More writing less screenplays...

Some of my friends like to say that I don't really do anything but sit around. And they say that with a combination of sarcasm and envy. After all, I type a few words in the morning than go to lunch then have a nap and then maybe make some calls.

I'm sure you get the same thing, at least from the "civilians" who go to work every day, fighting traffic and crowded streets.

I don't really say much about that, they do what they have to do and I do the same. They ask me how do I handle not really working at a steady job. I say it's more secure than having a job up till the age of 50 and then being kicked out of that job they had.

In other words, there's no security to either of those worlds.

As I said in the previous blog, writing a screenplay takes me around three months and usually it's a spec screenplay that I hope gets made.

Last year I wrote The President's Heart, and as of now, it still hasn't gotten a buyer. Some people like it, two are considering, but nobody's read to bite. The year before it was Christmas Carole, which got four potential buyers until someone at Hallmark said they've already done it with another script.

One could say Hallmark has redone a few hundred screenplays.

The only reason my Town That Christmas Forgot got made was because a woman picked up the screenplay from a stack and read it and liked the teen-age girl in the screenplay.

Did it matter if it was done before? Hell, they're all Christmas movies so what's the difference. I've said that the only new idea for Christmas would be Christmas On Mars. I'm actually considering that.

But before, I want to write a pilot for a webisode that could maybe go somewhere. I won't tell you what it is for now, and maybe I might change my mind. I've always wanted to write a screenplay called Rock and Roll Heaven, sort of a fantasy style story that I've had spinning around in my head for at least 20 years.

But in between those ideas and a half dozen more, I'm writing a bathroom book, you know, the kind you leave in your bathroom for guests. 

I'm calling it "How To Not Get Beat Up In A Smalltown Bar."

You like? Or not?

It's a collection of stories from the many roadtrips I've done, at least a half million miles of travel. You get to gather a lot of stories and incidents. And the title is based on an actual incident in North Dakota.

So as of now these are the other things I'm writing;

1. Finished a proposal for Emperor of Mars to be filmed in Alberta hopefully 2014 but maybe it might stretch to 2015.

2. Selling more of my Working Writer's Screenplay book, which will soon be at the UCLA bookstore as well as Samuel Franch bookstores, BookSoup in Hollywood and of course Amazon. A Kindle version will be out soon.

3. Working with Jule, the 90-year old who flew in the Pacific during WW11 and is writing his memoir of that period of time.

4. A few ideas I'm kicking around; 

Convert a screenplay I wrote called Secrets Of The Salmon to a novel.
Get rights to Gentle Ben, the movie that made me a lot of $$$. I could write another.
Write my mother's last wish, her collection of calendars and how she outlined our lives. It'll be called Annie's Calendars.

So it goes.