Gone Hollywood

As you know, I've been busily working on my latest novel, which is now nearing completion (18 of 21 chapters drafted). But this is a strange business, and you never know what's going to drop into your lap.

To wit: I received a phone call yesterday from a Hollywood producer who's interested in optioning my forthcoming book Native Acts for a screenplay.

Before we all get too excited, let's be clear about certain facts.

First, the aforementioned book is a collection of scholarly essays for which I, along with a colleague, served as editor. I've always thought of it as my final work of scholarship, a project conceived before I made the decision to switch to fiction-writing and thus a project I felt obligated to see to its completion even after I made the switch.

Second, despite its cool and racy title, it's not comparable to, say, Smoke Signals or The Last of the Mohicans. It's a bunch of historians and literary critics writing essays on Native American performance in the colonial era.

Third, I'm not even sure I have the rights to sell the book to a film production company. I'm a bit fuzzy on this, but I assume the publisher would be the one to do that.

So this is probably a dead end at best, a scam at worst. It's probably a guy who saw the title, knew it had something to do with Indians, said to himself, "Hey, Indians are hot these days!", and jumped on the phone. It's probably not going to amount to anything.

But as I said, this is a strange business.