Warren Adler's Blog, page 43
June 12, 2014
Why I Went Independent as an Author
I went into the e-book and Print on Demand mode in the nineties convinced that the new technology would radically change the future of book publishing, and would allow an author a chance to control his own destiny.
By then I had published 27 novels with major traditional publishers; many had been translated and published in various languages.
I had also sold or optioned a dozen of my books for film adaptation three were made. One was “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner; another was “Random Hearts” with Harrison Ford and Kirstin Scott-Thomas, and a third was a three-hour trilogy on the PBS network titled “The Sunset Gang”. Recently, additional works are in active development including the sequel to, “The War of the Roses” called “The War of the Roses: The Children,” and “Capitol Crimes,” based on my Fiona Fitzgerald Mystery Series.
I made the decision to become an independent publisher of my own work before the Kindle and other devices had made their debut.…
June 11, 2014
SHORT STORY: My Father, the Painter
My Father, the Painter
by Warren Adler
(Story featured in “New York Echoes” by Warren Adler )
“Cynthia Barish?” the voice said, cracked, clipped, harsh.
Normally cautious and skeptical, unafraid to show her irritation with unsolicited calls, she answered “yes.” Then it was too late.
“Your father’s dead,” the voice said.
“So?”
She hadn’t seen or heard from him in twenty-five years, not since she was five. Her meager memory of his presence, occasionally reinforced by her mother’s remarks, had become less sporadic as time passed.
“Who is this?”
“Feschetti, Mario. Actually I was his landlord. I wouldn’t say he was my friend, but I kind of traded out on some of the rent. He did odd jobs. You know, took out the garbage, cleaned the halls, washed the front.”
“Where did you get my name? I haven’t seen him in twenty-five years. Am I supposed to cry?”
He ignored her question.…
GREY EAGLE FILMS SIGNS ERIC OVERMYER TO DEVELOP TELEVISION ADAPTATION OF WARREN ADLER’S FIONA FITZGERALD MYSTERY SERIES
GREY EAGLE FILMS AND PERMUT PRESENTATIONS SIGN WRITER ALEX MCAULAY TO ADAPT THE WAR OF THE ROSES SEQUEL, THE WAR OF THE ROSES: THE CHILDREN, BY ACCLAIMED NOVELIST WARREN ADLER
Screenwriter and novelist Alex McAulay (HBO-EASTBOUND AND DOWN) is set to adapt Warren Adler’s novel THE WAR OF THE ROSES: THE CHILDREN into a long-awaited feature film sequel to the 1989 iconic American divorce-drama, THE WAR OF THE ROSES starring Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito and Kathleen Turner.
THE WAR OF THE ROSES: THE CHILDREN follows Barbara and Oliver Rose’s emotionally damaged children Josh and Evie, now adults, as they cope with the chandelier-shattering legacy left behind by their parents. In this sequel, Josh and his wife Victoria watch their marriage fall apart over a darkly comical mishap while Evie struggles with obsessive eating.
McAulay has a feature film screenplay “Flower” currently in development with Rough House Pictures in addition to an original HBO series.
Recently formed motion picture and television development and production company Grey Eagle Films, LLC was founded by Jonathan Robert Adler and veteran film executive Stephen Greenwald (“Amityville II: The Possession”), former President of De Laurentiis Entertainment and Embassy Pictures.…
May 22, 2014
A Nation Lost and Found: 1936 America Remembered by Ordinary and Extraordinary People
See complete details about A Nation Lost and Found including immediate purchase options.
Living among the gangsters of Murder, Inc., under the elevated railroad, during the hardships of the time, Warren recalls feeling utterly secure, regretting only that it lasted such a short time.
There were 11 of us living in my maternal grandparents’ row house on Strauss Street in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn during the Great Depression. My parents had been dispossessed from their apartment in Crown Heights. My father, a gentle, handsome man, was a bookkeeper, and a good career start was detonated by the depression. He had come to America from the East End of London when he was 10 years old. He never recovered his economic footing for the rest of his life, and although he lived on the generosity of my mother’s brothers, he was never made to feel inadequate or lesser in their eyes.…
May 16, 2014
SHORT STORY: I Can Still Smell It by Warren Adler
“I can still smell it,” Rachel said.
“That‘s not possible. It’s been four years.”
Because he loved her with the same zeal and passion as when he married her in June 2001, Larry was patient, although he was really worried about her. September 11, 2001, had come and gone. They had considered themselves lucky, secretly celebrating their good fortune while expressing their pity and compassion or those lost.
In the fullness of time, the site had been cleaned up, the building and human remains carted off to faraway garbage dumps. Some of the area was restored, although there was still argument about the final outcome for the property.
There was no questioning the fact that the area did, indeed, smell for that first year. It was a sickening odor, a mixture of dust, debris, and roasted flesh and bones. The smell snaked its way through the high-rises in lower Manhattan and alighted with great intensity on the Gramercy Park area. When the windows of their Gramercy Park apartment were opened, even a crack, the smell seeped in and was impossible to ignore. Rachel and Larry had tolerated it like everyone else in Manhattan. It was a byproduct of the horror.
The first move a year later was prompted by the idea that perhaps they were too close to the site and that the smell would never leave their apartment. That was Rachel’s theory, and Larry believed it credible at the time. Her senses had always been more acute than his. She had a great eye for color and design, and her hearing, as observed by her musical appreciation, was exceptional. Her nose for scent was phenomenal. She could detect perfume and judge the quality of wine like a professional. When Rachel said she could still smell the odor of 9/11, he believed her, even though he could no longer detect it.
“Who am I to question the quality of your nose?” he would joke, often teasing her when she stuck her nose in a wine glass filled with red wine.
They tried all sorts of air cleaners, mists, plug-in devices, every appliance that promised to clean the air. None of these things worked for Rachel. After awhile, they began to argue about it as his own survey among his colleagues at the office and friends revealed that no one else still smelled 9/11.
“I just don’t understand it,” he told her. “You must be the only one in Manhattan that still smells it. Maybe it’s psychological.”
“Are you suggesting I see a shrink?” she rebutted.
“What I mean,” he continued, “is that it could be a memory thing. But then again, when it comes to 9/11, everybody in town, the country, the world, is afflicted with that memory. Who could ever forget?”
“No one will ever forget that monstrous act. That is an indelible memory. It will be with us forever. But it’s the smell Larry. The smell is real, and I can’t get rid of it.”
With that one exception, life was normal. Rachel and Larry were otherwise unmarked by the event. Of course there was no avoiding the universal fear that it could happen again someday. That was always in the back of their minds.
Rachel worked as a copywriter with one of the big advertising agencies in the City. Larry was an art director with a different agency. They were still in their twenties earning good money. They had friends, kept in touch with parents and siblings who lived out of town, and had planned a future with kids. They had had a nice garden wedding at Rachel’s parents’ house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and went back every Christmas to visit.
Of course, daily news of the cleanup was in the papers for months following the tragedy. People volunteered, many going down to the site to assist with food service. Others carpooled. Doctors and nurses volunteered their assistance. Police, firemen, and forensic experts scoured the site for remains. Some victims were found and identified. Others were not. Everyone felt the grief of the survivors who had lost loved ones. There were predictions that many of those who worked at the site would suffer from lung problems later in life. But the amazing thing was how everyone coped, hung in there, tried to live their lives to the fullest, and prevailed.
There was something intrepid about New Yorkers. Both Larry and Rachel were proud to be a part of such resilience and optimism. Three years after the event, New York was booming, bigger than ever. Cranes building big high-rises were everywhere in Manhattan. Brooklyn, too, was booming. The Bronx was resurgent.
Except for the question of what to do with the site, and compensation for those who had lost loved ones, citizens were forgetting and growing less fearful of the possibility of another attack. The idea was losing any sense of immediacy in the public mind. But things changed dramatically; there were security lines at the airports, police and National Guardsmen at sensitive places like Grand Central Terminal, metal detectors and random searches at certain public places, and all the newspaper stories. The administration was reviled by opponents who thought the fear factor was being used as a political weapon, and many hated the President for invading Iraq, feeling that it only exacerbated the situation.
“I wish the smell would go away,” Rachel told him with increasing frequency, even after they had moved into their East Side apartment on 72nd. “It’s here in this apartment and it won’t go away. I know it won’t.”
“That’s what you said when we lived in Gramercy Park.”
“Okay, so it’s a coincidence. But it’s here, Larry. I can smell it.”
Larry checked with the management of the apartment building to see if anyone else complained about the smell. No one had.
“Would I mention it if I didn’t smell it?”
He couldn’t argue with that, and he tried his best to be patient and sympathetic. In the end, when their lease was up, they moved to the West Side to a brand-new apartment complex that had been built overlooking the Hudson River. The view was gorgeous, and there were exhilarating breezes that floated over the river and reached their terrace on the thirtieth floor.
“I’m so sorry, Larry,” she told him after they had lived there for a month. “I can still smell it.”
“What is it like?” he asked, determined to stay patient.
“Like the same as when I first smelled it.”
“Be more specific.”
“Like…dead people.”
“Have you ever really smelled dead people?”
“No. But it’s what I imagine they smell like.”
Of course, he had asked the question before, and he still thought it might have to do with complex biological factors, an olfactory sense memory. Although he had earlier suggested that she see a shrink, he decided to offer a less threatening alternative: going to the doctor. An Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist declared, after various tests, that everything appeared normal.
“I suppose that’s a relief,” Rachel said after they had received the test results. “Except that I can still smell it.”
He was losing his patience with her insistence. She was getting more restless, sleeping less, tossing and turning at night, inhibiting his own sleep patterns. Sometimes they would discuss the smell long into the wee hours.
“I smell it now, Larry. Believe me.”
“You’re imagining it.” He had started to take refuge in that idea, since any other possibility was unexplainable.
“Even if I was, I can still smell it.”
“Is there any time when you don’t smell it?”
He asked that question again and again, hopeful that her affliction manifested itself at diminishing intervals.
Unfortunately, Rachel’s answer was also the same. “It never leaves me, Larry. It’s most intense at home. When I’m thinking of other things at the office, I can ignore it, but when I get back to our apartment it is there.”
Larry could tell it was on her mind by the way her eyes drifted and her nostrils twitched. It became her obsession. It pervaded everything she did, and he sensed she was growing more and more desperate, although she did seem conscious of bringing it up.
She finally consented to a visit to a psychiatrist. She contemplated going by herself, but she decided that since Larry was the most affected by her situation, he was entitled to the psychological exploration, if it was possible.
The psychiatrist, a pleasant middle-aged man, offered a highly technical assessment. He referred to the section of the brain that was connected with the sense of smell, the “smell brain” he called it, and went through a series of possible physical and psychological factors that dealt with trauma and the effect it had on memory.
He asked her many questions about her childhood. Had she experienced any childhood traumas? Did she have nightmares? What were her fears? Had anything happened to her in her lifetime that suggested a relationship with fear and smell? Finally, he asked about 9/11.
“Are you afraid that another attack is imminent?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“Do you panic when you ride a bus or subway or go on an airplane?”
“Acceptance. Not panic.”
“Do you have nightmares of death?”
“If you mean death caused by a terrorist attack, then, no.”
“Do news reports of terrorism attacks upset you?”
“Sure they do, but not to the point where I get too upset to function.”
“Are you afraid to live in New York?”
“Of course not. I’m here, aren’t I?”
His diagnosis was logical and understandable, and he did offer her some hope.
“It could be that your fear is so palpable, so intense, that the odor associated with that tragedy continues to dominate your smell brain.”
“But I told you, I don’t obsess about a terrorist attack.”
“Not consciously,” the psychiatrist said. “But it is part of evolutionary theory that the sense of smell was the principle defense mechanism of our ancestors. They could smell danger from predators and poisons. It was their most powerful sense.”
“And this explains why I can still smell debris?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Have you seen other people like me?” Rachel asked him.
“Yes, I have. Fear is very disruptive to one’s being.”
She shook her head, rejecting the notion. “So you’re implying that my intense subconscious fear induces this smell.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Psychiatry is not a perfect science. It deals with clues, assumptions, and interpretations. It feeds on itself. The smell induces memory, like a chain reaction, and the memory induces the smell. Have you ever read Proust?”
Rachel and Larry looked at each other. Neither he nor Rachel had read Proust.
“The smell of madeleine cake from when he was a child,” the psychiatrist went on, “induced in him a lifetime of memory. It motivated him to write a masterpiece spanning multiple volumes.”
“So what can I do about it?” Rachel asked him. “Write a book?”
He laughed politely. “I’m going to prescribe a medicine that has worked in cases like yours. It was originally used to stop nausea in pregnant women.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Rachel asked.
“We’ll look for something else.”
“That it?” Larry asked, after exchanging troubled glances with Rachel.
“One day it might simply disappear,” the psychiatrist said.
“It’s already been over four years,” Larry said.
For the next few months, they tried to lead normal lives. Nothing changed. The pills he gave her did not work. Once again, Rachel began to claim that the smell was getting worse.
“Where can we go, then?” he challenged. He had been patient, understanding, and cooperative, had done everything possible to help her cope with the situation.
“Maybe if we moved upstate. Somewhere in the Hudson Valley, further up the river,” she suggested.
“It’s something inside you Rachel, not in the apartment. Will we keep moving forever?”
“I hope not.”
He felt sorry for her, but his love, he sensed, was turning to pity and compassion. They slept less and less, engaging in long, nocturnal conversations. They made love less often, and when they did it seemed routine, not spontaneous, as it had been at the beginning.
But Larry agreed to look for a place farther up the river, vowing to himself that this would be the absolute last time they would move. Moving was an exhausting process and was financially draining as well. Nevertheless, he was determined to help Rachel.
“We’ll have to commute by train for more than an hour to get to work,” he told her.
“I’m willing if you are.”
“Maybe if we went up there and you sniffed around. You know what I mean,” he said.
“That would be wonderful,” she agreed.
They drove farther up the Hudson Valley, past Peekskill, but she claimed could still detect the smell.
“Does it seem less so up here?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
They contacted a real estate broker and rented a nice house in Hudson with a garden, surrounded by trees. To Larry, the air was fresh and clear.
It didn’t help. She could still smell it.
“I’m not moving again,” he told her. It was chipping away at their relationship. He tried to rationalize his situation by characterizing her as “handicapped.” He reasoned that if she were handicapped, he would stand by her no matter what. “In sickness and in health,” their marriage vows had decreed. He felt ennobled by his sacrifice. It was a sacrifice.
Rachel gave up her job and started working from home as a freelancer. Larry’s job required face-to-face interaction. The commute was exhausting, and made him irritable and depressed. She was well aware of the toll it was taking on him but felt helpless in the face of what was assailing her .
One day, Larry came home and saw Rachel wearing a surgical mask. It was saturated with a heavy lilac smelling perfume.
“Does it work?” he asked.
“Only when I keep it on,” Rachel said, her speech muffled by the mask. She only took it off to eat and drink and when she was on the phone. She began to sleep with it on. The fragrance was so intense that it started giving him headaches. When he complained, she changed the perfume to other flowered scents, but nothing proved as effective as lilacs.
“I can’t stand it,” he told her, feeling guilty, finding it more and more difficult to cope with the scent.
“Now you see what I mean,” she said.
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“For me, it’s either lilacs or the other smell.”
Time went on, and he rarely saw her full face. Her speech behind the mask was muffled and, at times, he found it difficult to understand her words. The house was inundated with the smell of lilacs. It permeated everything, even his clothes. His co-workers would make comments about it, and after awhile he noticed that they preferred to keep their distance. He was too embarrassed to explain what it was all about.
Finally, his boss called him into his office.
“What is it with you, Larry? You stink of perfume, smells like lilacs. It’s making some people around here nauseous. Are you wearing perfume?”
“Actually no,” he responded. “It’s my wife’s. It gets into my clothes.”
“You’d better get rid of that stink, Larry. Really, it’s upsetting people. It’s too heavy, in fact, I’d prefer if you left my office right now.”
At home, he tried sleeping in another room and started double-washing his shirts and underwear, and sending his clothes to the cleaners frequently. Nothing helped.
He explained the situation to Rachel. “I may lose my job,” he said.
“Over the smell of lilacs? That’s ridiculous.”
“No it isn’t,” he acknowledged.
Larry was fired. In some ways it was a blessing because it forced him to confront his situation: his wife was tortured by the smell of 9/11, and the lilac scent was the only palliative that worked for her.
He tried working from home, but he couldn’t stand the smell of lilacs. By then, love had disappeared, although he did feel deep compassion for her problem, and a new emotion—guilt—was beginning to take hold. As a temporary solution, he rented an apartment in Manhattan and came up to the Hudson on weekends. Sometimes, she greeted him without the mask, but the smell of lilacs had seeped into the walls of the house. He could barely wait out the weekend.
Finally, he could stand it no longer. “We’re both casualties of 9/11, Rachel!” he snapped.
Rachel agreed, and they got a friendly divorce soon after.
It took Larry months to get rid of the smell of lilacs. He called her on the fifth anniversary of 9/11.
“I can still smell it,” she told him.
SHORT STORY: I Can Still Smell It
(Story featured in “New York Echoes 2” by Warren Adler)
They had moved three times, from their original apartment in Gramercy Park, to the East Side on 72nd, and finally,to the big high-rise on the West Side overlooking the Hudson.
“I can still smell it,” Rachel said.
“That‘s not possible. It’s been four years.”
Because he loved her with the same zeal and passion as when he married her in June 2001, Larry was patient, although he was really worried about her. September 11, 2001, had come and gone. They had considered themselves lucky, secretly celebrating their good fortune while expressing their pity and compassion or those lost.
In the fullness of time, the site had been cleaned up, the building and human remains carted off to faraway garbage dumps. Some of the area was restored, although there was still argument about the final outcome for the property.…
May 9, 2014
SHORT STORY: The Mean Mrs. Dickstein
A widow, she loved this exercise in delicious tranquility, and in the spring, when the weather was perfect, she would revel in this particular spot with the special view of the lake and the trees in bloom around her. Weekdays were best, for the crowds were sparse and most children were in their strollers pushed by chatting moms or nannies.
April 22, 2014
Writing Sex Scenes for the Non-Genre Novelist
For mainstream, non-genre novelists, writing sex scenes into a story line poses some serious questions. Unlike pornography, which is intended to arouse sexual excitement, literary novelists are concerned with insight, revelation, pace and tone. They must consider whether any extended graphic portrayal of sex is indigenous to character and plot development, and not merely a distracting detour offering the reader an erotic impulse. It can also be a clear sign that the story is flagging and that the author needs to reach for a kind of artificial sweetener to jolt his reader alert.
In several of my novels, such as The Casanova Embrace and The Ties That Bind, which deal with the dynamics of relationships and the mysterious nature of love, I have wrestled with the style and architecture of the sex scene. Some readers have called my sex scenes excessive and too graphic, and they may have a point.…
March 6, 2014
Funny Boys: Those Fabulous Jewish Comedians
Warren Adler's Blog
- Warren Adler's profile
- 111 followers
