Robin Gregory's Blog, page 3
February 7, 2020
Film Contest
🌺Wow! What a ride! I can't thank my contacts enough for the tremendous show of support. I LOVE you all! My book reached #6 of 40 in the contest. Not too bad. It got a lot of attention, and I learned so much. Congratulations to the winner, and to all the other contestants. Well done! 🥳🎥🎉Thank you #TaleFlick for showcasing "The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman."
February 6, 2020
Book to movie!
Let's help a disabled wonder boy get a movie deal.
Vote now for
⚡️The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman⚡️
No sign up req’d. Please invite your friends.
The angels will sing!
1 click: www.TaleFlick.com.
Vote now for
⚡️The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman⚡️
No sign up req’d. Please invite your friends.
The angels will sing!
1 click: www.TaleFlick.com.
October 4, 2019
August 15, 2019
My Date With Marc Chagall
📣⚡️The 2020 issue of Ginosko Literary Journal is out! My essay, "My Date With Marc Chagall," is on page 269. 💞💞💞
Thank you!
http://www.ginoskoliteraryjournal.com...
Thank you!
http://www.ginoskoliteraryjournal.com...
July 27, 2019
Excerpt #2 from upcoming book
CHAPTER 3
In which is recounted Moojie’s disenchantment and
further indictments that drive the valiant wonder worker to undertake an impossible journey
Night was falling when Moojie and Abu rode through the gate of St. Isidore’s Fainting Goat Dairy, three miles inland in the Valley of Sorrows. They were greeted enthusiastically by Millie Mae, the dairy dog, and goats fainted to both sides, a sea of falling beards. There was an unfamiliar motorcar and a buggy parked in the yard. The cabin curtains were drawn. Despite his crisis of hunger, Abu raised a wary hand to signal for Moojie to wait while he scoped out the scene inside. He threw open the door, and took one sniff of the steamy air laden with fried onions, turkey fat, and wood smoke, and swooned.
Henry, Moojie’s bespectacled father, looked up from minding the turkey, and said, “You’re late!” His eyes, the size of robin’s eggs behind thick-lensed eyeglasses, were pink-ringed from lack of sleep, and dotted with untreated cataracts, which had precluded his mapping days. He refused to have medical treatment. He didn’t want anybody poking around his eyeballs. He rejected Moojie’s offers to heal him with inflexible determination, the reason for which he never explained. Five and a half years ago, Henry returned from his last disastrous expedition, which had been more of a diversion to avoid home life without his deceased wife, Kate, than it was a job. With a twinge of conscience, he had left Moojie with his grandfather and sailed to a remote island in the Lesser Antilles for Monk Magoon’s “import business.” At the time, he had no idea the doomed trip was meant to establish an outpost for smuggling heroin from South to North America in fruit juice cans. After weeks at sea, the ship, Sheherazade, was driven ashore in a hurricane and wrecked on the coast of Little Tobago, becoming a total loss. He, and the rest of the crew, survived by swimming ashore, only to be met by pirates. At gunpoint, they conscripted Henry to draft a letter to his bankroller to extract a ransom of thousands of Trinidadian dollars, which roughly equalled thirty-two hundred American dollars. Monk contacted an associate in Trinidad, who delivered the ransom, and Henry and the others were set adrift in a tiny fishing boat. With one oar, they were able to paddle to the main island of Tobago, where Henry enlisted to play piano on a steamship line in exchange for the fare back to America. He still owed Monk the ransom money, plus fifty-percent interest. By then, Henry’s heart had iced over concerning Moojie. After all, his adopted son had been one grand disappointment after another, and was the reason his beloved Kate ran into the path of a runaway horse carriage. Once Henry was back from the sea, he kept a low profile in San Miguel, living off piddling savings and barter, pacing his backyard in pajamas—until the pandemonium. Had it not been for Moojie, Henry, who had succumbed to a chronic state of melancholy, would have been dragged out to sea with the tidal wave following the 1906 earthquake.
“Sorry, Papa,” Moojie said, coming into the cabin behind Abu. “Say, did you see that poster in town?”
Auntie Tilda interrupted. She shoved Abu aside and presented her cheek to Moojie for a kiss. An assortment of guests emerged from candle-cast shadows to greet Moojie and refill their glasses with mulled wine. Among them, Duncan McTavish, a neighboring rancher and Scottish immigrant who had served as a Civil War field medic. He had the face of a pickled tomato, red and withered. Having noted Abu’s defensive stance, McTavish offered a mixed metaphor as a parody: “I am watching you like you are a hawk.” Red-haired Tilda laughed wickedly, taking pleasure in any opportunity to put the cheeky ranch hand in his place. Having outgrown the need to dress like an African matriarch—a progressive statement in favor of Negro freedom—she had given up the colorful bubu gowns of her earlier years in favor of woolen skirts. However, she still wore flamboyant scarves, designed and made to order after foreign flags.
“I’ve got an important announcement to make!” Henry chirped.
“Oh no,” said McTavish, Henry’s good friend. He lit a hand-rolled smoke and spit out a bit of tobacco.
“The Spirit will descend like a dove from heaven, and the multitudes will see the Chosen One of God!” Henry said, pointing the carving knife upward.
“Not yet, not yet!” McTavish said. “Let the boy settle in first.”
Monk Magoon and his driver, a giant called the Barber who looked like a dressed up ape, approached Henry. “This better be good. I want my money and I want it yesterday. I’ve got plans.” He had once been the charismatic leader of the Gang of Five, a high-rolling pimp, heroin dealer, and mercenary for the Tammany politicians. After serving a prison term for cutting out a rival’s tongue and sending it to his wife, he had set up his own wife and children in a little house in San Miguel de las Gaviotas, and bought the general store. Despite an air of sophistication, he preferred riding a bicycle, while his socialite wife, Lila, insisted on a driver and horseless carriage. “I’m gonna build a city that works,” Monk said, “like New York. I’m gonna be the next mayor and I’m gonna make San Miguel great. Casinos, show halls, hotels. It’ll be a watering hole for dignitaries. The people of San Miguel may be stupid, but they’re not fools.”
“Yea, all that,” the Barber said.
“Wait till you hear what I have planned,” Henry said. “I’ll have your money and sweeten the deal to boot.” To appease Monk, Henry had been shaving off the middling profits from Monday’s healing meetings to make payments to this dandy with criminal connections, who had bankrolled his mapping expedition. But Henry still owed two-thirds of the hefty sum that had inflated with fifty percent interest. It was only because Monk had taken a liking to Henry’s homing pigeons, that it hadn’t gotten ugly. One nice thing leading to another, St. Isidore’s—deeded by Pappy, Captain Sean Finnegan, to Moojie, and run by Henry and Tilda—was barely able to pay the bills, much less old debts.
Squirming with anticipation, Auntie Tilda gestured toward Ginny Magoon, across the room with her brother, Patrick, and mother, Lila. “Moojie, look who’s here!” Ginny, her parents, and the Barber were dressed to the nines in the latest fashions. They looked like an advertisement in Harpar’s Bazar magazine. “Go on, talk to her,” the Irish auntie chirped. A spinster, she often bewailed the tragedy of her dying a “petrified barnacle” without grandchildren. If only Moojie would marry and get on with sprouting a new family tree! “Your entire life, all you wanted was a family, and now that you can have your own, what do you want? To hold out for a Martian in outer space!” She leans closer. “Sometimes love is an apple. ’Tis too big to fit in your mouth all at once…you were a stubborn, undisciplined child. You never did what was expected of you. Marry Ginny, dear. ’Tis time to settle down with someone of the same species, for the love of St. Peter!”**
In which is recounted Moojie’s disenchantment and
further indictments that drive the valiant wonder worker to undertake an impossible journey
Night was falling when Moojie and Abu rode through the gate of St. Isidore’s Fainting Goat Dairy, three miles inland in the Valley of Sorrows. They were greeted enthusiastically by Millie Mae, the dairy dog, and goats fainted to both sides, a sea of falling beards. There was an unfamiliar motorcar and a buggy parked in the yard. The cabin curtains were drawn. Despite his crisis of hunger, Abu raised a wary hand to signal for Moojie to wait while he scoped out the scene inside. He threw open the door, and took one sniff of the steamy air laden with fried onions, turkey fat, and wood smoke, and swooned.
Henry, Moojie’s bespectacled father, looked up from minding the turkey, and said, “You’re late!” His eyes, the size of robin’s eggs behind thick-lensed eyeglasses, were pink-ringed from lack of sleep, and dotted with untreated cataracts, which had precluded his mapping days. He refused to have medical treatment. He didn’t want anybody poking around his eyeballs. He rejected Moojie’s offers to heal him with inflexible determination, the reason for which he never explained. Five and a half years ago, Henry returned from his last disastrous expedition, which had been more of a diversion to avoid home life without his deceased wife, Kate, than it was a job. With a twinge of conscience, he had left Moojie with his grandfather and sailed to a remote island in the Lesser Antilles for Monk Magoon’s “import business.” At the time, he had no idea the doomed trip was meant to establish an outpost for smuggling heroin from South to North America in fruit juice cans. After weeks at sea, the ship, Sheherazade, was driven ashore in a hurricane and wrecked on the coast of Little Tobago, becoming a total loss. He, and the rest of the crew, survived by swimming ashore, only to be met by pirates. At gunpoint, they conscripted Henry to draft a letter to his bankroller to extract a ransom of thousands of Trinidadian dollars, which roughly equalled thirty-two hundred American dollars. Monk contacted an associate in Trinidad, who delivered the ransom, and Henry and the others were set adrift in a tiny fishing boat. With one oar, they were able to paddle to the main island of Tobago, where Henry enlisted to play piano on a steamship line in exchange for the fare back to America. He still owed Monk the ransom money, plus fifty-percent interest. By then, Henry’s heart had iced over concerning Moojie. After all, his adopted son had been one grand disappointment after another, and was the reason his beloved Kate ran into the path of a runaway horse carriage. Once Henry was back from the sea, he kept a low profile in San Miguel, living off piddling savings and barter, pacing his backyard in pajamas—until the pandemonium. Had it not been for Moojie, Henry, who had succumbed to a chronic state of melancholy, would have been dragged out to sea with the tidal wave following the 1906 earthquake.
“Sorry, Papa,” Moojie said, coming into the cabin behind Abu. “Say, did you see that poster in town?”
Auntie Tilda interrupted. She shoved Abu aside and presented her cheek to Moojie for a kiss. An assortment of guests emerged from candle-cast shadows to greet Moojie and refill their glasses with mulled wine. Among them, Duncan McTavish, a neighboring rancher and Scottish immigrant who had served as a Civil War field medic. He had the face of a pickled tomato, red and withered. Having noted Abu’s defensive stance, McTavish offered a mixed metaphor as a parody: “I am watching you like you are a hawk.” Red-haired Tilda laughed wickedly, taking pleasure in any opportunity to put the cheeky ranch hand in his place. Having outgrown the need to dress like an African matriarch—a progressive statement in favor of Negro freedom—she had given up the colorful bubu gowns of her earlier years in favor of woolen skirts. However, she still wore flamboyant scarves, designed and made to order after foreign flags.
“I’ve got an important announcement to make!” Henry chirped.
“Oh no,” said McTavish, Henry’s good friend. He lit a hand-rolled smoke and spit out a bit of tobacco.
“The Spirit will descend like a dove from heaven, and the multitudes will see the Chosen One of God!” Henry said, pointing the carving knife upward.
“Not yet, not yet!” McTavish said. “Let the boy settle in first.”
Monk Magoon and his driver, a giant called the Barber who looked like a dressed up ape, approached Henry. “This better be good. I want my money and I want it yesterday. I’ve got plans.” He had once been the charismatic leader of the Gang of Five, a high-rolling pimp, heroin dealer, and mercenary for the Tammany politicians. After serving a prison term for cutting out a rival’s tongue and sending it to his wife, he had set up his own wife and children in a little house in San Miguel de las Gaviotas, and bought the general store. Despite an air of sophistication, he preferred riding a bicycle, while his socialite wife, Lila, insisted on a driver and horseless carriage. “I’m gonna build a city that works,” Monk said, “like New York. I’m gonna be the next mayor and I’m gonna make San Miguel great. Casinos, show halls, hotels. It’ll be a watering hole for dignitaries. The people of San Miguel may be stupid, but they’re not fools.”
“Yea, all that,” the Barber said.
“Wait till you hear what I have planned,” Henry said. “I’ll have your money and sweeten the deal to boot.” To appease Monk, Henry had been shaving off the middling profits from Monday’s healing meetings to make payments to this dandy with criminal connections, who had bankrolled his mapping expedition. But Henry still owed two-thirds of the hefty sum that had inflated with fifty percent interest. It was only because Monk had taken a liking to Henry’s homing pigeons, that it hadn’t gotten ugly. One nice thing leading to another, St. Isidore’s—deeded by Pappy, Captain Sean Finnegan, to Moojie, and run by Henry and Tilda—was barely able to pay the bills, much less old debts.
Squirming with anticipation, Auntie Tilda gestured toward Ginny Magoon, across the room with her brother, Patrick, and mother, Lila. “Moojie, look who’s here!” Ginny, her parents, and the Barber were dressed to the nines in the latest fashions. They looked like an advertisement in Harpar’s Bazar magazine. “Go on, talk to her,” the Irish auntie chirped. A spinster, she often bewailed the tragedy of her dying a “petrified barnacle” without grandchildren. If only Moojie would marry and get on with sprouting a new family tree! “Your entire life, all you wanted was a family, and now that you can have your own, what do you want? To hold out for a Martian in outer space!” She leans closer. “Sometimes love is an apple. ’Tis too big to fit in your mouth all at once…you were a stubborn, undisciplined child. You never did what was expected of you. Marry Ginny, dear. ’Tis time to settle down with someone of the same species, for the love of St. Peter!”**
June 25, 2019
Excerpt #1 from upcoming book
Excerpt #1 from upcoming Book 2 of the Moojie Littleman Trilogy: The Boy Who Killed Time
I'm going to start sharing random excerpts from my next book on the 25th of each month. Please feel free to comment, I learn from you! Book 2 is a continuation of Moojie's life, but I want it to stand alone, as well. Boy, am I having fun with this! The following section introduces eighteen year-old, able-bodied Moojie, and his sidekick Abu, ranch hand and former grocer with uncertain origins...
Chapter 1
Continuing the trials of the valiant Moojie Littleman, with dubious input from his loyal companion, Abu, and other incidents worthy to be recorded by the most able historian
The world has ended many times. Ask Moojie Littleman. Four years after the disaster of the century, he was riding his aging horse, Ulysses, over sand-covered ruins. It had occurred on the 18th day of April, one thousand, nine hundred and six years following the birth of Christ. He took into account Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the blood-splattered Mayan pyramids, and the fertile Cradle of Civilization—cultures wiped out, scrubbed, reduced to ash. Maybe he survived the pandemonium for a reason. He liked to think so. After all, he had the word of a priestess who left the Earth in a swirl of light the world had never seen.
Moojie was sick with dread over an object he had lost the day before. In the old days, such a coin wasn’t worth a red cent. Romans tossed them to beggars like breadcrumbs. But he valued it as much as his own life. He felt resentment, forced as he was to minister every Monday, rain or shine, happy or sad, sweet or sour. Marvel at his healing wonders and the demands of his practice. Ask him where it all got started, and he was known to show you this antediluvian medallion stamped with a ghostly male figure sporting a nimbus.
In the distance, motorcars and buggies shared the road, marking the divide between yesterday and tomorrow. Yesterday, San Miguel de las Gaviotas had been a beachfront fishing village of shacks built from shipwreck timbers that had washed to shore. An astronomical clock had towered over corrugated tins roofs and terra cotta tiles, rippled and mottled as Stone Age artifacts. Tomorrow rang in the changing times: a town hall with a telephone, a bakery, Nickelodeon, and market, a general store specializing in livestock feed and fireworks, a cedar jailhouse with shingled rooftop. Clinging to superstition the way zealots cling to scripture, the villagers of San Miguel believed the 1906 pandemonium was the fiercest act of occult-retribution since the Indian Removal Act. They believed Native ghosts had wreaked havoc from Purgatory in an effort to even the score. Of the survivors—some say the greatest survivor of all time—Moojie Littleman never believed a word of it.
It was like any other day in November—wan and misty. In the winter, the sun never fully appeared, and the flat light made time stand still. Fog curled in on an easterly breeze, and the sun occluded San Miguel de las Gaviotas like a yellow cataract. Villagers were so isolated from the world that they got the latest news from newsreels at the Nickelodeon and old newspapers left on the train. And yet, every week modern life threatened to disrupt the troposphere of superstition. First it had been the horseless carriage, then the gyrocompass, then instant coffee. Never mind the scientific marvels, astronomical wonders, and wars of which the villagers never heard.
On this solemn winter’s day, Mrs. Latchkey, an aproned matron who possessed the long stringy limbs of an insect with a monumental thorax, was causing quite a stir outside her bakery. A crowd gathered as she tacked up a poster, and exclaimed, “He’s not a doctor, I assure you, not a priest. He’s a holy man!”
The tide was low. Four years prior, the pandemonium, which started as an earthquake and ended with a tidal wave, had devoured the former village. The residual rubble, beetle-bored timbers and a stairway leading nowhere, had the look of spit-out bones. Above the beach on a southern cliff stood the rustic chapel where Moojie had been abandoned as a baby. Sand, waves, the ghostly fog, and his horse’s plodding steps were all the company he could bear. Some wonderworker. He didn’t even know how to cure the ache in his own heart.
He pushed on, stubborn, hopeful, willing to do whatever it took.
Moojie was a kind of cowboy-Romeo who contended with rivaling natures rather than feuding families. Human on one side, Light-Eater on the other, he was both mortal and immortal. The Light-Eaters called him a halfkin. As a child, he had been called many names: a hostile, Claw Hand, pea-brain. His adoptive mother, Kate, may she rest in peace, had referred to him as diffabled. But once he mastered his healing power, he abandoned his taut legs and cramped left arm the way a tree outgrows its bark—only one example of his staggering abilities. In the isolated hamlet of San Miguel de las Gaviotas, he was, quite honestly, something more than a healer, more of a wayshower, really, because his capabilities violated the laws of nature.
Riding along the beach, he tied his shirt around his head like a sultan’s headscarf. His torso was sun-bronzed, his arms—the left, once intractable—well-hewn by ranch work. His abdomen was sunken, as if hungry with youth. He was listing to one side of the horse, eyes fixed on the ground. He simply had to find the medallion, his only link to Babylonia, the star child of his universe.
His dream that morning wasn’t just another carnival ride in his imagination, made surreal by its motion picture quality. It wasn’t just his mind. A cage held together by snakes. A bird with Babylonia’s face. A malevolent presence that sent her into a terror. The thunder in his heart and the bird’s flapping wings had conspired to ring him up, like he was a radio or a telegraph receiver, all cable and wire.
That wintry day, the world appeared so monochromatic that nothing bore distinction. In order to focus he squinted his eyes.
But then—
Horse hooves came thundering up the beach behind him! An attacker raced past, ripping off his headscarf. “ATENCIÒN!!!” a male voice trumpeted. Moojie’s horse startled, nearly throwing him off.
The attacker whooshed past and vanished in the fog.
“Whoa boy! Whoa!” Moojie said, calming Ulysses.
The attacker circled back.
“You crazy toad!” Moojie said. They called him Abu. Like Zorro or Geronimo, he had only one name. Paunchy and stiff as a banker, his dirigible-shaped head and fig-colored lips gave him a certain charm.
“’Tis the job of your squire to keep you at the ready, is it not?” Abu said. He cut a theatrical shape in the landscape: knee-high boots, waisted vest, hat with feather, and leather gauntlets.
“You get paid for rakin’ poo, milkin’ goats, and mendin’ fences. No one said anything about playin’ Sancho Panza.”
“The heart of this unworthy slave pours out gratitude beyond measure. It is upon my honor that I would serve a wonderworker such as you.”
“You’ve been readin’ Don Quixote to Teresa, again,” Moojie said.
“Why, of course! For as long as I live, I will commit the knight-errant to memory, for you, sahib, are my Don. You cured me of a life-threatening condition!”
“It was a toothache.”
“I could have died! It was but one of your many wonders. I will never forget before…you know…when your legs were strapped in metal and leather, when you limped around with crutches. Then, that remarkable day…the day you walked alone for the first time, when you cured yourself of all cripplement…well, you might as well have walked on water!”
“It was a long time ago,” Moojie said, waving away flies.
“Anyhow, Teresa is my most rapt audience.”
“She’s a pigeon.”
Moojie continued searching the sand for the precious object. Abu shadowed him, looking left and right, as if he were the rearguard of a famous general. Ever since Moojie had healed him, Abu promised undying allegiance. He shaped this noble gratitude into Sancho Panza antics that drove Moojie nuts. Moojie had no desire to sit on a pedestal, but Abu had taken the matter to melodramatic extremes. He made it a habit to ambush Moojie for his own good, to keep him on his toes, so to speak, to keep him safe from the “dark and stupid world.” Until recently, Moojie would have been amused. Normally, he would turn his horse around and chase Abu like a bandit, and once he caught up he’d take him to the ground in a vice lock, raise a knightly hand, and paste him.
But times had changed.
“You’re losing your touch, Kemosabe,” Moojie had said the day before, after he won the horse race along the beach.
Subsequently, Abu rode up next to him. It galled him that he could never catch Moojie off guard. “You have the eyes of a wolf spider, sahib. All over your head,” he complained. “I am fierce. I am strong. I am deft as a wildcat. One day you will not be able to evade my pounce. One day my famed exploits will come to life, and some sage historian will recount my incomparable feats, and my face will be stamped on a coin. This I promise, oh sage enchanter!”
“No doubt,” Moojie said. He suspected Abu confused King Morpheus of the Little Nemo in Slumberland comics with Don Quixote. All the same, Abu was a keeper of secrets. For one thing, Moojie had not been able to get out of this bookworm dressed like a shady cigar peddler the reason why he knew how to get to Uta, Babylonia's homeworld.***
I'm going to start sharing random excerpts from my next book on the 25th of each month. Please feel free to comment, I learn from you! Book 2 is a continuation of Moojie's life, but I want it to stand alone, as well. Boy, am I having fun with this! The following section introduces eighteen year-old, able-bodied Moojie, and his sidekick Abu, ranch hand and former grocer with uncertain origins...
Chapter 1
Continuing the trials of the valiant Moojie Littleman, with dubious input from his loyal companion, Abu, and other incidents worthy to be recorded by the most able historian
The world has ended many times. Ask Moojie Littleman. Four years after the disaster of the century, he was riding his aging horse, Ulysses, over sand-covered ruins. It had occurred on the 18th day of April, one thousand, nine hundred and six years following the birth of Christ. He took into account Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the blood-splattered Mayan pyramids, and the fertile Cradle of Civilization—cultures wiped out, scrubbed, reduced to ash. Maybe he survived the pandemonium for a reason. He liked to think so. After all, he had the word of a priestess who left the Earth in a swirl of light the world had never seen.
Moojie was sick with dread over an object he had lost the day before. In the old days, such a coin wasn’t worth a red cent. Romans tossed them to beggars like breadcrumbs. But he valued it as much as his own life. He felt resentment, forced as he was to minister every Monday, rain or shine, happy or sad, sweet or sour. Marvel at his healing wonders and the demands of his practice. Ask him where it all got started, and he was known to show you this antediluvian medallion stamped with a ghostly male figure sporting a nimbus.
In the distance, motorcars and buggies shared the road, marking the divide between yesterday and tomorrow. Yesterday, San Miguel de las Gaviotas had been a beachfront fishing village of shacks built from shipwreck timbers that had washed to shore. An astronomical clock had towered over corrugated tins roofs and terra cotta tiles, rippled and mottled as Stone Age artifacts. Tomorrow rang in the changing times: a town hall with a telephone, a bakery, Nickelodeon, and market, a general store specializing in livestock feed and fireworks, a cedar jailhouse with shingled rooftop. Clinging to superstition the way zealots cling to scripture, the villagers of San Miguel believed the 1906 pandemonium was the fiercest act of occult-retribution since the Indian Removal Act. They believed Native ghosts had wreaked havoc from Purgatory in an effort to even the score. Of the survivors—some say the greatest survivor of all time—Moojie Littleman never believed a word of it.
It was like any other day in November—wan and misty. In the winter, the sun never fully appeared, and the flat light made time stand still. Fog curled in on an easterly breeze, and the sun occluded San Miguel de las Gaviotas like a yellow cataract. Villagers were so isolated from the world that they got the latest news from newsreels at the Nickelodeon and old newspapers left on the train. And yet, every week modern life threatened to disrupt the troposphere of superstition. First it had been the horseless carriage, then the gyrocompass, then instant coffee. Never mind the scientific marvels, astronomical wonders, and wars of which the villagers never heard.
On this solemn winter’s day, Mrs. Latchkey, an aproned matron who possessed the long stringy limbs of an insect with a monumental thorax, was causing quite a stir outside her bakery. A crowd gathered as she tacked up a poster, and exclaimed, “He’s not a doctor, I assure you, not a priest. He’s a holy man!”
The tide was low. Four years prior, the pandemonium, which started as an earthquake and ended with a tidal wave, had devoured the former village. The residual rubble, beetle-bored timbers and a stairway leading nowhere, had the look of spit-out bones. Above the beach on a southern cliff stood the rustic chapel where Moojie had been abandoned as a baby. Sand, waves, the ghostly fog, and his horse’s plodding steps were all the company he could bear. Some wonderworker. He didn’t even know how to cure the ache in his own heart.
He pushed on, stubborn, hopeful, willing to do whatever it took.
Moojie was a kind of cowboy-Romeo who contended with rivaling natures rather than feuding families. Human on one side, Light-Eater on the other, he was both mortal and immortal. The Light-Eaters called him a halfkin. As a child, he had been called many names: a hostile, Claw Hand, pea-brain. His adoptive mother, Kate, may she rest in peace, had referred to him as diffabled. But once he mastered his healing power, he abandoned his taut legs and cramped left arm the way a tree outgrows its bark—only one example of his staggering abilities. In the isolated hamlet of San Miguel de las Gaviotas, he was, quite honestly, something more than a healer, more of a wayshower, really, because his capabilities violated the laws of nature.
Riding along the beach, he tied his shirt around his head like a sultan’s headscarf. His torso was sun-bronzed, his arms—the left, once intractable—well-hewn by ranch work. His abdomen was sunken, as if hungry with youth. He was listing to one side of the horse, eyes fixed on the ground. He simply had to find the medallion, his only link to Babylonia, the star child of his universe.
His dream that morning wasn’t just another carnival ride in his imagination, made surreal by its motion picture quality. It wasn’t just his mind. A cage held together by snakes. A bird with Babylonia’s face. A malevolent presence that sent her into a terror. The thunder in his heart and the bird’s flapping wings had conspired to ring him up, like he was a radio or a telegraph receiver, all cable and wire.
That wintry day, the world appeared so monochromatic that nothing bore distinction. In order to focus he squinted his eyes.
But then—
Horse hooves came thundering up the beach behind him! An attacker raced past, ripping off his headscarf. “ATENCIÒN!!!” a male voice trumpeted. Moojie’s horse startled, nearly throwing him off.
The attacker whooshed past and vanished in the fog.
“Whoa boy! Whoa!” Moojie said, calming Ulysses.
The attacker circled back.
“You crazy toad!” Moojie said. They called him Abu. Like Zorro or Geronimo, he had only one name. Paunchy and stiff as a banker, his dirigible-shaped head and fig-colored lips gave him a certain charm.
“’Tis the job of your squire to keep you at the ready, is it not?” Abu said. He cut a theatrical shape in the landscape: knee-high boots, waisted vest, hat with feather, and leather gauntlets.
“You get paid for rakin’ poo, milkin’ goats, and mendin’ fences. No one said anything about playin’ Sancho Panza.”
“The heart of this unworthy slave pours out gratitude beyond measure. It is upon my honor that I would serve a wonderworker such as you.”
“You’ve been readin’ Don Quixote to Teresa, again,” Moojie said.
“Why, of course! For as long as I live, I will commit the knight-errant to memory, for you, sahib, are my Don. You cured me of a life-threatening condition!”
“It was a toothache.”
“I could have died! It was but one of your many wonders. I will never forget before…you know…when your legs were strapped in metal and leather, when you limped around with crutches. Then, that remarkable day…the day you walked alone for the first time, when you cured yourself of all cripplement…well, you might as well have walked on water!”
“It was a long time ago,” Moojie said, waving away flies.
“Anyhow, Teresa is my most rapt audience.”
“She’s a pigeon.”
Moojie continued searching the sand for the precious object. Abu shadowed him, looking left and right, as if he were the rearguard of a famous general. Ever since Moojie had healed him, Abu promised undying allegiance. He shaped this noble gratitude into Sancho Panza antics that drove Moojie nuts. Moojie had no desire to sit on a pedestal, but Abu had taken the matter to melodramatic extremes. He made it a habit to ambush Moojie for his own good, to keep him on his toes, so to speak, to keep him safe from the “dark and stupid world.” Until recently, Moojie would have been amused. Normally, he would turn his horse around and chase Abu like a bandit, and once he caught up he’d take him to the ground in a vice lock, raise a knightly hand, and paste him.
But times had changed.
“You’re losing your touch, Kemosabe,” Moojie had said the day before, after he won the horse race along the beach.
Subsequently, Abu rode up next to him. It galled him that he could never catch Moojie off guard. “You have the eyes of a wolf spider, sahib. All over your head,” he complained. “I am fierce. I am strong. I am deft as a wildcat. One day you will not be able to evade my pounce. One day my famed exploits will come to life, and some sage historian will recount my incomparable feats, and my face will be stamped on a coin. This I promise, oh sage enchanter!”
“No doubt,” Moojie said. He suspected Abu confused King Morpheus of the Little Nemo in Slumberland comics with Don Quixote. All the same, Abu was a keeper of secrets. For one thing, Moojie had not been able to get out of this bookworm dressed like a shady cigar peddler the reason why he knew how to get to Uta, Babylonia's homeworld.***
May 29, 2019
One Step Closer To The Big Screen
Yippee! My screenplay adaptation of “The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman” has gone out for review. I couldn't believe my ears when, after two years of working on it, my producer, John Crye, finally said the words, "It's ready!"
Description of "Halfkin": A physically-disabled orphan discovers he has miraculous abilities similar to the Light-Eaters, a primordial race that warns intolerant locals in early-1900s America of an upcoming natural disaster.
In order to make the 294-page story fit into less than 2 hours on screen, we had to cut a few characters and scenes. Pappy and Auntie Tilda are now the central the focus of Moojie's domestic squabbles. Light-Eaters, Ninti, Babylonia, Sarru'kan, and others remain true to the novel. Dear Moojie is exactly the same character. Early on, he struggles with disabilities and unrecognized healing powers, while searching for a sense of belonging.
More news: Book 2 of The Moojie Littleman Trilogy is nearly done. “The Boy Who Killed Time” picks up four years later, when 18 year-old Moojie, now hailed in his hometown as a healer, escapes family and worshipful throngs to find the inter-dimensional realm where his true love awaits. What he finds when he gets there is completely unexpected.
I'll keep you posted on any news!
Description of "Halfkin": A physically-disabled orphan discovers he has miraculous abilities similar to the Light-Eaters, a primordial race that warns intolerant locals in early-1900s America of an upcoming natural disaster.
In order to make the 294-page story fit into less than 2 hours on screen, we had to cut a few characters and scenes. Pappy and Auntie Tilda are now the central the focus of Moojie's domestic squabbles. Light-Eaters, Ninti, Babylonia, Sarru'kan, and others remain true to the novel. Dear Moojie is exactly the same character. Early on, he struggles with disabilities and unrecognized healing powers, while searching for a sense of belonging.
More news: Book 2 of The Moojie Littleman Trilogy is nearly done. “The Boy Who Killed Time” picks up four years later, when 18 year-old Moojie, now hailed in his hometown as a healer, escapes family and worshipful throngs to find the inter-dimensional realm where his true love awaits. What he finds when he gets there is completely unexpected.
I'll keep you posted on any news!
May 1, 2019
Magical Realism That Drowns Us In Dark Beauty Then Resurrects Us
Not everybody likes award-winning movies. Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water won four Oscars: best picture, best director, best original score, and best production design, but some critics called it pedantic, shallow, unoriginal, and manipulative. It is no surprise that a film that plunges into stark contrasts is also eliciting polarized reviews. Controversy seems to badger great works. The novel of the same title, co-authored by del Toro and Daniel Kraus, hasn’t won nearly the same acclaim as the film. But here’s why I’m happy: magical realism has finally found a toehold in mainstream America. If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a finger on the national pulse, it seems America is ready for stories that treat supernatural and mythic themes as a natural part of life.
I've been drawn to mysticism and spirituality most of my adult life. During this time, I've witnessed a number of healings (my own and others’)—from the common cold to terminal cancer—without the aid of medical science. So-called miracles have become a natural part of my life. As a writer, I am excited to build stories on this premise. With a little help from Charles Dickens, I follow a tradition of subverting expectations and use irony to call into question social and religious traditions. For example, in The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman, I address Pappy's bigotry in a historic (and personal) context while showing him also as protective of bi-racial, disabled, troublesome Moojie. On the other hand, Moojie, who is developmentally challenged, is often wiser than Pappy and the adults around him. Another example can be found in The Whale Rider. Paikea, the protagonist, is excluded from her grandfather’s search for the next tribal chief because she is a girl, but she is more capable than any of his male candidates.
My greatest wish as a writer is to create stories that show characters subverting human expectations by awakening to their divine nature. For the past year I’ve been working on the film adaptation of Moojie Littleman, Book 1. Adaptation and screenwriting are completely different from novel writing so there are a number of changes to the story, but the basic themes and premise remain true to the book. My mentor, John Crye—writer, actor, producer, editor, and former CEO of Newmarket Films (produced The Whale Rider)—is as excited about magical realism as I am. While my screenplay is still in development, I credit John’s magnificent oversight for this pre-production review:
“The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman” is an emotionally powerful and viscerally stunning fantasy with a fascinating and hard-hitting family drama not overshadowed by all the spectacle. We are, with Moojie, entering a strange new world here where the incredible seems possible. At the heart of the story is always his quest for belonging, a universal human drive that resonates even in such extraordinary circumstances. The Light-Eaters are intriguing and capable of holding our interest with both their capabilities and thematic nature. Nahzi is a particularly breathtaking and memorable element. They are inspirational as well, and we can see that it is Moojie's time with them that helps him mature in the way that he does, whether it is taking responsibility for starting the trouble, or telling Babylonia he loves her with the stirring speech, "The day I met you, it was like I fell asleep and woke up in a better world.”—THE BLACK LIST, Hollywood (Aug/2018)
Europe, Australia, and South America have long-embraced magical realism in art, literature, and film. It is thrilling to see it finally recognized in America. Thanks to David Lynch's legacy, and other commercially successful films, like Being John Malkovich, Donnie Darko, and Edward Scissorhands, the road has been paved for stories that normalize mythical, spiritual, and mystical experiences. If you are drawn to films like this, you're going to love the Moojie film! Here are some magical realist films worth seeing: The Whale Rider, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amélie, Micmacs, The Delicatessen, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, and Pan’s Labyrinth.
So it’s onward and upward! Time to get back to work. I love hearing from you. Whether you are parenting or writing or being the CEO of a national corporation, I want to hear how you are following your dreams!
I've been drawn to mysticism and spirituality most of my adult life. During this time, I've witnessed a number of healings (my own and others’)—from the common cold to terminal cancer—without the aid of medical science. So-called miracles have become a natural part of my life. As a writer, I am excited to build stories on this premise. With a little help from Charles Dickens, I follow a tradition of subverting expectations and use irony to call into question social and religious traditions. For example, in The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman, I address Pappy's bigotry in a historic (and personal) context while showing him also as protective of bi-racial, disabled, troublesome Moojie. On the other hand, Moojie, who is developmentally challenged, is often wiser than Pappy and the adults around him. Another example can be found in The Whale Rider. Paikea, the protagonist, is excluded from her grandfather’s search for the next tribal chief because she is a girl, but she is more capable than any of his male candidates.
My greatest wish as a writer is to create stories that show characters subverting human expectations by awakening to their divine nature. For the past year I’ve been working on the film adaptation of Moojie Littleman, Book 1. Adaptation and screenwriting are completely different from novel writing so there are a number of changes to the story, but the basic themes and premise remain true to the book. My mentor, John Crye—writer, actor, producer, editor, and former CEO of Newmarket Films (produced The Whale Rider)—is as excited about magical realism as I am. While my screenplay is still in development, I credit John’s magnificent oversight for this pre-production review:
“The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman” is an emotionally powerful and viscerally stunning fantasy with a fascinating and hard-hitting family drama not overshadowed by all the spectacle. We are, with Moojie, entering a strange new world here where the incredible seems possible. At the heart of the story is always his quest for belonging, a universal human drive that resonates even in such extraordinary circumstances. The Light-Eaters are intriguing and capable of holding our interest with both their capabilities and thematic nature. Nahzi is a particularly breathtaking and memorable element. They are inspirational as well, and we can see that it is Moojie's time with them that helps him mature in the way that he does, whether it is taking responsibility for starting the trouble, or telling Babylonia he loves her with the stirring speech, "The day I met you, it was like I fell asleep and woke up in a better world.”—THE BLACK LIST, Hollywood (Aug/2018)
Europe, Australia, and South America have long-embraced magical realism in art, literature, and film. It is thrilling to see it finally recognized in America. Thanks to David Lynch's legacy, and other commercially successful films, like Being John Malkovich, Donnie Darko, and Edward Scissorhands, the road has been paved for stories that normalize mythical, spiritual, and mystical experiences. If you are drawn to films like this, you're going to love the Moojie film! Here are some magical realist films worth seeing: The Whale Rider, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amélie, Micmacs, The Delicatessen, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, and Pan’s Labyrinth.
So it’s onward and upward! Time to get back to work. I love hearing from you. Whether you are parenting or writing or being the CEO of a national corporation, I want to hear how you are following your dreams!
January 16, 2019
Adapt Your Book for Film: Interview With Masterful Filmmaker and Writer's Mentor, John Crye
Writers, Screenwriters, Visionaries, Filmmakers!
Do you dream of adapting a novel for film?
Get an idea of what it takes in my interview with a masterful filmmaker and writer's mentor, John Crye...
https://robingregory.net/2019/01/16/f...
Do you dream of adapting a novel for film?
Get an idea of what it takes in my interview with a masterful filmmaker and writer's mentor, John Crye...
https://robingregory.net/2019/01/16/f...
January 9, 2019
Your Book - Film Adaptation
Hey, maties!
Thinking of adapting your literary works into film?
Please check out John Crye. He has an amazing background in all aspects of writing/filmmaking, and is an extraordinary mentor. He's open to submissions right now. And, he's not after your hard-earned royalties. I highly recommend him.
http://www.truedev.sharpcrye.com/
Thinking of adapting your literary works into film?
Please check out John Crye. He has an amazing background in all aspects of writing/filmmaking, and is an extraordinary mentor. He's open to submissions right now. And, he's not after your hard-earned royalties. I highly recommend him.
http://www.truedev.sharpcrye.com/
