Casino lizard

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.

www.wolfdevoon.net

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Playboy Channel

I've created a lot of fictional characters over the years, many of whom I liked and respected. A few were modeled on people I knew, supporting characters whose personalities were frozen -- well, that's a bit harsh, let's say inflexible, unable to transform. It happens in life to most people. Their formative battles were fought long ago, and it shaped how they think and live. All of them deserve honorable mention to acknowledge their strengths and sorrows.

It's important always to treat a character with respect, even the tawdry ones, the bit players and stock figures -- tailors, waiters, uniformed cops, cab drivers. Little glimpses need to be three-dimensional and real. It's never wrong to be honest about where they are in life, how they move, talk, think, hide themselves from others.

Characters who transform, undertake challenges, and put their future at risk, are "principal players." There is no story without such people. Some of them are heroic men and women, some are dangerous villains. It's possible to see virtue in a villain, no different than a hero with inner conflicts and limitations. I'm speaking mostly of male characters. Women seldom deliberately do wrong, although it's good to see the extreme and exceptional. One of my favorites was a film star -- Ophilia Opfir -- always outrageous, mercurial, a comic figure. Now that I think of it, all of my women were wonderfully complicated. The Good Walk Alone had several female characters, no two alike, vital to the story line. In Mars Shall Thunder, Wendy and Emma played pivotal supporting roles, far more important than the men.

Leading ladies are important to me. Sorry, that's an understatement. The Good Walk Alone is Janet DiMarco's story. Mars Shall Thunder is Laura Oak's story. Chris is nothing until he meets Peachy in A Portrait of Valor.

Chris and Peachy are the subject of this essay. They deserved a series of novels. I risked everything to do it -- personally, financially, and artistically. I don't regret it, although I doubt that Chris and Peachy will be well received by readers. Their exploits are sexually explicit, adults only. My best bet is the Playboy Channel. It was important to give Chris and Peachy a voice of their own, in honor of their exceptional lives and exceptional challenges.

Christopher Cable, P.I., is a better man than I am, far more complex, far more courageous. He was an only child born into a military family. His birth took his mother's life. His father was a stern naval officer who became a powerful member of the Deep State, if you know what that is. Chris was raised by colored servants, if you know what that is. He went to Ivy League prep school, a sprig of privilege. He spent summers in New York with show people, his mother's clan of Broadway actors, dancers, musicians. When he was 18 years old, he was accepted in Marine Corps Officer Candidate School to honor his father and follow in his footsteps.

Combat changes people, always, and Chris fought with courage that could not erase sorrow and guilt and revulsion. He hated killing. As an officer, his duty was ever-present and clear, ordering men to their death and dismemberment. Rising to the rank of Captain, partly on merit, partly because his father pulled strings, Chris couldn't continue. He resigned, changed his name, and fled to Los Angeles -- a disgraced black sheep who abandoned his duty and his father's iron sphere of influence and expectations.

Ex-military is where most of our cops come from, and Chris had friends in L.A., ex-Marines who went into law enforcement, well-paid private surveillance, and medicine. None of those jobs were right for him. Chris couldn't deal with fussy paperwork or take orders, especially an order to do nothing, to drop a case, let the guilty skate because they had political pull.

When the saga opens in A Portrait of Valor, he's alone, lonely, miserable, age 38, jailed for killing a man, which he regrets but was compelled to do, to save a crowd of laughing drunks and doped-up chicks at a Hollywood nightclub. Terrible karma. The man who hates killing, forced to kill as a licensed private eye, working alone, financially strapped, hardened to life, expecting nothing but trouble. Not handsome, covered in battle scars, Chris cleans up every night and tries to be cheerful, drinks in nice nightclubs and dinner joints, hoping to meet a single woman his own age or thereabouts. He's ignored, night after night, year after year.

Enter Peachy.

I don't think I want to talk about her, a truly exceptional woman among women, beautiful, brilliant, elder daughter of a billionaire nuclear physicist (a horrible father), turned her back on wealth and made her own way in the world, a Stanford Ph.D.

Wonderful couple who saved themselves for each other, wouldn't settle for less than ideal romance, astounding sexual chemistry, risking their lives for each other repeatedly. This is the glory of heroic fiction, to paint the beautiful.

They meet and marry in A Portrait of Valor, and it nearly costs Peachy her life. They cheat death again in The Tar Pit showbiz mystery, throw global banking and CIA officials for a loop in Charity, and separated, incommunicado and older in Finding Flopsie, they struggle to understand what's happening in an alarming, globetrotting case of murder and extortion.

Think series franchise, a modern Nick and Nora Charles.

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