In my last post I mentioned a screenplay I was thinking of novelizing. Well, guess what? That’s what I’ve been doing every day since January 7. I wrote the screenplay in 2006 while I was in the Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA. The screenplay was titled Exhume. I toyed around with renaming it and did rename it when I began the novel version, but I have since returned to the title Exhume. It’s about a string quartet who heads out to a remote location in Amish country to work on new music. There they do something they shouldn’t, and all hell breaks loose. The screenplay received an honorable mention in the annual competition at the end of the UCLA program. I thought it worked well as a screenplay, but we’ll have to see about the novel version. It might be too early to call it a novel. At the rate I’m going, it’s feeling more like novella length. I’m already appreciating getting to explore my main character more deeply writing it as fiction than I could as a screenplay. I hope I’ll finish it this year and plan to send it out to agents in the hopes of traditionally publishing it.
Lately, I’ve been on a reading streak where I’ve been reading very good books. Right now, I’m reading War and Peace and To Live by Yu Hua. A couple weeks ago I finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls and was in awe for many reasons. I’ve also been reading the manga series Tokyo Tarareba Girls by Akiko Higashimura (my crush) which has been a lot of fun but whose viewpoints I’m often surprised by.
Two days ago, marked one year of being off social media. I don’t feel lacking because of it other than wondering if I’ve missed any messages from readers, but those are rare.
Well, that’s basically all I can think of mentioning. I hope you’re well and reading something really good.