The Highly-Illustrated Screenplay Narrative

  Pages and artwork from two versions of my historical novel about an attempt to engineer a fascist coup in 1930s America. The novel comes in two versions: as a conventional text-only manuscript, and as an illustrated screenplay novel with “storyboard roughs” and “stills” based on archival photos. I’ve seen (and, once, produced) a lot of graphic novels in my time. But I’ve never seen an approach like this. Not sure why. It’s an idea that borrows from the brilliance of whoever invented the original screenplay format, yet it avoids one of the biggest pitfalls of movie production: the incredible pressure to make a profit and recover production costs, and therefore make “crowd pleasing” fictions. The novel itself is based on real people and events, and tells the story of General Smedley Butler — a Marine who became a vocal critic of militarism and American imperialism — and his cat and mouse relationship with Gerald MacGuire, a small time bond salesman all too willing to act as an agen...

  [note: this originally appeared in Dark Sky Magazine]   BARAM WRITER EXT. AN URBAN WOODLAND. WINTER. LATE AFTERNOON. Wind blows through trees, rustles dead leaves, makes branches sway in a creaking, slow dervish. VO  [male]: The wind has its own tone, its own feeling. It’s like … coldness, thinness. It’s like hunger. The wind has a body. The wind is someone. JUMPCUT EXT. A HIKING TRAIL IN THE URBAN WOODLAND. A MOMENT LATER. A married couple walks along the trail. We see the wife, walking ahead. VO : You’re someone. I’m someone. Your body: petite, a source of warmth. A body to whom love is directed. My body? Wind. That is, has been wind. Still feels like wind, but sometimes feels warmth. I think this is the final state of love. JUMPCUT EXT. THE HIKING TRAIL. A MOMENT LATER. A view of nearby apartment buildings. Several of the apartments, while still in somebody’s possession, lie empty. The buildings look spectral and aristocratic: the second homes of the well-to-do. The ...

  Chronicles of Earthly Change  — a personal view of climate change 

  A few years ago, Tom Dooley, editor of the online literary magazine Eclectica, was kind enough to publish one of my novels, a historical work entitled The Business Army. It’s about an attempt to engineer a fascist takeover in America. It’s based on fact. I’m reworking the project, since it’s become more timely than ever. The novel exists in two versions: as a conventional text only work, and as a new kind of hybrid graphic novel I call the illustrated screenplay novel. To read the conventional version, go here: https://www.eclectica.org/v23n2/harvor.html (Note: I have other unpublished fiction mss., including a historical novel about Juno Beach.) * Pitch: Economic injustice is everywhere. The wealthy have too much, the poor too little. Unemployment is massive, and political violence is on the rise. In the midst of all this, powerful elites decide that the sitting president is too feeble to govern and democracy itself is "a problem". * OUTLINE – THE BUSINESS ARMY Below are t...

 YouTube link: Ambient: We Need Peace, Not Pieces... (World Bardo 103) https://youtu.be/0C_VoHYVwW4

  THE BUSINESS ARMY  Roosevelt’s first inauguration 2