Route 66 musical is now available!

Big news! Route 66 has just been released by Pioneer Drama Service. This tuneful adaptation of my megahit diner comedy, It Happened on Route 66, is my 30th play but only my 2nd musical.

The musical includes all of the dialogue of the straight play while adding nine songs as well as a chorus of customers and diner staff to the cast. These songs were penned by the super-talented Scott DeTurk, who I blogged about before.

Here's the blurb:

It's 1955 and Sally, a waitress at Cookie's Diner, loves her town of Winona, Arizona, especially now that it's a stop on the famous "Route 66." She also loves the glamorous lives of the movie stars in her favorite tabloid, "Screen Scene Magazine."

Sally is especially excited today. Not only is she sure her longtime beau, Roscoe, is finally going to propose, but it's also the day that movie start Lovey Lamour is marrying crooner Johnny Jerome. What a surprise when the next customer at the diner turns out to be Lovey herself, who has fled her wedding and needs a place to hide! Sally is sure she can help Lovey keep her identity by helping her pose as a waitress. She teaches the Hollywood star the "Diner Lingo" she needs to know, but their entire scheme threatens to unravel when a nosy tabloid photographer discovers Lovey's identity ("I Found Her!") and tips off Johnny as to her location.

This 1950s musical is packed with fun, entertaining tunes that feature your actors' voices as well as a chorus of customers and all the hilarious characters -- a short-tempered cook, Sally's geeky boyfriend (who doesn't propose -- he's "Moving to Chicago!"), an ever-hungry customer who has everyone limbo dancing, the world's worst auto mechanic, and even "Travelin' Man" Elvis Presley before he was famous!

I've listened to the songs, and I've got to say, they're a lot of fun. The tunes are catchy, the lyrics are clever, and they add another whole dimension to the characters I created.

I think you'll like them too. You can listen to the song clips by visiting the musical's web page and clicking on the Song Samples button about two-thirds of the way down.

And while you're on that page, why don't you book a production (or at least order a perusal copy of the script)? After all, somebody's got to be first. Why not you?

What was lost in the fires

I've got a story for you today. A true story. A personal story.

It happened in 1992. I was working as an engineer for a semiconductor company in Tempe, Arizona. I was invited to present a technical paper at an engineering conference in Los Angeles, and as a sort of impromptu mini-vacation, I decided to bring my wife Tammy and our daughter Ashley with me. Ashley was only three months old at the time and cute as a button.

I gave my presentation on Friday, and on Saturday we decided to take a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, a town I'd visited before but Tammy had not (obviously that goes double for Ashley).

The first place we went to was Zuma Beach. Since it was October, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. We didn't put Ashley in the water--it was a little too cold for that--but she loved the feel of the sand between her chubby little fingers and she was completely mesmerized by the waves pounding again and again against the shore.

When it came time for dinner, we decided to stop at a funky little Thai restaurant--it was really just a shack--a short ways up the highway from the beach. It was quiet inside, and dark. It seemed the perfect place for a relaxing dinner.

We were promptly seated at a table next to another couple, which I thought was weird as we were just about the only parties in the restaurant. Tammy and Ashley sat with their backs to a young woman. I sat across from Tammy, facing the man across from the woman.

Before we'd even ordered, the young woman turned to Tammy and lavished praise on how beautiful Ashley was. We thanked her. She mentioned that she was expecting, and we congratulated her. And then she introduced the two of them--being sure to use their first names only. Her name was Linda and the man's name was James. We chatted a little more before our food came.

I thought they might be celebrities so I took little peeks of them during our dinner. The woman seemed vaguely familiar, but she was wearing sunglasses, even in the darkness of the restaurant, and I couldn't quite tell who she was.

I looked across at the man and when he looked back at me, he had the look of someone who desperately wanted to be recognized. But no. I didn't recognize him at all.

After dinner, we paid our bill and said a quick but warm goodbye to the couple. As we headed toward the exit, we noticed that three of the servers were huddled around the stand, pointing at the couple and giggling.

That's when Tammy turned to look back at the couple. "I think I know who that is," she whispered to me. "That's Linda Hamilton." Movie fans will remember her from The Terminator and Terminator 2, the latter of which she'd starred in just the year before. 

It would be another six years before I figured out who the man was. Tammy and I were watching the 1998 Oscars at a friend's house when they announced who'd won Best Director. A tall, thin, blond man took the stage, and as he hoisted his statuette in the air shouting "I'm king of the world!", I immediately recognized him as the guy from the restaurant.

It was, of course, James Cameron. The film, Titanic.

I'd met other celebrities before. I had a nice talk with Amadeus playwright and screenwriter Peter Shaffer at a theater seminar in Colorado Springs. I had an equally nice talk with America Ferrara at the screening of a small indie film she'd appeared in, also in Colorado Springs. And when I was about ten years old, I met Buddy Ebsen on a film location in Monument Valley, where the old hoofer entertained me and my family with a quick little jig.

But meeting Linda Hamilton and James Cameron was the best celebrity meet of them all, because it wasn't a celebrity meet. It was just two couples having a friendly chat over dinner. 

That restaurant burned to the ground this week in the Palisades fire.

Thousands of people have suffered unfathomable loss from the fires currently burning in southern California. Some have lost homes. Some have lost family members. Some have lost everything. 

It has broken my heart reading all of the stories, and I wonder how long it'll take those affected to return to a semblance of normal life. Maybe never.

So my heart goes out to them today. And my prayers. And my deepest, dearest hopes for some sort of recovery.

In the midst of so much devastation and loss, one cozy little beachside restaurant may not count for much. But I know I'll never forget it.

A look ahead to 2025

It's always the same thing. Every year about this time, the major media outlets collect a purportedly random sample of the general population and breathlessly ask them the same question:

What resolutions have you made for the New Year?

About half those people come up with some inspiring, aspirational goals that promise to get them back in shape, buy them some quality time with their family, and cure their bad breath.

The other half of the people take a more practical approach. They refuse to make any resolutions, explaining that they're all a waste anyway since everyone gives up two weeks in.

I'm somewhere in between.

I recognize how difficult it can be to stay true to such life-changing objectives. But I also recognize how important it is to try to improve ourselves, all through out lives.

That's why I don't call what I make "resolutions." I call them "goals." To me, at least, that makes them sound less threatening, less final. 

No, I don't always meet my goals by the time I say I will. But you know what? I've found that I often meet them years later.

In 2022, I set a goal of becoming an adjudicator for the ariZoni Theatre Awards. I didn't make it that year, but I did the following year. 

In 2019, I set the goal of leading a workshop at the Arizona Thespian Festival. I didn't get in that year, but I did in 2023.

And, in one my longest gestating goals, in 2016, I'd hoped to publish both Kill the Critic! That finally came to pass last year.

So I think it's important for you to set yearly goals for yourself. Even if you don't achieve them right away, just the act of putting them down in black and white makes them more likely to happen in the first place.

And so with that bit of unasked for advice, I give you my goals for 2025. 

1) Finish six plays.

Admittedly, this is an aggressive goal, one more than the number of plays I finished last year. But I can't let up. Now that I'm trying to make an actual living at writing, this level of productivity has to be the new normal.

2) Publish six plays

This I have less control over. I may write the greatest play ever written, but if it doesn't meet the needs of my publishers, they're not going to publish it. So it's vital for me as I'm writing to keep in mind what the market needs. And for the amateur market, that largely means plays that are easy to produce: few props, few or no lighting and sound effects, a single set. And always, always, some kind of hook that'll get eyeballs on the script and, eventually, butts in seats.

3) Get a picture book accepted for publication

I've been trying to break into the picture book market now for--whoa!--twenty-eight years. Some of those years I'd write three of four manuscripts that I submitted to publishers (and were promptly rejected). Other years I didn't write a thing.

But now that I'm writing full-time, I've decided to kick start my picture book writing again. In October, I submitted a humorous picture book titled Okie and Firecracker to my agent, Stephen Fraser at the Jennifer Di Chiara Agency. I haven't heard back from him yet (which reminds me, I really need to check in with him!), but I assume it's still making the rounds of the New York publishing houses.

In the meantime, I'm allowing the ideas for some new picture books to simmer in the back of my brain. The last picture book only took me a week to write so it fit in nicely between plays, when I'm often stuck for ideas and need to fertilize my gray matter by working (and playing) in a different genre for a while.

4) Foster gratefulness

Lately, I've tried to include a more touchy-feely goal in my yearly to-do lists. Last year I focused on mindfulness. This year, I'm going to focus on gratefulness.

As a perfectionist, I find it all too easy to obsess about things that are going wrong. But there's a lot more going right in my life right now and I want to boost that by reminding myself of those things. If anything can bring more good into my life, it's being thankful for the good I already have.

5) Spend more time with Honey

I haven't written much about Honey the Wondermutt on these pages, and I should. She's been a wonderful part of our lives for ten years now. And that passing of time has been weighing on me more heavily this last year.

Honey's a lab/beagle mix that our daughter Ashley got from a shelter in Tulsa when she lived there. We don't know much about her previous life. But we know she was abused. She has a scar on one of her back legs to prove it, probably from being tied up by a chain.

She was super scared at first. So scared of the world that she didn't want to go for walks. So scared of me that if I came into the room where she was, she would leave.

But eventually she came around. She learned to love walks. and when I started giving her pieces of my banana, she learned to love me as well.

A year later Ashley ended up in Tucson. A year after that we ended up in Phoenix. Ashley moved in with us after she lost her job in late 2018 and Honey quickly made herself at home in our home. She loved watching the neighbors go by from our courtyard. She loved running around our backyard (when she wasn't digging holes in it). She loved sniffing every single plant, it seemed, on our walks around the neighborhood. But most of all, she loved sunning herself on our back patio.

And that's why, when Ashley moved back to Tucson in 2023, she left Honey with us. It was the hardest decision she'd ever made in her life, and the most unselfish. But we all knew that between Ashley's job and her newfound passion for trail running, the alternative was to keep Honey cooped up alone in a tiny apartment for twelve hours a day, and she'd never be happy with that. Not after she'd experienced the doggy glory of rolling in fresh-mown grass or sticking her snoot in the perfumy richness of a lantana plant.

Honey turns eleven at the end of this month. She doesn't run like she used to. She's too stiff for that. But she still finds much to be happy about. And that's why this year I want to carve more time out of each day to just be with her, to savor the quiet moments as well as the playful moments, while she's still with us.

So, yes, it's important to me to learn to be grateful. But I expect the one who's going to teach me is Honey.