In this post, I describe what motivates me to tell
stories on the page, onscreen and onstage.
I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and I’ve wanted to be a writer ever
since I can remember. I credit my mom, Shelly, with instilling in me a love of
writing and creativity.
My mom is a writer herself and has written short stories and
poems since she was a kid. As a youth, she wrote a novel titled “To a Wild Rose,” which
she says is eerily similar to my novel, “The Chloe Chronicles.”
In my mom’s
novel, “To a Wild Rose,” a young woman sits down at a Parisian sidewalk cafe and
begins recounting her life story to an interviewer.
My novel, “The Chloe Chronicles,” centers on a beautiful, mixed-race woman whose story begins with her upbringing in Paris.
What makes the similarity in the stories my mom and I wrote so
eerie is that I never read my mom’s unpublished novel. The only copy of the typewritten manuscript was
misplaced long before I was born.
In addition to my mom’s encouragement, I draw inspiration from pop culture. Like a lot of Generation X kids, I grew up on movies
and television.
I spent a lot of time over my maternal grandparents’ house as a kid. My Daddy
Bob and Nanaugh Pearl were ahead of their time. In the early 1980s ‒ it
may have even been the late ‘70s ‒ they
got cable television. Growing up, I spent countless hours glued to the floor-model TV in their finished basement watching
movies on HBO, Showtime and The Movie Channel. I did so much channel-surfing that I wore out several remote controls.
The stories that really spoke to me were movies like “La Bamba,” “Flashdance” and “Purple Rain” about
young people of color pursuing dreams in the arts. “Purple Rain” struck such a chord (pun intended) in me as a preteen that Prince continues to be my favorite musical artist of all time.
I was always inspired by multifaceted, creative people like
Prince, Quincy Jones, Debbie Allen and Maya Angelou ‒ innovators who would jump from medium to
medium and genre to genre.
I never understood why artists are supposed to limit themselves
to just one “category.” Prince was a musical genius who became a movie star. Jones is a composer, but he also produced movies and founded the magazine Vibe. Allen is a dancer/choreographer, but she also became a director and producer. Angelou is famous for her poetry and
memoirs like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," but she made the leap into
movie directing later in life.
I remember seeing Angelou's directorial debut, 1998’s “Down
in the Delta,” at the Drexel Theatre, a popular arthouse cinema in my hometown. I was inspired that a writer
could successfully segue into filmmaking. I continue to be inspired by multidimensional artists who transcend genres.
Conventional wisdom would tell me to stick to one project in a
specific genre, but I have so many stories that I want to tell that take the form of various media.
The major projects I’m working on this year are stories in different formats: the documentary “Lady Wrestler: TheAmazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring” and a re-release
of my novel “The Chloe Chronicles” with some juicy new plot twists.
I am also
working on a new, fictional movie titled “Things Are Tough All Over” about a middle-class African-American family struggling to keep their heads above water during the
Great Recession of 2008.
I have dozens of concepts for stage productions as well. At some point, I plan to revive my 2013 play, "The Springtime of Our Lives." In the urban drama, teen lovers Gary and Denise cope with an unexpected pregnancy while battling class differences and family instability.
For updates on my projects, please visit my website, Chrisbournea.com, and leave me your email address so we can stay in touch.
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