Sunsets, Marmosets, and Machinations

To my lovely readers on the East coast, I understand if you pooh pooh me when I say that I have had a wacky week. Wackiness is truly relative. While I have had experience with the Earth shaking and I have been in a hurricane that hit Manhattan (Gloria, 1985), I have not managed both feats within one week. It's been embarrassingly balmy and pleasant weather-wise in Southern California. The ground has been behaving itself and remaining still. Weather-wise, it was a delightful week. Where my life gets wacky is when it collides with the Industry.

Sunset Blvd at Sunset

Most of Los Angeles that isn't part of an actual studio complex goes about its business without talking about movies or TV beyond what any other American talks about around the water cooler. However, there are pockets of the city where the movers and shakers move and shake and where others come to see and be seen. Deals do happen in these places. Sunset Blvd is actually a very dangerous place to talk about any kind of project. There are many, many ears about, and they are always listening. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this on the blog, but the remake of Walking Tall with Dwayne Johnson is Craig's fault. He was blabbing on and on about how that would be a good role for Johnson while in Book Soup, a famous book store on Sunset Blvd. The next thing I know, there is the trailer for said remake. And there has been some thievery of TV projects from other folks I know.No, I can't name names.

Thus, the pretty restaurant on Sunset with the yellow and blue décor so reminiscent of Provence and the gorgeous and attentive staff was a minefield for creative folks. Many want to be seen and heard doing industry business. If one is perceived to be successful, they attract success. They certainly attract attention, especially when still wearing sunglasses after the sun went down. The tourists passing by riding in open air mini buses sure thought they were photo worthy. Jon and I weren't concerned. We were in that part of town to discuss a documentary on a rare cancer – not something anyone would likely steal. Still, we had to be really careful. Jon and I arrived for our meeting really early, so we would be chatting while people watching. So along with talking about stuff we were editing, not planning and never giving any coherent details about anything, we engaged in a game began during our last trip to the Cannes Film Market. You see, the American Pavilion is another dangerous place to talk about active film projects. Everyone with our party was strongly cautioned against this. Marie came up with a clever alternative. We talked about films involving marmosets. Action movies with marmosets, comedies with marmosets, dramas with marmosets – we talked about them all. It was our hope to instigate a string of such films and then laugh about it. There were ears listening last week. I noticed really reactive listeners. Who knows? Maybe something will come of it this time. Meanwhile, Jon and I had a great time eating dinner and discussing the documentary and a number of surprising things. As soon as I can go into more detail, I will. In fact, there has been a whole lot going on that I wish I could share, but it is verboten until there are signed documents. Fiddlesticks!

We had a blast overall, and I realized that I truly need to get out more.

Writing Update

There is a reason I can't get out as much as I'd like in the next few weeks. I'm still wrestling with this danged book. And then there is the conga line of titles Sybaritic Press will be releasing from now until the end of the year. We hadn't planned on a publishing a full slate of titles. Things just sort of happened. Since none of us are stressing about it, I suppose the time was right for the Press to re-launch.

I am closer to the end of the book, Ensnared, than I was last week. However, I am still struggling with the blocking of the ending. It involves some major action with fights and death, but there must be an appropriate amount of build up to make the action seem inevitable. There also must be the right amount of denouement after the last pivotal action scene to bring the narrative to a close without lingering too long. I strongly feel that once all the character issues are settled, the story has come to an end. However, I don't like loose threads hanging around. Also, romances demand a certain amount of afterglow, so to speak. The book is already a lot longer than I had planned, so there is a strong temptation to just stop already. These machinations have slowed my output to a little less than a page a day of late. It's frustrating, but I trudge onward...ever onward. The new book has an astonishing cover. I'll share that next week when I have a full on discussion about the controversial issues the book raises and the fight I plan to start over them.

This one is short, I know. More to come next week.

Stay tuned.