Making A Move

I took the plunge and obtained my own domain and hosting. It’s a work-in-progress. There will be ongoing changes and trying different things.

Be sure to bookmark this new link:

http://www.writersreport2.com/

Stephen King disses ‘Twilight’ Author

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

Cuba opens Hemingway archives to Scholars

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

Kerouac-Burroughs Murder Cover Up

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

Lawrence Block’s Short Stories Span 50 Years

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

Stephen King Video Gets Over 1 Million Hits

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

Anne Rice Re-Invented

This article can now be found at Writer’s Report 2.0

It Really is Never Too Late

This is a story from our friends across the pond in the UK. It is inspiring at a couple of levels. First, it is the story of Lorna Page, who had her first novel published. She is 93-years-old. More importantly is what she did with the money she received from the sale of her books. She bought a five-bedroom home to keep her friends from ending up in nursing homes.

Read the BBC News article here and watch the video at that link. It’s a great story.

New York Subway Worker Hits it Big in Hollywood

Reuters

A New York City tollbooth worker in desperate need of a car wrote a crime thriller script titled “Brooklyn’s Finest” last year. Now he finds himself rubbing shoulders with some of Hollywood’s finest, including Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke and director Antoine Fuqua.

Living in Brooklyn, Michael Martin had just totaled his car in an accident. While in physical therapy, he entered a screenwriting competition, hoping to win the prize money for his new set of wheels.

“I had never written a screenplay before,” said Martin, who had studied film in college. “I thought, ‘How hard can it be?’ I was more like, ‘If I win this, I can get a new car.”‘

His screenplay came in second but eventually ended up in a far better place: the doorstep of Warner Bros.-based producer who had been looking for a writer with an authentic and gritty voice to write a sequel to the 1991 gangbanger saga “New Jack City,” which was in development at Warner Premiere, the studio’s direct-to-DVD division. Impressed by “Finest,” Mary Viola set out find the writer, who then had no agent.

Martin had moved out to L.A., staying at a downtown hotel, and hooked up with management representatives. He enjoyed a brief stint writing for Showtime’s “Sleeper Cell,” but homesickness overwhelmed him. He returned to New York and wound up back at the Transit Authority.

Meanwhile, in the hands of Viola, “Finest” became red hot, quickly attracting top talent. Gere and Cheadle are now polishing their badges to star in the ensemble police thriller, which Fuqua will direct for indie financier Millennium Films. Hawke is also coming on board to star, a move that will reteam him with Fuqua, who directed him to an Oscar nomination in “Training Day.” Ellen Barkin is also booking a part.

The script almost brought Mel Gibson out of acting seclusion. He took a string of meetings, but things ultimately didn’t work out.

The story, a sort of “Crash” meets “Training Day,” is a dramatic ensemble with three intertwining story lines involving Brooklyn cops. “I worked for a bus company that got indicted by the Feds because of Mob connections,” Martin said. “I could not have written ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ without that experience.”

The movie is prepping for a May shoot in Brooklyn, in the very locations that inspired Martin to write the script. “Things are moving very fast right now. It’s something I’ve been waiting a long time for,” Martin said.

Fuqua’s last movie was 2007’s “Shooter,” while Gere was last seen in Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There.” Cheadle was in theaters last year with “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “Talk To Me.”

Martin, a new dad, was recently promoted to construction flagger within the Transit Authority, working inside the subway system. He is writing “New Jack City 2,” often during his breaks in the subway tunnels.

He drives a new car.

Congratulations Michael, and more power to ya!

Novelist already working on her third book at 18

By LEAH DUMOUCHEL
Ann Arbor News

Cassandra Carter is one to make you think, “Hmm . . . what the heck was I doing with my teenage years?”

The 18-year-old’s own reply involves a nationally published book and two more in the works.

Her debut novel, “Fast Life,” was published in July as part of the “Tru” series from Kimani Press, a division of Harlequin that focuses on African-American young-adult fiction.

Carter started the book when she was just 14, after getting the idea from, of all places, a dream.

“I woke up and – I hate telling people this because it makes me sound crazy – but I heard a voice . . . saying, ‘Cassandra, you should write a book about that.’ So I created this character. It was about this girl and she’s . . . got to go and move real quick, and everything else just kind of came.”

There’s a lot of “everything else,” since the move is over in the first 50 pages. What follows is a fast- talking, high-rolling rumble following Kyra Jones between Chicago and an island in the Bahamas, complete with gorgeous guys, sniping girls, friendships gone horribly bad, scandalous wealth, the illegal drug industry and a few more page-turners.

Carter worked on it all through the summer she was 15, and when it was done she mentioned it to her grandmother, Sandee Grassi.

“I wasn’t at all surprised,” Grassi said. “Cassandra has always impressed me with her dream of and enthusiasm for writing.”

Grassi encouraged her to get it published, but Carter balked: “She was afraid it would change (the family’s) opinion about her or that people might think the book was about her life. But hey, it’s a book and it’s fiction – now, someone’s got to read it, right?”

Grassi talked her into at least taking it to an uncle in the book business, though Carter was still nervous.

“He’s a blunt person, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what is he going to think?’ ” she said.

He thought it was a darn fine book. He passed it along to a friend who was a literary agent who ended up taking Carter on as a client.

She’s still taken a little aback by the book’s success. The online reviews at both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble’s Web site have been overwhelmingly positive, and the comments on her MySpace page are fairly bursting with praise.

“This is so surreal almost, sometimes, like going online to look myself up, and having people contact me telling me they like my art and my book,” she said.

She’s finished her second book, “16 Isn’t Always Sweet,” which is due for publication in March, and is working on a sequel to “Fast Life.”

“I’m excited to work on it. I’ve even thought about carrying (Kyra Jones) on through a series. . . . I’ve started planning things that happen to her in, like, volume 5. Trust me, I have a million ideas. I just need the time to sit there and get ‘em out, that’s all.”

And it’s time that she’s taking. Even though she graduated from Huron High a semester early with honors in January, she’s decided to put off college for a while and give this dream some hot pursuit.

“I know it’s such a risk putting school off the way I am, and it weighs on me. . . . They say that people who are successful at creative ventures like this are the ones who’ve been doing it since they were born, and that’s me right there, so I’m willing to take the risk.”