch the moderate neoliberal economic consensus that has benefited billionaires, pulled the floor out from the middle-class, and failed ordinary workers.
In their place, liberals must embrace the vision and language of old-school universalist progressive ideals, alongside a policy agenda of maximum social freedom, a grand immigration compromise that is both fair and secure, and a muscular “prairie populist” economic progressivism modeled on the pro-growth but pro-stability policies of the New Deal, 1950s, and 1960s.
This economic agenda will recreate the high productivity growth, broad job stability, living wages, affordable education and housing, widespread public safety, attainable upward mobility, above all, the broadly shared prosperity of the “American Golden Age” that spanned the mid-20th century, when families lived secure and dignified lives—but extended now to all Americans, regardless of identity, protecting the marginalized and vulnerable, from gender nonconformists to hardworking immigrants to committed evangelical Christians to military veteran patriots to ordinary families of every belief and stripe: in short, all of us who want to live our own truth.
The way we speak about and envision this agenda—universal, optimistic, patriotic, fair, dynamic—is critical to bringing it about. With an old-school FDR-style progressivism, wedded to truly universal social freedoms and choices, we can win not just in blue cities but in red rural areas, exurbs, suburbs, everywhere.
Voters are fed up with the status quo. It’s time for liberals to stop thinking small. It’s time to rebuild a truly dominant, enduring, nationwide, FDR-style Democratic majority that lasts for decades, based on a unifying liberal vision that appeals to hardworking Americans of all colors, genders, faiths, orientations, education levels, and ages who want a fair society of hard work and shared wealth that makes a stable, dignified, prosperous life attainable for everyone.
Book nearly complete and hopefully forthcoming soon!
To begin, the Democratic Party needs to shed the divisive, narrow rhetoric of identity-based politics that alienates voters of all backgrounds and ditch the moderate neoliberal economic consensus that has benefited billionaires, pulled the floor out from the middle-class, and failed ordinary workers.
In their place, liberals must embrace the vision and language of old-school universalist progressive ideals, alongside a policy agenda of maximum social freedom, a grand immigration compromise that is both fair and secure, and a muscular “prairie populist” economic progressivism modeled on the pro-growth but pro-stability policies of the New Deal, 1950s, and 1960s.
This economic agenda will recreate the high productivity growth, broad job stability, living wages, affordable education and housing, widespread public safety, attainable upward mobility, above all, the broadly shared prosperity of the “American Golden Age” that spanned the mid-20th century, when families lived secure and dignified lives—but extended now to all Americans, regardless of identity, protecting the marginalized and vulnerable, from gender nonconformists to hardworking immigrants to committed evangelical Christians to military veteran patriots to ordinary families of every belief and stripe: in short, all of us who want to live our own truth.
The way we speak about and envision this agenda—universal, optimistic, patriotic, fair, dynamic—is critical to bringing it about. With an old-school FDR-style progressivism, wedded to truly universal social freedoms and choices, we can win not just in blue cities but in red rural areas, exurbs, suburbs, everywhere.
Voters are fed up with the status quo. It’s time for liberals to stop thinking small. It’s time to rebuild a truly dominant, enduring, nationwide, FDR-style Democratic majority that lasts for decades, based on a unifying liberal vision that appeals to hardworking Americans of all colors, genders, faiths, orientations, education levels, and ages who want a fair society of hard work and shared wealth that makes a stable, dignified, prosperous life attainable for everyone.
Book nearly complete and hopefully forthcoming soon!
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