Christine Brown arranged for us to do a Q & A on writing at the Frazier Park library. Frazier Park is a little town perched near Interstate-5, the river of commerce that runs from Mexico to Canada. Yes, we’re a little off the beaten track but we have a brand new library. In a small town that’s a big deal.
We had a full house, and if they came expecting to hear about books about small town life, there was more on offer.
Christine’s Blood and Matzah, is the debut novel of a trilogy about Jewish time-traveling vampires on a mission from God to stamp out Evil. And she has the big personality to tell about it in an entertaining way. My recent book, On Behalf of the Family, is about an honor killing of a rich Muslim girl in Santa Monica, California.
I’m always surprised that people who don’t write regard writers as extraordinary beings. Authors are everywhere. This is the best time in human history to be a writer; all the gateways that used to guard the path have been cleared away. One can load up a manuscript and be on the way to stardom. Or so people think.
A generation of differences in life experience separates Christine and I. One questioner was insistent that both of us should make a movie out of our books because they sounded so interesting.
Christine said, of course, she was planning to do that and had a Kickstarter plan in action. I sat back amazed. That had never once occurred to me. Having lived in Santa Monica so many years, I had seen the bodies of old screenwriters and producers whose dreams had finally died outside the studio door.
Once I thought writing a murder mystery was the most wonderful thing I could do. I did it. Now there are four and a fifth in the birth canal. But a movie?
Is making a movie out of one of your novels the dream of youth? What do you think?