My daughter will be 18 soon, a matter of months. I need to hand her money for college, no choice in the matter, which supposes that I can do such a thing, and maybe I can.
The only asset that matters financially is film rights, and the ideal sale would be a franchise, like Game of Thrones was a franchise that ran eight years, big money behind it, graphic sex and violence, which makes one wonder about the television market. If I had my druthers, I'd remake 77 Sunset Strip -- and maybe I have. There are four Chris & Peachy novels, which I created to pitch as a franchise, a modern Nick and Nora Charles,"Thin Man" husband and wife magic starring William Powell and Myrna Loy about a hundred years ago, when movies were fun. My stuff is less innocent, but equally hetero, which is a impossible sell today.
That said, there are two novels in particular that people seem to like, the second Chris and Peachy story, The Tar Pit, and my last full-length novel, Partners, set in 1975. Partners might be recorded as an audiobook soon, which is excellent publicity. Another Amazon-powererd Audible project, The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch with a pro narrator will be completed in October, a royalty split that didn't cost me anything up front, good publiicity for name recognition. I've worked on name recognition 20 years, seem to have been successful in libertarian circles and a boost on Google. Not as famous as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, but I don't have a radio show. I'm not sure that I could. Whatever talent I have is best on the page, heavily edited. Reading a speech is okay, but I don't have the gift of gab, off the cuff, unless I'm being interviewed by somebody with a brain. I'm not a talk show host, don't have the stomach for a 24-hour news cycle hammerlocked by Washington and political gossip.
A gem in the million words I wrote was called "Human Goodness Proved Beyond Doubt." I re-read it this morning, one of my better columns published above the fold by Laissez Faire City Times a long time ago. Back then I could sizzle on the page, examining U.S. GDP of 1993 and calculating how big a share government swallowed, about 40% back then. I haven't done the math recently, but there's a ceiling of 50-something percent, which government took during the peak years of World War II. Over half is economically unstable. Think about it. Suppose that government and its contractors and entitlement beneficiaries grabbed 60% of GDP, demanding more than the private sector could produce. Bankruptcy for all concerned.
I guess I've lost interest in explaining the obvious. A neighbor lady brought me a jug of milk, so I'm sipping cafe au lait this morning, a nice treat that put me in mind of Paris, one of my least favorite places. I had a 24-picture Columbia deal in my back pocket when I went to visit one of the biggest distributors in Europe, based in Paris, tied to RTL in Luxembourg, who backed my first feature. The Frenchman in Paris scoffed that stars wouldn't travel to make little TV movies in Luxembourg, despite the fact that BIL and the Foreign Ministry helped me put together a deal to build and operate a studio in Luxembourg. Never happened. When Columbia changed hands, the great and the good (Streisand's former hairdresser) grumbled that I wasn't spending enough money -- only $250,000 per pic, to give young, qualified Euro directors a shot at making a second or third movie for TV. Columbia dropped out.
That was part of my past, big projects that misfired. I started writing because my film career was stuck in first gear. I needed people to fund my ideas with tens of millions of dollars, back when the dollar bought more than it does today, especially in Europe. The price of TV movie production today is astronomic. Game of Thrones, for instance, a "low-budget" franchise shot in Northern Ireland for tax breaks, still cost millions per episode to cast, costume, stage the stunt action, re-record dialogue, and so forth. Nevermind why movies have to be dubbed to clean up dialogue in post. There's music and sound effects work involved, too.
I'm disappointed that my two books on movie production fizzled. Not quite as sexy or dumb as Save The Cat and endless chatter about 16x9 digital gizmos. Directing is not about gizmos or story "beats" that can be plotted on a computer screen. Sorry. Ancient history. Two more self published books that failed to win readers. I fell into the habit of self publishing my work to archive it at Ingram, Amazon, or Lulu, because I didn't trust my laptop. I've had several that died. Self publishing also helps in name recognition. Google thinks I'm a novelist, which is a helpful leg up. Maybe I earned it.
Come on! -- seven! Baby needs a new pair of shoes and money for college.
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