Enjoy an exciting day trip from Orlando, FL to Art Basel Miami Beach with the Elar Institute on Saturday, December 3rd. For more info, or to register, email artbasel@elarinstitute.org
Category Archives: Celebrations
Worth the Wait!
At least a decade ago, I sat in the 16th floor ballroom of the historic Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, and listened to a group of fellow Spalding MFA students read from their works in progress. Many were passable; a few were darn good. And then Bren McClain stood up and read what would become the first chapter of One Good Mama Bone. About three sentences in, I leaned forward in my chair, transfixed. Soon, I forgot to breathe. When McClain finished her piece, there was the kind of hush that fills a room when no one wants the reading to be over. Then the applause began, and we leapt to our feet.
For ten years, I’ve been waiting to hear what happens next. And this novel does not disappoint. If you are a mother; if you have or had a mother; heck, if you love Mother Nature, buy this book. (Available for preorder now.) I promise you’ll never forget Sarah Creamer and her son, nor Mama Red and hers.
Published by Pat Conroy’s Story River Books imprint at the University of South Caroline Press, with a forward by Mary Alice Monroe, One Good Mama Bone is Southern Gothic fiction at its finest.
Sewing Holes: The Movie
When Tupelo Honey Lee opens the King James version of the Holy Bible to Matthew 7:7, she finds, in the beautiful red letters that tells her they are the words of Jesus, this promise: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
On the back of a prayer card at Our Lady of the Sea, Honey reads this quote from Saint Joan of Arc: “Work, and God will work also.”
Although as Honey grows up through the pages of Sewing Holes, she learns that God is not an ATM, and Jesus doesn’t run a fast-food restaurant where you place an order at the counter and get handed a bag full of wishes moments later, she does find, by the end of the book, that believing in something bigger than yourself matters; that hope outlives despair; and that the love we give away to others is the only miracle we ever really need.
If you know me at all, you know that the publication of my novel was a dream that came true after years of struggle, and with the involvement of just the right people at just the right time. Now I’ve been given a new dream, and have been quietly working behind the scenes to learn the necessary skills and meet the right people to make the adaptation of Honey’s story into a feature film a reality.
The first draft of the screenplay is complete. I know it has flaws, and will workshop it with an amazing screenwriter/professor in mid-November. Rewrites come after that, and then the search for the perfect producer and director begins in earnest, although I already have my heart set on a couple of successful indie-filmmakers right here in Orlando whose work I truly admire.
Come take this journey with me – one step at a time – as I ask, seek, knock – and work.
One day, in the not-too-distant future, we’ll all sit together in a local theater as the lights go down, the music swells, and Honey’s voice-over begins: “Memories are colored by perception, and the truth is pocked with holes. This is the way, after almost half a century, I’ve stitched those holes together….”
Auld Lang Syne at Orlando Film Festival
Here’s another Scribbler pick from the Orlando Film Festival, currently happening at the Cobb Theater downtown. Auld Lang Syne tells the story of three couples at their annual New Year’s Eve retreat in West Virginia. The story starts with a visual tour of the to-die-for cabin where the gathering is held. By the end of the story, my one question for writer/actor Kimberly Dilts and director Johanna McKeon was: did the cabin survive the shoot? They assured me it did, and today my mind is lingering more on the three couples, and hoping for the best for all concerned. Yes, by the end of two hours, I cared about them like old friends, and I believe you will, too.
Here is the synopsis from IMDB:
“On New Year’s Eve, married couple and theatre artists Steven and Vanessa host an annual get-together at their parents’ cabin for their oldest friends, struggling actress Sadie and her new surfer/rock star boyfriend Jude, Bryce, a repressed accountant, and Jodie, a world-weary photojournalist. When Jodie and Bryce drop a relationship bombshell over dinner, they set off a chain reaction of truth-telling that promises to destroy the carefully-crafted reality of everyone present. How long is too long to wait for your dream? Can art change the world? Are we all doomed? A film about old friends and artistic passion, Auld Lang Syne is a meditation on the creative class, global warming, and the power of damn fine pie.”