Three Favorite Books??? First Friday with Rita

Three Favorite Books??????

You must be kidding. Only three?

 I’m remembering this really little kid being read to.

I’m this little kid going to the library every Saturday of my young life. I sopped up books like the proverbial sponge. But what sticks in my head: The Green Fairy book. The Red Fairy book And Violet, Yellow, etc., every book by Andrew Lang. Not that I knew what an author was.  How about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? And Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan and Madeline and Lassie, Come Home and Pippi Longstocking. I loved them all.

 Wait a minute. I’m only up to age eight.

Enough about that. I’m supposed to talk only about three books, so I’ll talk about three books. My own three books. Two going up for Kindle.  One there already. Writers are often asked where they get inspiration for stories. Well, here are three of mine.

 A Summer Without Boys.This was originally written as a screenplay and shown on TV years ago. It starred Barbara Bain and Michael Moriarty. I was commissioned to turn it into a novel soon after. It was the only piece of writing that was autobiographical that I ever had the chance to do on TV. It was a bitter-sweet coming-of-age story of a 14-year-old girl who spent a summer with her mother at a resort in the Catskill Mountains during WWII.

  The Four Coins of the Kabballah. The inspiration for Four Coins came from a paragraph I read while doing research. It was a passage that supposedly never got into the Bible. I am paraphrasing here. Adam was originally married to Lilith. However, Lilith was an unhappy bride. Since God made her from the same dust (adama) as Adam, she felt she was entitled to be equal to him. (Imagine! The first woman’s libber!) So, God promised him another bride. This time she would not be made of any other parts (For example, not from the ear or she would hear too much, not the eye for she would see too much, etc.) She was made from the useless rib. Adam’s rib. Thus was born Eve.

And thus was written an urban fantasy. A paranormal. An entire novel using the Adam/Lilith/Eve legend in modern times.

 (Title withheld) My memoir. The idea of me writing about the early days I spent writing for TV in Hollywood came about after being on a few convention panels with Rhys Bowen called Liar’s Club. In which we told very funny stories about our real life adventures and the audiences were supposed to guess whether we were lying or telling the truth. I kept telling the truth and everyone thought I lied. Rhys suggested I write these stories down. I started to do it as a lark, but then I realized to my own amazement that I had been one of the earliest women script writers in the business. I was a pioneer and a book was born.

How did your books come about?

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

I'm glad I skipped all those kids' books so I could dive right into yours, Rita!

The world is waiting for that Title Withheld!

[rita lakin]

what world might that be? So far I've been told the pub houses are in dfeep trouble, yadda yadda...

[Susan Shea]

I didn't know the Lilith myth but it ure says a lot about what hasn't changed in a couple thousand years! Thanks for sharing it, Rita.

[Terry Shames]

Rita, talking about childhood books reminded me of my young obsession with Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. From the time I was five, I begged to go the library to get yet another one. I still remember what the books looked like. And it was only recently that I realized that were mystery/adventure stories!