Well, Hard Right Productions is beginning to look more like an actual company all the time!  Hopefully, this is a good thing, though we don't want bureaucracy to overshadow our purpose....and that is to make a movie!  Peigi Midey is now officially our Executive Producer, which is basically a euphemism for THE BOSS.  I have given Peigi a mind meld, so that she has a very clear vision of what the movie should look like, so things can happen when I'm not around, and vice versa.  Peigi has a very keen eye, and that rare commodity known as "taste."  I trust her implicitly with my vision of Plasma Dreams.
    We also have a Script Supervisor, Hosanna Tolman, whose job it is to edit the scripts as we rehearse, and alter them to fit the particular characters.  Unlike the novel, which is chiseled in marble, the script is a living document...and it's a BLAST watching it evolve.  We want to catch those rare, spontaneous lines that the actors throw in...sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, and incorporate them into the script.  Hosanna is also a capable acting coach.
    My ninth-grade daughter, Jasmine Nichols, is the Camera Assistant...she gets to mark and clap the clapperboard before each scene, and will also be responsible for making sure there's a clear path for the cinematographers to maneuver.  It's a grunt job but extremely important....and Jasmine loves doing the clapperboard thing.
    Jasmine's friend, Stephanie Smith, also a ninth grader, has been showing up regularly at our rehearsals, also, and is showing some talent as an acting coach and cheerleader, as well.  It's so good to have some young eyes on this project...they catch inconsistencies we old geezers easily miss.
    And now for the most exciting news.  Her name is Marlene Young, an Athabaskan woman who just returned from Arizona.  Tonight, as a first blush audition,  we had Marlene fill in for the role of A.M., since Veronica couldn't make rehearsal.  She did a fine job for a first reading, and showed some promise.  On a lark, we had her try out Scene One as Vengeance Toy, with Hosanna reading Lisa....and.....

    MAGIC HAPPENED

   It's one of those things you can never explain, but you know it when you see it.  It's that fleeting moment when you KNOW you have an actress and a movie.  The first line out of Marlene's mouth.....I knew that was Vengeance Toy....exactly as I envisioned her twenty years ago when I penned (literally) Plasma Dreams.  The fact that Marlene is not Chinese, but Athabaskan, was/is immaterial.  (With a bit of makeup and Venny's dark shades, she WILL be Chinese, easily)  I never would have predicted this...I might have seen her as A.M., or one of the minor Indian characters in the story.  But Marlene Young  is Vengeance Toy.

 Case closed.