Thank you so much, you whackies!!

April 30, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, again, I have to say I am flabbergasted. (See a similar post down below somewhere.) (It can’t be too far down there since, as you know, I can never seem to post to this blog in any sort of timely fashion anymore.)

I got an email alert from Amazon Kindle that still more royalties were coming my way from a book I wrote years ago. Yay. (Published writing — the gift that keeps on giving!) So that was nice…

AND YET…. In yesterday’s snail mail: My ex-husband in Manhattan had forwarded to me a bunch of royalty statements and a “cheque,” in British Pounds Sterling, from Virgin Publishing in London, that amounted to several hundred US dollars, for eBook sales of a very short erotic story I literally wrote 20 years ago. They recently had it translated into German, and apparently sex still sells, no matter how old, no matter how translated!

What a nice surprise, considering that 99.999% of anything that arrives in my mailbox reflects some sort of “payment due.” I have a hard time processing “payment received” these days.

Anyway, it is amazing to me that these indescribably recycled stories are still selling. As soon as I get back to New York, I will resume writing books in among the screenplays and the plays, but, as I said recently, no erotica, per se. (I say, “per se” because I always found life, in general, to be erotic; it was the publishers who insisted I was writing “erotica.” I didn’t necessarily agree with them all the time.)

Okay, new topic! Yesterday, a friend and I saw the movie While We’re Young and it was really good. It was a kind of throwback to the 70s storytelling style of film, where the characters have depth and what happens to them gets complicated. I wish it had been on film instead of digital, but I know, that part of life is long gone. Anyway, it was good! A movie ticket well-spent.

Here’s some awesome news that I keep forgetting to tell you about because now that I am back in school full-time, I am a little bit busy… My award-winning screenplay, Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story is getting a professional staged reading in NYC, by professional actors, in a professional venue, with professional wine & cheese being served!! Yippee ki yi yay!! I am so excited!

The tricky part is that I have to edit the 90-minute screenplay down to between 45-60 minutes, tops, and since the movie relies heavily on flashbacks within paintings, you can likely see where the trouble lay: Coming up with a linear storyline within a seriously non-linear script. Luckily, I am really good at tearing my hair out. Oops! I meant to say, I am really good at sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen and going quietly insane. No wait — I meant to say, I am really good at finding the linear flow within the non-linear whole.

However, it does require patience and finding ways to not let your head explode. Sobriety is also key.

As soon as I know the date/time, etc., of the reading, I will let you know and if you are in NYC, please be there!!

Okay, back at it over here! Plus I have to create a Power Point Presentation on Christian Grief Counseling for school it’s due Monday. I can only imagine what that is going to look like, gang. But thanks for visiting!! Don’t let my quandaries keep you from enjoying your day and come back really soon! See ya!

At long last, a day off!

April 19, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, minus the fact that I was working on the play for a couple hours already this morning (and am now done with revisions on Act 1), I have the whole day off! My first whole day off since school started up again, three weeks ago.

I have no idea what I will do with the rest of my day, but I’m going to try to get out and take a walk before it starts raining. Then play the rest by ear.

It’s been an interesting, quasi-stressful week. Taxes, of course, were due. And I always owe taxes. And that ceiling in my sun room, that I wrote about recently, finally came crashing down. What a colossal smell of mold and mildew! And needless to say, what a colossal mess. As of now, I am just leaving it and keeping the room closed off. Depending on what the realtor says about the current timeline for the developers taking over my house, I will either leave the mess for the bulldozers, or get a mask and clean it up myself. I’m hoping for the prior choice, obviously, but I can’t go all summer with mold taking over my downstairs. So we shall see.

But so sad. It used to be my favorite room in the house. I have so many great memories of spending time in that room and now it is a complete, bona fide disaster. Really just so sad.

But I don’t want to dwell on it. I know that a brighter future is on the horizon.

So, yes!! Act One of the one-woman musical is DONE, gang!! Yay!! And it is terrific. The actress has truly done such an amazing job — and had an amazing life. Of course this also means that a quick trip to NYC is looming large, once again, in my future, because we have to work out the staging of a formal reading with the director and musical director. I have no clue what “looming large in my future” really means. I only know that at some point soon I will have to take off and go. Hopefully, that will happen before my housemate moves out on June 1st. Otherwise, I will have to hire the professional cat sitters and I’d much rather not have to worry about that expense, but I guess we’ll see. Naturally, for the 3 months that I was out of school and didn’t have homework to do every single day, the trip wasn’t looming large at all…

I’m thinking that I might actually work on some of my own writing today. It’s been a really long time since I had time to do that. You never know, I might still remember how! (Oh, and the other day, I was invited back to L.A. to pitch my TV pilot to some more producers, but my finances are stalled in limbo until the house sells. However, flattered I was!)

Hey, last Tuesday, my girlfriend and I got a chance to see the Al Pacino movie, Danny Collins. We really enjoyed it. (We were in one of those Fork & Screen theaters, where you get to order dinner while you watch the movie. That was a cool experience! Except that sometimes the waiters talk to you while interesting dialogue is galloping past on the screen and then, of course, you miss it. But it still was fun. If you like Al Pacino and/or John Lennon, I really recommend the movie.) (Not sure why all that became a parenthetical phrase, but there you have it!!)

Okay, I wanna go out and look at the flowers, the sky, the trees — take that WALK before it rains!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a wonderful Sunday, wherever you are. I leave you with Al Pacino!! See ya!

Happy as a clam can get!!

April 13, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Wow! Well, I have to say, I couldn’t be happier with Time Warner Cable! My phone chat with them regarding my impending surge in cable fees (see post from the other day, below) couldn’t have gone dreamier!

I will now be paying $6 less per month than before, with twice the megabytes for my iPad streaming. Yay.

And here I had watched Mad Men this morning, solemnly thinking it would be the last TV show I would watch in my comfy family room. I don’t mind streaming shows on my iPad, but the family room used to be my favorite room in the house, and now the only time I’m in it, is if I’ve recorded something on the DVR. So that was kinda making me sad.

(To be honest, pretty much everything about this house makes me sad, nowadays. I used to have this fantastic sun room, but it has now become overrun with mold due to a collapsing ceiling and rain pouring in — this has been going on for years. The collapsing ceiling part, I mean. But I couldn’t see fixing it if they were just going to be tearing the house down, right? So now I have to keep it closed up. Oh, and the first new franchise to set up business in this new shopping district they’re building around me is Arby’s. Isn’t that weird? To think that my once sweet little paradise could become something like an Arby’s?)

Anyway. It’s very sad. The sunroom had once been a beautiful room.

But, on the upside!! I still get to watch Columbo re-runs and Mad Men. And, speaking of Mad Men — OMG! I honestly think that this final, short season is the best yet. The writing has been incredible, right???

Okay! Have a wonderful, sunny Monday, wherever you are! Thanks for visiting!!

Jerusalem, the movie

April 12, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I saw this movie today after church. Produced by National Geographic in IMAX, it was really gorgeous. It’s only 44 minutes long! I wished it would have gone on forever.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see it and have 44 minutes to spare, it is worth it!

What a glorious spring!

April 9, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

That vintage postcard image of the chick on the telephone was supposed to be my Easter post for you on Sunday, but everything got away from me since I had to be at church for 17 trillion hours that day, and now here it is, 4 days later…

Still, I thought it was a cute image, so I regale you with it, regardless!

Here’s a thought: When I woke this morning, at 5:02 a.m., I had the sudden realization that 34 years ago this very day, I got married for the first time, down at city hall in Manhattan. That’s really shocking, because I always feel like I’m still about 12 years old, so to think that I was even alive anywhere 34 years ago, let alone getting married to a man who has actually been dead now for 20 years, is simply something I cannot wrap my wee bonnie mind around!!

But enough of that! Things right here, right now, are really great so let’s just move forward.

Here’s something else that is really interesting. Amazon brought to my attention yesterday that quite a flurry of folks have been buying my eBooks here in the USA over the past 2 months. This is quite an exciting development, since I haven’t written any books since 2010 (I’ve been focusing on screenplays and teleplays since then). But I do have several other book ideas on my back burner and it occurred to me that maybe I should set aside some real time and write something new!

To be honest, people all over the world are still buying my erotica (in the UK and Germany, mostly) and those are stories that have been recycled and recycled and recycled since the NINETIES, gang! I am astounded that people are not stupidly tired of them. (Or perhaps they are, and they only keep buying them in the vain hope that the stories might have new endings or something by now…)

Well, I’m not planning on writing anymore erotica. Not that I think ministers shouldn’t write erotica if they feel moved to do so; it’s just that I wrote erotica for over 20 years. I wrote dark and bleak erotica, I wrote funny and upbeat erotica, I wrote romantic and sweet erotica, and I also wrote just plain literate award-winning erotica. I don’t feel like I have much left to stay in that department! I wanna write about other stuff! Yay!!

Still, it was a real thrill to see the boost in sales when I do absolutely ZERO to promote that stuff anymore. (Plus, it was nice to see that Twilight of the Immortal is selling again, too, and that’s historical fiction — not erotic at all.) So I really want to thank any and all of you who are feeling compelled to purchase my fiction!! I really appreciate it.

Well, okay!

Today is just a gorgeous spring day and all I have to do today, besides homework, is argue with Time-Warner Cable on the telephone and most likely entreat them to close my account since I really stream everything on my iPad anyway, but we’ll see how it goes. I also plan on taking a walk later, to see what splendid & wondrous sights God has in store for my eyes today. I hope that wherever you are, something similar is going on!! (The “wondrous God on a gorgeous spring day” part, not the argument with Time Warner Cable.) Thanks for visiting again, gang. See ya real soon!