Here’s an illustration of The Crosby Street Hotel’s lobby in New York City that’s remarkably similar to the fictional Crosby Street Hotel where Matthew King and his agent Jeffery are staying. After (providing?) I return from visiting my family in Chicago, Matthew and Jeffery will meet with a fictional Barbara and her fictional half-brother Michael from a fictional enterprise called Eon to name my hero Matthew King the next James Bond. He’ll be the first one from the United States but he’s got a full retinue of coaches as well as a pair of very savvy teenage girls to propel him toward unprecedented heights. Part of the next James Bond movie (mine and, from what I’ve gathered, the real thing), is considering New York City as an explosive and richly colorful, even exotic, setting.
Meanwhile my agent Jeffery has Fed-Exed a letter, which as Tara says “expresses all Matthew’s private feelings” for her sister Brooke. Matthew duped Jeffery into thinking the envelope held the insurance card to his hybrid Mercedes SUV. (These exist, btw.) Brooke’s signature is required for delivery but who knows?
While that world hangs suspended, I will post a few flash fictions that have appeared on The View from Here but not yet on this blog, as well as one that’s been up since last year.
It’s my one (thousands!) hit wonder, “Guaranteed Happiness.” My friend Jan Geronimo of Writing to Exhale stumbled it, as many others must have, on StumbleUpon. It’s so popular that it occasionally tops Google’s list. Last time I checked, it ranked second, right below Guaranteed Happiness Despite Bad Credit. Someday I hope to use that title for a companion piece, but it hasn’t jelled yet. After our holiday trip, the “bad credit” angle should take on a new urgency.
As the year and the decade draw to close, I will also put up a few blog posts that, judging by my little fiction blog’s Google Analytics, are far from the star billing of “Guaranteed Happiness,” and yet (sadly) consistently draw many more numbers than any serial episode I’ve ever written.
One comes from my forgotten novel, “Diary of a Heretic.” Paisley posted the first episode on a writing prompt blog, and apparently, people still use it.
Another readers’ favorite concerns two illustrations by John R. Neil for “The Land of Oz” in which the young hero Tip learns from Glinda the Good Witch that he is actually—she.
Why Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer never made this sequel into a movie baffles me. It is, however, not too late. The simple illustration I once posted pulls in enough traffic to suggest a ready-made audience for “The Land of Oz.”
Here’s a Christmas wish: To all you directors out there, big, independent, TV, YouTube, whatever, if you can pay us at all, Manny and I have always wanted to try co-writing a screenplay but only if we could be at least assured of a “kill fee.” Seems I have a difficult time straying from the wildest fictions.
Seriously, though Happy Holidays and Best Wishes throughout this new decade to everyone everywhere.
One Love—now more than ever!
