Jack Fitzgerald's Blog, page 6

Your Fitzgerald Literary Horoscope

Issued with the expressed hope that you will consider reading one of Jack Fitzgerald’s books. Look up your Zodiac sign below and see what the stars suggest you read. These books make great gifts. Most are available as E-books in addition to paper back or hard back. Click the BOOK STORE above button for ordering copies of these books.

ARIES (21 March – 20 April): You like to project yourself energetically and actively into life. You are quick thinking and quick witted. You are a naturally endowed leader, and we are sure you will use this ability to good advantage by reading CONTESSA. You have great concern for justice and human welfare and we know this particular book will decidedly appeal to you.

TAURUS (21 April – 21 May): You are practical, reliable and steadfast. Your constructive outlook and sense of responsibility to others equip you emotionally to understand all the characters in the book VIVA LA EVOLUCION. While slow to anger, you will be furious if you go to the Book Store and find they’re sold out! Therefore, it might. be best to order copies right away for you and your friends.

GEMINI (22 May – 21 June): You are adaptable, communicative, versatile, and hava an urge to adjust yourself to your environment and communicate with others. So, come and communicate with Jack. The environment is an anthology of the 9 plays of his that were originally produced in Paris, France, at The Paris English Theatre, which Jack founded. The title of this collection of humorous plays filled with wit and irony is PARIS PLAYS. You might even want to produce one of these plays.

CANCER (22 June – 22 July): You are sensitive, versatile, and patient. You have deep feelings, a retentive memory, a dramatic imagination and a fascination with the mysterious. You will undoubtedly enjoy every minute of ROGER SHOULD HAVE SAID YES. Your flair for the unusual will insure that you take pleasure in these five screenplays. Maybe you would like to film one of them on your smart phone. Anything is possible as these scenarios show.

LEO (21 July – 23 August): You are generous, warm-hearted, a born leader, enthusiastic, dignified, broad-minded, outspoken, a good organizer, love doing things in a big way and love puzzles. You have a strong sense of the dramatic. You are therefore cordially invited to try to find out who did it in the rousing mystery-thriller TEDDY BEAR MURDERS. This book is filled with candor, magnetism and imagination. Round up a dozen or so of your friends (this won’t be hard for you) and start a mystery book club.

VIRGO (24 August- 23 September): You have a contemplative, discriminating nature and a good reasoning ability and command of language. Your greatest interests are literature and art. You like to be of service to others. So, how would you like to do us a favor? Tell all the other Virgos you know that the author of TEDDY BEAR MURDERS wrote a sequel called MURDER IMPOSSIBLE. We dare you (and your book club) to find out who did it. Jack Fitzgerald, the author, also resides under this sign and claims that Virgo people will understand the nuances of the impossible murder in this book.

LIBRA (24 September – 23 October): You have a sympathetic, pleasant and courteous nature, and you are likely to be extremely popular exactly like my book PARIS PLAYS. Having a keen sense of fair play, you’ll instantly recognize that in this part anthology-part autobiography, you’re getting a lot of fun for your money. Your humanitarian concern will probably make you one of the best-word-of-mouth advertisers for PARIS PLAYS—that is, once YOU have read it. So, make plans to acquire it now!

SCORPIO (24 October – 22 November): You possess an intensity of expression and a way of thinking and feeling that springs from an inner depth. You are a power-house of emotional energy. You are subtle, purposeful and take experiences deep within yourself. You’ll for sure get all the hidden meanings in VIVA LA EVOLUCION. Therefore, tell at least 9 friends about this amazing satire on the quirky side of life in the USA so they too can enjoy all the hidden meanings this book contains. All of you will have hours and hours of fun.

SAGITTARIUS (23 November – 21 December) You are intellectually inclined, open-minded, frank and have good judgment. You love exploring and being adventurous. You are idealistic, jovial, benevolent and outspoken. You have an urge to explore beyond your own known environment. Being that you are an explorer at heart, you probably already sense that CONTESSA is a real page-turner that you can’t put down. This book is not one to overlook—especially for you Sagittarians. Order it today. You’re only a stone’s throw away from the Book Store link above. Also tell your friends about this book—in your outspoken way, of course—and we’ll love you for it. Being that YOU have the rare ability to prophesy things, you already sense how good CONTESSA is and you’ll love recommending it to your friends.

CAPRICORN (22 December – 21 January): You are patient, thoughtful, practical, methodical and resourceful. You have an inborn ability for perseverance and concentrated efforts. You tend to take things very seriously and are a fountain of common sense. You are very dutiful and punctilious. So we know when you say you’re going to get a copy of ROGER SHOULD HAVE SAID YES, you mean it. You’ll also appreciate finding out a lot about the art of screenplays—and in the process we wouldn’t be one bit surprised if you didn’t end up a tremendous film critic. Go for it!

AQUARIUS (22 January – 19 February): You have strong ideals, humanitarian feelings, originality and are a progressive thinker, You have a modest, retiring nature. Yours is an original mind, and you should always rely on your hunches.  You have an urge to identify yourself with the progressive aims of the community. Therefore, you’ll be able to see right away that’ TEDDY BEAR MURDERS is your cup of tea. Watch that tea though! It could be poisoned. Oh, well, just dive into this murder thriller and get some of your wits scared out of you. The ending is something you won’t soon forget.

PISCES (20 February – 20 March): You are emotionally sensitive, compassionate, kindly, sympathetic and easy going. You do not like to conform to a disciplined or regimented pattern of behavior. With self-discipline you can rise to great heights, especially in the literary world. Knowing your type, you’ll have so much fun reading MURDER IMPOSSIBLE that you might like to read it twice —especially after having found out its impossible ending. You’ll convince your friends they should visit this book too just for their reaction to the ending. Now, that would really be nice.

Entertaining readers and theatergoers for years, Jack Fitzgerald, a member of the New York Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild, has been widely acclaimed for his plays, novels and screenplays. The International Herald Tribune said of his writing: “Fitzgerald has an uncanny knack of capturing American types and speech; it is in his conversation and shrewd observation of character and present-day mores that Fitzgerald’s talent shines.”

Thanks for reading the blog each week. Good reading and writing. Cheers!

Murder Among The Ancients

Readers of this blog are by now certainly aware that last month I took a 15-day bus trip throughout Turkey. As I have stated, I was amazed at how modern Turkey is and how clean and up-to-date it is as a nation. The last time I was in Turkey was about forty years ago. At that time it had a great deal of poverty, tons of low-level housing, and had only a glimmer of its present-day spic-and-span veneer.

What a surprise greeted me this year when I arrived in Turkey with its new, sleek glow. I, like many others, though would have to readily admit we did not go to Turkey because of its new appearance and polish. We were there to see the ancient side of Turkey. I returned mainly because when I was there nearly a half century ago, I was doing little more than going from my vacation in the Greek isles through Turkey, making my way back to Paris where I lived at the time. ‘Practically all I saw was the third-world aspect of the country. I had very little notion of how rich its ancient heritage was.

I only became enlightened to this fact on the bus I was taking at the time from Kusadasi to Istanbul, where I would catch the train to Paris. Along the way, our bus passed a small sign that pointed to a place called Ephesus. A German tourist seated next to me asked me if I had been there. I replied no and he gave me a look of surprise. He said that was a pity because Ephesus was one of the most marvelous ancient cities of The Roman Empire. Its ruins, he pointed out to me, were one of the glories of Turkey.

Since that very day I decided to return to Turkey and see what I had missed at Ephesus. I read about the place when I got back to Paris and felt like I had really been remiss by not having paid this place some attention. Forty years later, I finally made it to Ephesus and truly it is remarkable and amazing.

I remember this August when I was driving in from the airport to the hotel where I was to meet up with my tour group, my taxi passed a large billboard near the airport that stated: Turkey—The World’s Largest Museum. Truly this was the gist of my 15 days in this remarkable country. I felt like I was in one vast museum. Such experiences help writers express their emotions, adventures and stories.

Two years ago I wrote a mystery entitled TEDDY BEAR MURDERS with the main character being an Agatha Christie type Miss Marple, loosely based on some of my experiences as a high-school teacher. This past year I came out with a sequel entitled MURDER IMPOSSIBLE, which takes place on a cruise ship to the Mexican Riviera that I had taken the previous summer. Now my main character is visiting Ephesus and the third novel in this series will be called MURDER AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

Potties in Ephesus.

The antiquated city of Ephesus that I had missed 40 years ago was one of the largest and most important in the Greco-Roman world, and the Ephesians had their fingers on the pulse of progress. The Scholastica Baths, built in 1st century included the budding versions of many modern conveniences. Ephesus had advanced public works, including municipal toilets with more than a dozen marble seats in place that can still be seen (and sat on, but please don’t use) to this day. A series of 36 holes designed to handle your business stretch across three long benches, and a trough where relatively clean water flowed underneath them. It is said that if things were chilly, the upper class Ephesians would send their slaves down to warm the seats for them in anticipation of their arrival. To garner use of the luxury of plumbing, one had to pay a fee to enter, and citizens enjoyed a small pool, mosaic floors and pleasant company while socializing in the public toilets.

The two kitties that befriended Jack.

One of the most interesting things to me about Ephesus was the number of feral cats at the ruins. In the USA, a feral cat means one that is wild and would not let you get near it on a bet. However, these Ephesus cats love people and are total scene stealers. They let you pet them and they do everything they can to get your attention. They are not necessarily looking for handouts of food. They all look well-fed. They love posing for photographs and act as though they are generally interested in all of the goings-on at Ephesus. I had two that came and jumped up very near me where I was sitting. I spoke to them and they acted as though they had known me years. Shortly though, a Russian tour group came nearby. The two cats pricked up their ears and with a quick kitty smile jumped up and left me post-haste as much as to say that they were busy elsewhere. The Russian tour guide posed his group in a circle to give his pitch in Russian on Ephesus. The two previously-mentioned kitties went over and stood with the group and listened to the tour guide as if they understood Russian perfectly. Some members of the group petted them and took their photos. Amazing. If you are a cat lover, this will give you one more reason to love Ephesus.

I with my 18 Australian fellow tourists, along with Rod my tour companion, walked the 6000-year-old stone streets and soaked up the ancient vibes of Hittites, Greeks, Romans, and even Antony and Cleopatra. The exotic pair traveled here with their entourage, among them Cleopatra’s sister, who was murdered in Ephesus in 41BC. Cleopatra was here on these very stones. Nineteen hundred years later these streets are now home only to more tour groups than you can imagine as well as these happy felines attention grabbers.

The largest Roman city outside Rome itself, Ephesus was home to the temple of Artemis – one of the seven ancient wonders – and an outdoor theater that was probably the biggest in the ancient world.

Multiple aqueducts supplied the metropolis with clean water. Paul and John, two of Jesus’ apostles, are associated with the area. Over 250,000 people are thought to have lived there, working in the markets, washing in the communal baths, filling the streets from dawn to dusk.

The library at Ephesus.

The highlight of Ephesus (and the location of the murder in my third book) is the Library of Celsus, the restored façade of which is visible from most anywhere in the city. It was dramatically impressive, both inside and out. Today the noise from the dozens of tour groups milling around the library make it seem more like a fairground than a place of historical interest. Hundreds of selfie photos are being taken at any given time.

A little further down the road lies the Great Amphitheatre, where Elton John gave a concert in 2001. (available on you tube.) (Feature Photo.). Able to house up to 25,000 people for plays and gladiatorial contests, and still used for special performances today, it was the one place that didn’t feel crowded. The steep climb to the top served to put a few people off (including me), and the sheer size of the theater meant plenty of room for everyone. You can go to you tube and see some of Elton John’s concert at this theater in 2001.

In classical times, Ephesus was a city that mattered and nowadays it matters even more. It is a marvel and well worth my waiting for forty years to enjoy. It also provided me with the inspiration for a new book and for that I am grateful.

How to Write a Book

In my travels and via this blog, I am constantly encountering people who express to me their desire to write.

I’ve mentioned here and also in person that some people enter the writing arena for profit or thinking being an author is a quick avenue to fame and fortune. To these would-be writers, I let them know that the writing profession as far as they are concerned is like buying lottery tickets and hoping for a winner. Your dreams can come true only if your numbers are the lucky ones. So, in sum, your chances of immense success with writing are nothing more than playing a special kind of lottery. Great bucks do happen but only to a very limited, lucky few.

Then we have the people who need to write or believe they have a calling to write. They will write no matter what and if it is published that is okay but not essential.

Then you have the people who ought to write. Many of these are found sitting in therapists’ offices spilling their thoughts out to a set of ears for big bucks. I’ve often told these people they’d be better off to write it all down in a book. They’ve got a lot on their minds and to pay someone to listen might and might not work out. Either way, you’re out a good stack of bucks.

On the other hand, these people could try spilling all their thoughts and secrets onto a blank screen or sheet of paper. You could edit it for continuity and in the process learn a lot about yourself and perhaps find out what your major problem in life is. Many great writers have agonized on paper and the result has been enlightenment for us the reader and fame and perhaps fortune for themselves.

A goodly number of folks don’t write or go to a paid listener. They read. They’re generally very heavy into “how-to” and self help books. (”How To Have An Attractive Personality In Ten Easy Lessons.”) This has become a lucrative field in itself for writers. At least one of these books is cheaper than a sit with a therapist.

There are others though for whom reading isn’t the answer. They have a deep feeling that they must let their feelings out. They belong to a group that I will call “there is more room on the outside than the inside.” These people feel compelled to express their feelings and emotions to others. That is just fine. You should definitely give writing a chance. If you do write via this method, don’t get it hooked up with dollar signs or the whole house of cards will come tumbling down. Your project will end up a mess and more than likely your book will never get past chapter one.

If you are going to let it all out and bucks are not in the equation, then here is what you must do. DON’T talk with anybody about your writing—just jump in and do it. Look at the hundreds of people you have heard make remarks about their going to write a book—but it never happens. It doesn’t happen because they have very little self-discipline. To be successful in writing a book means that you have to be committed to writing daily for thirty minutes to an hour. Everyday. If you can write more, that is wonderful. The rule is write more, talk less.

I’ve known many people who want to write a book or say they are going to write one. Talk is cheap but actually making some inroads into writing that book takes on-going discipline. They start writing and nothing much happens. Soon the project is forgotten and abandoned. These people tell me their biggest problem is they simply do not know how to get started or continue past page ten.

I tell friends and students of mine that a good way to establish the necessary self-discipline of writing is to compose a page review of a film or TV show they have recently seen.

In your composition, list the good points as you conceive them and the poor points. Tell what in your opinion could have made the film better or what made it an excellent viewing experience. Then try to touch on a theme in your last paragraph that the movie was trying to make. This will take you at least forty-five minutes to an hour. Do this for one week daily without fail. Then let what you’ve written cool off for a couple of days before you read it. You’ll probably surprise yourself. You are now ready to jump into telling your personal story to a sheet of paper or a screen.

Pretty soon your activity will become a daily habit and you’ll actually begin to look forward to it every day. Remember! Don’t tell anyone you are doing this. Otherwise they will ask you questions and your trying to answer them will take energy from your writing. It’s just you and that blank page or screen and nobody else.

Oh, and most importantly. DO NOT think of grammar, construction or facts. JUST WRITE! Once you’ve finished, you can edit the whole thing or get someone to help you or hire a professional.

Hey, you have a book! Now, it’s a whole new world of what to do with it when you’re finished. You may put it away and re-read it occasionally or you might try to market it for publication. The first thing is to get the book written. You can do it if you follow my no-nonsense approach as outlined in this blog.

Remember though, if you think of big bucks or think negatively by telling yourself you can’t do it or any other downer, then you are doomed. Just go see the shrink and the only book that you will produce is your check book.

Good writing and best to you.

ENCORE: Good and Bad Movies

(Original publication May 16, 2013)

I venture to say that most of you who are engaged in screenplay writing activities are more influenced by BAD movies than GOOD movies.

We all know what a really GOOD movie is. It’s a CLASSIC. We see it over and over and it remains fresh with each viewing. Even though the actors, the director and technical aspects are excellent, the screenplay for the most part seems as though it were written only yesterday. The year 1939 seems to exemplify a moment in film history when every film nominated for an Oscar as best picture that year resulted in a classic. The ten film are: Dark Victory, Gone With The Wind, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice And Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights. Gone With The Wind won.

Each of the above listed films is shown over and over on TV, mainly via Turner Classic Movies, and many, many people own their own personal copies of them. Within the last few week I re-saw Goodbye Mr. Chips (my own copy) and The Wizard of Oz (TCM) and both were about as fresh at the current screenings as they were when I first saw them many years ago.

I doubt if any of these 1939 films caused you to enter the screenwriting business. They certainly DIDN’T in my case. I have always admired them as something for me to emulate in my writing once I managed to get my toe through the door in Hollywood.

Here’s what got YOU into writing screenplays. You saw some perfectly dreadful films and you said to yourself, “Hey, I can write something better than that with my hands tied behind my back.” So, your mind hatched out the idea that screenwriting couldn’t be all that difficult.

Here’s the unfortunate part behind such thinking. Those dreadful screenplays were made into films not because someone thought they were good. They came alive on the silver screen because of the author’s special relationship with a person we shall call a mentor, which is a highfalutin term these days meaning “sugar daddy.” As I said in the last blog—such miracles happen only because someone likes you better than your writing.

The only reason I’m putting together this particular blog is to try and convince you that “quality writing”, which is ballyhooed as the Holy Grail in the screenwriting business by most other bloggers, producers, directors and potentates, is just nothing more than malarkey—or toro poo poo as I like to call it. You did not join in on the screenwriting game because you wanted to write a classic people would view over and over. You merely wanted to see your words up there on the screen and you thought it was easy due to all the crap that hits the screen weekly.

It’s a tough game and, believe me, if you’re going to ever see your words being spoken on the screen, you’ll spend most of your time promoting yourself as a person instead of a writer. I personally know someone who attended Alcohol Anonymous in fashionable areas like Beverly Hills and Malibu until they found a Mr. Right who became captivated with them and later with their writing. That writer has had several of his projects produced.

I think once you realize that playing Pollyanna (altruistic) will get you nowhere with your writing, you might just start realizing some success. In certain socialistic countries in Europe, the government helps poor souls with not a sugar daddy to their name. But here in the USA, we practice the FREE MARKET via the Sugar Daddy route. It’s WHO YOU KNOW that counts in the USA when it comes to upward mobility—especially with your being a screenwriter.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my birthday. Believe it or not, I am 83 years old. I don’t feel 83 and my outlook on life isn’t 83 at all. In fact, I feel quite young in spirit and am ready to tackle many more adventures—like the big Turkish trip I took just last month.

Jack on his original birthday September 10, 1932, being held by his father Everette.

I know when I was very young, birthdays were instilled into my psyche as something monumental. It took forever it seemed to get from one of these celebrations to the next. There was always some hoopla to celebrate my having been born. The same with the rest of my family from my grandmother to aunts and uncles and cousins. We all had this one magic day in our lives. I loved getting a year older and receiving presents for it besides.

As I got older and older, the birthdays started coming more rapidly than ever it seemed. I entered the world which I will call Hallmark—the swapping of birthday cards. I send you one, you send me one. When I was very young, some paper currency of a small denomination was generally in the card. Later on though I could shake the card and nothing fell out.

All of a sudden instead of birthdays being cake and ice cream and presents, they started becoming mind changers. When I hit forty, all I could think of was the saying: Life begins at 40. In my case that turned out to be true. My writing career took off and I was actually getting paid to write. Others though felt that 40 was the end of their youth and that Father Time had moved in next door. Not me though. I started kicking my heels up and life really became an hors d’oeuvre tray for me.

Jack ‘s birthday party at age 4 in Okolona, Mississippi.

Then I hit fifty and I began looking in the mirror for wrinkles or laugh lines as many people prefer to call them. I stopped thinking about birthdays as fun days and began feeling that they couldn’t be stopped or slowed down and were to be avoided. (Some of my friends even resorted to lying.) So I kept having those yearly additions to my age and before I knew it, I was a senior citizen. About the only gifts I received were senior discounts.

So here I am at 83. It’s been a great ride and in spite of all these birthdays, I have not slowed down. I just refuse to give in to old age and this constant flurry of birthdays that seem to come every six weeks. I don’t really dwell on numbers. I count the adventures in my life.

Some people have a completely different take on Birthdays. My friend Ken in Paris who is a bit younger than I am says his family never put much stock in birthdays. I used to find that hard to believe—because where I came from, birthdays were a major celebration almost equal to the end of World War II. Anyway Ken’s psyche has not suffered one bit from not annually being told that his day of birth is a national event.

Look around you. Some people really overdo birthdays. These special days are treated with almost Broadway fanfare. This is where I side with Ken. Maybe a gentle remembrance and a birthday card are adequate but to celebrate this day as though it were a monumental event is over-doing it. In many present-day families, super gifts are involved such as Cartier watches, new cars, trips and lavish parties. I guess it’s okay but when you look at the whole birthday scene objectively, you can see that in some cases the event is completely blown out of proportion.

I thought today about birthdays in general as they pertain to a writer. I have figured that for a writer, a birthday can be a very good writing ingredient. Having a birthday in your book, screenplay or stage play is a convenient way to get all your main characters together in a very unique way. Then you can use this situation for something big to happen such as a murder, an accident, a secret revelation. Birthdays are good to incorporate in your writing.

Maybe in real life, birthdays—especially when you hit 83—are nothing really all that different from any other day. It’s still up to you to make the fireworks keep happening in your life.

Impossible Fiction

I well remember when I was a teen-ager and began having serious thoughts about writing as a hobby or possibly a career, my father’s first cousin, Sally Kelley—an established writer, would say about certain things that happened, ”If you wrote that bit of reality down, it would be called impossible fiction.”

I’m afraid we’re living in “impossible fiction” times these days. I know when I was recently touring Turkey on a 15-day bus tour, Rod, my traveling partner, and I had just sketchy bits of news in English on the TV. These fragments came via BBC or CNN, which for the most part were broadcast in Turkish. Those slight moments in English were the only way we could find out what was going on in the USA. One piece of information that startled us was not only had Donald Trump gotten into the race for president but he was leading the pack of Republican want-to-be candidates. We were amazed and figured that we’d just have to wait until we got home to find out what was really going on.

Upon our return, we found that Donald Trump was running the biggest reality show ever—The Donald Trump For President Show. It was full of bloated comments and was feeding a certain segment of the public all sorts of braggadocios tidbits about anything that popped into his brain and slide out on his tongue. The major surprise to me was the number of people who were eating his showmanship up with a spoon and relishing each of his over-simplifications to the country’s problems.

This past week I had a wonderful week in Portland, Oregon, with my friends Dave and Pete. At night we watched some reality shows based on real-estate. One I had never heard of and it was about “Tiny Homes.” I watched as each show crafted a doll house for eager couples. We are talking about trying to put all of one’s living into a very minuscule space. Apparently there is a vast audience for this show. I watched and wondered like most people how two adults could possibly fit into such a structure and actually carry out their daily creature habits. Some inhabitants even talked of entertaining and other such things. This for sure was some of that “impossible fiction” my cousin talked about.

Then we watched another real-estate reality show about renting an apartment in a foreign country. The searchers are always given three choices and they make a pick. This might be interesting to the viewing audience perhaps because many people could be planning on moving somewhere outside of the USA—especially if Donald Trump gets any closer to the White House than he presently is.

Then if you look around you will find reality shows about any and everything possible. You soon realize that “impossible fiction” shows have taken over TV. There are duck hunters, a family of 19 and counting, a little-people show, ghost busters and the biggest one—“Keeping Up With The Kardashian.” The latter are famous for being famous.

New reality shows seem to be hitting the TV all the time. Producers are anxiously trying to come up with some new wrinkle in the reality business daily. They see it as fast money.

I well remember many years back when the Variety show was king. The Perry Como Show and Ed Sullivan type productions were extremely admired. Then comedy in the form of The Carol Burnett Show and others were all the rage.

All of a sudden though “the talk show” format came into vogue. We had the Jack Parr Show, the Steve Allen Show, Dick Cavett and a half dozen more like them that were popular. They gave us our first taste of “reality.” We heard movie stars talking about their personal lives and we ate it up.

The soap operas have always been a mainstay for those with a yen for “scripted” reality. Mix them with the talk shows and over time the entire society became hooked on how people are getting through each of their days.

For the professional writer of books, screenplays, stage plays and short stories, this new avenue “the reality show” has not been a welcomed adversary. A good reality concept can make tons of quick money and find acceptance easier than most regular writing. The big thing is you don’t have to have a written script.

Is it no wonder then that a large stadium in Mobile, Alabama, could have over 20,000 people screaming in rhapsodic glee at the reality antics of Donald Trump?

All this “reality” we’re witnessing makes me wonder where we will go from here? Who will be our next president? Will that person continue the “reality” show type of society or will he or she try to anchor us to a more reasonable approach to daily living? The election is still 14 months away. How much more material can Donald Trump provide us in those 14 months? How many more new reality shows will appear in those months?

It all makes me think of the 1935 political novel by Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here.” This book deals with the rise of “Buzz” Windrip, a popular person who gets elected to the presidency after promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and traditional values. Once elected, he takes complete control of the government and imposes a plutocratic/totalitarian rule.

So, what was fiction in 1935 is now beginning to sound like the reality show we are presently viewing in the political arena.

Keep watching to see how all of this plays out between now and election day on Tuesday, the 8th of November, 2016.

Moments

Here are some of the moments from the trip that will remain in my memory. Getting out and about, and especially to new places, is one of best parts of life. Such adventures are the seeds for many a book and screenplay or stage play. Each of these photos carries the potential for a story. Who knows which of these moments will provide that spark? Enjoy.

Vacation Hangover

As most of you who read this blog know by now, most of the content is based on various adventures I have had in my life. During my early years, most events had to do with my adjustment to life: employment, wanting to be a writer, where I lived, where I grew up and my relatives.

Once you hit a respectable age in life where most of the things previously mentioned have been covered, you enter what I call “the vacation” part of your life. You have worked, you have saved and you have a retirement check of some sort coming in. You are no longer one of the active people of society. You become a “vacationer.”

Paris tourist boat, Summer 2015.

True, I traveled a lot during my youth and pre-retirement. Five of us even went on a round-the-world trip one summer that was to last 80 days. Now, that was some jaunt and we had innumerable events to take place in those 80 odd days. We were young though and in an era of our lives where pills and aches and pains had not yet set in. The problem was that we had to work these vacation trips into our job schedules. A vacation is generally thought of as an activity that is geared to make you forget what day of the week it is. That is not the case when you are young. I don’t care where you are or under what conditions, you will still know the day of the week.

Not so when you hit the golden years which I prefer to call “the vacation years.” Here we are not bound by the convention of a clock or a calendar. We are what we call fancy free. We can go and do as we please. The problem is that our bodies are not as full of zip as they used to be. We can no longer backpack our way through life’s adventures. We are now laced into organized tours or boat cruises.

Now don’t get me wrong. Adventures are still available just for the getting up off your couch. You can for sure find many things to write about by taking a cruise or an organized tour. For example, not too long ago I took a boat cruise to the Mexican Riviera, consisting mainly of the cities of Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta. Seven days of no thought of what day of the week it was. Seven days of socializing with just about anybody you can imagine. From that trip came my latest book MURDER IMPOSSIBLE, which takes place on a cruise ship traveling the Mexican Riviera.

I just finished a vacation of five weeks that included two weeks in Paris, fifteen days in Turkey and three days in Venice. In Paris, I stayed with my good friends Ken and Christian. Then I met up in Istanbul with Rod, my friend of 45 years. We went on a guided tour call “The Treasures of Turkey.”

Gallipoli, Turkey.

This expedition turned out being like we were in the army. We had to get up early, pack and unpack daily, and overeat at numerous buffets. The hotels were splendid but on such a schedule, it was not possible to enjoy all their amenities. We were herded into many wonderful ancient cities such as Troy and Ephesus; were in Gallipoli, the site of the horrific battle between the Australians, New Zealanders and the Turks a hundred years ago; we saw and heard so much interesting history; quickly realizing though it all that I was blessed to have 18 wonderful Australian traveling partners (Rod and I were the only Americans—the rest of the bus was from Australia.) After fifteen days of intensive vacationing, we all ended up a bit like zombies from the TV series “The Living Dead.”

Replica of the Trojan Horse.

Upon the fulfillment of “Turkey’s Treasures” to our ears and eyes, Rod and I went to Venice for three days. What a beautiful and wonderful place that is. Of course it might sink any day now from the kazillions of tourists moving through its many winding, small streets and water canals—all taking “selfies” of themselves. I noticed that one of the biggest sellers in any market was a “selfie” taker—a pole you can buy to make photo magic via your smart phone of yourself and friends in captivating surroundings. I even saw some people texting as they were gliding through the canals of Venice in a gondola. On a ferry I saw three veiled women taking “selfies” of themselves. Nice eyes, would be about the only comment anyone seeing the out takes could remark.

I come back home and I’m totally fatigued. I have a bad case of jet lag because Turkish time is 10 hours ahead of us. My body is having to readjust to being awake when I’m supposed to be asleep and vice verse.

So, no way about it. Vacations are interesting but they are work. You need a lot of “r and r” once you get home. Your mind must reflect on all the marvelous things you’ve experienced while your body must recuperate from a large dose of time-change overload.

Cheers and I’m glad to be back. And I did get enough adventure for another book.

ENCORE: The Idea Machine

Original Publication: January 16, 2014

Writing begins with ideas that you gain via personal experience. As writers we depend on the photographs in our minds. What have we seen? What have we done?

No shortcuts exist. There is only experience. Bad writing happens when one goes against this grain and tries to write via ideas they gather and recycle from other books, movies, or TV. Even if your writing project involves a time or an area of which you are not familiar, you will still have to incorporate your personal experiences to make it come alive.

When I was eleven years old, I lived for a year with my great aunt, Eron Rowland, in Jackson Mississippi . She was a writer of historical books as well as her husband, Dunbar Rowland. In addition, he founded the State Department of Archives and History for the state of Mississippi. Aunt Eron wrote the state song for Mississippi.

Once when I was living with Aunt Eron, a distant cousin, Tom Williams, his friend John and his friend’s wife Mary came to spend a week or so with us in Jackson at Aunt Eron’s very big home across the street from the state capital building. Tom was really a teller of tales and a writer himself. His friend John was a poet. They both kept me in stitches.

At one time the three of them had lived in a trailer court in Laurel, Mississippi. I thought it was awfully adventurous to live in a house on wheels. Being a very curious child, I asked them about the bathroom set up. Tom and John laughed and then told me a story involving the manager of the trailer court, an overweight woman whose name was Blanche DuBois.

One day the sump truck came by to pump the waste from the cesspool. Blanche, they related, was in the area when all of a sudden the hose came disconnected and began flaying waste all over the place, with Blanche getting totally doused. It was a sight to see, they said. We all really had a good laugh—that is, except my great aunt who thought their bawdy stories were too raunchy for my delicate ears. Three years later Tom (aka Tennessee) turned Blanche into one of the world’s most famous characters in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. His core experiences at that trailer court in Laurel served him well in his writing.

Chucha from a production of Hotel Virginia in Morongo Valley, CA.

I taught Spanish in Riverside, California, in the late sixties. One summer a fellow teacher and I took a driving trip down to Guatemala City, Guatemala, in his Volkswagen van. At the border between Mexico and Guatemala, we were told by fellow tourists just driving into Mexico from Guatemala as well as the border guards that terrorists were operating along the route and that we had to be very careful.

Joe and I decided that we’d chance it anyway and crossed into Guatemala. We pushed our luck by straying off the main highway to check out some Indian ruins. On the way, we were stopped by a gang of terrorists and robbed. We had taken the precaution though to hide some of our money in the van so we weren’t totally without funds.

Program cover from the Los Angeles production of Hotel Virginia.

That night we recuperated in a dump of a place called Hotel Virginia, which had a tawdry lounge called Bar Romance. A very full-figured prostitute named Chucha plied her trade on us with no success but she was a wonderful character. I knew right then that if I ever became a writer, I would use her.

Flash forward to my Paris years when I founded The Paris English Theatre. I wrote a play called Hotel Virginia about some terrorists kidnapping a group of tourists and holding them hostage in a bordello by the name of Hotel Virginia. One of the lead characters was the very same Chucha. She did not become as famous as my cousin’s character Blanche, but she was an idea that became a stage play.

So, we plant our ideas like seeds and they grow into novels, plays and screenplays. Life is a giant platter of hors d’oeuvres just waiting to be experienced.

Turkey Part 2

 

Whirling Dervish

I really haven’t mentioned it in my blog before but a couple of years ago I fell down some stairs and fractured my hip. Since that time I have had a mobility problem and a lot of the time I use a cane when I’m on uneven surfaces.

Silk spinning. One cocoon has a mile of thread.

This trip to Turkey could easily be called “The Helping Hand Tour.”  I say that because every time I’m faced with a challenge of getting up and down or managing stairs, a super helpful Turk is always there to help with a smile. But then I’m doubly blessed. All 18 of my Australian traveling companions are there Johnny-on-the-spot to help with great big friendly Aussie smiles. I think it took half of them to get me into one of the mosques–taking off my shoes and later getting them back on.

Our guide Dar Han, a Turkish ex-basketball player who now works for this excellent touring company (Insight Vacations), has been super helpful in making sure I am fully included in every activity. Together with his expertise and the friendship of all my new Australian friends, I can safely say this tour has been sheer magic.

I am overwhelmed with how vibrant the Turkish economy is, how clean everything is, how friendly everyone is, and what a fountain of history Turkey is.

Cappadocia hotel.

We have seen so many things. The most magic for me has been Cappadocia, an area full of underground cities and chimney rock cones (Featured picture) which people have carved out and live in. We visited a charming lady in her cone home and she served us tea. We even saw a floor show in a cave structure.

We’ve seen and visited large mosques, palaces, a rug factory where it takes women nine months to weave one carpet, a Roman amphitheater whose acoustic are excellent and is still in use.

My new Aussie friends (l to r), Paul, Austin, and Ann.

The food has been very good. Mainly we’ve had buffets and what copious feasts they have been. We’ve stopped at roadside auto malls and they have been clean and a shopper’s find.

If you want a thousand and one marvels, I hope you will consider this vibrant country.

My Australian agents, Tony and Tracey.

I wish I could list by name all my new Australian friends but there simply isn’t space. I will say though that I’ve really enjoyed each and everyone of them tremendously. Austin and Ann, Shirley and Dave–and to Tony and Tracey whom I call my Australian agents. Tony has made sure that all my books are well publicized within the group. Thanks so much to all the other new friends who have made this trip so much fun.

Cheers!

I guess our tour really is just one big “Turkish Delight.”  My very best to you from this amazing country, Turkey.