Introduce Yourself : A New Year...and new opportunities? by Christopher Neal Fisher

Hey there, folks! Christopher Neal Fisher here once again. Hard to believe it’s 2024 now. I’m another year older as of the 12th (can a 63 year old retired dude break into the entertainment industry?), and oddly enough, haven’t written down “2023” for the year (so far) on anything! No doubt about it, 2024 will be a year of destiny; for our country, our world…and maybe ourselves?

So who am I? Well, you already know my name, age, and that I’m retired from the “workaday world” (specifically working in my state’s civil service for 32 years as general office support). I’ve also been married to my wife Judy for 36 years now. No kids of our own, but she has two daughters from previous relationships, as well as grandkids and great-grandkids from them, so I guess that makes me a “step-“ Being retired (not by choice) since 2016 has had the benefit of finally allowing me the time in my life I needed to pursue what I’ve really wanted to do ever since I was about 6, namely become a screenwriter for movies and TV. Growing up, I watched Batman, The Wild Wild West, The Avengers (the real ones, Steed and Peel, not those Marvel Superheroes), Secret Agent, Dark Shadows, all the Irwin Allen shows, and my all time favorite TV show, The Prisoner. I thought those shows were magical, and something inside me said “I want to make some of that magic too!”.

So what am I working on? Well, my main project — the earliest “idea seeds” of which came to me all the way back in 2002, though I didn’t start working on it in earnest until 2017 — is a Southern Gothic Soap Opera with the working title “Bayou Noir”, named after the fictional Southern Louisiana town it’s set in and around. Basically it’s “The Sopranos meets Dark Shadows in the middle of Louisiana’s famed ‘Cajun Country’”. It’s a project I’ve invested a lot of time and energy towards, crafting characters, a “world”, and story arcs for it, and I’m hoping this year to find a producer who sees in it the same potential as an entertainment property that I do.

Here’s the logline and synopsis for it: 

“A wealthy Louisiana French family deals with dysfunction, conflicting agendas, and the enemies human and supernatural that threaten to tear them and their “bayou empire” apart.”

“Meet the Delacroix family. They’re rich, powerful, influential, and nothing happens — legal or illegal — in the Cajun Country town of Bayou Noir, Louisiana, without the say-so of the family’s current patriarch, “JB”. But when you’re all those things, you’ve probably built up a lot of karma and made a lot of enemies over the last three hundred years, and when you live in the most supernaturally charged region of America, some of those enemies might not be entirely human — or even human at all.”

Other things I’m working on include writing some short film scripts based on the folktales of the “Illinois Country” French, plus I have an idea for another possible series, set on the American frontier of the early 1800s, in the town of Kaskaskia. I envision it as being “Grittier than ‘Little House on the Prairie’, but not as gritty as ‘Deadwood’”, and would center around the relationships and interactions in what was both a very important and a very diverse community; one which counted among its residents at the time Franco-Americans, Anglo-Americans, African-Americans, First Nations, and Metis. At this point, it’s only at the “notes” stage. I do know it could be done either as a weekly stand-alone episodic series, or a serialized (aka “soapy drama”) one. (Personally, I would prefer to do it as a serialized one, as I am doing with Bayou Noir, as I’ve discovered I really enjoy writing serialized story arcs, and even have something of a flair for it. I definitely like how you can develop characters and depict them as experiencing personal growth and change better in a serialized format, as well as can be more detailed in your storytelling.)

Since the last IYW, I finally managed right after Christmas to get over the horrific cold I’d picked up a couple of weeks earlier, plus in the new year I finally managed to take the plunge and get a new Mac mini, so that I can start writing scripts again. Between the computer, the monitor (my worsening eyes mandate that I buy a larger monitor than the iMac comes with now, so I bought a Samsung “32 one from Worst Buy), keyboard, mouse, data recovery from my old machine, and data transfer, I just added over 2k with of debt to my credit cards, plus for some reason the third party apps did not port over, so I may wind up shelling for a new copy of Final Draft (unless the place that did the transfer can still recover it from my backup drive). I’m lucky that apparently the banks have enough faith in me to give me the lines of credit needed to get back on my feet, computer wise, but it still makes me nervous adding that much to my debt load. Also, in early December, I signed up for a half-hour pilot read and conference with an executive. The one I picked I chose specifically because they've had experience both with "Daytime Drama" soaps and "Prime Time" soaps as well, which I'm thinking might give my pilot script for Bayou Noir and what I'm trying to do with the series concept a better chance of being correctly understood. I know execs are busy people, and probably like most of us even more so than usual during the holidays, but I'm hoping to hear from them soon.

Finally, my apologies for not responding to any of the kind comments some folks left me last month. Unfortunately, my cold wound up knocking me for a loop badly enough that I had to give other things a higher priority for little energy I had.

Well, I guess that’s it for this time. Hope everyone has a great rest of the month and year, and that this is the year the success you’re striving for comes your way!