Dear Reader,
When I finally read the writing on the wall and decided to leave the dead end road of screenwriting behind—a realm where I had great success but didn’t jive with the community that runs Hollywood—I decided to demystify the writing process (my process) in hopes that more people who secretly desire to write stories will choose the high art of novel writing instead of the cheap art of screenwriting that leads to chintzy streaming movies.
Novels are forever. Movies disappear at the speed of light.
It is more important than ever that we find and lift up new voices telling the truth about life instead of being downstream from echo-bots of story driven corporate political narrative which has infected and ruined everything.
Stephen King called books “portable magic” and he was right. Cracking open the pages of an interesting book and letting the author’s words paint pictures and meld with your imagination to produce an emotional connection/experience/response—is far more satisfying than poorly arranged unoriginal action scenes and a slick marketing campaign.
OMIM is my third book, soon to be published under my personal imprint Hosel & Ferrule Books and it is the most ambitious story I have written. The idea came to me way back in 2012 and just like my previous novel, Crisis Moon, it began as a screenplay that was called Encounter.
Good ideas come from the strangest moments and places. Part of what separates professionals from amateurs is the ability to be tuned into the mysterious inspiration when it hits and then be willing to follow it without dictating the outcome.
In the case of OMIM the inspiration came at 3AM when I was up watching Romancing The Stone on cable TV (A movie that would never get made today) The basic premise of Romancing is a romance novelist gets drawn into a real life plot that is similar to one in her books. She finds herself lost in a dangerous faraway land with a man she severely dislikes (Michael Douglas) because of his fearless machismo, which she needs to survive.
The real premise though, is that a man and woman who are total opposites in every way, learn there is a natural order to the their existence that emerges in the wild when the two are in danger.
Now you know the BASIC premise for OMIM—a man and a woman who are total opposites are trapped on an alien world and must overcome their differences to survive…
The irony that I was inspired by an old movie and worked that inspiration into a book is not lost to me. In fact it’s one way to take digs at the system that chews up and spits out artists as corporate brand ambassadors.
MICHAEL McGRUTHER 