Chapter 12

In general, Craig Randal had no complaints as to how things were going for him. One minor troublesome area that was now concerning him was how he was doing the weekend news weather broadcasts. Doing a straight weather broadcast he could do in his sleep, but that was not his style. He wanted to do more than just show how the wind was blowing and what the temperatures were or were forecasted to be in the future. Because of that, he spent some time thinking about things he would say that would appear to be off-the-cuff and were out of the ordinary that you normally wouldn’t hear uttered from a weatherperson’s lips.

Craig saying, “It’s going to be a good day for bikini watching,” or “Break out those short shorts” were some of the comments he would make. He was surfing the net for more of these so-called off–the–cuff comments he could make. He had to admit that it wasn’t easy to do this and at the same time make it look like they were just normal comments for him to make.

At the same time, he had some upcoming vacation time he needed to take or in the alternative ask the station management for approval that it carry over to the following year. He thought about what he could do with this vacation time, but he wasn’t coming up with anything that interested him. Doing another cruise did not excite him. Maybe something would turn up, but time was running short and he had no clue as to what to do with this vacation time. He was also laboring to finish up the writing of a current novel that he was working on.

Craig received a call from Brian telling him that the current story he was writing was almost finished. Brian said that instead of a Ric Nolan-type story, this one was about a man who is an attorney and is the Chief of Staff to a Senator in Washington. This man is a friend of the First Lady who he knew from his college days and she asks him to help her. She reluctantly tells him that at a party, there were some pictures taken of her when she was not fully dressed. These pictures she said, would be extremely embarrassing if they became public.

The First Lady is being blackmailed to put pressure on the President to increase some farm subsidies. The main character has no option but to get involved and try to help the First Lady. The head of the First Lady’s security detail, a female Secret Service agent is told by the First Lady to cooperate fully with this man. The agent doesn’t like it or know why, but she does do it and eventually develops more than a professional relationship with him. The CEO of a large farming corporation is involved in doing this blackmail.

Craig told Brian he liked the plot and to send him the finished story.

Later in the day, Craig received a phone call from Danny Larkin his agent asking him how things were going with the next novel.

“To put it bluntly, it’s not going as well as I would like it to be.”

“Why, what’s the problem?”

“I need to take some vacation time and get away from writing as I am hitting a brick wall. What to do in taking time off is also a problem in that I haven’t figured out what that could be.”

There was silence for a moment on Danny’s part before he said, “It’s my understanding that in about a week they are going to start shooting the movie of the first book you wrote. While you don’t have any say in what they do in making the film, I am sure as the author, there would be no problem in having you watch what is going on in doing this filming. If you want, I can get you more information as to where this filming is being done and who to see. I understand some of it will be a one or two-day shoot at Fort Polk while most of the shooting will be at some small town in Mississippi by the coast.”

“That sounds like something I would like to see happening. Please get me the necessary information and make the necessary contacts.”

It was over a week later that Craig was doing the drive to Mississippi. The drive for the most part was all interstate and a little non-interstate to this town. He checked in at the hotel and left a phone message that he was there for Trish Berman, who was the producer of this movie.

Later that day, he received a phone call from Trish. She said there was going to be a production meeting and invited Craig to attend. He told her he would be there.

In walking into the room he was immediately greeted by Trish who shook his hand. She introduced Craig to the cast members and the director. Craig could see that Trish conducted a business-like meeting along with being a good-looking lady. The meeting consisted of Trish telling everyone what, where, and when things would be happening in making this film. It was interesting for Craig to see this business approach being given to the making of a motion picture.

After this meeting was over, Craig was invited to have dinner with this group. That he did and came away with the impression that they were all nice people. That they worked in the motion picture industry was interesting, especially when they told stories of their experiences about things that had happened. A few of the actors and actresses they mentioned in telling these stories, they said were nice and interesting people while some of them were not so nice in how they conducted themselves.

The following days Craig watched the scenes being filmed which followed the storyline of his novel fairly closely. He did note a few differences between his novel and the filming of this movie. In writing his novel he was concerned with describing what was happening to the reader’s mind. In making this film they were concerned with what the reader’s eyes were seeing.

Craig spent quite a bit of time talking with Paula Burke who was the screenwriter that had taken his novel and written the script for this motion picture. Craig enjoyed talking to her about writing and the scripts for other films she had written.

Paula said that in doing what she does, she doesn’t need a published novel to write a script for a motion picture. If Craig or any author would send her a “roughed-out” novel which she likened to a detailed outline, she can turn it into a script. Craig told her he would consider doing that when he comes up with an idea for a story. They agreed that if she sold the script to be made into a motion picture, they would split the amount fifty-fifty.

In watching the filming being done, Craig could see there was a close relationship between Trish and Ryan Leonard the leading actor of this movie. More power to them he thought as they were a nice-looking couple. He was a little surprised to learn that Ryan lived just outside of Austin.

Ryan in a conversation Craig had with him, said that the no state income tax was the reason he lived in Texas and not in California. Ryan invited Craig to visit him when he had the time when they were back in Texas. He also said that he watches Channel Four mainly because of Paul Conners, and asked Craig if he was the weekend weatherman. Craig said he was and asked Ryan to keep that tidbit of information to himself.

During the evenings when the filming was done for the day, Craig drove to Biloxi a few times and visited the casinos. His doing that was mainly to see what was there and maybe get lucky and hook-up with a lady. He did visit the casinos and dropped a few bucks, but that was the extent of what happened in his doing these casino visits.

On the last day he would be at the filming, Craig thanked everyone and said he hoped the film would be a box office hit. Trish said that if it was, there would be another film based on Craig’s second book with this Ric Nolan character. Craig in doing his drive back to Austin had a good feeling and was glad he had come to watch this film being made.

Back at the television station, things were normal as to the activities of reporting the news and Craig doing the weekend weather. That was till a normal pre-broadcast meeting when assignments were given out and the coming news broadcast was discussed.

Darcy Weaver, the news program’s producer dropped what Craig would consider to be a bomb when she said that Maddie Turner, one of the two newsreaders was leaving the weekend news broadcasting team at the end of the month. Maddie’s husband had received a big promotion at work which required that he relocate to the airplane manufacturing facility in Melbourne, Florida. An offer for Maddie to continue to do the news by flying in for the weekend news broadcasts was made which Maddie said she considered but she turned down doing that.

Darcy said Maddie was going to be missed and everyone in the room seconded that comment.

Craig had the thought that Darcy, Burt the news director, and maybe even Dan Fagan the station manager were going to be solicited by several people who wanted to replace Maddie. He thought that whoever this newsreader replacement was going to be would be some good-looking woman.

During the week Craig was involved in reading and doing some minor revisions to the new novel Brian Gill had just sent him that Craig would be a co-author. In doing revisions, he thought it was an interesting story about this main character trying to find out who was blackmailing the President’s wife. Craig liked this story and thought the novel would be a bestseller. If it was the best seller Craig thought it would be, Brian would want to write a second novel with this main character. That was to be expected, but it meant that Brian wouldn’t have time to ghostwrite a Ric Nolan story. Craig made a phone call to Janet Morris asking her to send him a few rejected detective novels for him to review to find another ghostwriter.