I have. And it all began several years ago in 2005 I believe. My good friend Kyle Hafkey told me for a film class, he was going to make his own student film. And he wanted it to be a feature-length action movie. Very ambitious, to say the least.
Kyle had the idea and knowing that I've had experience both in writing and directing, asked me to write the screenplay based on his outline as well as play one of the main characters. I was only happy to do it.
The movie was about a woman named Angela Lockheart who worked for a government agency but after the death of her husband, left. She then found herself working as an assassin for the mysterious Dante. During the course of the film, Angela falls in love with an innocent bystander named Christian.
The film was originally titled Code Name: Black Widow with myself playing the role of Dante and Maggie Carlin starring as Angela. While writing the screenplay, I worked very closely with Maggie and Kyle and Maggie and I would frequently do readings of the scenes almost immediately after they were written. So there was a lot of collective input into the characters and the story.
Of course, as the budget of the film was basically whatever we had in our pockets (and as we were all poor college students, I can assure you it wasn't much), we were pretty limited with what we could do. So the script was a bit minimalist in that sense.
Unfortunately, the film never really materialized. We shot a few scenes (which have unfortunately been lost to the sands of time), but the story and those characters really stuck with me. So a few years later, I decided to give the concept another shot, this time as a comic book. Because I didn't want to risk any conflict with Marvel Comics, I decided to change the title from Code Name: Black Widow to Love & Bullets, which was pretty appropriate.
Because the film limitations were now removed, this allowed me to expand the world a little bit more and take the story a step higher. I also made some other changes. Although the first half of the story in pretty much each incarnation was the same, the second half experienced a number of changes. The major change was elevating Christian from just an innocent bystander into an operative of the Agency, which Angela once worked for (and which is pursuing Dante's organization, Infernum). I found an artist named Keith Jim to work on the series with me.
But again, we had difficulties. Since we were self-publishing through Ka-Blam, we had some limitations with that. I was able to sell copies for $2.50 a piece. But for people to purchase copies at that price, it would take maybe a month before it shipped out to them. This made it difficult to set up a monthly release schedule for a six-issue limited series. Also, as this was Keith's first experience drawing comics and it was my first experience coloring them, I felt our work wasn't really ready for publishing yet. So I made the decision to cut the series. But if you're interested and want to pick up a copy, the first issue is still available for purchase at IndyPlanet.
After the series ended, I had considered trying to revise it but never got past a few pages. But then in December of 2008, I was in a massive state of writer's block. Joshua Reynolds (who will have his own entry on this blog tour this week) suggested I try submitting work to some short story anthologies. Jason Franks (another participant in the blog tour) gave me some places to submit to. One of which was an anthology about assassins.
So I went back to both the original screenplay and the comic scripts and I wrote a story featuring Angela on a job. And I had such fun writing it that I went on to adapt the story into a novel. The result is what is now available for sale -- Love & Bullets the novel, published through Pulpwork Press.
The book took only a few months to write. I breezed through it and made some more alterations to it. What those alterations are, I won't say. It's much better if you read the book for yourself and find out. Needless to say, I believe that the novel is the best version to date of the story.
And this is just the beginning. I plan for more stories to be set in the world of Infernum. The next book, Outlaw Blues, will be kind of a sequel but not completely.
Love & Bullets is now for sale on Amazon.com for $11.95. Here's the description:
Beautiful. Cunning. Deadly. These are just a few of the words that describe Angela Lockhart, former operative of the mysterious Agency. Now working as an assassin for an international syndicate called Infernum, led by a mysterious power broker known only as Dante, Lockhart has become the 'Most Wanted' for every major law enforcement agency in the world. But when Agency operative Christian Pierce begins a dangerous game of deception to try and bring her back into the fold, Angela will find herself torn between her old life and her new one...
Also, for anyone who lives in Kagoshima, Japan, there will be a release party on this Friday the 21st at Recife! For more information, check out my Facebook page.
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