Deal or no deal?

No, this is not about the show. Actually, I am up in the air right now over a possible deal I’ve made with a screenwriter.

The deal is that if I turn one of his screenplays into a book, he will turn my book, “Playing With The Devil” into a screenplay. It all sounded pretty simple when he first contacted me last week about this mutual arrangement. He has a screenplay that sounds quite similar to the book I’ve just finished co-writing called “The Man With The Magic Spectacles,” which is a spy/adventure novel. Same type of storyline, plot, etc.

Anyway, I got an email from this fellow yesterday saying he’d read the first 32 pages of “Playing With The Devil” and was totally emotionally drained by the horrible, seemingly never-ending accounts of child abuse. In case you aren’t aware, this book is a novel based on the true story of the abuse of 12 children in a Newfoundland family during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

This book was the most difficult one I’d ever written, because of the nature of the subject and the extent of abuse that occurred with these children. It is heart wrenching for sure. I have learned of women who have read the book and couldn’t stop crying. However, I never expected this man to be so severely affected.