Waiting on Hollywood

It’s that time of night that film and television news occasionally trickles in. 

Both SOMETHING MISSING and UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO have been optioned to film and television producers, and since they are working on the West Coast, I tend to hear from them around 7 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Lately, the news has been good, and this evening was no exception.  Big-named movie directors are bandied about in terms of UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, and a serious, no-nonsense television producer is hard at work on SOMETHING MISSING, trying to convince someone that it would make a great television series. 

It can be quite exciting.    

But I’ve learned over the past year to never get your hopes up in terms of film and television.  Everyone from Oprah’s production company to Johnny Depp’s “people” have considered the projects and passed, so despite the enormity of the names, I’ve learned to just sit back and continue writing my books. 

If something happens, it happens.  I’m an author who might get lucky enough to have a movie or television series based upon my stories someday,  but at my heart, I write books for people to read. 

This is my focus.

The remarkable part of the whole process is that I never anticipated anything like this happening when I first started writing.  Truthfully, I never even expected SOMETHING MISSING to be published.  I thought I’d end up with a book to pass onto my kids someday, as evidence that their dear old dad actually existed in a younger form and had half-a-brain. 

Everything since I finished the book has been gravy. 

But in the last two years, I’ve found myself on the phone and exchanging email from time to time with powerful and influential people in Hollywood.  Producers, directors, writers, and agents who want to pick my brain, pitch their idea and pay me for the rights to shop my book around.  I often hang up the phone after one of these calls and pinch myself, wondering if all this could still be real.

Hopefully one day it will be.