After the Storm: the documentary you must see

I have written many times here about my dear friend James Lecesne.  I have written about his talents, his kindness, his soul.  James stands behind the renowned and supremely humane Trevor Project—"determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life saving and life-affirming resources."  (Click here to watch Harry Potter's own Daniel Radcliffe talk, with James, about Trevor.)  James also, as you know if you read this blog, was a pivotal force behind "After the Storm"—an arts-based initiative, a documentary film, and an ongoing effort to support the young people of Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.  "After the Storm," not incidentally, is also full-on proof that the faith we place in the arts is wise and fertile.

I have watched the "After the Storm" trailers for a long time (repeatedly!), read the reviews, talked to James.  But yesterday my own copy of the DVD arrived.  Bill and I ate an early dinner so that we could sit and watch it.

This, my friends, is a movie that can change your life.  This is also an opportunity to make a difference by investing in a DVD you will watch again and again. 

Please do.

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Why do I?

I had one of those days yesterday (they come on me from time to time) when I asked myself some serious questions about the writing life.  Does it matter, this thing that I do?  Would life be simpler, less angst-producing, less panic stricken, altogether more orderly and calm, if I stopped writing stories down in favor of living more fully?  Have I, in the end, achieved what I set out to achieve—or did I ever actually have a plan?  What should I have done that I didn't do?  What is still possible?  Why, after all these years, is writing so hard?  I write young adult novels (among other things), but I don't write typical young adult novels, as the gorgeous (inside and out) Booking Mama so poignantly points out on her blog today.  I care a lot about the sort of things that many readers pass right by.  I once tried to write a book that shimmered with big-time commercial possibility.  I failed.  Miserably.  For the life of me I do not know how such a thing gets done.

For a long time I sat in a quiet place thinking about these things.  I'd hear the ping of email coming in from across the way, but I didn't rise to find the news.  Finally, feeling no less good or smart for all my mental meanderings, I returned to my desk, opened my email, and was forcefully reminded of why I am still, after all these years, a writer.  Because I cannot help myself, for one thing.  And because my life would be bereft without the many kind and intelligent souls that writing ushers in.

Yesterday my email was full of saving graces.  You, you graces, know who you are (Julie P., you are pure grace, too), and how grateful I am.  Among the emailers was one James Lecesne—author, actor, activist, man of great heart—who wrote to say that he would be coming into town today to share his remarkable documentary film "After the Storm" at the offices of one forward-leaning law firm. Maybe we could get together beforehand, James said.  Absolutely, I thought.  Absolutely.  And so today, that's where I'll be—downtown breaking bread with James, a man I'd have never had the privilege of meeting had it not been for books and book festivals and a shared interest in writing stories that are invested in language and spring from the heart.

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James Lecesne and Virgin Territory

"I have been told," a friend wrote, "that the BEA is a non-event."

For so many reasons, it wasn't that for me.

Consider (among so much else), this:  I spent an Egmont-sponsored lunch rotating through tables with actor/Laura Geringer author/activist James Lecesne (I struggled with the listing of those attributes; James is all three, equally, and more).  We interviewed each other.  We discovered intersections.  We looked across the table and saw, in each other, an author who cares, first and foremost, about kids.

He went off to his thing after that, and I went off to mine, and by fluke and accident and perhaps fate, we ended up on the same train going home.  I had his book, Virgin Territory, in hand.  He had Dangerous Neighbors.  I have long nurtured a dream of seeing someone read one of my books on a train.  James was my first sighting.  I doubt it gets better than that.

When you adore someone, you want, you ache, to adore their book.  James makes that easy with Virgin Territory.  It's a book about a boy who has lost his mother and has a trembling relationship to faith.  A book about a town, Jupiter, Florida, that is rearranged by a possible sighting of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the face of a golf-course tree.  Faith seekers flock to the tree. A carnivalesque atmosphere ensues. Dylan, our hero, finds himself among new friends who believe that miracles erupt amidst the stirring of two things:  great desire and surrender to risk.

Supremely fluid, generous, and original, Virgin Territory is well made; it is seamless.  It takes the time to unfold characters that are new, complex, easily liked.  It paces perfectly—speeds up, slows down.  Its pieces fit its pieces, if you know what I mean.

You don't find many books like this—YA or otherwise.  And you don't find many people like James.  Buy the book and read it.  And after you do that (or before, if you insist), check out this trailer from the extraordinary documentary, After the Storm, which features James in a glorious Mad Hot Ballroom kind of tale about a musical that helps restore the kids of New Orleans.

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