THE MARTIN LUTHER KING PRESS RELEASE
My publisher announces THE MARTIN LUTHER KING MITZVAH 3/30/18
https://regalhousepublishing.com/product/the-martin-luther-king-mitzvah/
With my mother and Hemingway’s short stories
Mom (at right) was an English major in college and we had bookshelves of classics in our house when I was a kid. I guess something rubbed off on me. Now, about to have my first novel published (The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, from Fitzroy Books in 2018), I look back on my early days of reading the great master Hemingway. Maybe some of his talent rubbed of on me as well. I hope so.
Me and MLKM cover this morning.
THE MARTIN LUTHER KING MITZVAH COVER
My intrepid publisher just sent this to me. I think it looks great.
THE MARTIN LUTHER KING MITZVAH: BRIAN GRAZER’S SPLASH EXPERIENCE
In his book A Curious Mind, movie producer Brian Grazer writes about trying to sell his movie Splash to the movie studios, and about how he kept getting the answer no. The problem was that he had been pitching it as a story about a mermaid. Nobody wanted to make a movie about a mermaid. Then he changed his approach and pitched it as a love story between a man and a mermaid, and he sold the movie to Disney and the film became a big hit.
When I read this story in Brian’s book, a light bulb went off in my head. I’ve been describing The Martin Luther King Mitzvah (Fitzroy Books, 2018) as a story about two kids and Martin Luther King, and that’s the not the best way to describe this novel. Here’s a better way. It’s a love story between Adam, a twelve year-old Jewish boy (who is the victim of anti-Semitism in his hometown), and a twelve year-old Catholic girl named Sally (whose older brother bullies Adam because the latter is Jewish); and through their social and political awakening through meeting Martin Luther King, Adam and Sally form a bond with each other that blossoms into love, and they eventually bring the fictional town of Beachmont together to overcome anti-Semitism and to protest against the war in Vietnam.
Therefore, as with Grazer’s mermaid experience, Martin Luther King is an important part of the story, but it is not the main story. The primary story is the relationship between Adam and Sally, and how this young boy is drawn out of his shell by his interactions not only with Sally but with the other people in his life, such as the blacklisted author Gladys McKinley; his grandfather named Grappa; Gladys’ housekeeper named Honey; Cousin Louie, the disc jockey who puts Adam and Sally on the radio; editor Jack Williams, who publishes Adam’s photographs of musician Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King in the Beachmont Times; and Adam’s sidekick, the dyslexic Jimmy Robbins. Through Adam’s growth, he is even able to bring his father Eugene (who is a holocaust survivor) out of his own shell; and as Eugene is embraced by the community, Adam can only bask in his father’s glory.
Every story (and movie) should have an “arc,” a narrative during which the characters evolve from one state of being to another. Nobody wants to read (or watch) a story about characters that never change. What’s the fun of that?
So thank you, Brian Grazer, for pointing out the way to pitch a movie (or a novel) by recognizing the timeless emotional elements that will connect your story with an audience. The next time I see Brian (to whom I was introduced recently), I will thank him and describe The Martin Luther King Mitzvah the way I have explained it here, and I will share with him how much I learned from his Splash experience.
