When I was growing up, I lived for summer vacations and all the glorious free time it represented for me to bury my nose in a book. There was a library within walking distance of our house that could easily have become my home-away-from-home. I’d check out the maximum number of titles that I could (I think the limit was three), read them all by bedtime (and sometimes even under the covers with my Girl Scout flashlight), and then be back the next day as soon as the doors opened to check out three more.
My romantic suspense, Charade was only the third time I’d ventured into penning a sizzling scene but I was apparently getting rather good at it. So good, in fact, that my editor at HarperCollins – a naive and bespectacled young woman whom I suspected at the time had never set foot outside the comfort zone of her own borough – requested that I “turn down the heat”.
When I was 15, no one could see me. No one who really mattered, that is, which – in my sophomoric myopia – revolved around a hottie senior boy named Artie. Artie was tall, handsome, smart and, on occasion, borrowed his father’s tweed sport coat that had suede elbow patches and made him look like quite a promising young captain of industry. In retrospect, he reminded me of John Davidson (which just goes to show what conservative, white bread taste I had in an era that fostered The Beatles, free love, draft-dodging, and Mary Quant cosmetics).
For authors and publishers across the country, hackles have been raised regarding Amazon.com's disturbing ultimatum that POD entities and independent publishing companies must now use Amazon's own enterprise, BookSurge, for all of its printing orders or else incur higher costs to have books available for purchase online. This is clearly both a restraint of trade issue and conflict of interest that could severely impact the independent publishing industry. To that end, I'd like to share some suggestions offered by my husband and in-house counsel, Mark Webb.
There’s a funny scene in Shakespeare in Love in which a boatman – upon recognizing the young Bard as his passenger – eagerly tries to foist a new script on him. As anyone who has lived in Los Angeles for more than 10 minutes can attest, it’s an accurate send-up of the fact that almost every valet, waiter and clerk you encounter will just happen to have an extra copy of his or her latest project if they overhear you have any connection to Tinseltown. (“Here’s the Cobb salad you ordered, Ms.
Does Life imitate Art or does Art imitate Life?
BEHIND EVERY GREAT ROMANCE IS A STRUGGLING WRITER
Can Life really imitate Art? When sophomore Laurie Preston is chosen to be lead screenwriter for a movie her high school is producing, she sees the chance of a lifetime to scribble a romantic script that will finally make the boy of her dreams say the words she's been longing to hear. Unfortunately, the senior hottie who won her star-struck heart from the very first moment she saw him has yet to discover she even exists.
As goes a favorite Christmas week tradition at our house, I was in charge of picking the movies we’d traipse off to the mall to see while everyone else was doing frantic last-minute shopping. “Sweeney Todd is first on the list,” I told my husband. Who could blame him for raising an eyebrow? Tim Burton’s adaptation of the bloodiest musical in the history of American theater is unquestionably an odd choice in a season synonymous with sugarplums, mistletoe and joyous conviviality.
If my husband and I are ever on a quiz show and the topic is White Christmas, we will easily leave our fellow contestants in the dust. Throughout our marriage – and, for me, even longer than that – it has been a tradition that the holidays don’t officially commence until we’ve watched Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye croon their way to Pine Tree, Vermont and give their former commanding general the best darned Christmas of his life.
For new screenwriters, crafting credible conversation is a major challenge. Too often, someone who would probably be better suited to writing novels or short stories tries to put words in the mouths of live actors. It’s a dead giveaway when they don’t know what they’re doing. Why? Because (1) the characters all talk exactly the same way, (2) they talk more eloquently than normal people ever do, or (3) they talk way too much.
THE CRITICAL DO'S AND DON'TS OF DIALOGUE
