Waiting on Hollywood

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

The news has been good lately, 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 never to get your hopes up regarding 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 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 on 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 on to my kids someday as evidence that their dear old dad 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 emails from time to time with powerful and influential people in Hollywood. Producers, directors, writers, and agents who want to pick my brain, pitch their ideas, and pay me for the rights to shop my book around. I often hang up after one of these calls and pinch myself, wondering if all this could still be real.

Hopefully, one day, it will be.