"Secret Weekend"

Thom Racina Greetings! It's been a long time. Meaning me, getting around to updating my web site. I'll ask for forgiveness and a little bit of understanding, as I suspect some of you are as lazy as I am when it comes to things like this. I know I have a lot of new fans here, mainly resulting from the fact that I started, on August 4th, writing one script a week for The Young & The Restless. I know that some blogs have heralded my "return to daytime," but I take it a something a whole lot simpler: just great fun. I've been away from the genre for a long time--was rather surprised when I got the offer--but my love for it rekindled in a moment, and not only for the paycheck. I just really enjoy it. This time around it's almost like a whole new ball game, in that I'm doing scripts for a change--easier than head writing, I'll say--but equally as challenging and creative. I'd never really known Y&R except to hear from friends of the battles between Kay and Jill, and the antics of Victor and Nikki (especially from my great pal, Sally Sussman Morina, who came from the Bell family to create "Generations") (her husband, Tony, a wonderful director, is now a producer on the show), but it was always one step from the reality of watching it (who has the time to watch soaps when you're writing them?), so this job meant a crash course in Newman Family History, and an overnight learn-the-characters seminar. I trust, from what I hear from the fans, that I'm doing okay. Plus, I think that Maria Bell and Hogan Scheffer are doing a terrific job of telling stories and holding on to the constantly-diminishing daytime audience. There has been a lot of consternation over what the former writing team had done ("damage" the fans call it), and I think the new team is bringing the Y&R of old back to prominence. Hey, it's Number One for a reason.

Meantime, still in television, my partner Susie Bedsow Horgan and I have a prime time series that's kind of like Downstairs at the West Wing. Or 90210 meets DC. It's called Adams Morgan, the hip, young section of that city (I lived in Dupont Circle, right next door, for five years after leaving daytime television), and it's about the kids who live there--the pages and interns who work in congress. Our producer is Jay Benson (Traffic, the mini-series) and we all have high hopes that a network will pick it up this year. Our pilot script is being pitched right now. Cross fingers.

On the book front, I'm way behind. Being lazy is one thing, and traveling like a flight attendant is another, but there is no real excuse why I haven't knocked out another thriller in the past 3 years. One is on its way, however. It's called Guardian Angel, my co-writer is Terri Lee Ryan, a new talent from Chicago, and we hope to sell it this fall--we are in our final rewrite of the proposal. I've left Penguin and NAL for other pastures, which is why most of the books here on the web site are either out of print or soon to go out of print (no investment in me anymore). God willing, look for it at the end of 2009.

Even more exciting is a totally new project that is as different from my other books as scripting Y&R is from making up the stories: I'm doing a nonfiction book, my first really, which is the life story of Jeanne Stawiecki, the first woman to summit Mt. Everest and all the seven summits of the world as well as run in marathons on every continent on earth. It's titled Dream, Dare, Do! Jeanne holds 2 Guinness records, and her story is wonderfully inspirational as well as dramatic and compelling. The agent takes it to publishers this fall, so by the time I update this again, I hope to be able to name a publisher and tell you when it will be in the stores.

Meantime, I'm flying home to Palm Springs from Chicago today, and in three weeks go off to London and Poland, then a few weeks later I'm in NYC for three weeks, and again in December to see Billy Elliott on Broadway (finally) and South Pacific once again. I saw it in June just after the Tony awards, and was blown away, mainly by the fact that my old pal, Loretta Ables Sayer, who sang for years at Lewer's Lounge in Honolulu's Halekulani Hotel, my home-away-from-home, plays Bloody Mary, brilliantly. And how I love her house seats!

Another reunion of sorts took place a few weeks ago when I met up with my old friend Pat Loud. You know who she is if you saw the first reality show before they were even called that, "An American Family" on PBS back in the 1970's. I was a Loud Family junkie, then had the good fortune to meet her in NYC a year later, and we were close for years, until she moved to England and distance got in the way. But our hearts never lost the love, and this weekend we (and her great daughters Delilah and Michele) are going on a fabulous cruise on the Pacific on my friends' Tom and Carole's yacht, which should be the perfect end to the perfect summer.

Hope yours was as good as mine!

All best, Thom Racina