In Chinatown, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is L.A.’s most corrupt institution.

Holly Sheidenberger came to Hollywood to be an actress — and ended up running the office of the labor union charged with keeping the DWP’s power in check.

She has since spent seven years writing psychological thrillers.

Her debut screenplay, The Sanguine Scissors — a Southwest Gothic thriller about a pregnant bridal designer who must survive long enough to give birth and escape her husband’s murderous estranged mother — is the flagship of a four-property slate she wholly owns across novel, novella, and screenplay formats.

She develops her projects in creative partnership with her husband, Hollywood composer and orchestrator Todd Sheidenberger, who has created original score material for properties across her slate — an unusual creative advantage.

Holly’s conviction that every human being (no matter how evil or boring or ignorant or irritating) is in fact deeply fascinating, if you would take the time to get to know them, is what attracted her to acting. That same insatiable curiosity is what drives her to create characters on the page rather than the stage.

Her stories come alive in the places she has called home: misty Seattle, sunlit Los Angeles, and the harsh Sonoran Desert.