My love of fiction started with an old musty box in my uncle's garage that held a treasure trove of old magazines and paperbacks, but it wasn't the artwork that held my attention, it was the short fiction and the novels. I devoured works by Louis L'Amour, Vonnegut, Fleming, and Hemingway. Those books made me want to tell stores. I wrote my first full-length real novel in the basement of an old house in Vancouver, Washington, with water dripping from the pipes above me and a weird kind of millipede for company. I lost that story when the pages flew out of my motorcycle saddlebag on the I-5 freeway outside of Portland, Oregon, and it's probably a good thing. I've been writing for thirty years now, and I still love a good story. I write fiction and non-fiction, but what they have in common is my desire to inspire and entertain. My non-fiction is based on a lifetime of studying the fundamentals of meaningful personal accomplishment and my fiction is just pure fun. I admire badass female warriors, so that's who I write. They fight injustice and wrongs and sometimes they fight werewolves or zombies. They are always flawed and human and I love them. I take my inspiration from current events and my brilliant, badass, social justice warrior wife (she wrote that bit). I love to get out into the world and away from my desk by riding my Harley Road King across the southwest, hiking, eating at one of the great Santa Fe restaurants, or flying down the Colorado and New Mexico slopes on my skis.
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Hi Joe Cooke! Thanks for sharing! Have you tried turning any of your work into a screenplay before?
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Hi Emily! I just uploaded my current screenplay, The Santa Suit, to the ISA site. I have a post-apocalyptic story called The Spread that I turned into a screenplay and took third place in the George R. R. Martin screenplay contest, and I have another screenplay I'm working on called The One and Only Oregon Star Ball International Samba Contest (Samba, for short) that is done but I want to rewrite it after taking a great class from Max Time in February. The Santa Suit has been an idea in my head for a long time, but I decided in February to screenplay it and just finished what I think is the final draft. I have a bunch of other stuff I'm working on, too. Just need to sell something!
Thanks for connecting!
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The Santa Suit: During the height of the holiday season, an ambitious lawyer takes on the biggest case of her life—a multi-billionaire client who wants to trademark all things Christmas.
Welcome to the community, Joe Cooke. Nice motorcycle and jacket!
"I lost that story when the pages flew out of my motorcycle saddlebag on the I-5 freeway outside of Portland, Oregon." I know the feeling. I wrote my short story at 13, and I lost the pages before I could finish it.
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Welcome!
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Welcome Joe Cooke .
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What a great background , stories, and accomplishments, Joe. Wishing you continued enjoyment and all good fortune. it'll be great for us on Stage 32 to see what you're doing.
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Hi Joe, it's great to have you in the community! I hope you've found a way to get that lost story of yours into another one you've written. It's such a visual and visceral moment.
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Hey Joe Cooke! Those four writers you named are so great, i spent my formative years reading those same authors as well! Santa Fe is so great, I'm a fan! Are the badass warrior books all part of one big series?
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Glad to have you here! What challenges do you face when you write screenplays after having written novels?
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Amanda, I think some projects seem to lend themselves better to the screen, like my Samba screenplay that is set in the world of ballroom dance, and The Santa Suit (a Christmas movie, obv.). I turned my idea for a novel called The Spread into a screenplay specifically so I could enter it in the New Mexico Film Foundation's George R.R. Martin screenplay contest and now I am taking that screenplay and expanding it into a novel. I enjoy both formats but I guess at heart I am a novelist.
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Awesome post, Joe Cooke. It’s great to meet you here in the community. What’s THE SPREAD about, if you’re open to sharing?
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Sam Sokolow
The Spread: When a global pandemic creates a violent subspecies of humans, a preschool teacher and an AI-enhanced sexbot must team up to stop a megalomaniac from destroying the remnants of civilization.
I first came up with this idea in 2018 when I was undergoing cancer treatment, so it pre-dates COVID ha ha.
I finished it a couple of years ago and it's been in rewriting hell since then.
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Sam Sokolow I saw someone in the news today predict that Trump's strategy if he is elected will be a "scorched Earth" scenario (retaliation against his political opponents) and that's exactly the terminology I used in The Spread except the villian is a meglomaniac dictator (he was President when the Spread happened) and his scorched Earth scenario was nuclear. I just found that interesting. I've pulled out my 2021 version of the script to rewrite. I didn't really like any of the prior rewrites, despite trying to work in all the feedback.
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It's often said that the Mission of Creatives is to perceive and present the Future. And often with that presentation, Creatives help shaped the actual real-world future. I've always like the Ageless Wisdom phrase for where Creatives get our inspirations -- from the "Raincloud of Knowable Things".
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Welcome and a very good introduction. There is nothing better than a good story.