The Scent of Rain & Lightning

Last week, I received one of the most gratifying e-mails I’ve ever gotten. It was from writer Nancy Pickard.  There were two words: It’s real! And she provided a link.

When I got the e-mail, I was at one of the Paint Nite events that my daughter, Megan, teaches, an always uplifting experience where 20 to 50 people attend a two-hour painting class at a local bar. I was staring at my attempt at painting a beach scene with an umbrella in the foreground and wondering why my beach umbrella didn’t look like Megan’s. Did it need more red? A wider brim? What?

Then my phone dinged and there was Nancy’s e-mail: It’s real!

In 2010, I wrote a post called Writers  about Nancy’s beautiful novel, The Scent of Rain & Lightning and how it had just hit #19 on the New York Times Bestseller list. As Nancy wrote at the time: “It’s only taken 30 years!”

As I wrote in that post:

Thirty years.  Think about that for a moment. Three decades of typing, of churning out stories. Thirty years and so much inner work, tweaking of beliefs, paying attention to your dreams, interpreting them, taking your cues from those dreams. And, ultimately, it took believing it could happen, that her work was powerful enough to compete. The Scent of Rain and Lightning is proof of a writer at the apex of her talents. The book is magnificent.

This 2010 post was also about how we met in 1985, at a bookstore where I was signing copies of my first novel, and the friendship that grew from that and has spanned thirty years. So when Nancy’s e-mail came through last week, I knew what it meant before I clicked the link.

Scent is going to become a movie,  an indie production. As it says in the link:

The film, an adaptation of the novel by Nancy Pickard, is the story of a young woman forced to confront old wounds and the destructive power of hate when she learns that the man who killed her parents has been released from prison. Produced by Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison and Jeff Johnson of No Coast Entertainment, Kevin Waller and Michael Davis, and Maggie Grace, The Scent of Rain and Lightning is directed by Blake Robbins. WeatherVane Productions and PKs Remain Entertainment will be Executive Producing. Filming begins this fall in Oklahoma.

I shot up from my chair and ran toward the back of the restaurant, where Megan was cleaning up paintbrushes. “Megan, you’ve got to see this! Nancy’s book is going to be a movie!” I thrust my cell into her hands so she could see the article.

“My God,” Megan breathed. “This is awesome. What a great cast. Maggie Grace was in Lost.”

Then we bumped fists.

This is the kind of stuff you dream about when you’re a kid, the kind of stuff you talked about at sleepovers with your buddies….When my book becomes a movie…. It’s magic. And when it happens to someone you know and love, the joy you feel surpasses everything else. My friend did it, she really did it… You go to sleep and wake up and leap through your day with a big grin on your face.

Way to go, Nancita! The MacGregors will be in line on opening day.