The Things that Fascinate

The day is old, but it's not quite time for bed.  I surf the TV channels and find nothing.  I switch to my DVR...ah, here we are.  A collection of some of my favorite movies of all time.  Tonight I press "Start" on "The Lion in Winter."

This is the good stuff.  Kings and queens and politics and treachery and passion and...

If you ever wondered what sets my imagination free, it is watching films with the depth and smarts of this 1968 gem.

I don't suppose I shall ever manage to pen such stirring monologues.  Nor shall I cast the timeless Kate Hepburn as one of my heroines.  I dare not try to step on such toes.

Instead, my muse begins to think about what else may have happened behind the storied walls of the castle.

And so we begin again.

***

You can find my latest exploration into royalty in "The Heart of the Dragon."  Now available for your ereader!

The Silver Scream

A great many things in my life have inspired me.  Perhaps movies could be counted near the top.  It wasn’t always happy ever after, for me.  As a child, I adored the old creature feature films, many where shadows were the source of all fear.  I watched Mel Brooks’ classic High Anxiety and loved all the imagery, camera angles and hidden characters…all spoofs of the greatest master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

Thus when I decided to embark upon an erotic story that featured gremlins—those unseen creatures that live in the wiring—it should not surprise anyone that I placed the book in an old movie house.  How many tales of fear and love crossed that silver screen in its heyday?  And what of the old wiring?  Does it keep memories of lights and passion? 

The Silver Scream is not a tale of happy ever after, but perhaps lives closer to those suspense films of old where a great many things will happen in the course of time, many of them evil.  This tale releases August 10^th at Purple Sword Publications, and you will find it available at most major ebook outlets shortly thereafter.

TAGLINE:  Trapped in the wiring for decades, this Gremlin desires but one thing…and he can’t have her.

BLURB:  Film school student, Gilda Albright, has taken a job in the newly refurbished Orpheum Theatre as a movie projectionist.  The gem from another era prompts her imagination to take flight, and she invites her boyfriend Seth to a private screening.  Looking like a movie star from the 50’s, she strips in the spotlight, ensnaring Seth’s lust and drawing the eager eyes of another to her buxom figure.  The building takes on a life of its own—fear invades Gilda’s workdays.  Will the unseen gremlin let her go or fulfill its erotic obsession with a vision from the past?

The Sweet Sense of Anticipation

It's with great dread and anticipation that I look at the upcoming week. 

First there is the fun!  Richard dropped off the RV at NHMS this morning and tomorrow we'll drive up with a few more things and...just so we can wander around the track a bit.  Watch the incoming RV's.  Think about the great empty grounds that will be seething with humanity come next Saturday morning.  I've said it many times, the NASCAR circus is an amazing feat of organizing and promotion.  Seriously, Barnum & Bailey's train has nothing on the hauler parade that criss-crosses America continually for much of the year.  This is spectacle on the grandest scale.

Now, the not so fun...well, not entirely true.  Thursday night, come midnight, the final Harry Potter movie will open to thousands of dressed up muggles.  About 1,500 of them will be at my theatre.  In about one hour I will need to feed and seat these 1,500 patrons.  It is enough to make one shiver in their shoes.

It is in itself something of a spectacle, these midnight screenings of the latest and greatest film.  We will have capes, hats, wands, tattoos on foreheads, owls (fake) perching on arms and long, striped scarves wrapped around necks that would otherwise be bare in the summer heat.  By and large, everybody laughs, is very patient and mostly cooperates with those moving the cattle in and out of the holding pens.  And all the craziness will be over when the projector turns on and does its magic (yep--praying that the projector gremlins don't play any games on us).

So, you see, it's a big week.  But before there is the Harry Potter insanity followed by the sudden appearance of a major city in the midst of the New Hampshire forest, there is tomorrow:  Sunshine and 84, so says the Weather Channel.  We'll wander around the track and enjoy the rumble of various vehicles as track personnel scurry to ready for their own version of a movie opening. 

And I won't have to stress about a thing.

That's tomorrow.  I'll worry about the rest when it gets here.

See you at the races!