Hello, my friends! It's been a while. If you follow me on FaceBook, Instagram or Twitter, you know that I'm around, and busy. But I'm rethinking the best ways for me to use social media. Today, I posted for the first time on Substack Notes. Just giving it a try.
Meanwhile let's do a catch-up and round-up. The big news is that I entered my novel, Zigzag Girl, in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book competition, and it won!
I'm the Grand Prize winner! With the prize comes a year of mentorship with Richard Kahan. I'm absolutely thrilled.
Those of you who know me know how long and hard I've worked on this book. I'll say more about it another time, but briefly, it's a mystery suspense novel about a female magician that takes place in Atlantic City. Yup, Atlantic City, with detours into the notorious Pine Barrens. It's got magic, a haunted theatre on the boardwalk, a band of colorful characters, a reluctant killer. And unfortunately, for our hero, Lucy Moon, the mysterious magician she's attracted to is the prime suspect.
I'm looking forward to Zigzag Girl's journey into the world. Meanwhile I'm working on a new novel and a screenplay. More on those later too.
As for the round-up-- I don't know about you, but during the pandemic I got used to watching movies and binging shows and miniseries... I went through a craze during which I obsessed over movies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Movies before cell phones and computers. I craved the street scenes, watching human beings crowded on a city street. No one looking at a phone. When people needed to make a call, they used a phone booth!
Detectives went to people's houses to talk to them. Once you left your home or office, you couldn't be reached. Can you imagine? You were incommunicado. When you got home the first thing you did was check if the light on your answering machine was flashing, which meant you had a message. There was something so personal and intimate about human connections and interactions. Which leads me back to those street scenes.
I'm sure the lockdown and masks and isolation intensified the yearning to see people's faces again-- not on Zoom-- but in person. So I watched movies: Dirty Harry, The Conversation, Blow Out, Three Days of the Condor, Dog Day Afternoon, Moonstruck, Tootsie...
And for shows set in the present I binged Severance, White Lotus, The Last of Us, and others. I'm currently loving Perry Mason, which is set in 1930s LA, which is retro and moody with brilliant music.
That's enough for now. Hope you're all doing well. And I'll be back soon.
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