Category Archives: Fiction

So Alive…an excerpt from It’s in His Kiss by Vickie Lester

July 21, 2018 by Vickie Lester

SO ALIVE In 1996 Keir Bloomfield got his first sole screen credit as a writer. Granted, it was on a low-budget, a very low-budget, movie that the producers guaranteed would be seen on oil platforms and tuna boats the world over. But it was a credit and it was his. Toni Todd, the film legend, had nothing to do with it; contrary to the advice of her facialist, she crinkled her nose at the whole project as if it had […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Relationships, Short Stories, Story, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood Royalty, Hollywood sign, inside story, screenwriter

Stealing a line from Billy Wilder, “I am not a gal writing deep-dish revelations.”

July 21, 2018 by Vickie Lester

You all know (I think…I must have mentioned it before…) that I started this blog because I was told I had to. The surprising and wonderful thing is that I love the people it’s introduced me to. I never expected that. Getting back to the had to it all started because I had written this book, and publishers—oh yes, and we all know what happened to the publishing deal and I won’t bore you with that again—anyway, publishers wouldn’t look […]

Categories: Advertising, Blogging, Books, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Mystery, Palm Springs, Photography, Publishing, Romance, Story, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, Billy Wilder, Billy WIlder quote, Hollywood behind the scenes, I don't take what I do too seriously, I have a lot of fun with words, publishing deal, screenwriter, some like it hot gif, writing influences

“I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting. She said, “Just be truthful – and if you can fake that you’ve got it made.” Fred MacMurray

July 16, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Categories: Art, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: #FredMacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity, Fred MacMurray quote

“Four nights will quickly dream away the time,” especially if you have a good book in your hands

July 13, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I open the front door at dusk and the heat of the day is beginning to lift. A breeze stirs through the scorched and shriveled roses. I see a tawny rabbit, who turns to me and then comes a bit closer, only to take shelter from a hawk under a parked car. I know better than to get any closer, unless it should dart into the predator’s view. For now the bird is sitting in the branches of an oak, […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Photography, Story, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, a woman of a certain age, aging, As a child I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, author, reading, roman à clef, sanctuary, summer reading list

“The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” Jean Cocteau (July 5, 1889-Oct. 11, 1963)

July 5, 2018 by Vickie Lester

“I met a young man of nineteen or twenty, who at that time vibrated with all the youth of the world. This was Jean Cocteau, then a passionately imaginative youth to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundations of the Heavenly City.” Edith Wharton (1934) From the Crucifixion By Jean Cocteau

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Movies, Photography, Poetry, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: A film is a petrified fountain of thought, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Cocteau's Orpheus, Jean Cocteau, Jean Cocteau poem, Jean Cocteau quote, Jean Marais

“A film is a petrified fountain of thought.” Jean Cocteau

July 5, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Categories: Art, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, History, Movies, Paris, Photography, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: A film is a petrified fountain of thought, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Cocteau's Orpheus, Jean Cocteau, Jean Cocteau quote, Jean Marais

“To write is divine. Forget all the rest.” Olivia de Havilland is 102

July 1, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I always listen to Olivia, especially on her birthday. Have you heard of this? The literary agent hypothesis? It’s a way of saying while writing fiction the author channels reality to make a compelling narrative. Or, as the old chestnut goes, write what you know. Additionally it means the characters “write” the book, and the author serves as their agent (oracle? medium?). This gives me the feeling those involved in coming up with this theory have never sweated their way […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #july1, editing a novel, gone fishing, literary agent hypothesis, Olivia de Havilland, rewrites, roman à clef

Dear one, what are you reading?

June 5, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I found a copy of Paraic O’Donnell‘s “The Maker of Swans” while I was in Seattle, it seems the perfect thing to distract me from the news this evening and take me into some kind of sorcery, that I’m more than intrigued by, and have no clear concept of, as I’m only on page 48. I will tell you this, it has a heroine, Clara, a child of words and wonders, that I’ve fallen in love with. Speaking of words […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: Anne Margaret Daniel, author, F Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ireland, Katharine Hepburn GIF, Paraic O'Donnell, reading

“She surrounded herself with a hot plate, telephone, scotch—and books.”

April 30, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Oasis: The bookshop on Fifty-second Street and Fifth Avenue in New York which stays open till midnight. Dietrich: In the German language: the name for a key that opens all locks. Not a magic key. A very real object, necessitating great skill in the making. The actress Marlene Dietrich spent the last ten years of her life bedridden, in her apartment on Avenue Montaigne, in Paris, refusing to see old acquaintances and avoiding photographers… She coped with isolation by running […]

Categories: Art, Audio, Blogging, Books, Choreography, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #bibliophile, marginalia, Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich quotes

BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

If you want a little historical perspective you're home.