Energy

Where to focus one's attention and energy? That's a pretty good question.

After e-publishing two novels and one book of poetry last month - representing two years of work - I now find it difficult (if not impossible) to be both a marketeer and a writer. 

I simply do not have the energy to do both. My energy is sapped after two hours of writing because I put all I've got into it, like a chess grandmaster playing for the world championship. 

So now I'm supposed to turn around and put on my Madison Avenue hat? Hats off to those who can. 

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." 

I'd like some company or person to do it for me. At a reasonable cost - duh! Suggestions, comments and offers are as welcome as Dom Perignon at your daughter's wedding reception. 

How To Get An Agent - Reality Check

Over a two year span (2011 - 2013) I wrote 13 full-length screenplays, hoping to see at least one of them made into a movie. I had neither the time, nor the ability, nor the experience, nor the inclination nor the wherewithal to market them myself, so I decided to look for an agent.

I happened upon an interview with a bona fide, genuine, top notch Hollywood agent, and the interviewer asked her point blank, "How does an unknown writer find an agent?" Her answer was very simple. You need to know somebody who knows an agent. Or you need to know somebody who knows somebody who knows an agent. Or you need to know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who knows an agent...ad infinitum.

The further down you go the harder it gets - obviously.

All the cold calling and query letters you can muster will get you exactly nowhere,

Regaining Momentum

Writing a story you love is like slow dancing with someone you love. 

What would you do if halfway through the dance you lost your momentum? You could stick it out by force of will but that would be no fun and the dance itself would be pretty awkward, perhaps even alienating your partner. So you'd walk away, take a break, plead exhaustion ... whatever. 

Does this mean that you will never dance with this person again? Of course not. Now you may choose to listen to different music, experiment with various other dancing styles ... and for awhile you forget about the prior dance and your prior partner. This is good because in the process your mind is clearing.

Without warning you want the old dance back again.Your partner appears like magic, the old music rears up and away you go.

Having Fun

If you are not having fun then you are either wasting your time or a slave. 

I love writing (fun) and I hate marketing (not fun). The result is that in two months I've sold exactly two copies of what I consider a very good novel, and those were both to personal friends. It is impossible to do well at a task you hate. 

The solution to the problem, if solving it is important to you, is to somehow, make marketing fun. 

We all know that fun and creativity are two words for one feeling. So the question is, "How to make marketing fun?" The general answer is "be creative or "use your imagination." 

So my suggestion for this group is to share your ideas on how to have fun marketing your book. I'll start. This is a brainstorm and the hurricane is just off the coast. 

- Read the "how to" books and take them with a grain of salt. They all sound the same and I can't help yawning. 

- Write a review of your work saying how awful it is. That will get attention. 

- Make up some quotes about your work and attribute them to some famous dead people. For example, "Alex Burke is the only author who makes me feel small." - William Shakespeare. 

- Offer to digitally sign every book you sell. 

- Write a review as a sonnet. 

- Create a slide show featuring your main characters. 

The list is endless but you get my point. 

Finding Time to Write - Knocking Out Writers' Block

I make a promise to myself every day that I will work for at least one hour on my writing. I set the bar low because I am easily daunted and prone to laziness.

More often than not the one hour turns into 2 or 3 hours, but if it doesn't I can still pat myself on the back for attaining my goal.

On those days when I don't feel like writing at all, I say to myself, "Okay Alex. Open the Word document and write just ONE WORD." I've had instances when the one word turned into 500.

This also works for writers' block.

Confidence

It is always nice to have a positive review or hear words of encouragement, but you as the author are the final judge and it is wise to subject every critique of your work to a critique of the critique. 

If I had to choose one word to describe the most important quality for a successful life, it would be "confidence." A writer cannot develop confidence by an over-reliance on the opinion of others. 

My best writing occurs when I have the attitude, "I am going to write whatever I darn well please because I like it, and what other people may think is of no concern to me." 

The irony is that the writing thereby produced generally receives the most favorable responses. 

About Alex Burke

For those of you who may be interested in reading one or more of his books, it may be enlightening to look briefly into the entirety of the artistic endeavors of Alex Burke.

Mr. Burke is the author of two novels and one book of poetry: "The Assassin Shall Prevail" and "Much Ado About Mars" and "Sonnets From Hell," respectively. All three of these are available as ebooks for the Amazon Kindle.

Beginning in 2011, Alex wrote 13 full-length screenplays over a two year period. None of these have been produced to date. Their synopses are available in a previous post. Anyone interested in reading the screenplays themselves should contact Mr. Burke at burkealex@yahoo.com.

Additionally, he has produced over 150 paintings, all of which are featured on his website AlexBurkeArt.com, and many of which were recently displayed in a two-month exhibition in the lobby of La Vida Del Mar apartments in Solana Beach, CA.

He was a Software Engineer for Northrop Grumman for 20 years and during that time he designed and wrote the software for three different Top Secret national security projects.

He is a top-flight chess player and a talented golfer.

Mensa member since 1985.

13 Screenplay Synopses

Synopsis of "The Vampires of Brazil"

The Black Death (the Plague) kills Count Dracula in 1345. On the night of his death, he makes the greatest scientific discovery of all time, involving butterflies and Brazil, but the secret goes to the grave with him.

His two sons, Drake and Stoke, both vampires, reunite in LA, 666 years later.

Stoke begins an affair with Dr. Mary Sanguinetti (“Bloody Mary”) - a dermatologist.

Drake is about to fly to Brazil as a representative of Dow Chemicals, the company that manufactured Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange consists of the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man.

Rats infest Stoke's dingy apartment. Flea bites in combination with contaminated blood infect the brothers with the Plague.

Mary misdiagnoses Stoke's condition as severe acne, and prescribes Accutane, a drug known to cause suicidal depression.

There are only three ways for a vampire to die: 1) a wooden stake in the heart; 2) the Plague; 3) throw one's self headfirst into a Brazilian volcano.

Drake is in the Amazon and Stoke ends up on Skid Row.

To disguise the buboes on his face, Stoke dons a Brad Pitt mask.

He now looks exactly like Brad Pitt.

He then donates blood for airfare to Brazil, where he plans to kill himself.

The Nurse thinks the donor really is Brad Pitt.

Stoke gets on a plane, coughing and sneezing the whole way.

The Plague spreads to Brazil and throughout the United States.

The real Brad Pitt is arrested for crimes against humanity and tossed into a dungeon, with no human contact.

Meanwhile, Mary discovers that she is pregnant by Stoke, the fetus is a vampire, and that it carries the “Jesus gene,” which will make the child the most spiritually advanced human being since Jesus.

Mary and her colleague, Dr. Porphyria Lens, travel to Dracula's castle in Transylvania, in search of clues which may lead to Stoke's whereabouts.

They encounter Count Dracula's ghost, from whom they learn about the Brazilian volcano and of the Count's scientific breakthrough on the night of his death.

To lick the wing of the Brazilian Yellow Long Winged Tiger Queen butterfly frees a person from all disease.

Meanwhile, Drake is in the Amazon with Angelina Jolie, who comes across as a publicity hound, a hypocrite, a drunk, and a nymphomaniac.

Stoke shows up, still disguised as Brad Pitt, and has sex with Angelina Jolie.

She departs, while Drake is beginning to show symptoms of the Plague. He tries Stoke's Accutane, and they resolve to kill themselves together.

Mary and Porphyria visit the Pope and inform him of the butterfly secret and of Mary's “Jesus gene” conception.

The Pope turns out to be a crypto Nazi and orders his henchman, Cardinal Rotunda, to use Agent Orange to eradicate the rain forests of the Amazon, where the butterflies live.

The Pope then calls a mysterious “Agent A” to assassinate Mary.

At the only volcano in all of Brazil, Mary and Porphyria save Drake and Stoke from suicide.

The four of them test the “butterfly lick” and it works. They hurry off to the rain forests.

Cardinal Rotunda is in the Amazon, working with Dow Chemicals as they prepare to destroy the habitat of six billion Brazilian Yellow Long Winged Tiger Queen butterflies.

The Cardinal hears that the Pope has died and he has been elected Pope.

Stoke, Drake, Mary and Porphyria arrive at the scene and are promptly thrown into rock-carved dungeons.

Cleverly, Mary turns the new Pope around in the nick of time - you'll have to read it to find out how - and the mission is aborted at the last second.

Our heroes institute a worldwide “butterfly lick” program and Mankind is saved from all disease forevermore.

Stoke, Drake, Mary and Porphyria win the Nobel Prize.

Eight months pass and Agent A – alias Angelina Jolie – is apprehended as she is about to assassinate Mary, and is thrown into a dungeon, where she is reunited with the real Brad Pitt, who has been languishing there ever since his arrest.

The story ends on the day that Mary gives birth to the “Jesus gene” child - but I don't want to ruin the ending.

Synopsis of "An Unsolicited Submission"

Logline: An aspiring screenwriter concocts a diet pill scam as revenge against a fat female literary talent agent, but it goes awry and he ends up on trial for murder.

Synopsis:  A young and handsome aspiring screenwriter moves from West Virginia to Hollywood to sell his screenplay in order to pay for his dying father’s liver transplant. He thinks it is so good he'll make an easy million dollars. A top-tier but seriously stressed-out talent agent (a middle-aged woman obsessed with her weight problem), rudely rejects his script by referring to it as "toilet paper."  The screenwriter seeks revenge by concocting a diabolically clever practical joke involving a diet pill scam, but the joke goes badly awry and he finds himself on trial for first-degree murder.

In the meantime, the dying father back in West Virginia has just won enough money in the lottery to pay for the liver transplant. Should the money be used for the transplant or for the best legal defense money can buy? The father favors the latter option and the son the former. The screenwriter's pregnant fiancee is caught in the middle of this moral dilemma. Its resolution is both ironic and unexpected, and addresses some serious ethical issues, involving justice, criminality, and anti-Semitism.

                                                           

 Synopsis of "A Son of Kenya"

A white First Lady of the United States, whose husband, the President, is also white, gives birth to a black baby, and soon thereafter, a black man who served 18 years on a chain gang in the Deep South, on a trumped-up charge of raping a white woman, becomes President of the United States and proceeds to solve the world's problems.

Nine months after a state visit from the President of Kenya, the First Lady of the United States gives birth to a black baby boy, but her memory of the evening in question is hazy at best, due to an excessive consumption of alcohol.

Like Henry VIII of England, the President of Kenya has always wanted a son.

To hide the truth from the world, including both Presidents, she conspires with her nurse to buy a white baby on the black market (no pun intended).

The plan would have worked except that the Vice-President of the United States, a very clever Harvard-educated black man, with impeccable credentials, and a wily politician, who is beginning his campaign for the presidency, figures out what happened.

In the midst of these complications, a black man, who served 18 years on a chain gang in the Deep South, on a trumped up charge of raping a white woman, becomes President of the United States, and proceeds to solve the world's problems.

Synopsis of "The Hook of Heaven"

This screenplay addresses the issue of teen-age pregnancy and its concomitant problem of "abortion for the sake of convenience and to avoid family shame" versus the right to life, the priority of life, the triumph of life, the need for life and the sacrifices one must make for life.

Synopsis of "Much Ado About Mars"

Genre: Science Fiction/Comedy/Romance/Political Satire

A Martian invasion of Earth goes terribly awry when the poet laureate of Mars, known as the “Shakespeare of Mars,” and who sidelines as an assassin, is assigned to assassinate the Director of the FBI, but he and the FBI director’s daughter fall in love after he impregnates her, disguised as a literature professor, and genetic tests reveal that their daughter will be born as the most intelligent person who ever lived.

The Martian leadership plans to invade Earth, but first they must crash Earth’s computer system, and secondly, they must assassinate the Director of the FBI, Mr. J. Edgar Wormwood, who is the galaxy’s foremost expert on alien detection. They send in a homosexual interrogator, Agent Gay, to wrest the secret of the Doors software from Bill Doors, the founder of Mini-Smooth Corporation. They give the latter assignment to the poet laureate of Mars, Mr. Shake Speer, who sidelines as an assassin.

Synopsis of "Room for Cream"

Three Starbucks baristas form the nucleus of a domestic terrorist cell dedicated to the destruction of the government of the United States. A 97 year old detective - a veteran of World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, and an ex FBI agent - pursues the case with the tenacity of a Tamil tiger, but problems arise when he becomes romantically involved with one of the terrorists.

Synopsis of "The Bald Charade"

Two semi-bumbling and bald LAPD detectives investigate the murder of a beautiful blond attorney at the height of her career as a criminal defense lawyer. There are several people with motives but all of them have airtight alibis.

Synopsis of "Demons Out Of Acid"

A young and successful career woman takes a hit of the most powerful hallucinatory drug known to man, with unimaginable results.

Synopsis of "The Ghost of Roger Casement"

In 1911, His Majesty's government sends Roger Casement to investigate allegations of egregious human rights abuses at a British-owned rubber plantation in the Amazon.  His investigation breaks down under the complications of an affair with a beautiful Christian missionary; the discovery of his diary which purportedly reveals his pedophiliac and homosexual proclivities; and finally, his sympathy with the cause of Ireland's freedom and the freedom fighters of the Irish Republican Army – all with tragic consequences.

Synopsis of "An Eye For Love"

A young attorney in LA wants to become a stand-up comic but his domineering mother has other ideas, putting her in conflict with his girlfriend, who supports his dreams and goals 100 percent.

Synopsis of "The Patsy"

A neophyte actor thinks he is being auditioned for the leading man's role in an upcoming movie, but it is really a deadly game of masquerade and subterfuge engineered by a rich socialite to hide her extra-marital affairs from her elderly but influential husband.

Synopsis of "Mischief"

A child's "harmless" prank in a quiet American suburban neighborhood leads to nuclear war.

Synopsis of "Man Licker" 

A dramedy of the JFK Assassination, from the point of view of the Assassin on the day of the fatal event, through the prism of his surrealistic and hallucinatory world.