Exciting visit to the Maui Film Festival in Hawaii. Hi Blog readers interested in novel writing and script writing.
I was just down in Maui for the Maui Film Festival and to collaborate with Pono Productions on my documentary script "Hope of the Nation" about the children placed in the Chief's Children's School under scary Calvinist missionaries in 1840.
Wonderful things happened while I was down in Maui. First I was interviewed by the editor of the Haleakala Times and was able to tell him all about Print On Demand Publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing. He published the article about me in the Haleakala Times in the June 22 -July 5, 2005. He quotes me as saying "Publishers are Dinosaurs" a statement I quite agree with. They all too often look for only the next "Da Vinci Code", publishing 250,000 copies of what they think will be the next best seller only to have them rot in "sad warehouses" left to be remaindered (the author doesn't get any royalties for that) or destroyed. At best you have a shelf life of anywhere from 2 weeks to 16 weeks and if your books are not flying off the shelf goodbye royalties.
Booksurge.com, the company I used for my latest novel "The Wager: A Humorous Novel About Dog Parks, Seniors and Gambling for love later in Life, was acquired by Amazon.com over a month ago because they can supply the book anywhere in the world extremely quickly and for little cost. Booksurge also has a return policy for bookstores (you pay extra) and the bookstores (who all demand a return policy) are more willing to stock the books. As a result you have a much better chance of bookstores stocking your print-on-demand books if you are with Booksurge.
The second thing that happened when I was in Maui was an interview on Public Television (Maui Channel 53) on a program called "Truth and Justice In Hawaii." I was able to explain how the children in the Chief's Children School were indoctrinated rather than educated and suffered much self-worth damage from the Calvinist missionary put downs of their culture, language and way of doing things.
I then went up to Pono Productions to do an interview with them. The interview resulted in eighty minutes of film. Topics covered included the suffering in the Chief's Children's School by the children who would become monarchs of Hawaii; suffering by Indigenous children in residential schools in Canada, Australia, Alaska, Tahiti as their teachers/wardens? tried to take the native out of them; the meaning of this suffering from then existential framework of therapist Victor Frankl; Ethnocentric Monoculturalism vs Racism, and how western societies like Britain and the U.S. need more compassion in their Christianity, more social responsibility in their Capitalism and more Grassroots input in their Democracy. We also covered how drug epidemics get started (lack of social mobility, lack of proper education, poverty, and discrimination in marginalized populations) and methods for healing and family programming in addiction.
I realised after viewing the eighty minutes of film that we had the guts of another documentary and Pono Productions is now going to edit, add visuals, music, pictures, etc. to turn it into a documentary we can enter in film festivals.
On top of the above I also attended the screenings of several fantastic feature films like "Ocean Odyssey" which has musician Paul Gilman playing his flute and keyboard for dolphins in Hawaii, Humpback Whales in Tonga, and Orcas near the San Juans. The whales, etc. came to listen and cavort about Gilman. I also attended three panels of documentary makers, feature film makers and documentary short makers and now realise that anyone with the will to persevere can make their own documentary, feature film, documentary short etc. and then challenge the marketing task to sell them.
I made a quick visit to Molokai aboard the Molokai Princess and was the only person on the upper deck enjoying the ferry cavorting like a catamaran in the wind-swept channel between Maui and Molokai. I also drove up to the top of the Haleakala Volcano with the clouds coming down around the road making the drive a driver skill challenge to say the least.
Not bad for a visit of thirteen days. I forgot to tell you about the night I went out on the Lanai and found myself staring up at a full moon shining through three palm trees and reflecting on the clouds over the slopes of the Haleakala Volcano. How romantic!
So long for now. Will keep you posted about what is happening with my new novel, "The Wager", my six movie scripts, the two documentaries with Pono Productions in Kula, and my other novels.
What an exciting time we are living in for publishing and script production.
