Catch Me If You Can

I recently received a 1-star review for one of my books. All the rest are 4s or 5s. I know exactly who did this. Yes, I have high-tech skills, and yes, I'm a computer hacker, but I'm confused about why this person did this. For me, doing this is stealing. It is the low of lows. Their revenge isn't a victory; it’s a revelation.

I once worked for a man who was suspicious of everyone, and he suspected employees were stealing from him. I was provided a free new car to drive as part of my job, but I had to pay for the gas. One day, I was underneath a huge printer, changing the ribbon, and Mr. Boss came into the parts department and asked the manager, "Is Sandi paying for her gas?" I came out from under the printer and took Mr. Boss aside. "Look," I told him quietly, "if I want to steal from you, I will steal the whole gas truck, not just a few gallons a week. With my computer skills, you'd never find it."

Yes, I am a hacker. I started using computers in the 70s, before most hackers' PARENTS were born! Computer science was my minor in college, and accounting was my major. As a CPA, we know where the money is buried. The IRS provides a 10% reward for turning in cheaters, but if I had ever done that, I'd be writing this from my yacht instead of my Florida home. But CPAs are not like lawyers; if the IRS asks us for information, there is no client/CPA confidence. We have to spill the beans. In fact, we have the responsibility to report fraud. Tax professionals, including Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and tax attorneys, are obligated to report potential instances of tax evasion or fraud by their clients. He once argued with me that 3 years had passed on a questionable deduction - but in cases of fraud, the statute of limitations for assessment of tax never expires. The IRS can go back as many years as it wants to investigate and assess taxes, penalties, and interest. I let my boss know that, and now he had two things to worry about, but theft was his main focus.

Mr. Boss began weekly sessions in which I would tell him various ways I could steal from him. The gas truck theft would be easy, I explained to him. I'm the one who orders and approves the fuel tanks to be filled. I'd issue the purchase order, but then have the gas delivered to one of the parents on a soccer team I coached, who owns a gas station. I'd split it with the guy. A pretty easy way to steal $28,000-$40,000 every few weeks. But I explained to my extremely wealthy boss that there are three types of people. The first type is totally dishonest. They will steal at any opportunity. It is their true nature. But fortunately, most of these people are working the streets, running cons, or sitting in prison. The second group is totally honest. Born honest and raised honest. When they find a twenty-dollar bill, they pick it up and ask around, "Did anyone drop this?" I like to think I am in this group. It is the way my parents raised me. Plus, why would I ever risk everything I have: my CPA license, my home, my family, my freedom –  just to steal? Money has never been a motivator for me. It is only a measure of how much I'm appreciated.

The third group? That's where it gets interesting. They are honest until they're not. Something happens that makes them feel entitled. They feel underpaid or unappreciated. They rationalize. "That person owes me." That's when the trouble starts. I gave a workshop at the annual AICPA conference on employee theft, titled "Catch Me If You Can." I think it is the only CPA workshop where you can't buy a DVD of my presentation. The board was worried employees would use it to steal from their employers! I had so many ideas!

I came up with the title after reading the 1980 book Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale Jr. and journalist Stan Redding. That book inspired the 2002 Spielberg film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. The book describes how Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks – and all before he was twenty-one. It's written in the first person and reads almost like a thriller. Fast-paced and entertaining, Abagnale recounts his various cons and escapes across multiple countries.

Here's where it gets interesting: the book is acknowledged to have been partly fictionalized, and the factual basis for the events has been challenged. Abagnale himself acknowledged issues with accuracy. He stated, "I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job telling the story, but he also overdramatized and exaggerated parts of it. That was his style and what the editor wanted." More damning, in 2020, journalist Alan C. Logan conducted an in-depth investigation and found documents that contradicted many of Abagnale's claims. Logan's investigation revealed that Abagnale was in Great Meadow Prison in New York between the ages of 17 and 20 (1965-1968). That was the exact time frame during which Abagnale claimed to have committed his most significant scams. So ironically, the greatest con Frank Abagnale may have pulled was convincing the world his cons were real in the first place. Today, he'd probably be a computer hacker.

I'd like to finish with a thought. Is hacking stealing?

I honed my hacking skills when I owned a technology company and received a ransomware demand. I circumvented the hacker and didn't pay the ransom. I have only used my powers for good. Remember, I was raised to be good. But finding out about this 1-star review? I'm not sure I'm at peace with this person. It feels intentional. A type of revenge against me. My best friend wants me to write a "best revenge book" because I have told her so many ways to get a pound of flesh, but maybe I should let it go.

Hey, does anyone want to release an updated "Catch Me If You Can"? The best ideas in Frank's book didn't even make it to the screen, and I have hundreds more. But today, I'm not writing screenplays - I'm creating my own animated series, so I'm going to move on, let it go –  and not let this dark person get inside my head. If you want to see one of my videos that helped me decide to "let it go," please watch my YouTube video - https://youtu.be/LPUMiMM4JE0.

Happy New Year, and more about my web series next month when you catch up with me when you can!

Mother's Day Romance

This has probably been one of the busiest months of my screenwriting career. The producer working on my Christmas Bonbons script for Hallmark (he changed the title to Emma and the Chocolate Factory) asked me if I'd be willing to change it from a Christmas movie to a Mother's Day movie. GASP!

The first major changed was to bring the dead mother back to life. That was actually fun, because I was able to name her Rita in honor of Mother's Day and my mother, who has been gone now for almost 25 years. Next, I need a new B-Story having to do with a missing recipe box from Rita's mother, and it reminded me of the surprise 25th Anniversary party I had planned for my parents. A few weeks before the big day, my mom's brother and sisters had decided that Grandma Nellesen should move in with my Uncle George. They planned to divide up all the stuff from my Grandma's house between the 5 of them. Everyone was going to meet at Grandma's house at 10AM and take their things. It would be rather easy because my Grandma would take masking tape and put each person's name that she wanted something to go to on the bottom. 

That fateful day, my parents arrived at 10AM, and the house was empty. Her brother and sisters had their trailers and trucks all loaded. Sitting on the porch were 3 items for my mom: an old footlocker, a book, and something that I don't remember. My dad probably knows. My mom called me crying that afternoon when she got home. She was especially upset because she knew there were keepsakes for my brother and me. She vowed that she'd never speak to her brother and sisters again.

I got my dad on the phone and told him about the big party. He told me that I would need to cancel it. Since there were hundreds of people invited, we quickly sent out postcards and called people, telling them that my dad had planned a cruise and we had to cancel. My dad quickly booked that cruise, and I spent the next few years angry at my mom's family and trying to use up all the napkins that said Rita and Larry - 25 years! But they loved their cruise and my dad ended up going on many more after my mother passed away and paid for me to go on a cruise - which I did after I retired.

So in this script, I had the B-Story be a dispute between my mom, Rita and her sister, Catherine. I picked Catherine (the tallest one in the photo to the left) because she was always one of my favorites, and Mom said I looked the most like her. Like all Hallmark-like movies, Mother's Day Romance ends happily, and this script is special because it is about a handsome chocolatier from Ecuador named Luis Silva. My precious granddaughter married the real Luis Silva last year, and I am trying to learn Spanish to travel to Ecuador in a few years to attend their second wedding for the Ecuadorian family. Luis can't travel until his green card comes through, so I have plenty of time to get fluent.

I have some other projects, the play I wrote - Colonoscopy the Musical, that I hope our local theater group, the KR Players, will perform someday. I'm pitching a girls' soccer script tomorrow, and finishing up my book Churchill's Mum - about Keith's 5th cousin, Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill. I had to get a new picture done for that!

I had an article written about me this month - https://canvasrebel.com/meet-sandi-jerome/

That was exciting!

Getting back to the keepsakes, I'm happy today that I don't have a lot of stuff from my grandparents. I keep downsizing houses, so not a lot of room! I try to give things to my granddaughters when I can - and I wrote this blog 

https://sandijerome.blogspot.com/2021/03/your-grandkids-dont-want-your-junk.html - about how your grandkids don't want your junk.

So a very busy month - and that was only half of it! More next month! Thanks for reading!

Nobody Knows

 

I finished a TV pilot this month with an old friend, Mark, and we entered it into SeriesFest to see if we could get some bites - or bliss. It is a pretty interesting story. Mark and his wife, Arlene, moved to Mexico to find their bliss. In this picture (left) is our cousin, John, Mark and his wife, Arlene. Our TV pilot is based on Mark's comedy book Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak. I got the coverage on it back this month, and it is fantastic!

"The writer has created an absolutely fantastic premise. The concept of Americans (from Portland) moving to Mexico to realize some idealized dream that is far from ideal is great and will provide endless setups for future episodes. I could see this done as a single-camera or multicamera show, though the format is very much a single-camera show. It's a concept that also has wide audience appeal, especially depending on how much you dig into cultural discussions and commentary.  I also love your three main characters, Charlie, Marty, and Adele. The dynamic between Charlie and Marty feels reminiscent of ALL IN THE FAMILY, though with completely different archetypes that fit contemporary audiences. They each have a very distinct personality with its own quirks, positives, and negatives. You do introduce a few locals into the pilot, but it would be great to see them even more so we get a sense of the regulars within this world that our central family will be interacting with from week to week."

Getting back to Mark, decades ago, we found that we liked to write and were both going to the Willamette Writers Conference that summer. We agreed to meet in the big tent for lunch. When Keith and I walked in, I said, "Isn't that your cousin, John, sitting next to Mark?" Yup, in Portland, a town of 2 million+, the only two people we knew - were friends with each other!  Mark and I stayed in touch over the next few decades, and it was Mark who told us when Cousin John died this year. John was an LA lawyer who moved to Portland to find his bliss and write plays. That is also Mark's bliss, writing plays, although he's quite the accomplished comedian and has written for shows like Leno. But his book has been on my Kindle all these years and has been my "go-to" book when I'm feeling sad - which has happened a few times this year. After I read it again this fall, I knew it could be a TV pilot and convinced Mark to take a leap of faith with me. He gave me the option on it and agreed to co-write the pilot.  

I changed "Mark and Arlene" to Marty and Adele - fictitious characters and then merely told Mark's story. He and Arlene have moved to San Miguel de Allende three times! They are now back in Portland. I made a fictitious city, too, to protect the huge expat community in San Miguel "where if you swing an artist, you'll hit a writer and if that writer ducks, you'll hit a jazz musician." In addition, the locals speak Spanish with the speed of a particle accelerator.
So that is what I've been knee-deep in this past month. Here's the Nobody Knows Pitch Deck.

Now, I'm starting on a horror movie, writing it with a famous artist, Guy Vasilovich, based on Edgar Allan Poe's last living relative, titled Last Poe —more on that next month!

A Hallmark Christmas

This month, my best friend, Laura (right,) visited me for a week. There aren't that many people who knew me as my mother's daughter, so we talked a lot about our mothers. 

My mother loved Christmas – every inch of our home was decorated. She made a magical bonbon – and I'm often asked for the recipe. One problem – I don't have it. My mom never wrote it down before she died unexpectedly, and we lost more that day than her secret ingredients.

As kids, I admired Laura's mother; she was a professional woman and they lived in an immaculate house. When I asked why their sewing machine was in the master bedroom when they had both a family room and a rarely used living room, Laura laughed. Appearances were important in her family and nobody touched their formal living room. In our home, the sewing machine was on the dining room table because we ate in the kitchen. For my family, everything was about functionality. Eating was number one; my mother was an amazing cook - in fact, my maiden name was Cook. Mom's dining room and kitchen looked like a Hallmark movie set during a bonbon contest.

Last month, we welcomed a dashing young man, Luis, from Ecuador into our family when my scientist granddaughter, Vrinda Jerome, became Vrinda Silva. He loves to cook! While up in Jacksonville for the wedding, I watched a marathon batch of Christmas movies. A few months ago I had finished writing my Hallmark-like movie, Christmas Bonbons, which is being shopped by the same Hijacked producer Autumn Bailey (On a Wing and a Prayer with Dennis Quaid.) Hijacked was an adaptation from a true book about the heroes of flight 705. Christmas Bonbons was my first Hallmark structured movie. I loved writing it. The 9-acts and Hallmark "rules" are like catnip to a former programmer like me that loves structures.  For those of you considering a career writing Hallmark Christmas Movies, here's the most common format;

Act 1 -  Setup. The heroine has a happy life, but something is missing.

Act 2 -  Inciting incident. She has to travel somewhere; maybe home for the holidays or a  project for work. Often is is snowing when she gets there.

Act 3. Meet Cute. She arrives - and by chance, she encounters the romantic interest, who can be her long-lost first love or involved in her work project. But it can also be a family friend, or the friendly town vet, or even a guy that sells Christmas trees.

Act 4. Debate - as her situation gets more challenging and that frustrating romantic interest is always just there, resulting in many more encounters where the guy makes himself useful, and sometimes frustrates her and she wants to leave, but she has to finish something first.

Act 5. Almost kiss -  they begin to enjoy spending time together. This is also where they touch accidentally, or look into each other's eyes - and then,  one of them says awkwardly, "I should go..." something isn't right about them being together as they almost kiss.

Act 6. Fun and games. They finally get over that reason why things are awkward, find themselves in a snow ball fight, or trying to decorate a tree, or make cookies, and get interrupted right before their lips meet. Sometimes there is a town contest for the best decoration of some sort and they compete.

Act 7. BUT - something is wrong; he said/she said - misunderstandings, rumours, and she thinks she should go back home because she's afraid - or he doesn't seem to feel the same way about her..

Act 8. Finally – one of them, has the courage to tell the other how they really feel thanks the classic mentor who often is wearing a Santa Hat. Feelings are real, they are falling in love! She maybe decides to move back home, or he's going to move to where she lives. A new life is beginning. Their life together matters.

Act 9. They live happy ever after and the whole family (or town) joins them around the Christmas tree for a group picture or singing a Christmas carole.

There are also some of the Hallmark traits and rules;

1. No words like crazy, hate, NO profanity

2. Christmas in almost every scene

3. NO religion

4. Must decorate a Christmas tree

5. Theme uplifting

6. Make Christmas food like cookies

7. No sex scenes

8. Few displays of affection

9. One snowball fight

10. One kiss at the end

11. Must have a happy ending.

I'm not sure my Christmas Bonbons is a perfect script yet, I probably have some rewrites it its future, but I also and I haven't given up trying to recreate that bonbon recipe of my mom's. The difference between a writer and a professional writer is that a professional never gives up. I'd write more this month, but today I'm getting down my Christmas decorations from the attic. I love Christmas.