The final revisions were made yesterday to my TV movie script, The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder At Parsons Ridge, AND I did the highly implausible: I wrote a logline that the producer said was “excellent”.
That’s a first.
Normally, my loglines suck. I usually marvel in awe at writers who can come up with a decent logline right off the top of their heads — or even right after they tinker with it for several days, laboring slavishly. I thought the one I came up with for Tea Cozy Murder Club was serviceable, at best. I imagined the producer would tinker with it until it was better than serviceable.
When he emailed me back and said it was excellent, I was dumbfounded. (“How can that be?” I wondered. “If I was the one who wrote it?”)
This is the logline (drum roll, please): The members of a small town book club that delights in solving cozy old whodunits suddenly find themselves with a very real not-so-cozy murder to solve.
Yes, you guessed it! The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder At Parsons Ridge is a cozy mystery. (So is The Miracle Cats and the Case of the Purloined Passport — see numerous posts below.) Even though everyone the world over knows me for my super-duper killer award-winning literary erotica, I haven’t written in that genre for nearly 10 years, and I only read it now when I’m hired to edit it. Nowadays, I only read religious tomes (this one is jaw-droppingly awesome and needs to be read by everybody you’ve ever known), or cozy mysteries. (I’m currently reading this one, by Louise Penny.)
So, the great news is that the producer will be taking The Tea Cozy Murder Club to a meeting with a production company in L.A. next week! I will keep you posted on how much they love it.
Yippee-ki-yi-yay!
On the Fluffy front (see post below about how my beloved Fluffy has advanced cancer): she is still with us and that makes it a great day! She is quite frail, though. This morning, at dawn, I scooped her up really gently in my arms and took her over to the screen door so that she could see the beautiful world that was awakening outside. It really was lovely out — and cool! 57 degrees! Fluffy was so alert and entranced by the outside world. The greenery everywhere, the flowers blooming and, most importantly, the happy birds chirping like mad.
I just love Fluffy. I will deal with my grief when I have to. For now, it’s just a perfect day.
Well, okay. On that note…Thanks for visiting, gang! Have a perfect day, too, wherever you are and whatever it finds you doing! See ya!
Life does indeed go on, even though it doesn’t look like it from the truly sporadic nature of my blog posts. (I like this definition of sporadic: “Appearing in scattered or isolated instances, as a disease.”)
Anyway, I hope my blog doesn’t strike you as a disease… ha ha
In an unfortunate segue, Fluffy is still hanging in there (see post below). She is actually doing better (which is a surprisingly subjective term when used to describe advanced cancer). She is thin as a rail and sleeps most of the time, but while awake, she is in happy spirits and even still a little feisty when encountering any of the other cats. I don’t think they have any conception that she’s dying. and in true “wild life” fashion, if they do know, I don’t think they care. That said, though, we are still a happy household, and I am always incredibly grateful each morning when I awaken and find her still alive beside me in the bed. Right off the bat, that makes it a good day. (Also a surprisingly subjective term. My use of the term “a good day” has truly narrow requirements these days.)
My stepmom, whom I adore, is also dying. It is getting near the end. She has struggled with MS for many years; the last 6 of which she’s been in a nursing home. She has always been an incredible optimist, always had the most inspiring outlook on life, always so uplifting to be around, even all these years that she’s been confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. But now her pain levels are off the charts and she’s on morphine, which signals the beginning of the end, however, “the end” is a surprisingly subjective term when it is forecasting what morphine will trigger in terminal illness…
I will miss her so much. Not only is she a wonderful, charming, warm, and generous Italian woman, but she has also made my Dad really happy while they’ve been together. And for whatever reasons, the words “happy” and my “Dad” were not usually words that appeared close together in a sentence for most of the decades I’ve known him.
On the writing front… I got word from the producer in LA last night, that he is sending the final edits (for The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder at Parsons Ridge) to me in the mail TODAY. I should have them early next week. Today, I’m working on the outline for the first book in the series (the book has the same name). I decided last night that if I can write at least 3 pages a day, I could complete the book by the end of the summer. (Not always an easy task, since I write, re-write, revise, and edit pretty much every sentence as it comes out of my brain — which is why voice-activated software is useless for me, but also why I usually only need a first draft of any manuscript I write.)
Even though Valerie and I are still working on The Miracle Cats and the Case of the Purloined Passport, we are both dealing right now with cats who have terminal cancer. It has stymied the flow of inspiration for the time being. So we’ll get back to it probably later this summer. Meanwhile, I need something to keep my spirits up, so I decided to work on the first book of The Tea Cozy Murder Club series.
Re: the car accident (see some sort of post below, where a cable TV repair guy totaled my beloved, albeit exceedingly OLD Camry)…his insurance company is being what my lawyer describes as “stingy.” So I am biding my time, it’s been 2 months already. As I wait for an acceptable settlement, I am driving a really lovely, albeit exceedingly OLD, Mercury Sable Premium LS. Wow, do I love it. However, it needs a lot of work. It looks great on the outside, but under the hood, it simply is nowhere near as awesome as my Camry was. But I have to say, every morning when I open my garage and see that sparkling silver luxury sedan from days of yore, I get super excited and say, “I love you!!” And I totally mean it.
So. A holiday weekend is practically upon us. I am busy through the weekend, but on Monday, my cousin and I are going to see Alice Through the Looking Glass !! I cannot wait. We loved the first one so much.
You know…I was saddened to read that Johnny Depp’s mother had died recently. It always seemed like they were very close. But regarding Amber Heard filing for divorce from Johnny Depp (I guess, now that his mom’s dead)… Well, long-time readers of this lofty blog have probably noticed that I stopped writing about Johnny Depp after his engagement to AH. I did that because my grandmother always told me that if I can’t say something nice about someone then don’t say anything at all. Well, now I feel like I can say something sort of positive about AH. And that is, the fact that she’s seeking spousal support after 15 months of “marriage” doesn’t surprise me at all. (MEOOOWWWW!! ha ha ha)
Anyway, I sure hope this means that one day in the foreseeable future, Johnny Depp can go back to being “sort of” happy (and go back to being the incredible actor he was before the nuptials set in). We shall see, gang!
Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend, if you live state-side. If you don’t, just have a great weekend. Thanks for visiting. See ya.
I’m referring to the month of April being seriously whacky; not to some unknown woman named April who might be whacked-out of her mind somewhere…
Like everyone everywhere, I began the month of April on April 1st — a really lovely spring morning around here. By 8:30 that morning, though, a cable TV repair van ran a red light in the intersection in front of the library that led him directly into the driver’s side of my faithful 19-year-old Camry.
He totaled it.
I prefer to dwell on the fact that I walked away from the crash relatively unscathed, with only a few hours in the ER and 4 and a half days in bed, and will finally get a new car, which I needed anyway.
However, it has not been a fun month. And the release of SomethingDark Issue 3, out of Bristol, England, this month, brought another disturbing thing. While I’m the North American Editor for SomethingDark, this issue is a little late in being released and with its release came the news that writer/colleague/friend/radio host and person I edited in Issue 3, Michael Hemmingson, is dead.
I’m of the opinion that he’s not really dead but is living under an assumed identity with his daughter in some foreign land (i.e., Japan). However, if I must accept that he is really dead, I think he died under seriously questionable circumstances. He “died of a heart attack” in Tijuana, where he coincidentally had lots of drug cartel enemies…
The whole thing was really disturbing news for me, making me wonder where the heck time flies to because Hemmingson has been dead for over two years already and no one told me! However, the issue of SomethingDark is truly worth waiting for, so check it out at the link above. And if you were long ago scheduled to be in Issue 4, the Japan issue, you will be hearing from me directly!
While researching cars online, trying to figure out what I will end up driving one day really soon (more than likely another Camry, even though I was planning on buying a Jeep Commander when I moved back to New York, but now that the move is indefinitely on hold…). Anyway, I came across this fantastic magazine ad from 1967. My father bought this very same car in 1967 — in red!! The lady in the insane hat did not come with the car, nevertheless, it was a seriously COOL car!! I was in the second grade when he bought the red Wildcat and I was astonished the afternoon he drove it up our driveway in Cleveland. Wow. It had a black leather interior. I had almost forgotten all about it!
Buick Wildcat 1967
So I wanted to share that fun news with you, rather than all the other not fun stuff that’s been going on around here.
Other good news… The producer in L.A. loved my Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder at Parsons Ridge TV movie script. He only wants some very minor revisions, which I’m working on today. Then we shall see!
Meanwhile, as I await the check from the insurance company, I’m planting flowers in my garden and trying to get this property back to what it once was three and a half years ago…before it was scheduled to be demolished.
Hope things have been just as good wherever YOU are! Thanks for visiting, folks. Here’s hoping May is a little easier. I’ll keep you posted. See ya!
Since tomorrow is April 1st, it looks like it’s only been about 2 MONTHS since I last posted anything here (but what a fine and lively post it was! I hope you all listened to that wonderfully fun song! I am still listening to it in my car.) (Not exclusively — I listen to quite a panoply of Frank Sinatra tunes from the 40s & 50s while driving in my 19 (!!!) year-old car…)
Okay. Many updates occurred while I was absent from the blog. Some of them traumatizing — for instance, any and all developers and private real estate investors suddenly and without warning dropped all interest in commercializing my specific block on my street here in Gahanna.
This means that after keeping me in limbo for 3 and 1/2 years, telling me they were tearing my house down and re-zoning my block for commercial use, and hence my reasonably-foreseeable-future plans of moving back to New York — all of it came to a grinding halt.
It has something to do with City Hall, taxes, other residents, unhappy voters. So now I am basically working around the clock to afford all the many, many repairs this poor house needs to make it livable again.
I know that the absolute minute I get it back to being the sweet little dream house it once was, they will knock on my door yet again and tell me they are tearing it down. But you know what? We’ll just have to see what we see. I can’t live in limbo anymore with a house falling down around my ears.
So.
The one-woman musical I’m working on with the actress in New York is basically done. Yay!! I think the premiere will be in Toronto, though, not New York City. I will keep you posted about that. It has something to do with funding from the Canadian Arts Council. But I can tell you, with complete certainty, that it is a GREAT show!! I am so thrilled to be a part of it.
Now she and I have 3 more plays/musicals to write together. I’m guessing that will keep me busy for a huge number of years. (The actress has been working on the above-mentioned one-woman show for maybe 7 years already. Writing, re-writing, workshopping it, performing it — it won an award in Canada already. Then I came on board to help significantly re-write it about 2-3 years ago. These things really do take forever.)
I have also finished writing my TV movie script for The Tea Cozy Murder Club!! It goes off to the producer in L.A. on Friday. He is excited to read it and I am super-duper excited to send it to him! This is an idea I have been developing for about 4 or 5 years. Now, I need to start writing the novels that go along with the TV movies (there is, at the very least, a series of 4.)
The mystery book series I’m writing with my illustrator friend in Brooklyn is still moving forward (The Miracle Cats and the Case of the Purloined Passport). We had to put it on hold, though, momentarily, until I completed the script for my other project because the producer’s assistant emailed me and asked if I was planning to wait on sending it until after the producer retired….
Anyway, so I finally had to stop juggling everything at once, and write one thing at a time. But now we are back to The Miracle Cats. Here’s the latest illustration. It is “Sister Thomasina”:
“Sister Thomasina” aka known as Tommy Cakes!
I am also researching and putting notes together for a one-man play I want to write. I will go over more of those details as it goes along. But I’m very excited about it. It is somewhat connected to my ministry, but I won’t say more than that, lest I send you off on a complete tangent that would be wholly inaccurate.
Now that I’m done with school and staring down several years’ worth of paying off student loans… I am now learning Ancient Greek, and re-learning Biblical Hebrew (which I studied as a child, so a lot of that comes back to me). Anyway, learning them both at once is not really so daunting as it might seem because they have similarities. Sort of. Plus, I am strictly doing it on my own time and at my own pace, so it is really invigorating and fun.
I doubt I will ever learn enough Ancient Greek or live long enough to translate the Septuagint on my own, but we can dream, can’t we??? I’m already planning to write my own version of The Jefferson Bible (my minster at church refers to my plans as The Lewis Bible and it may well be that!). And I fully, fully intend to do this and maybe even publish it online! We shall see…
So, that’s it. That’s it. That’s where I’ve been. It is completely, 100% thoroughly safe to say that I am exhausted. But that’s how it goes sometimes.
Right now, it’s a wonderfully rainy spring morning. The birds are singing outside my window and the many, many cats who live here are planted at the screen door, looking out at the beautiful, wet, singing world. I hope it’s just as peaceful and promising where you’re at today, gang. Thanks for visiting! See ya down the road.
That drawing above was done by my girlfriend in Brooklyn — the one who is collaborating with me on the cozy murder mystery that features my cats. (Bunny, above, is one of the cats in the book, although she is also an actual cat — see posts below.)
My girlfriend drew the picture last night in solidarity with me over Bunny’s recovery. So beautiful.
On that front, it is safe to say that Bunny has, indeed, recovered! Last night, she was ornery, stubborn, and opinionated. In other words, back to her old self! She refused to come up to bed with me and listen to her 528 Hz. tones, and was insistent on sleeping in the living room, down under the coffee table, thank you very much. I was very pleased with the development…
Now all I need is for MYSELF to get back to normal — no, not ornery, stubborn, and opinionated; it would take an Act of God to stop me from being ornery, stubborn, and opinionated! What I need to do is get my energy back and my clarity back and my overall vitality back after Bunny’s brush with death, so that I can get back to my writing projects/deadlines and produce more than, say, one paragraph a day… Plus, the actress in New York City (you remember her, gang, right? We are still working on her one-woman show) — she popped in yesterday via text and asked if I was “ready for more pages”???
I’m always ready for more pages… I wouldn’t be back to normal if I didn’t have 2, 3, or 4 projects needing 100% of my attention at once.
I’m still waiting to hear back from the new developers about buying my property — which would then lead to my finally moving back to New York (and getting a ticket to see Hamilton post haste!! It kills me that I am not there, seeing shows, gosh dang it!) Writing is the only way to take my mind off of not being there. Although, keeping my thoughts centered on being there, I believe helps pull the experience to me.
Ah well, so back at it around here, gang. Thanks for visiting. Have a terrific, action-packed, super colossal (and perhaps snowy) Saturday, wherever you are!! See ya.
Yes, I am under several deadlines at once! Yes, I am sitting at my desk, writing (sort of). Yes, my mind is wandering!! I have no idea what is coming next in this plot so, like any dedicated writer, I get online and start surfing the web, killing precious time…
If you, too, are killing time, waiting for inspiration to manifest, here are some things to look at/listen to! Free of charge!
Last Christmas, I received my degree in Pastoral Ministry. Here’s the song I celebrated with! Followed by…
…the song the choir sang when I took my first Holy Communion as an ordained minister:
And here’s the song I chose for when I was ordained, even though I was ordained in July, and this is an Easter hymn that is oddly very popular here in the USA at Christmastime (the dull organ intro takes about 60 seconds before the hymn begins but it is well worth the wait!):
Enjoy the start of the season, gang! I suppose I will get back to the typewriter now (ha ha)… See ya!
I’m still not clear about how to keep you updated on one of my really fun new ebook projects, since I will be writing it under a pen name that I haven’t chosen yet, but the illustrator will be using her real name… I must ponder that; how to keep you informed without giving everything away. (Methinks it might be too late.)
But in the meantime, I wanted to regale you with some of her sample drawings for the ebook series. (These will be a series of mysteries, where my cats solve the mysteries unbeknownst to the humans around them. The humans think these solved mysteries are ‘miracles’. The first book in the series is titled The Miracle Cats and the Case of the Purloined Passport.) (But you didn’t hear about it here, because someone under a pen name is writing it…)
Okay, here is Beck, also known as the Right Reverend Daddy O. Cakes:
The Right Reverend Daddy O. Cakes
And here is one of the tabby twins, Sister Frannie McPhee:
Sister Frannie McPhee
(I forgot to mention that all these cats are also secretly in the clergy and live in a mostly abandoned church in an old church graveyard…)
Don’t you think she’s doing an awesome job? These illustrations actually look just like my cats.
Well, I for one, cannot WAIT to see how this book turns out!! On that note, I must get crackin’ around here and do some more writing. (I’m also halfway through a teleplay/screenplay project for The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder at Parson’s Ridge. I have to keep switching between them. Sometimes it’s hard to keep the two stories straight since they are both mysteries with old ladies and cats in them.) (Luckily, the musical I am working on with Sandra Caldwell in NYC has no murders, no mysteries, no old ladies, and no cats in it. It’s a lot easier to keep that one straight.)
Okay!! So have a great day out there, gang, wherever you are and whatever you’re getting yourselves up to. Thanks for visiting. See ya!
Howdy, howdy, gang! YES, I am back home and YES, it was a most auspicious trip to New York, and THANK YOU to all of you who sent me birthday greetings last week! Oh, and YES (!!) I had CAKE!
First, I want to regale you with the riot of flowers that are blooming all over my yard this year. These are Roses of Sharon — taking over, as they are wont to do — because I have lived the entire summer not knowing when (or if) I was going to be packing up and moving away… Alas, I am still here, and the yard has become a veritable jungle of blooming madness (and also weeds).
The view through one of my garden gates
Multiply all these blossoms on the right by the entire yard — back, front, sides– and you get a tiny idea of how crazy it is around here this summer. I went out to water my little herb garden on the kitchen stoop yesterday and discovered hundreds more blossoms blooming where they had never been before. The other garden gate is so overrun that I have to keep the gate open all the time, or the honeysuckle vines will wind all over it and keep it permanently shut.
Well, it could be worse. I do love flowers.
So! The trip to Rhinebeck was a complete success. We hammered out the version of the script that we will use for the staged reading of Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story. We also made great progress on notes and a synopsis for the one-woman show I am writing for the same actress “about” Pearl Bailey. (I put it in quotes now because it has become apparent that the Pearl Bailey family won’t release any rights whatsoever for outsiders to use her likeness, so we have to tell her story in a different way now, but it will be even better. Yay.)
My most amazing news is that the actress is forming a production company and asked me to be the writer for it, since we already have 4 theater projects we are working on together, and I COULD NOT be more excited! (Even though Tell My Bones is a screenplay, we are also working on a version of it for the stage.)
The downside is that there was a heat wave in Rhinebeck the entire time I was there and the AC wasn’t working right and there were no fans. Not only did I think I was going to perish in the relentless heat and humidity, I was the only person who was being eaten alive by mosquitoes everywhere we went!!
It’s a good thing so much good stuff was happening. It made it easier to just “deal and get over it.”
Now that I’m back home again, the cats couldn’t be happier. They had to have a cat sitter the whole time I was away and since they are all the proverbial “scaredy cats,” it was not a fun time for them. Hopefully, the next trip I make back to Rhinebeck, they will all be coming with me and we will be moving into our new home…I hope. We shall see.
Okay, on this wonderful Monday morning, I leave you with something wildly upbeat. I dare any of you to have a bad day after listening to this oldies gem!!! Thanks for visiting, gang. See ya!
Yes, gang, I am finally off to New York for about 5 days!! I cannot wait! I will be working on the staged reading of my screenplay, Tell My Bones, with the lead actress and the stage manager, up in Rhinebeck, NY.
Yes, this is where I’m moving to when I finally sell this house and move back to New York. If you have never been there, Rinebeck is a real gem. And it is only a commuter-train-ride from the heart of Manhattan. So, for me, after having lived in the heart of Manhattan for over a quarter of a century (!!) and struggled like mad in my halcyon days, this is a much lovelier option as I squeak through middle age.
Rhinebeck, the village…Rhinebeck, the surrounding town…
But back to the staged reading… It has been postponed until September, gang, because too many of the actors were already out of town, doing regional theater for the summer. So the lead actress and I, and the stage manager, are going to get all the little production-ducks in a row, so that we can hit the ground running once everyone is back in Manhattan come September.
Meanwhile, I am working like a crazy person, trying to get two weeks’ worth of homework turned in this weekend, so that I don’t have to even think about homework while I’m out of town. Then, the moment I return from New York, it will be my birthday!! That fabulous CAKE time of year!! I will be a glorious 55 years old, gang!! I cannot believe it.
Okay, I gotta scoot. I’m teaching a writing class in about 7 minutes… Have a wonderful, sunny Saturday wherever you are, folks, and whatever you wind up doing! Thanks for visiting. See ya!!
Okay, time for a new selfie, since the one of me in the red dress is exactly one year old already…
No, the subject line, “free at last,” does not mean they have given me a date yet for my move back to New York. It means that I am now living alone again — for the first time in 5 years. I’d been renting out one of my furnished guest rooms for a while now and my tenant moved out on June 1st. In anticipation of my house being torn down, he opted to go get his own place. I don’t blame him! And as much as I wasn’t relishing the idea of living alone again, I discovered that I TOTALLYdig it!!
First of all, I am somebody who likes to clean. Actually, I love to clean, although I’m not OCD about it, as some of my dearest friends (read: Kevin) are. But the guy I was renting the room to was young and not on the same wave length as me when it came to cleaning. However, now my house is feeling like my home again! I can clean it one day, wake up the next day and …. it’s still clean!! Even with all these cats!! So that feels great.
No, I’m not trying to show you the food I eat. I’m showing you how I like my fridge to look when I open it!! Yippee ki yi yay!
All right! As usual, I’ve been busy. Some of it, not so good, since a very good friend of mine’s wife died the other day and it has been heartbreaking. He is moving back to the West Coast now, to be near his kids. I am going to miss him so much. I’ve been trying to help him get ready for the move as much as possible since he is elderly and I likely won’t get a chance to see him again once he moves away. When he needs me for something, I drop everything, but that also means that other work is getting a little bottle-necked.
I’m also starting to wonder WHY ON EARTH I went back to school! Of course I know why I went back to school. And I’m going to stay in school at least until I move back to NY because it really keeps me grounded. But, boy, is it making it hard for me to stay on top of stuff at this particular juncture.
I did manage to get all my application paperwork together for the Screenwriters Lab I am hoping to get into in the fall (for women over 40). The application involved writing 2 essays that kind of wore me out. But I did it and submitted it, one day before the deadline. I felt good about the final product. That said, though — it’s a really good thing I didn’t know beforehand that they are only choosing 8 (!!!) women to attend the lab, or I would have been too intimidated to bother applying. It’s a very high-profile lab in NY. For some reason, I was thinking it would be more like a conference, with about 30 or 40 women selected. But, no: 8 will be chosen. 8 will go. Since I’m guessing that well over a thousand screenwriters applied, the odds are not super hugely in my favor, gang. But, we shall see!!
Other than that, plans are still moving ahead for the staged reading of my screenplay, Tell My Bones, in NYC. We are trying to pin down actors who are net getting ready to go off and do summer stock all over the country. So we are falling a little behind here. The reading needs to be done ASAP, since the lead actress, along with the stage manager, are going off to France for the month of August…
I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like there’s all the time in the world and then things seem to be moving at a snail’s pace. Then, suddenly, you’re out of time!! And rushing around. How does that happen?
Soon, enough, though, I will be in NYC, and not only for the reading. I’m going to get to see “my significant love interest,” at least for an evening. And for that, I cannot wait, gang. I bought a new dress and some new high heels… Luckily, he is tall. Because high heels make me about 6-foot-2.
I am so totally, totally, totally into this idea of trying out love again after so many years! All I know for sure is that he makes me really happy. He makes me laugh. He gets my sense of humor. So I am super excited about getting back to New York. Even though, at this time of year in New York City, it’s too darn hot…
Okay, on that happy note… I hope you’re having a great Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing!! Enjoy the heat, gang. Thanks for visiting!! See ya!
Marilyn's Room 