Award-winning romantic comedy about one ordinary but stubborn horse who changes the lives of people in three countries. Endorsed by comedy legend Tim Conway.
Following the success of my short story collection, my brother bugged me to write a novel. My reply was brief.
“The world does not need another lousy novel.”
“Then write a good one,” he said. “If Nicholas Sparks can do it, you can do it.”
“I can’t write that (mushy) stuff,” I said. “I’m a comedy writer.”
“Then write something funny.”
It took me awhile to find the characters and story I was compelled to write. But I did and am very proud of the result. Tim Conway, the American comedy legend, wrote me a letter raving about 12 Miles. I framed his letter and hung it on the wall. Tim is a high-road guy and that’s the kind of stuff I write, funny but clean. To have a man whose body of work I admire so much like my story and take the time to tell me meant the world to me. It still does. The man knows funny.
12 Miles is a romantic comedy about how one stubborn but otherwise anonymous horse changes the lives of people in three countries (the U.S., the Bahamas, and New Zealand). It’s a multicultural ensemble story with a happy ending. I love to write those types of stories because that’s the way I want the world to be.
Ensemble comedy is a challenge to write but fabulously fulfilling for me. It’s hard, which is probably why I like it so much. It’s safe to say it’s my chosen art. I want a world in which everybody to gets along and lives happily ever after. I want a world of happy endings.
Thinking up 90 percent of the story was fairly easy and came quickly. The final 10 percent took nearly fifteen months. When the scene I needed to make a good story a great one dropped down from the heavens and landed in my head, I knew it instantly. I shivered when it happened. Just like that, all the pieces fit. I could see the entire, sweeping thing and was tremendously excited. I immediately began to write.
That’s the way any story I create must be. I must be able to see it: the beginning, middle, and end. I have to know the characters, their quirks, their story arcs, the conflicts—all that stuff. I never start blind or on page one and hope for the best. I must see it all and describe what I see.
Once I embrace the story, adrenaline takes over. It races through me, propelling me with energy and passion. I am compelled to write. I immerse, often beginning at 4 AM because I am too excited and cannot stay in bed one minute longer. I always write in early morning. I think about things in the afternoon and proofread in the evening.
Mine is a world of imaginary friends and, oh, how I loved this bunch!
I do not write in sequence, so whichever scene demanded to be written that day was crafted as its own short story. Later I cobbled the short stories together and smoothed out the transitions and foreshadowing. Famed mystery novelist Dick Francis helped me with 12 Miles. I was thrilled and honored by his support.
I was sad when I keypunched the story’s final period. I know it sounds silly, but I really enjoyed hanging out with that crew. They made me laugh a thousand times and took me places I never intended to go. But you have to do that with characters; you must leave them free to go wherever they want.
From idea germination to publication 12 Miles to Paradise took five years to write, my longest project. When it came out in hardback, I reread it cover to cover and loved every part of it.
The book has been optioned for movie development twice and is now with a great Hollywood screenwriter, Doug Eboch. Eboch wrote the story of Sweet Home Alabama that Disney parlayed into a big box office success as a star vehicle for Reese Witherspoon. He will do a super job. Even now that I’ve written a screenplay, I would never go back and adapt one of my novels. Once the book is born it needs to be adapted by someone else. I’d have too much emotion to a good job.
Legendary screenwriting coach Robert McKee told me to do what I do best: tell stories.
“There is art and there is craft,” he said. “Thinking everything up is the art. Adaption for the screen is a craft. Do what you do best.”
What I do best is write great characters. Great characters can tell a good or great story. Mediocre ones can’t.
Parts of 12 Miles, to this day, still make me laugh. That’s what good comedy does, it sprinkles ink-based pixie dust onto eyeballs and turns silence into laughter.
Laughter is magic. This book has a lot of that. You’d be hard pressed to find a better collection of imaginary friends.