A few years ago I wrote a song about Gappy's adventures but had never gotten around to finding a musician to perform it.  Then I met Bernard Badria, who lives in South Africa, and knew I'd found the man for the job. When he accepted the challenge, I got down to work and added another verse to include Book Six, as the original song only covered books One through Five.  The resulting song was six or seven verses long!  I e-mailed Bernie the lyrics and notes of the song, along with a recording of me singing it.

While I was singing into my cell phone, however, I could tell that the song was way too long!  I think Bernie was relieved when I told him not to start working on it until I had trimmed it down to size.  I had to reduce it to only three verses, plus add an instrumental, or middle-eight, section between the second and third verse.  It was really tough slashing the song to half the size.  Any author hates cutting out much-loved sections of copy.  But it had to be done, and after much agonizing I managed to accomplish my goal.  I then sat down at my piano and composed the instrumental piece and its transition into the final verse.  That was also too long and had to be cut down.  I sent Bernie the new Word file of the song and a new recording from my cell phone, including a hummed version of the middle-eight, and waited in anticipation to hear what he came up with.

Bernie launched into the project with great good humor and did an excellent job, adding percussion and backup vocals to the recording of him singing and playing his guitar.  I couldn't believe it when I heard the first take!  Here at last was my Gappy Song in actual sound!  Even my husband, who'd poo-pooed the idea of my writing a song, had to admit he liked it when I caught him bopping his head along to the tune.  Now for the next step of turning it into a music video.

In my vision, the video was comprised mainly of beautiful black and white graveyard scenes from Oakwood Cemetery.  That's where Gappy's fourth adventure takes place, and Uncle Sam is buried there.  Videographer Bob Shenise and I drove around the cemetery, taking photographs.  It had recently snowed, which was great for my black and white theme, and Bob kept exclaiming in delight at the resulting monochrome effect of the snow against the headstones and monuments.  

​Once all the photos were downloaded on my computer, I  selected the ones I wanted to use and changed them to black and white. I also tone-mapped them to make them appear more spooky. Then I laid them out, story-board -style, on my dining room table in the order in which they would appear in the video, numbered them, and added the numbers to my typed Word document of the song.   

STEP ONE: The first step in writing a screenplay, once you know the story, is to write out a list of scenes. It's Monday morning. With my trusty Gappy exercise book on my lap, I page through Book 4, Gappy and the Thieves, from start to finish, and write down all the scenes that appear in the book. Others may type these on their computer or begin straight away by plugging the scenes into their screenwriting software program, but I prefer to do it long hand. The physical act of wielding a pen just feels good and sets the creative cogs in my brain a-turning.

Action descriptions and pieces of dialogue start to overflow onto the back side of the index cards as my imagination gets into movie mode, envisaging the action in each scene. Three hours later, the sun is sinking lower and so is my pile of blank index cards. By this time, I'm scribbling feverishly, hardly able to keep pace with my racing thoughts, and I've worn my pencil lead down to nothing. Barely breaking my stride, I reach into my purse and grab a pen to continue writing.

I insert new scenes here and there and break a couple of scenes into two of more parts, numbering them 13.2, 15.3, etc. At last I record the last scene on index card No. 51. With the added scenes, I've got about 60 scenes in total. Yikes! And this is just for book 4. Remember, a page of screenplay equals roughly a minute of film, and kids' movies usually run around 120 minutes. The first screenplay for books 1-3 is already around 110 pages. I comfort myself with the fact that at least I've started the process.

STEP THREE: Bright and early Wednesday morning, I extend my dining room table to its full length and lay out my index cards in rows.
​

Then I stand and peruse them. I run through the scenes in my head, imagining how they would play out on a movie screen. One of the most important rules in screenwriting is to make sure that each scene is relevant to the story and serves to propel the action forward. In other words, the audience needs to know the information imparted in the scene, and be left wanting to move on to the next scene to see what happens next.

Hour after hour I pour over the index cards while asking myself these questions. Slowly I weed out scenes that seem irrelevant or unimportant. A few are somewhat repetitive so I combine them. This requires some adjustment as far as timing and even the ordering of certain events goes, but makes for tighter, more interesting, fast-paced action, which is good.

​I pour over those index cards for two more days, weeding out more irrelevant scenes, combining others and inserting new ones. I invent some scenes and insert them in certain spots to provide a character thread and add some suspense. I also change the order of some of the scenes, but not too much: movies for children are usually enjoyed best when presented in a logical, progressive fashion rather than in flashbacks and bouncing around between past, present and future.

STEP FOUR: Saturday morning dawns, and I'm happy with the way my scenes are progressing, one leading into the other. It's beginning to look like a real movie! I fire up my laptop and open a new document in my screenwriting program. The right side of the screen has pictures of index cards, which you can arrange into however many columns you want. I like to have three across.

I  type the scene heading on the first index card and add whether it's interior or exterior, the location, and the time of day, e.g. INT. ICE RINK - AFTERNOON. In the body of the index card I type the brief action summary, notes, bits of dialogue etc. As I create each index card on the right side of the screen, the scene heading is duplicated on the left side of the screen, which contains the actual screenplay.  

On Sunday afternoon, I page down through my scenes and do some tweaking. Even now, I'm still finding scenes to discard or combine. On the left side of the screen, I start typing the action below each scene heading, e.g. "GAPPY (14, tall, dark hair ...) is skating alone when a trio of GIGGLING GIRLS girls approaches him on a collision course." If you want more information on how the actual screenplay program works, see my earlier blog post of 5/18/14, entitled Hollywood News and the Next Book. 

STEP FIVE: It's Monday morning and I'm liking how my scene headings and corresponding action and descriptions (brief as possible)  are looking. Now it's time to add the dialogue. One week to go to submit-to-producer time.

"This will be the hardest part," I think to myself, but it actually turns out to be the easiest, even though I basically create most of the dialogue from scratch. Only rarely do I feel the need to look up the language used by the characters in the books. Typing on my laptop at the dining room table overlooking the back yard, I play out the scenes in my head. I even act out a few (as long as no one's watching me), and the dialogue almost writes itself. Not only is this the easiest part but it's a heck of a lot of fun too!

I complete a dining-table line or two of scenes per day, and by the end of the week I have all the dialogue down. The deadline's up for submitting the script to J the producer, but there's no way I'm sending it to her until I've read, reread and edited it 20 to 30 times more.

STEP SIX: The next week, I edit, edit, edit, edit, and edit some more. I pare down the dialogue, concentrating just as hard on the unspoken word as on the spoken one. For example, instead of Character A saying, "I dunno," and Character B agreeing with the response, "Beats me," they can just as easily shrug at each other or swap glances. The audience will "get" what's going on and feel more connected and invested in the characters and the mood of the scene than they will if they're made to listen to a verbal exchange which doesn't require as much of their own imagination to mentally and emotional discern what's taking place. 

Another challenge I face when writing dialogue is that although I've lived in the States for a long time, my writing has remained quite British in style, and the characters in my books sound a little British too. This lends them a certain charm on the page, but for an American-made movie, J wants them to sound American. Therefore, on Sunday afternoon, my daughter helps me Americanize the dialogue where necessary. Plus, she teaches middle school so she's perfect for telling me, "Mom, kids don't say that!" and suggesting editing changes.  I'm definitely including her in the movie credits. 

I stay up til the early hours of Monday morning doing several final read-throughs and making slight changes. Finally I begin to experience that mental tingling elicited by a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction for a job well done. I'm excited, thrilled, full of energy at 2:00 in the morning. I e-mail the screenplay to J and can't wait to hear what she thinks of it.
​

I flew to L.A. on a Wednesday in mid-January to see my producers ("J" and "K"). Our mission: to discuss the screenplay of the first Gappy movie, which encompasses books one through three. Most of our business can be handled over the phone but it's nice to meet face-to-face once in a while.

K very kindly made her apartment available, and our first meeting took place on Thursday afternoon. K and I spent most of the time reading the script out loud to J in a monotone so that she could picture the scenes unfolding in her imagination and not be influenced by someone else's vocal expression.

The reading took a long time because there was a great deal packed into those 128 pages: over-long descriptions of actions, settings and characters and wordy dialogue. Generally one page of script equals one minute of film. I did the bulk of the reading aloud and felt quite "bogged down" as I waded verbally through the densely-printed pages. Three hours later I finally pronounced the final word.

Slightly dazed from screenplay overload, we all took a break to relieve our parched throats and ears. There wasn't much time left for discussion that afternoon but a few of  the suggestions J and K voiced were quite major ones. It was nice to hear that K's young granddaughter -- who'd listened in for a while -- had enjoyed the scenes where Gappy went to summer camp to learn about his magical vampire powers.

K's granddaughter aside, I returned to my hotel feeling quite depressed. The task of editing such a cumbersome screenplay while incorporating all of the changes, additions and possibly new story lines seemed totally overwhelming.  I went down to the hotel exercise room and put in an energetic hour on the treadmill to gain steps for my Fitbit challenge. 

The next meeting took place on Saturday afternoon. It lasted four hours, and I took copious notes. "More exciting," "More dramatic," were the phrases mentioned most often. Then Janet dropped a bombshell.

"Doesn't book four continue on with the villain who first appears in book three?" she asked.

"It does," I answered.

"And the situation with the villain finishes at the end of book four?"

"It does."

"Well," J concluded with a determined-looking nod, "we have to add book four onto the end of the movie."  

Groaning inwardly, I knew that she was right, but the thought of adding a whole other book onto the end of the screenplay that was already more than two and a half hours long was daunting. I also had to come up with a way of transitioning book three into book four, since that adventure takes place months later. Feeling my pain, J instructed me to write book four's screenplay first and then we would tackle the editing of the first one.

"Deadline?" I asked. Much though I love writing, I have a slight procrastinate problem when it comes to starting a project. Having a deadline helps. We set a date for three weeks. Twilight loomed in the Californian sky as J drove me to LAX. My red-eye flight was scheduled to take off in six hours. I spent the wait-time mulling over the meetings in my head. 

Back home, I spent the first two days continuing to mull -- as I said, I have a hard time starting. Unlike the first screenplay, which I wrote ass-backwards, I was determined to tackle this next screenplay the correct way. Deciding I could do with a refresher in screenwriting technique, I pulled out my Screenwriting for Dummies book and opened it to page one. Yellow highlighter in hand, I started to read.

Two days later, I finished the book with a renewed sense of confidence and enthusiasm. I could do this. I spent the next day typing out all the points I'd highlighted and grouping them into categories in logical progression. Then I printed out my 14-page cheat sheets for quick reference.

At last I felt ready to start writing the screenplay of book four. Two weeks to go til submit-to-producer time!

​To be Continued . . . 

Having been blessed with a love of reading and writing, I have often wondered what it must be like to not be able to see well enough to do the things I so enjoy. My local PBS station has a program called RISE: a subscription radio program for the blind and print-disabled, whereby subscribers can log in to hear the daily newspapers read to them, as well as magazines and books.  Years ago, I’d looked into RISE but my work schedule never allowed me to volunteer. After quitting my job in March to concentrate on my writing career, I revisited the idea. I happened to be driving near the station one day, so on the spur of the moment I went in to ask about registering. I met with Joyce, the volunteer coordinator and filled out an application.
 
In August, Joyce called to tell me she was scheduling training sessions and would I come in for an interview? After chatting for a while, however, she suddenly said, “Why don’t you just read me something over the phone?” I picked up the first thing at hand—a literary agency’s instructions for submitting a manuscript—and read her a paragraph or two out loud.  When I‘d finished reading, Joyce said, “I think we can waive the interview. When will you be available to come in and observe a session?” (I think my British accent probably helped.)

My ultimate goal is to read best-selling novels on the air, but Joyce told me I should first gain experience by reading the newspaper. Two pairs of volunteers do this live on the air daily: one pair from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. and the other from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. For my first day of observation I had to arrive at the studios at 8:00 a.m. (ugh, early!). Coffee from DD helped, but it does tend to make me pee a lot. I met the morning volunteers—very warm and welcoming people—and watched them prep for an hour. This involved circling the headlines and the tags at the ends of the articles so as to easily see which pages the stories continued on to and hopefully read seamlessly from one page to the other without pausing too long--especially if the first part of the article ended on the first page in the middle of a sentence.
 
Besides the national and local news stories, they also marked the editorial, Letters to the Editor, Dear Abby, horoscopes, birthdays, death notices, weather, lottery results, TV listings, sports articles, and rankings. The latter two are totally out of my comfort zone because I’m not a strong sports fan. They also marked a few articles to read as fillers, in case they had a bit of extra time to fill.
 
Then it was time to move to the studio to watch them in action.

The volunteers sit facing each other, separated by big, sloping stands for holding the oversize newspaper pages. One volunteer works the control board and mics; the other takes care of reading the lead-in intros: one at the start and the next after the mid-point break at 10:00 a.m. It was exciting to watch them work. They were obviously pros because they’d been at it for years. They even invited me to read an article on the air. I was surprised at how extra-British I sounded as I carefully read at a slower pace than I usually do—my mom always accuses me of gabbling.
 
After observing a second session a week later, I told Joyce I felt ready to give it a go. When she needed a fill-in volunteer the next week, she e-mailed me to ask if I’d like to take it. I took a deep breath and said Yes.
 
I arrived promptly at 8:00 a.m. to start prepping. My co-reader, Nancy, arrived soon after. I peppered her with questions, most of which I thought I knew the answers to, but just to reassure myself that I DID know the answers. As 9:00 approached, I felt more and more nervous. What if I screwed up? What if I couldn’t find what I was supposed to read next by the time my turn came around? What if I caused DEAD AIR? All these scenarios screamed through my head as we pushed open the heavy soundproofing door and entered the studio.
 
Nancy was handling the control board, so I was the one to start with the lead-in intro. I managed that okay, and then Nancy started reading the main national story on the first page. We were off and running!

The first hour wasn’t too bad because we just read the national and local news on the first few pages. What’s more, none of the local stories on the Empire page carried on to other pages.
 
We broke at the halfway point for about one minute—barely enough time to catch our breath—then started on the second hour of reading. This turned out to be much more difficult because we had to jump from one section of the paper to another without pausing. You had to be organized.
 
After I’d read the standard second-hour lead-in, we started with the death notices, alternating on reading the obituaries. Whoever read the second-to-last death notice would begin the next section of readings: the editorial. I thought I had myself organized, but somehow my pages had gotten themselves all mixed up. Panicking slightly, I tried to locate the next section. Each time Nancy read a death notice, I quickly did another search, keenly aware that one must NOT shuffle the pages too loudly, as listeners have been known to comment on the volume of same. Do you know how hard it is to search through a newspaper without rustling? Kind of like trying not to giggle in church.
 
As each death notice takes about ten seconds to read, I was thus limited to quick ten-second forays into my by-now-hopelessly-disorganized mishmash of pages, then swiveling back round to the mic just in time to read the next death notice—hopefully not the same one Nancy had just read. We're supposed to mark the items with a red X once they've been read in order to avoid reading the same one twice. I didn't have time to perform this vital function, however, because I only had ten seconds to find those elusive editorial pages. At this point, I had newspaper pages scattered all over the floor, on the table behind my chair, and stuffed into a little cubby beneath the tabletop out of the way because I had thought I didn't need them anymore. 

I breathed a sigh of relief when I found the editor’s section in the nick of time. Then it was on to Dear Abby. Pheeuw! That went okay too.
 
It didn’t last.
 
It was now 10:30 a.m.: time for ten minutes of sports, and woe betide if you didn’t start reading them right on the dot of 10:30! I'd asked Nancy to read the rankings because I didn't know what they looked like or what the abbreviations meant, such as "GB." I didn't know that stood for "games back." What does "games back" even mean? Anyway, we're supposed to read as many major national and local sports articles as we can but to look for a good stopping point where the main story ends and the list of play-by-plays begins.  The first article I read was fine because it was about horse racing at Saratoga, and I happen to like horses. After Nancy's turn, I launched into the next article--I think it was about a baseball or NFL team.

So, I was reading this thing and, before I knew it, it had morphed into play-by-plays. Uh, oh. I'd forgotten to prep that part. I should have stopped reading already, but now I was trapped. Having read the first set of play-by-plays, I felt I had to continue. I didn't really understand what I was reading, so I didn't know where it was safe to stop. I mean, one score might lead into another, and I might stop in the wrong place. I soldiered on through a seemingly-endless litany of confusing play-by-plays. 

By this point, my throat was parched, my mouth was dry, and I was finding it increasingly hard to enunciate properly because my tongue kept sticking itself to the roof of my mouth. Then the inside of my top lip started resolutely gluing itself to the front of my teeth. That ten minutes of sports was lasting a lifetime. I found myself opening my mouth wider and wider in an effort to pronounce the gummy words more clearly and heaved a sigh of relief when I finally reached the end. I grabbed my glass of water and gulped it down to the last drop.

We had a few minutes to go before horoscopes at 10:50 a.m., so Nancy started reading a local-interest piece as filler. I swiveled around and almost fell headfirst off my chair as I bent double to rummage through my mishmash of pages for another filler story. Ah! Found one! I laid it out on my stand, located the page that it carried over to, and set it next to the first page so as to continue reading from one to the other without interruption.
 
When my turn came, I started reading the headline. However, as I started on the byline, something made me glance quickly at the next page out of the corner of my eye, and I realized it was the wrong one! The story I was reading only had two paragraphs on the first page, so I couldn’t just stop there. What if it stopped in the middle of a sentence? All these thoughts raced through my head as I continued reciting the byline.
 
I believe I said something like, “Excuse me. I have to locate the right page.” I swiveled round to bend over the pages lying on the floor behind me, hoping against hope that the correct one would somehow magically appear on top. No such luck. I think I muttered something to Nancy. Hopefully I was far enough away from the mic so as not to be heard by the listeners. Fortunately, after observing me suddenly disappear from view mid-sentence, Nancy realized the newbie was in trouble and calmly introduced another fill-in article as if nothing had happened.

Still trembling with fear, I realized the next section was birthdays. Due to the timing, it would be my turn to do them as soon as Nancy finished reading her article. I knew the list of birthdays was located on page A-2, but where was A-2? I also needed the D section for horoscopes after that. Lord, help me! I managed to spot the D page on the floor which contained the horoscopes. I also located the TV-listings page. But could I find A-2? It was nowhere to be seen.

Desperately trying not to rustle papers too loudly, I scrabbled in the cubby hole beneath the tabletop for the pages I’d stuffed in there earlier to get them out the way. Maybe A-2 was in there? No such luck. By this time Nancy was approaching the end of her article. I’d be on the air in two seconds, and I still hadn’t found the dratted A-2.
 
I don’t know if Nancy possessed ESP, but she ended her article and seamlessly moved on to reading the birthdays. What a relief! How did she know? At last we were in the home stretch. Ten minutes to go, and then the nerve-wracking ordeal would be over!
 
I started to relax as we began reading the horoscopes, followed by the TV listings. Then, since it was one minute before 11:00 a.m., Nancy put on a 60-second promo. We were done!

I left the studio in a daze. Despite reassurances from Nancy that these things happen to everyone, especially when they’re first starting out, I felt like a dismal failure. All I wanted to do was go home with a fattening frappe from MacDonald’s, munch on chocolate and chips, and feel sorry for myself. When Joyce asked me how my first time went, I plastered a smile on my face and said, “Fine, thanks . . . with the exception of a few hiccups.” “Good,” she said. “Great! I’ll let you know when I draw up the next two-month schedule.”
 
I left the building, never to return. I couldn’t handle it. I’d screwed up ... ON LIVE AIR! I was sure the phone lines were already buzzing with listener complaints, even as I drove away from the station. Of course, I turned the wrong way out of the parking lot and got lost in the sprawling complex of office buildings. By the time I found my way out of the maze, I was feeling frustrated as well.

During the ride home, however, I started to calm down. So, the first hour hadn’t been too, too bad. It was just the second hour I had to work on: organize my pages better, and so on. Maybe I would return to WMHT and give it another shot. Now that I’d suffered through my baptism of fire and made it out the other side relatively unscathed, I was forewarned and forearmed.
 
A week or so later, Joyce circulated an e-mail looking for people’s availability over the next two months. I sent her a couple of dates I couldn’t do and verified I could only do morning shifts because I have grandma duty in the afternoons. The schedule soon arrived. I was down for three sessions in September, and the first one started on September 2nd. Yikes! No. None of that! This time will be better, I told myself.
 
On the evening of September 1st, I watched the news on TV so I would have an idea what stories the next day's newspaper would contain. I also went over my cheat sheets again. I'd need a new one soon. The current one was getting a little too covered in notes, arrows, timelines and highlighter.

September 2nd dawned. I showed up at the station at 8:00 a.m. on the dot, armed with my new pass card to get in the door, a pad of sticky notes, and a bright yellow highlighter—all the better to find things with. I didn’t drink coffee on the way in this time for fear of bathroom breaks between 9:00 and 11:00. I took the bags of newspapers into the RISE cubicle and set to work, circling headlines and tags, death notices, and extra stories for fillers. I stuck large Post-It notes on the edges of carry-on pages, with the page numbers written large in red pen. That way, I’d be able to locate them easily without too much rustling. I looked over the sports articles to mark places where I could stop reading before the lists of play-by-plays began. I felt more in control. Once I got in the studio, my pages were going to stay in order. No more papers on the floor or stuffed into cubbies!
 
My partner arrived: another warm and friendly volunteer willing to help the second-time newbie. Not too many questions this time, but I did ask her to do the sports rankings. Duly prepared, I entered the studio feeling somewhat more confident than the time before.
 
The first hour went fine. The dreaded second hour went fine too. I was an ultra-organizing machine. Before I knew it, it was time for me to read the sign-off. This had actually been a lot of fun! I’d even relaxed enough to engage in some lighthearted banter on the air with my partner. I left the building with a swing in my step.
 
And now I can’t wait to do it all over again!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted since January!  There are two pieces of news to get you up to date on: 1) Gappy's journey to the big screen/Hollywood, and 2) Book 7. 

You might know that all six of Gappy's Young Vampire Adventures have been optioned by a movie producer in L.A.  She loves the Gappy series and is excited to be working on getting a movie deal for him.  The first three books, A Surprise for Gappy, Gappy Disappears, and Gappy is Kidnapped, will comprise the first movie, and Books 4-6, Gappy and the Thieves, Gappy's Great Escape, and Gappy and the Witch's Curse, will make up one or two subsequent movies.

The producer sent me a spare copy of the screenwriting program she uses, called Final Draft.  I'm not very computer literate so I asked my husband, who's a computer wiz, to figure it out and show me how to use it.  It is easy to use and has some neat features.  When you enter a discussion between two people, it automatically fills in that character's name because it assumes the person is going to be responding to the first character.  It also has a really cool feature, in that it has a number of different audio voices you can assign to your characters, and then you can tell it to read the script out loud, using the voices you have assigned to the characters.  I haven't done that yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it.

Anyway, around the beginning of this year, after the contract had finally been signed by all parties, I set to work on the screenplay.  I had previously written the first 10 minutes in Word, up to the point in Book 1 where Gappy finds out that he is turning into a vampire, and once I had downloaded the proper screenwriting software and had a lesson from my husband, I converted what I had done thus far into the program.  Then I spent a free day off in my favorite coffee shop downtown and listed all the scenes in A Surprise for Gappy and Gappy Disappears.   I've spent so much time writing at The Daily Grind that I simply must acknowledge them at the end of Book 7 . . . but, back to the scenes: Each scene appears as a digital index card on the right side of the screen. You can decide how many you want to see at once, you can given them headings, make notes in them, describe the action, etc. 

There's a format to use when you begin each scene.  You have to put INT. or EXT. for interior or exterior, where the action takes place, i.e. Gappy's Kitchen, and whether it's morning, afternoon, evening, midnight, etc.  The scene headings from the index cards appear on the left side of the screen, which is the actual screenplay. Below the screen heading, you type in a description of the action in that scene, and then you start your dialogue, which the program arranges in a column down the middle of the page.   You can also add in parentheses below the character's name the way the character is speaking, e.g. chuckling, angry, sadly, sighing, etc.

I spent the weekend filling in all the scenes with the action descriptions and dialogue and quickly learned that less dialogue is better than too much.  That's my main problem: I'm way too wordy and find it difficult to pare down.  Keep in mind that one page of screenplay represents roughly one minute of movie time, and you only have a thin strip down the middle of the page to fit the dialogue into.  You also can't say what a character is thinking, like you can in a book, unless you want the audience to hear his/her thoughts, which sometimes does happen in movies.  In Gappy's case, I don't think that's the way it's going to go, so therefore I have to write in facial expressions, body language, and movement in order to impart what the characters are thinking or feeling at that moment. 

Remember, one page is equal to one minute? Well, Books 1 and 2 took up 70 pages of screenplay and I still had to add Book 3, Gappy is Kidnapped, which is about three times the length of books 1 and 2 combined!  A children's movie should ideally be about an hour and a half long - i.e. 90 minutes.  That meant I only had 20 pages left.  The producer told me not to worry about the length for now, just to get it all down, and we would cut it down afterwards.

I took a break from screenwriting to concentrate on finishing Book 7 (no title yet but probably something like Gappy in Disguise or Gappy Goes Under Cover).  After a jaunt to the UK for my aunt and uncle's Golden Wedding Anniversary, the producer e-mailed me to ask if I had started writing the screenplay again because she has people to talk to and they don't really take you too seriously until there's actually a complete screenplay that's close to the final draft. 

I received the e-mail on a Wednesday, which is Grandma Day in our household, so after I'd put my granddaughter down for her nap in the afternoon, I set to work putting Book 3 into the screenplay.  I then worked on it all weekend and finished it Sunday night.  The total length - about 175 pages!  I also wrote a page of ideas about how to cut down the length and e-mailed the screenplay with my idea sheet to the producer.  The first read-through and idea sheet were well received and I can't wait to get it back from her and see her editing suggestions, added directions, etc.

Book 7 is written and I've edited it a couple of times so far.  I'm going to get back to it in a while so that I can look at it with fresh eyes and do another editing read-through.  A friend of mine is helping me with some Spanish translation, and then it'll be done!  All I can say for now is, Stay Tuned!


Star

So I've had a fantastic time in Arizona, driving around the desert, viewing cactus, looking for likely places for Gappy's latest adventure to take place . . . but today surpassed all expectations. 
I needed to do research on how police respond to calls and also what the U.S./Mexican border looks like in certain places.  After inadvertently almost driving through the border and doing a U-turn just in time, I was driving around the border town of Nogales looking for the border fence where I could view it up close and was getting hopelessly lost driving around residential neighborhoods, up and down hills, and never seeming to get close.  I had passed by City Hall at one point and figured that the police station was probably located there and maybe it would be simpler and more efficient to try to interview a police officer and ask some questions about the border too.  

I went back to City Hall and, sure enough, there was the police station.  I went in and introduced myself as a children's author researching for my seventh book and asked if I could ask someone some questions.  I gave them my business card, but I thought the cops might be suspicious that maybe I was working for a drug lord, scoping out how things work at the border. However, they were cool, but they did take a photocopy of my driver's license and check me out first. 

The shift supervisor (Rick) came out and offered to take me on a ride-along, during which he would answer questions and show me the border.  I leapt at the chance and leapt into the passenger seat of his police SUV with alacrity.  Actually, it was more like a heave and a climb into the SUV because it was so big and high up off of the ground. 

First we drove to a street on a hill from which we could look down on the border fence and see Mexico on the other side.  It was a weird feeling, seeing it for the first time.  I couldn't believe I was actually looking at Mexico!  And from a cop car, to boot! 

After that, we drove down to the crossing point and almost drove through into Mexico but made a U-turn at the last minute.  Rick explained how people and cars are inspected when and after they cross into the States.  I was amazed that the 12-to-20-ish-foot-high border fence was made out of square, vertical, metal bars with quite wide spaces between them.  Apparently it used to be a solid fence, like sheets of metal with no holes, but for aesthetic reasons, the powers-that-be, whoever they are, decided to replace them with the slatted fence.  We could have bought a hot dog from Mexico by reaching through the fence.  There really was a hot dog vendor right there on the other side, and I'm sure they would have been happy to sell us a hot dog. 

The fence continues on, up and down hills and valleys, as far as I could see and the form of it changes in different locations.  Various houses on both sides of the fence are suspected as being  lookout points for the purpose of keeping an eye on happenings at the border fence for warning smugglers of both drugs and people and facilitating their passage.  What an eerie feeling that was.  Rick also told me all about the "coyotes" who are paid to smuggle them across and how they abuse and rob their charges.  He was very empathetic towards the plight of the illegals and the suffering many of them have to endure, especially the women and children he has met.

We proceeded to drive through neighborhoods, both affluent and poor, which backed on to the border fence and Rick  pointed out popular places where illegal aliens scale the fence and where drugs are delivered to the States in various forms and packaging, either thrown over or passed through to the other side.  He told me about night raids by flashlight in the gullies and sandy washes between the hills, what the cops do when they come across people who they suspect to be illegal aliens, how they coordinate sightings with border patrol, etc. 

I was surprised to learn that Nogales is one of the safest cities in the States to live.  It only has one or two homicides per year, which makes some of the neighborhoods around where I live in the Northeast look like real crime hotspots.  Part of the reason is the size of the police and border patrol presence.  At several strategic points along the route were parked big white and green border patrol SUVs, keeping an eye on the fence with the aid of huge lights, cameras, infra red devices, etc.  Apparently most illegal aliens are respectful to the police and do what they are told when caught.  Another reason is that drugs are much less valuable right at the border.  They increase tremendously in value the farther into the States they go, and the danger and violence grow exponentially. 

Throughout the drive, Rick was also monitoring his radio and dispensing instructions to patrol officers.  At one point when I wondered aloud what the outcome of a call involving a crying baby was, he got on the radio to find out who had responded to the call and what the status was.  I felt really honored that he would do that for me - a non-cop, civilian!  I was concerned that I was taking up too much of Rick's time but he assured me that he was having fun.  Certainly, when he woke up that morning, he had no idea that he would be giving a ride to a children's author and coolly discussing vampires, magical powers, border fencing and police procedures while sitting on a hilltop overlooking Mexico.

All in all it was a great experience and I'm very grateful to Rick for being so obliging and informative.  I look forward to sending his children a set of my books, once I get back home.

Flying to Tucson, Arizona tomorrow to immerse myself in desert and add the finishing touches to Gappy's seventh vampire adventure.  Should be a fun trip!

So, the book signing was very successful, and I sold a lot of books between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  It only took about 10 minutes for the first people to come looking for me after seeing the announcements I'd posted all over the place online and in e-mails.  I think it the local interest helped because the bookstore is right next to the Troy Farmer's Market where Gappy's adventure begins in the fourth book, Gappy and the Thieves.  It also features Oakwood Cemetery, just down the road where Uncle Sam is buried and where Gappy's adventure really heats up and becomes quite scary.  Below is the news article about my Gappy books, which came out in the Troy Record newspaper on Friday, July 26th, and the poster made up by Market Block Books to announce the book signing.