Planning one’s life out as a 20-something usually isn’t only dangerous, it proves to be a laughable exercise in futility. With that not in mind, I moved to So. Cal. after college – life planned out – in pursuit of a career as a screenwriter. I had the training and talent, but Hollywood didn’t work out as I planned. My five-year plan became 17 years in California, having interesting but ultimately unfulfilling experiences, with producers liking my work but always passing. One producer declared he was going to make a movie out of one particular script… and yeah, I’m still waiting for tickets to go on sale.
(If you knew how brutal it is to get anything made in Hollywood, you’d be amazed anything gets made. Ever.)
Having a 30-minute short produced was a great experience. As a writer, it was awesome to watch actors repeat lines I wrote. I won’t go into the entire experience here, but suffice it to say that the production process and interactions could become a movie all its own.
The next phase of my plans was to eventually leave So. Cal. and write novels. After moving back to God’s Country (the Midwest – need I say where God’s Country is?! It’s so obvious!), I decided to take some of my scripts and turn them into novels. Children of the Sun and Dead Dreams are based on screenplays I wrote while in California.
This leads me to my third novel, also based on one of my screenplays, which will be published either late this year or early in 2019. Wager of Death is a thriller set in Ventura County, California, about three businessmen who fall under attack personally and professionally.
Another stand-alone novel, and therefore unrelated to Dead Dreams, Wager of Death continues my love of dealing with the minds of my characters and putting “average,” normal people in difficult or deadly circumstances. (Okay, so David and Johnny weren’t “normal” “people” in Children of the Sun, but they thought they were.)
I don’t have the pitch down yet for Wager of Death, but I can tell you this much:
Someone is attacking Triumvirate Technologies. After multiple arson attacks and two employees are murdered, one of the owners insists on pressing forward with the company. Suspects abound and paranoia climbs. Someone is playing mind games with one of the owners, and it’s working. While losing sleep, finding himself framed for the murder of his best friend, and losing his grip on his business and his mind, the owner struggles to discover the identity of his enemy before that mysterious person kills him. He realizes survival is not a good bet.
Stay tuned. There will be more in the coming months about Wager of Death. I will also have a full pitch down, which I will publish here. The pitch is incredibly important, so it will require lots of massaging and editing.
And, now, back to my massaging of words. In the meantime, remember to tell your friends and family about Children of the Sun and Dead Dreams. I’m still working on building my readership base, so thank you for being one of my readers.
Somewhere on the edge of the Great Plains,
Brian W. Peterson