JUST LIKE A MOVIE: THE MOVIE!

NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAM!

I received a wonderful email when I woke up this morning.

The screenwriter in Hollywood who is developing the screenplay of my romantic comedy, JUST LIKE A MOVIE, sent me what he has written so far and asked for my feedback.

I don’t know this person. He is the friend of a friend who has written numerous screenplays and won awards for his work. He heard about my book, bought it, loved it, and felt it should be a movie.

I am giddy with excitement!

Now, let me take you back to the beginning of the epic saga that JUST LIKE A MOVIE has been in my life for over twenty years.

Once upon a time I felt like crap. While from the outside my life – and by this I also mean my extended family’s life – appeared normal, but in reality, all sorts of dark things were going on: Illness, death, redundancies, mental health issues, abuse, divorce, court cases...

I felt stuck in a whirling vortex of never-ending catastrophes.

I’m hyper-sensitive and don’t cope well under stress. Being bombarded with terrible news day after day took its toll. I had two young children, a husband with a demanding job, and I needed to find a coping mechanism.

Back then therapy wasn’t as readily available as it is today; it never even occurred to me that I could seek outside help from a professional. I had many friends, but most of the issues that were affecting me were far too personal to discuss with anyone with whom I wasn’t ultra-close. My best friend had moved to Ibiza and international phone calls were expensive back then. The only solution I found suggested I turn inwards.

So, one day, when my husband had gone to work and the children were at school, I went into my office, sat down at my computer and began to write a story.

I’d been to visit my best friend in Ibiza a couple of times and had fallen in love with the island. Also, I had a hilarious crush on Ricky Martin who had burst into my life on television one morning singing Maria (Un Dos Tres). What better escape could there possibly be than to spend the next few months in Ibiza having wild, crazy, romantic adventures with Ricky Martin and some my favourite girlfriends?

I grabbed a Café del Mar CD and went to work. The book took off as though writing itself. It almost felt like all I was doing was transcribing a brilliant, entertaining movie. With my poster of Ricky Martin above my computer, and my little CD player by my side, every day I would escape to Ibiza and hang out with my gang. Ricky Martin became Emilio Caliente, the famous Latino superstar Gemma (the main character) meets on the plane on her way to the island.

For eighteen months I had the best time.

And then, suddenly, one day I wrote “The End”.

And felt utterly lost!

However, while I’d been writing the book, a carefully selected committee of friends had been reading it chapter by chapter. I knew from their reactions that the book worked because they always wanted to know what happened next. Better yet, they always wanted it NOW.

So I reached out to various agents in London (I live in Switzerland) and within a couple of weeks I had an offer from someone who represented many famous authors. She loved the book and wanted to meet me. I flew to London, returning home a few days later on a high. She sent me a contract, I signed. I had an agent!

Within a week she called. A big editor at Penguin loved it, was already talking about who would play Emilio in the film! Mark Wahlberg was mentioned, which didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t going to start saying, “hey there, hang on a minute…!”

And then, after loads of other Penguin people loving it, someone at the top said, “Sorry, no.”

All the editors in all the big publishing houses seemed to love it, and again, many of them spoke of movie rights, got excited, throwing out names of famous actors. Over and over my agent and I got all excited. The book kept going up through all the echelons of the reading committees. Time after time, the person right at the top turned it down.

My agent began submitting to America, to editors so famous even I’d heard of them. I began to receive feedback from these people pitching me as the next Jackie Collins (wait, what?), and my agent and I fizzed with anticipation.

Everyone loved it.

And yet.

Same same, but different. A hundred “almosts” ending in “no”.

My agent submitted to film companies. Sony Films kept it for ages. As did Miramax. And Working Title. I vividly remember arriving at a party and telling my friend that my book was at Miramax. Surreal!

Meanwhile, I was trying to write my second book. As I said at the beginning, I’m hyper-sensitive. The excitement and the stress of having to produce something as good, preferably even better, sucked the joy and playfulness right out of my writing. I had a wonderful story yet I couldn’t do it justice. I battled with that manuscript for two years, finally felt as though I might have something I could build on, sent it to my agent who read it and asked me to fly to London to see her.

I came out of her office in tears. I felt like such a failure. I felt like I’d failed her, failed myself, failed my family. I wasn’t a writer after all. I felt so ashamed.

I didn’t write for twenty years.

In retrospect, I should have gone back to her when I’d calmed down, when I no longer felt so broken. We could have talked. I had a base that could have been worked on, or I could have pivoted towards something else. Encouraging words could have been exchanged. It didn’t need to end the way it did. She even sent me an email telling me she felt bad, that maybe she’d come across too harshly, that she was there if I needed her.

But instead of being honest and telling her I felt utterly broken, that I needed a few of my feathers stroking so that I might manage to fluff myself out and dust myself off and get back in front of the screen, I told her it was fine, that I understood and that she was only doing her job. Stiff upper lip. It’s-not-you,-it’s-me. I’m the one who sucks.

I tried to write. My neck seized up. I developed nausea every time I sat in front of the screen.

So, I quit. I went back to my other passion: horses. I bought a horse and immersed myself in the dressage world. I spent six or seven hours a day at the stables instead of at my computer.

Yet that book (initially called "Mucho Caliente!”) continued to sit and wave at me from the the back of my mind. Everyone who’d read had enjoyed it. It gave people a good time.

Years passed. The E-publishing revolution happened, and a friend of mine in the US encouraged me to submit to a publisher who’d signed two of her books. At that point I just wanted the book out. I wanted to be able to hold it in my hands, look at it on my bookshelf, give it to people!

I hadn’t spoken to my agent in six years; but what reason would we have had to speak? I hadn’t written anything else and still felt ashamed for having let her down. I emailed her and asked to be released from my contract. She replied, told me she understood, and not to hesitate if I ever wrote something I felt might interest her.

I soon signed a publishing contract with an E-publisher, and “Mucho Caliente!” came out some months later. The book received a small number of stellar reviews, won an award for best book with one of the larger book blog review sites of the time, then sank without a trace.

Nevertheless, I felt like I’d achieved something. I’d google myself once in a while and see the title crop up. Once, I even found a brilliant review in the online edition of American Elle magazine.

These past five years, various health issues gradually forced me to stop riding. A catastrophic neck injury put me through hell, and I now have chronic neck and shoulder pain as well as an intestinal autoimmune disease brought on by all the pain medication I had to take. Giving up riding horses was hard, but not even being able to look after them hit even harder.  Chronic pain is scary and depressing; I get through it with the regular help of my therapist.

However, the silver lining shines bright. Because I’ve had to radically rebuild my life, I reconnected with my creative side, particularly with my love for writing. A few years before the pandemic, just before my body started to come undone, I’d asked my E-publisher to release me from my contract and reclaimed my rights to “Mucho Caliente!”.

As soon as I was well enough, I decided to republish it myself under a new title.

I spent a couple of months working on the book again, tweaking it, making it slightly more politically correct (how times have changed!). My daughter designed the cover, and I released it as JUST LIKE A MOVIE in June 2023. I’ve had lovely reviews, but as all writers know, the competition is fierce. I’m proud of the book, love the new cover, love the reactions I get from readers. What I love most is how the process has reignited the creative fire in me that I believed I’d lost forever.

I’m writing another novel and enjoying the process. I’ve had to learn how to use social media where I’ve met lots of lovely people. I’ve written multiple posts for my website. I’ve even started writing funny poetry!

Writing has finally become fun again. Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s fun hard work. Work I love.

And, as I mentioned, this morning I received the first few pages of the screenplay for JUST LIKE A MOVIE! They are brilliant! I’m beyond excited. My gratitude is off the charts!

I’m also not naïve. I know that most screenplays are never picked up by studios.

But it doesn’t matter. Very few people ever write a book. Few writers land an agent. Few writers persevere with something they wrote decades ago…

To be honest, there have been times when I’ve felt silly about persevering with this. Various people have made it clear that they don’t understand why I republished this book. They find it pointless and strange. I’m sensitive; it got to me.

But now, to have someone I’ve never met love this book so much that they’re writing the screenplay with…a famous actress I can’t name… in mind as the main character is crazy wonderful! And yes, she’d be absolutely perfect as Gemma!

As for Emilio Caliente, he will forever remain Ricky Martin in my mind. But Ricky, bless him, is no longer 29 years old, so chances are it wouldn’t work, unless we put Gemma in a Zimmer frame! I’m joking of course, but if this project gets off the ground, Ricky should at least have a cameo role in it, right?

I’m getting slightly ahead of myself… But I think I’m allowed to dream a little on a day like today.

I’m happy that I believed in this fun, effervescent book enough to give it a second chance. Because of my persistence, JUST LIKE A MOVIE is now being developed for film.

That in itself feels just like a movie!