HOW COMIC BOOKS SAVED MY LIFE

FLASHBACK: Brownsville, Brooklyn circa the late 70s

I grew up in a hard place at a hard. I grew up in one of the most violent ghettos in New York at a time when New York City was ranked the murder capitol of America. It was the kind of place where there were only two ways out:

College through an academic or sports scholarship...

Or prison.

Most people I grew up with didn't know there was a world outside of Brownsville.

Now when I say comic books saved my life, I don't mean that I'd be dead if I hadn't discovered comics (Although, who knows). What I'm saving is comic books expanded my mind. You know how they say marijuana is a gateway drug that will lead to harder more addictive drugs like cocaine and heroine. Well comic books were my gateway drug. From comic books I started reading mythology, spy novels, horror, sci-fi, then... everything. 

It also made me want to express my creativity. It did the same thing for my two brothers who also read comic books. They both became artist (one does paintings for a gallery in Manhattan). For me, it made me want to write. 

Comic books did one other thing. 

It led me to Gymnastics. 

When I went to high school, I had to take the public bus to Canarsie, which was basically a Jewish and Italian area. Getting lost in the halls of South Shore High School during my first week, I accidentally wandered into the gym during Gymnastics practice. I didn't even know what the name of this sport was at the time, but I was hooked. This was the closest thing to being a costumed superhero there was. I could be like Spiderman, Batman, Daredevil and a whole universe of flipping, twisting, kicking badasses!

I think at that moment I even said, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life." However the gymnastics coach didn't see it that way. He wouldn't work with me. Not knowing better, I tried to go for flips on my own and ended up crashing and burning. One time the coach got so mad at me he shouted, "Why don't you just get on a motorcycle and crash into a brick wall." 

That summer I decided to branch out, I sought out every YMCA and sports facility in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan that had an open Gymnastics workout and started going to them. I still didn't have a coach, but I quickly realized there were other gym bums like me. I befriended these fellow lost souls and we began training together. I was obsessed.

When summer was over and I went back to the gym at high school, the coach was impressed with all the skills I had learned over the summer. He went from being my main detractor to being my number one supporter. He even held me up as an example to the other gymnasts of what you can accomplish when you work hard.

After high school, I realized I would never be good enough to make the Olympics (not even close). I started when I was fifteen years old and for much of my career I was self-taught. So I hung up my gym grips and enrolled at Brooklyn College. 

But within a few months, I got the itch again. I began training and before long I found myself at the International Gymnastics Camp in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. There, the hand of fate struck. Bruno Klaus, the owner of the camp, was also the coach of the local Gymnastics team at East Stroudsburg University. He recruited me as a Parallel Bar specialists and I spent the rest of the summer training there.

This also happened to be the Summer of 1980 when then President Jimmy Carter boycotted the Olympics in Moscow and ordered that no America athlete attend the games. 

So guess where the Mens Olympic Gymnastics team ended up? You guessed it. My coach's camp. I went from being just a nothing bum club gymnast to training alongside Olympic gymnasts and their coaches, as well as high caliber coaches and gymnasts from all over the world. 

Also weened since childhood on a steady diet of Professional Wrestling and 42nd Street movie theater Kung-Fu flicks, I would choreograph fights with my fellow teammates that combined Kung-Fu, Pro Wrestling moves and acrobatics. 

After college, not wanting to sit behind a desk or get a real job, I moved to Hollywood to become a stuntman. 

Once again the hand of fate struck. I got a job coaching Gymnastics in a local gym. Five weeks later, after Richard Pryor's stunt double was injured in a stunt doing a flip off a tractor trailer truck as it crashed into a lumber yard, Warner Brothers was desperately looking for a Black stuntman who could flip (there weren't too many back then). Someone at the WB got the bright idea to call around to gyms. The next day I was on set. I did the gag and my stunt career began. They liked the stunt so much they came up with an acrobatic martial arts dream sequence that they brought me back for.

I never in a million years dreamed I would get paid (well paid) for the same thing my friends and I did after workout in college. I would go on to double Arsenio Hall, Martin Lawrence, David Chapelle, Chris Rock, Danny Glover and many more. 

Then, I actually became a superhero (or at least a super villain). I started doing stunts on "POWER RANGERS" playing a Putty - the villainous creatures in gray that would always attack the Power Rangers.

But then my creativity re-emerged (or maybe I just grew tired of landing on my head for a living). I began to try my hand at writing screenplays. After a lot of trial and error, I sold my script "BRIDGE OF DRAGONS" to Millennium (the people behind "THE EXPENDABLES"). My movie would star Dolph Lundgren and become an HBO World Premiere movie.

After that I wrote an episode of "Power Rangers" that the producers later expanded into a straight-to-video movie called "POWER RANGERS LOST GALAXY: RETURN OF THE MAGNA DEFENDER." 

So I guess you can say my life has come full circle. From creative to athlete back to creative.

Maybe the title of this post should be "HOW COMIC BOOKS GAVE ME A LIFE."

PUTTY PATROL from "POWER RANGERS"

A New Era of Black Entertainment - JetMag.com

A New Era of Black Entertainment - JetMag.com

JAMES BOND BY ANY OTHER NAME

I have a confession to make. I grew up on James Bond Movies. Sean Connery was always my favorite. There seemed to be two types of Bonds: the tough Bond and the foppish Bond. The tough Bonds were Connery, Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby, Daniel Craig. The foppish Bonds were: Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and David Niven.

I always leaned more to the tough bonds (although Brosnan's last couple of Bond movies were very good). Even though most people didn't resonate to Dalton as Bond, I thought he was great. His tough, realistic portrayal of Bond just came at the wrong time. 

When they rebooted Bond with "CASINO ROYALE," I was blown away by the screenplay, direction, action and acting. Although I never pictured Craig as a Bond, I was immediately drawn in my his taunt portrayal. 

Now there is a big brouhaha about the possible casting of a Black man as James Bond. Though that may be moot now. Idris Elba says all the public debate has killed off his chances of playing Bond. 

To make matters worse, actor Yaphet Kotto who played a Bond baddie way back in "LIVE AND LET DIE" came out publicly and said James Bond cannot be Black. Which to me seemed a silly statement on his part. How many novels and screenplays which originally had Black or Ethnic protagonists have been white-washed by casting Caucasian actors in the starring roles?

That being said, Yaphet Kotto is correct. Ian Fleming created James Bond as a White man of Scottish ancestry.  

Some people are trying to get around this by saying James Bond 007 is a mantle that many men have worn throughout history. While that is an interesting interpretation, it is not true.

Ian Fleming wrote James Bond as one man. And that man is White.

Although I would like to see Idris Elba play James Bond, I would rather see him cast as a spy who lives the Black experience. 

If it weren't for the fact that the character John Henry in my novel "SPOOK: CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHIC SPY" is in his early twenties, I would absolutely love someone of Idris Elba's caliber of acting to play him.

However, an interesting thought has come to me. The series of novels I plan to write, will take John Henry through the Cold War from 1961 to 1989 (his character goes off the grid and underground at that point).

My thought is to write the series out of sequence. What do you mean that's crazy? I'm the author. I can do anything I want. One book can be in the 60s, the very next book can be in 89 set during the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, John Henry would be in his mid-forties.

WAIT A MINUTE! THAT'S A GREAT IDEA!

Okay, I'm going to end this post right now.

I've got to get Idris Elba on the phone!

Idris... call me!

                        

                       

SIXTH 5 STAR REVIEW ON AMAZON

So I just got my sixth 5 STAR REVIEW on Amazon for my novel "SPOOK: CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHIC SPY." I'm extremely grateful and very excited that people are reading and enjoying something of mine that I put so much heart and soul into.

I am feeling the pressure to write the sequel (I'm planning at least 10 SPOOK novels). I'm in the middle of a YA now. After that, I'm writing two NA novels (New Adult). Then I will write the sequel to SPOOK, which will find our hero John embroiled in the JFK assassination. Please be patient.

BUY HERE

NEW ERA OF BLACK ENTERTAINMENT

With the recent critical success of “Selma” and the commercial successes of the animated feature “Home” (starring a Black lead voiced by Rihanna) and TV series “Empire,” is Hollywood going to have to rethink its position on Black entertainment having limited appeal? I think so.

Is Hollywood’s sudden consideration of Black actors in film hero roles typically played by white actors enough (Anthony Mackie possibly taking over the role of Captain America, Idris Elba maybe taking on the persona of James Bond)? I don’t think so.

I believe this wave will and should be helmed by Black creators. As a Black screenwriter and novelist, I am devoted to creating cross-media titles for a multicultural audience I feel is the more accurate depiction of America today than what is currently portrayed in books, TV and movies. To that end I have created “SPOOK: Confessions of a Psychic Spy.”

Here is an excerpt from the book’s back cover: “In 1961, during the hottest days of the Cold War, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, in a time when the Superpowers are deploying psychic spies behind the Iron Curtain to engage in intrigue and espionage, the CIA discovers a man who just may be the most powerful remote viewer of them all: a Black prison convict named John. Although they hate him because of the color of his skin, although they fear him because of his unnatural abilities, the CIA secretly ‘baptizes’ John into the world of espionage. From Montgomery, Alabama to Istanbul, Turkey, from the Orient Express to Washington, D.C., from Marilyn Monroe’s final moments to the Cuban Missile Crisis countdown, John walks unseen through the annals of history, in its shadow.”

“Spook,” a novel about an African American remote viewer for the CIA during the Cold War and Civil Rights movement, is the first in a series of books that will take the character through the Kennedy assassinations, the shooting of Martin Luther King, the Birmingham riots, Vietnam and other grand historical events. 

As an independent screenwriter in Los Angeles, I have struggled with the industry’s lack of interest in diversity in entertainment. According to the 2014 Hollywood Diversity Report, despite minorities making up more than 36 percent of the U.S. population, out of 172 movies only 11 percent of the films had a minority lead and more than half the films had casts that were 10 percent minority or less.

When I decided to finally write this novel - and several people in Hollywood advised me not to - I knew it was going to be controversial. I wanted a title that reflected the book’s nature. Spook, which is the slang term for a spy and the derogatory slang term for a Black person, was my intended double entendre. This isn’t just a spy thriller. It’s social commentary. The duality of the title is also reflective of the main character John, who ironically enjoys more freedoms in the European countries he is spying in, than in America where he has to sit in the back of the bus or eat at a diner with no restroom for Coloreds.

The relevance of the racial themes in “Spook” can be seen in headlines across America today where young Black men are being killed by law enforcement officials such as in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson.

I am promoting my novel to the African American community and shopping a screenplay adaptation to Hollywood, where I already have interest.

SEE SPOOK HERE

Either way, I'm going to keep pushing and keep creating.

PASS IT ON

My novel "SPOOK: CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHIC SPY" has been out for a few months now and it's exciting to see everything that is happening with it. 

In the past, I would have just written it as a spec script and gone through the traditional channels to try and sell it to a studio or studio level company. The company buying my script would have complete control over how it was produced. They could bring in other writers and change anything they wanted. My biggest concern would be they would change the lead character from African American to White. In initial pitches where I talked about how pivotal the Civil Rights movement was to the story I was telling, I actually got statements like, "I really like the whole Cold War spy/Civil Rights dynamics. But is there a way we can do that and have the lead character be White?  Just for sales' sake."

Or, equally as bad, I shop my script and it doesn't sell. Hollywood gatekeepers have their own agenda and it has nothing to do with finding the best script. It's about deal making, making the most money possible and nepotism. 

Without the backing of a studio or studio level company, my spec scripts that don't sell inevitably end up in the back of my sock drawer.

That's why I'm still excited about going straight to the audience for my novels without a traditional printing house. I don't think a traditional printing house would get it anyway. It's not traditional enough.

Also, by printing and building my own audience, I own the project. It is an intellectual property. I can still license a screenplay adaptation to a studio. Only now, they be would less likely to change anything of major importance in the story.

That being said, I am pleased to find out that people who have read my book are passing it on to other people after they are finished. To me that's the greatest compliment (other than giving me a positive review on my Amazon page).

So, whether you bought my book Online, at Book Soup on Sunset in Los Angeles, Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena or if I've given you a free copy (I carry copies around with me and give a copy to anyone who expresses a true interest in reading it), please pass it on once you're done.

There are a billion books being sold Online. I believe that even with those odds, a good book will eventually find an audience. And I wrote this from the heart.

Thanks.

CHECK IT OUT HERE

SPOOK LIVES

This won't be a very long post. I've been on a very tight schedule between working on the new book and trying to promote the two books I already have out.

GAME

It's too early to say too much, but there is interest in SPOOK as a video game from an award winning filmmaker who has been involved in producing video games for Ubisoft ("Assassin's Creed") for the last few years. We should be meeting soon to discuss the possibility. I never thought of SPOOK as a video game, but once I wrapped my head around it, I had a lot of great ideas including how to visually show a mind being remote viewed (cool). I see it as a story-driven, decision based game with an exotic cast of characters. I'll find out soon if the producer is on the same page as I am.

MOVIE
On the other front, the screenplay adaptation of SPOOK is already out to one studio producer and my manager will be getting it to two other studio companies in the coming weeks.

BOOK
I'm working on new deals for the novel.

I should begin work on the sequel to SPOOK in another six months (I have a couple of other novels that I'm working on first). I'm brainstorming on the title for the new book.

That's it for now. Or in the words of the immortal James Brown, "SAY IT LOUD, I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD!"