From my journal October 23, 2017:
“What an incredible weekend! It’s been a whirlwind at the Film Festival…I simply LOVE Anthony (McCarten). He’s an author and the screen writer and I was assigned to him for the screenings…We talked about his love of history and his upcoming project about the Pope. I told him about Selma and the rich history of the house. He told me that I needed to write it. In fact, he insisted that I write it. And when I published it, he’d read it—and who knows, he says, it might make for a great screen play!”
Throughout my life, I have always kept a journal, more to keep me sane than to keep memories. For me, it’s free therapy. It requires only paper, pen and the resolve to write every day.
The entry above memorializes the day I decided to take that first step to writing a novel. It all started at the Middleburg Film Festival. As a board member, I assist in hosting the many actors, actresses, directors, writers, sponsors, etc., that attend the festival each year. In 2017, I was honored to host Anthony McCarten, a screenwriter of numerous award-winning films to include The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Over cocktails after the screening of Darkest Hour, Anthony listened intently to my ramblings of Selma and her ghosts. He encouraged me not only to capture their stories and but to write a novel filled with drama and passion that reflects the characters’ emotions and creates a cinematic sense of time and place.
And that is what I have attempted to do with MASQUE OF HONOR. Meeting Anthony was the catalyst for this next chapter in my life, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
