Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 33

Can There Be Comedy Post-MeToo?

My inspiration for Mick & Moira & Brad was the romantic comedies of Hollywood classics. I wondered whether, in our presumably enlightened but admittedly distressed age, lovers can like as well as lust after each other. Can’t we all get along? Might we actually enjoy each other’s company – even when we have all our clothes on?

I thought the book managed just that. My models were Myrna Loy and William Powell (aka Nick and Nora Charles), and Tracy and Hepburn.

Apparently, the judges of the Independent Press  and the Amor Romance Novel Awards agreed it was worth the effort. Reader’s Favorite and Booklife reviewers, as well as colleagues who generously gave their attention as beta readers, appreciated the humor.

Mick & Moira & Brad is a #MeThree romantic comedy!

So I was dismayed to see an online review that lamented the book fell short of expectations and just wasn’t funny:

Most of the dialogue between all of the characters came off as courteous and very rarely had strong emotion to them. I was looking forward to the fact that this was a romantic comedy, yet I seemed to have missed any humor that might have been intended. 

But courtesy – mutual respect, if you will – was very much the goal of the exercise! I recognized that in trying for civilized discourse I might disappoint readers who crave a good, snarky fight. But in this story, none of the characters throw things or even slam doors.

And some of the humor is between the lines!

– paperback giveaway –

These three are so generous with their story they’re giving away 10 paperbacks.

 

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Be curious. And please argue!

Elizabeth Gagnon, podcast host of Teatime with Miss Liz, asked me recently what single word defines my character. I chose curious. I recall reviewing movie producer Brian Grazer‘s memoir, A Curious Mind, in which he claims that asking questions of influencers, such as directors and studio moguls with experience in showbiz, has been his secret to success. He goes on to claim that curiosity is the single most valuable trait that teachers should encourage in schoolchildren.

We’re now at a phase in the evolution of technology when rote memorization of names, dates, and events is no longer necessary. Decades ago, the invention of the handheld calculator eliminated one of the most annoying chores of my grade-school education – long division. Now with even the most inexpensive computer, you can make an Excel spreadsheet do calculus for you – and some apps have generation of complex curves built-in. That’s a subject I never even attempted because so many of my freshman-college classmates were failing the course. (I don’t like to fail, but when I have, I’ve learned more from the recovery than from any advice I ever got.)

What remains essential – fundamental – is curiosity.

We’re all online data drillers now. But if you don’t know what questions to ask, how can you progress? At anything?

My podcast GetPublished! Radio is on indefinite hiatus but remains a rich online archive. The late, great announcer Bill Navarro would introduce me:

And now, here’s your host Gerald Everett Jones. He has the answers because he’s already made all the mistakes himself!

That’s another thing about curiosity: It will make you skeptical about advice you hear – and presumed facts that might be little more than gossip. Curiosity will drive you to challenge opinions and check facts.

When I was in middle school, it was generally understood that studying for history exams was all about memorizing names, dates, and events. A great-uncle who was a believer in phrenology once felt the shape of my forehead and pronounced I would have a lifelong propensity for such rote learning.

But the most valuable thing I ever learned in any history class was a single sentence spoken by my seventh-grade teacher:

Remember that Russia will always covet warm-water ports.

Do you want the answer to why – in today’s news – Russia wants to guarantee its access to the Black Sea? Why Syria is their alternate route to the Mediterranean? Why building a pipeline from the oil fields surrounding the Caspian Sea – through Afghanistan – to the waters of the Indian Ocean was important enough to fight a war that destroyed the Soviet system?

Curiosity will take you there. And bear in mind that as wondrous as AI might be or become, nothing starts until you ask the robot a question.

Oh, and when you have opinions about what you discover, please argue with your comrades about it. I don’t mean argue as in provocation for a fistfight. I mean argue in the lawyers’ sense of developing a case and backing it up with evidence.

Yes, debate. That’s the skill the kids should learn after they’ve honed their curiosity and research skills. When I was in debate club in high school, we participated in competitions with clubs from other schools. The topic for the semester was set. Back then it was, “Should the United States commit to nuclear disarmament?” And our team engaged in furious (library) research.

Does it strike you that members of Congress seem to have forgotten the skills of serious debate? Wouldn’t it be sweet to hear some reasonable arguments?

The catch was, in those school debate competitions, your team wouldn’t find out which side of the question you were expected to take until right before the judges told you to begin!

“I could argue either side.” Most law-school students can claim that. And they might argue with passion, but they learn that passion shouldn’t make them deaf to their opponents’ objections.

But what about grade-school children in, say, Florida? In your town?

Preacher Evan Wycliff is a an amateur sleuth, a reluctant investigator because he has a curious mind and sympathy for unresolved personal problems. This first book in the series is free as Kindle or EPUB. The other two novels are $2.99 now.

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Does the “marriage plot” still work in romance novels?

For generations, a staple of romantic fiction has been a genre called the marriage plot. An underprivileged female protagonist must find a rich, aristocratic husband, or her life will be ruined. Her choices for the future will be to enter a convent or resign herself to spinsterhood.

Amusing scenes in my new romantic comedy, Mick & Moira & Brad, are rooted in post-metoo sexual politics. It’s a “full and frank exchange of views,” as the Brits say. Nevertheless, it’s not a “marriage plot” because Moira’s all-or-nothing goal isn’t a wedding but success in showbiz, provided she’s willing to pay the price of fame. Unlike women of yesteryear, Moira knows the decisions are all hers. But – how to decide?

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides is more of a melodrama, also a love triangle, but written years before #MeToo. It’s a story about four friends, which begins when they meet in college at Brown. It updates the question embedded in the old theme. It’s about whether we understand anything about what makes relationships work.

The Marriage Plot is masterful on many levels. At first I wasn’t drawn to any of the three characters in the love triangle – Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. Each seemed deeply flawed, and they are. Except you read along and find that Eugenides thinks we all are, just as deeply in our unique ways, and are none the lesser for it. That’s the way people are, and the way life goes. We stumble through it, thinking we are somehow in control, and it’s what happens nevertheless while we are furiously busy making other plans, or simply fretting about making up our minds.

This is a literary novel, in the best sense, and I was surprised to read some critics cramming it into the diminutive genre “campus novel.” That would be like classifying Pride and Prejudice as a rom-com, which is not as irrelevant as it sounds. The marriage plot, you see, is the genre form of which that work is representative. Eugenides wants to know whether the marriage plot is dead as a meaningful literary form, now that marriage seems hardly worthy as the ultimate goal of youthful aspirations.

But back to Eugenides. The characters meet in a semiotics class at Brown, and the author gives a lot of detail about the subject and its impact on their personal thoughts. Semiotics claims, for example, that humans would not experience love as we have come to understand it unless we had read about it (or seen movies about it) first. There’s a similar concept in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. The narrator comments that peasants in the French countryside cope with life less well than the sophisticated citizens of Paris, who have all read novels that give them models for how to act in society.

Ultimately, this is a novel about perception, what we make of reality as it is happening to us, and our inability to make meaning of events in time to control their outcome. Things happen or they don’t. Things work out or they don’t. They mostly don’t, and we move on.

Perhaps significantly, the character in this book who understands himself best is the one whose grasp on reality is most tenuous because he has to work at staying sane. In his acknowledgments, Eugenides credits several experts and sources for genetic research (another theme), but he thanks no one for his extensive detailing of bipolar disorder and its treatment. So naturally I wonder how he came by this information, and at what personal cost.

Mick & Moira & Brad is a romantic comedy about post-metoo sexual politics. It’s all up to Moira – but how to decide?

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His only inflatable friend is his swelling ego…

 

What is a young man’s most vulnerable part?

You’d think Rollo would be discouraged, but he continually fails upward.

I suspect that only an avid new female readership will make it possible to resurrect popular interest in male-centered romantic comedies. As evidence it’s women to the rescue, I offer the expert opinion of none other than Jane Austen, who wrote in 1813:

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Literature of the late twentieth century was dominated by male authors. In fact, there was an unrelenting series of Johns, including O’Hara, Steinbeck, Cheever, Updike, and Irving. Humor in the category of literary fiction was dominated by the hirsute likes of Wodehouse, Thurber, Mencken, De Vries, Lefcourt, and Barry. Exceptions included Dorothy Parker, who made a career of lampooning men, and Erma Bombeck, who picked unmercifully on housewives.

Since that time, book industry statistics show that women now buy more books than men do — and today they hold many of the managerial posts at publishing houses. In the area of comedy, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, appearing in 1996, set off a firestorm of book buying in the now sensationally popular genre of chick-lit.

So, one might ask, “Is male-centered comic fiction still a thing?” It is, I suggest, if women embrace it, starting with poor Rollo.

In February, Rollo #1 (the inflatable one) is 99c on Amazon Kindle and FREE from EPUB stores. The other two books in the series are reduced to $2.99 in either format. The audiobook of My Inflatable Friend is available from Audible and other audio booksellers.

 

 

 

 

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Ever Wonder What It Takes to Make a Pop Singer a Star?

 

With the Grammy Awards – Music’s Biggest Night – set to take place on February 5th, it’s the perfect time to talk about how a music celebrity – like Beyonce´ and Lady Gaga – finally makes it!

A new book – “Mick & Moira & Brad: A Romantic Comedy,” by award-winning author Gerald Everett Jones, is rich with insights into “the biz” – which includes Hollywood and especially the music industry. The book offers a tantalizing view of how major entertainment agencies manufacture celebrity.

The story revolves around a woman with a talent for singing who’s plucked from the legal profession by an aggressive Hollywood agent who reps famous singers…and is determined to do the same for the character known as Moira. But her arrogant billionaire boyfriend has his own plans for his girlfriend and these three characters may butt heads and sparks fly.

Gerald is available for interviews to discuss the timely themes about surrounding his new book – especially how a music star is born and can be thrust into the limelight of pop stardom.

He can also share his “recipe for success,” when it comes to developing stories and characters.

– Paul Sladkus, Host, Good News Planet

Mick & Moira & Brad: A Romantic Comedy – Gerald’s thirteenth novel, available in Kindle from Amazon and trade paperback from booksellers worldwide.

 

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Challenges of Post-#Me-Too Relationships

It’s not your mother’s world.

Transparency – Hollywood super-agent Mick McGraw‘s office is glass on all sides.

Loyalty – Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bradley Davenport thinks a dog will always be more affectionate than a spouse.

Determination – Criminal-defense attorney Moira Halimi-Joubert is sure she makes all the decisions. And she can. But as she prepares for a new career on the stage – why is she so unsure of herself?

Kindle is FREE today on Amazon. Go4T!

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Thinking About Thinking: A Love Triangle Won’t Roll

Amazon Kindle Weekend Markdown$1.99 December 31 – January 2 – Get It NowJust posted on BookLife Reviews:

From the prolific Jones (author of the Evan Wycliff Mysteries series, among other titles) comes a witty and timely romance between a criminal defense lawyer who has kept her opera-trained singing a secret in her professional life, an eager and well-meaning talent agent, and a stiff, highly proper financial manager. Readers follow Moira, Mick, Brad, and a host of other engaging characters through their Los Angeles lives as Moira makes the life-altering decision to seize a wild opportunity. She’ll fill in for—and possibly impersonate, if necessary—an international music star who no longer can fulfill her upcoming obligations, a process that entertainment lawyer Mick assures her can make her a star, too … or that she can walk away from once her contract’s up. With little holding her back, save for her potential romance with the seemingly disinterested Brad, Moira leaps at the opportunity to pursue her dreams.

Jones’s prose is fleet and conversational, and the setting and scenes come across vividly. Characters are engaging and witty, especially in their responses to each other; Jones is adept at the parry-and-riposte nature of romantic-comedy dialogue, and his showbiz chatter likewise shines. At times, the character of Brad is opaque, his choices driving the story forward but not always clearly rooted in what readers know of him. Of course, that’s also how it feels to Moira, a cunning and smart woman, whose existence has been upended by surprising new obligations. Jones never lets the comedy—or the element of wish-fulfillment fantasy—inherent in Moira’s situation obscure the real emotion at the story’s heart.

The stakes are high—millions of dollars are on the line—but the novel is breezy, at times even low-key, with Moira already accomplished and established before her fateful choice. That means the narrative at times lacks urgency, but the wit, quips, and situations continually engage. Romantic comedy readers with a love for dry humor may find this right up their alley.

Takeaway: Romantic comedy readers will enjoy this story of a lawyer-turned-music star and her love triangle.

Great for fans of: Virginia DeBerry, Terry McMillan.

Get It on Kindle

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New Rom-Com Shows How Hollywood Manufactures Celebrity

LaPuerta Books and Media announces the December 27 release of Gerald Everett Jones’s thirteenth novel, “Mick & Moira & Brad: A Romantic Comedy.” Reminiscent of classic movie-studio comedies like “Pat & Mike” and “The Thin Man” couple Nick and Nora, this contentious but lighthearted love-triangle story engages its trio in a “full and frank exchange of views.”

Witty dialogue is very much the order of the day. Hollywood trade secrets – and gossip – are the center of it. Mick McGraw is an aggressive Hollywood agent who reps famous singers. Moira Halimi-Joubert is a headstrong criminal defense attorney who studied opera. Brad Davenport is an arrogant billionaire hedge-fund manager who has a soft spot for dogs. Mick wants to make Moira a superstar, but she may have to dump Brad.

What does the battle of the sexes look like when the combatants are equally matched – and might actually like each other? #MeThree?

The twisty plot takes rom-com fans inside a big-time movieland packaging agency as Mick’s team scrambles to put together a stadium concert patterned on Cher’s “Farewell Tour.” The superstar they’ve scheduled has canceled just nine weeks before opening night. They need a totally new show theme – and a new star. With Moira in the role, her “Follow This!” show brings back famous names and songs from pop culture – and surprises everyone, including Moira, who must decide whether to pay the high price of fame.

The book has already attracted rave reviews. Showbiz insider Roberta Edgar, coauthor of the award-winning book “Million Dollar Miracle” says, “This is smartly written with strong, sometimes very witty, dialogue. The narrative is rich with insights into “the biz,” particularly the music industry. Jones nails the latest in upscale fashion and other contemporary cultural trends. The story is fun, it moves fast, and it’s about Hollywood.”

“Readers’ Favorite” reviewer Pikasho Deka writes, “A seamless blend of witty dialogue, humor, and romance makes ‘Mick & Moira & Brad’ a thoroughly entertaining read you don’t want to put down. Gerald Everett Jones’s novel is a treat for anyone who loves romantic comedies. With a fast-paced plot and vibrant characters – whom you’re not going to forget soon – the narrative feels like a breeze. The three main characters, Mick, Moira, and Brad, all have strong yet distinct personalities that create a compelling dynamic, which is a delight to the reader. Their interaction involved some humorous and quick back-and-forth dialogue, and those were some of my favorite scenes from the book. If romantic comedy is your go-to genre, you will have a blast with this one.”

As these reviewers agree, the book offers a tantalizing view of how major entertainment agencies manufacture celebrity. As Jones describes Moira’s new stardom, “Show business wasn’t just a job change. She’d jumped into an alternate universe, a phantasmic place with its eccentric traditions, rules, and jargon. A place where talent was never enough, where emotions are manufactured, delivered, and manipulated as a product.”

Himself a veteran of the Los Angeles music business, John Rachel, author of the recently released novel “Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun,” applauds the showbiz realism: “A star is born? Not anymore. A star is manufactured. Gerald Everett Jones in a style of storytelling that is uniquely his and endearingly superb has spun a riveting yarn of an epic makeover, a young lady who’s plucked from the legal profession and thrust into the limelight of pop stardom. It’s a fascinating look behind-the-curtain at what goes into the creation of music icons like Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.”

“Mick & Moira & Brad” is available for preorder in trade paperback from booksellers worldwide, as well as in Kindle e-book format from Amazon. The release date is December 27, 2022.

Gerald Everett Jones lives in Santa Monica, California. This book is his thirteenth novel. He is a board member of the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC), a Film Independent (FILM) Fellow, and a winner of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Diversity Award. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the College of Letters, Wesleyan University, where he studied under novelists Peter Boynton (“Stone Island”), F.D. Reeve (“The Red Machines”), and Jerzy Kosinski (“The Painted Bird, Being There”).

Learn more about the author, including his other multiple-award-winning novels, at his website geraldeverettjones.com.

[Featured photo credit: The Everett Collection. Author photo: Gabriella Muttone, Hollywood]

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Harambee Means “We Are One”

“Harambee” is the motto of post-Independence Kenya. The country was ceded from the British Empire in 1963 after a period of social unrest, which included the Mau-Mau Rebellion. A leader in that uprising was Jomo Kenyatta, who became the new nation’s founding president. His son Uhuru is the outgoing incumbent president, defeated by William Ruto in the election, just concluded last August.

Harambee – We Are One. E Pluribus Unum – One from Many.

May it be ever so!

He went as a passive observer. He stayed when they showed him how to live.

 

 

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Book Review: A Prominent Kenyan’s Memoir and Daring Exposé

Just after the recent Kenyan national elections, a disruptive and revelatory book appeared: Stronger Than Faith: My Journey in the Quest for Justice in Repressive Kenya – 1958 – 2015 by Oduor Ong’wen. Just who is this author, and how does his life fit the provocative description in the book title? Prof. Yash Tandon, respected Ugandan policymaker who is renowned for a career opposing the viciously oppressive Idi Amin, wrote this about Ong’wen in the Introduction:

… In 2015 he [Ong’wen became] … the Executive Director of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). The ODM is a centre-left political party – a grassroots people’s movement which was formed during the 2005 Kenyan constitutional referendum campaign and led by Raila Odinga, whose foreword to this book aptly captures the twists and turns of Kenya’s democratic struggles, at the centre of which Oduor was.

Do powerful interests in Kenya want to suppress this book? Why did it suddenly appear after the national elections? Is its fate safer now? Or potentially more disruptive?

Most striking in this voluminous memoir is Chapter 28, “The New Eating Chiefs,” which alleges more than twenty power-grabs, public thefts, and scams on Kenyan taxpayers by the outgoing administration. Lest these protests seem fake news promulgated by the defeated party, note that The Standard – the nation’s most respected newspaper in Nairobi – is serializing the book in its current issues – perhaps to counter fears that Ong’wen’s version of history will soon be suppressed by entrenched interests.

Kenyan politics – and geopolitics – interest me because before the Covid outbreak I was a resident in Kenya for two years, having gone there to support my wife’s work in wildlife conservation and child welfare. This residency occurred after years of trips between our US home and various ecotourism venues in East Africa.  Just before our decision to move there, the previous national election had taken place in 2017. The principal opponents for president were Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the first president and founder of the republic Jomo Kenyatta, and Ong’wen’s colleague Raila Odinga. Raila (Kenyans often use given names rather than surnames, even in formal writing) is a veteran politician with a reputation as a populist leftist. Uhuru is seen as more conservative and backed by entrenched interests. Uhuru, the incumbent, and Raila have been contending with each other for decades. Accusations of voter fraud have been common in Kenyan elections, but when Raila lost to Uhuru for the second time in 2017, concerns about corruption exploded as violence in the streets. Raila insisted so vehemently that the process was rigged that he held an “alternative swearing-in ceremony” in a public park, attended by a huge crowd.

If some of this sounds familiar, bear in mind that this cockeyed scenario in Kenya took place three years before the disruptive events of the 2020 US elections – well before many of my countrymen and I thought such events were possible here.

Parallels, although tempting, between US and Kenyan politics are not straightforward. Far from being an exemplar for our election-denying past president, in political philosophy, Raila might have been viewed as Kenya’s Bernie Sanders. And to make matters perhaps more confusing to Western observers, in 2018, after a year of prolonged disputes compounded by longstanding tribal unrest, Uhuru and Raila came together in what has since been termed “the Handshake Deal.” Besides affirming peace between the parties, the deal seemed to make his rival Uhuru’s new right-hand man – so much so that Uhuru must have agreed to back Raila for president in the next national election – which is just what he did in the one concluded in August.

So Raila was looking like he’d made a deal of either convenience or necessity with the establishment. His populist messages softened, but they didn’t disappear. Meanwhile, after another year, the third man at the top of the government – Uhuru’s deputy William Ruto – broke away from the ruling Jubilee Party and declared himself an independent.

Ruto, himself a political veteran who had previously held cabinet posts, had initially been groomed by Daniel arap Moi, the country’s long-serving president from 1978 to 2002, having served since Independence in 1963 as Jomo’s vice president. To this day, Moi is widely regarded by Kenyans as their most unashamedly corrupt leader. But in joining Uhuru’s government, Ruto disassociated himself from Moi.

In this last election, Ruto squared off against Raila. Ruto won by barely a percentage point. Raila once again cried fraud, but he nevertheless conceded after the Kenyan high court ruled his objections had no basis.

Raila recently pointed the finger at those responsible for his defeat:

Our election was not stolen by [Ruto’s coalition] Kenya Kwanza. It was an international conspiracy involving Britain and the United States. A former president of the USA who many Kenyans admired greatly was on [the] Smartmatic Board. (Raila Odinga quoted in Kenyan Lyrics, October 8, 2022).

So – here we are today – Raila is still an active voice in Kenyan politics and head of the Orange (ODM) party of which Ong’wen, author of this confessional book, is the director.

One might assert that Ruto’s hands are not clean. Since his swearing-in as the nation’s new chief executive, Ruto is acting like a reformer. Maybe he is one. Perhaps significantly, politicians from both the Moi and Kenyatta families lost their seats in Parliament.

But now Raila continues to spin the next installment of the conspiracy story. He keeps insisting that the vote was rigged against him. He further accuses Western powers of favoring Ruto over him, presumably because of Raila’s prior leftist positions. Raila is telling Kenyans that the world’s big-money interests want to manipulate the future of this fast-emerging economy, and he stands instead for regional control of resources and investment.

All during my stay there, I heard Kenyans in the coffee shops, taxis, markets – and especially when tongues let loose in the bars – repeat, “Corruption is the mother of Kenya.”

Now I live once again in Southern California, having returned just prior to the Covid outbreak.

Then in 2019, I began to look at the US political scene with Kenyan eyes. All the while, I have marveled at how fast economic development in Kenya is progressing. (And this is a factor in the persistent human-animal conflict that threatens the natural world everywhere and the health of the planet.)

I have speculated and still believe that Kenya is poised to become the Silicon Valley of East Africa.

With Ruto in place and the elections having been settled this time peaceably, I’d expect international investment there to boom. Apparently, the Biden administration concurs, as evidenced by the appointment of Meg Whitman, past CEO of Hewlett-Packard, as ambassador.

A fictional story of love, intrigue, conspiracy, and corruption in Kenya.

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