Right now I am standing on my deck looking at the bowl of broth that is the Burbank skyline. People think Hollywood is where all the magic happens, but it's really Burbank. It's the home of The Tonight Show and the home of Universal Studios and Industrial Light And Magic. So, movie magic abounds in this city that's at the mouth of the San Fernando Valley.
Burbank also makes me think of Harold Robbins and Sydney Sheldon. If you were to ask me who influenced me as a writer, I would point directly to those two.
I was captivated by their big stories of the tawdry lives of power brokers and sultry baronesses.
To me the best books ever written were The Betsy and Master Of the Game. They are seminal works of two great literary authors who swung for the fences in life--who dreamed larger than their surrounding environment.
These guys were the old Hollywood war horses-- the men with big sunglasses and fly away collars.
Today we have pimply faced kids on skateboards passing themselves off as the movers and shakers in this business. It was a sad moment when we ceded this great industry to Romper Room.
Well back Sheldon and Robbins, I feel in my writing I channel their spirits--sometimes it's like they take over the keyboard and they are typing the words onto the screen. I can tell, because it's then, my prose drips syrup and molasses. So, that is why I cast a gaze on Burbank and hold a glass to their honor.
It's because Burbank felt like home to these men. It was their seat of power. It was were they built there literary empires and lived like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think I live like Fitzgerald-- maybe I don't have the wealth, but I have the spirit and soul of that great author-- and so did the Harold and Syd. Their souls and spirits scream out to me up from the smog of the city below and they echo through the brown biscuit hills. To them, I owe great respect.
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