The entry begins:Tonight I walked my first red carpet. I was supposed to go with a gangsta rapper whose sister won Last Comic Standing, but he cancelled last minute, so I found myself alone at an awards show at Universal being introduced by a handler as “author Ron Riekki. He’s awesome.” I laughed each time a photo was taken. There was some guy with a cane who was supposedly heir to a billion dollar oil fortune and Dean Cain, a.k.a. Superman, talking humbly about his son and then me.Visit Ron Riekki's website.
I moved to L.A. because I do have dreams of U.P. being a film. Two reasons why I’ve been confident it could happen are that the book has been Ghost Road Press’s fiction bestseller for fourteen weeks and because a friend whose opinion I respect—Rafael Alvarez (writer for HBO’s The Wire)—put the idea in my head of it being a film. Well, being here helps take things a step closer. Now it’s destiny. I figure Barfly would never have been made if Bukowski lived his life in Opelika, Alabama, so here I am ... afterwards eating free gourmet macaroni and cheese, nursing a recommended Merlot, and chatting with a producer who wanted to hear about the novel. I pitched it was full of strong roles for young actors, where they’d get to play the type of roles they tend to desire, the sort of vibrant character roles you find in Snatch or Pulp Fiction. He took my card. We’ll see.
On the drive home, I thought about this article, the recent red carpet memories showing that things can happen if you make yourself available for them to happen.
The novel’s written in four distinctive voices, four high schoolers trying to survive a brutal Michigan winter and a violent act by a local bully. For Cräig, a metalhead who insists everyone put an umlaut in his name, I imagine...[read on]
Writers Read: Ron Riekki.
My Book, The Movie: U.P..
--Marshal Zeringue
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