All the Little Sparrows

This is a novel about screenwriters, their lives and what they do. If film is our day's Theater of Magic, then screenwriters spark that first alive little flame that lights it. "Fade in" are magical words screenwriters build whole worlds upon. They want to sound an exquisite note, to be viewed as artists. Some dream of immortality. For others, mere money will do. Most are the unsung heroes of countless works that will never be produced. The years gathering behind them, their yearning hearts grow slowly dim and perhaps eventually break in them. One of them once told me she felt she'd spent her whole adult life on a treadmill, some incurable bug having taken her over, spinning her heels. "If you hear a little voice in your head counseling you that if one can watch a film one can write one - then run," she warned. "Run really fast and crash your head as hard as you can into the nearest brick wall. If that doesn't still the voice, nothing will." And it's true there are times I wish I'd taken her counsel.