Slange (sci-fi in an historical drama setting)
Writing this story fulfilled an artistic need and its completion unlocked the door to a host of story ideas that are much more commercial and marketable. “Slange” will not be seen in theatres until production companies start vying with each other to buy any scrap of story idea I have ever imagined.
It’s a charming and action-filled tale that pits a man (Aartje) against a fantasy/sci-fi beast (slange is Afrikaans for “snake”). The setting is South Africa and London in 1908 and ’09 but it’s the “action-filled” part of the story that complicates things. There’s a huge scene at sea involving a vintage tramp steamer, a two-masted schooner and the beast. The money people in Hollywood seldom loosen the purse strings for expensive stories by unproduced writers out of Evanston, Illinois.
I am fascinated by the Boer War and the parallels not only to our Civil War but to Vietnam as well. Aartje is a war hero, famous for his frightening efficiency in killing British soldiers. In the aftermath of the war he tries to “turn off that switch,” go back to the peaceful, constructive life he led before being called to military service.
I have a friend who was asked to do things in Vietnam that I’m sure will haunt him for the rest of his life. His situation is one of several reasons that the writing of this story was an itch that I needed to scratch.
Now that I have finished one novel (“ARC”) and proven to myself that I can do it, it occurs to me that expensive movie scenes cost about the same on the page as cheap ones. If I revisit the “Slange” story and decide to rework it as a novel, y’all will be the first to know.
It’s a charming and action-filled tale that pits a man (Aartje) against a fantasy/sci-fi beast (slange is Afrikaans for “snake”). The setting is South Africa and London in 1908 and ’09 but it’s the “action-filled” part of the story that complicates things. There’s a huge scene at sea involving a vintage tramp steamer, a two-masted schooner and the beast. The money people in Hollywood seldom loosen the purse strings for expensive stories by unproduced writers out of Evanston, Illinois.
I am fascinated by the Boer War and the parallels not only to our Civil War but to Vietnam as well. Aartje is a war hero, famous for his frightening efficiency in killing British soldiers. In the aftermath of the war he tries to “turn off that switch,” go back to the peaceful, constructive life he led before being called to military service.
I have a friend who was asked to do things in Vietnam that I’m sure will haunt him for the rest of his life. His situation is one of several reasons that the writing of this story was an itch that I needed to scratch.
Now that I have finished one novel (“ARC”) and proven to myself that I can do it, it occurs to me that expensive movie scenes cost about the same on the page as cheap ones. If I revisit the “Slange” story and decide to rework it as a novel, y’all will be the first to know.