Tuesday, November 24, 2020
?It’s no secret that I feel wronged by Sacha Baron Cohen’s tactics to involve my mother in his movie. The level of disgust and disappointment I feel runs deep. But this scandal has also spurred me into writing. Not only is writing my outlet, but I also feel that I owe this to my mother.
As many of you know, I have been planning on writing the third and final book in my Pinnacle series. However, with my mother’s passing and her encounter in the movie Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, my priorities have changed. My new project is writing a fictionalized family history including my mother’s biography. What makes this book unique is that I will write in first person POV—like I did with my first two books, Pinnacle Lust and Bloody Coffee—but in dual perspectives. ??
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?While shooting for the moon, I hope to craft a novel where you will hear the story from two people: my grandmother who was murdered in a concentration camp during WWII, and my
mother who survived the Holocaust. The challenge of writing in first person POV, navigating between the past and the present in Heaven, is intriguing.
This novel is based on a true story and historical facts. To protect some family, I have changed two characters’ names. But does it really matter who the person behind the character is, or is it the story and message you get from a book? It doesn’t make any difference what name I give a character, what’s important is that I develop a character that you love or hate.
A significant portion of the book will be dedicated to exposing the truth on my mother’s involvement in the
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm—was she duped or not—what techniques did Sacha Baron Cohen use? The way in which Cohen undermined my mother’s life’s work to make the world a better place might create a great two-minute scene in his movie but left a sour taste for the family.
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If my mother was still alive, what would
she say to Sacha Baron Cohen? I feel that it is my obligation to tell the world how my mother built her life—from an orphan during the Holocaust to being a well-known public speaker on the Holocaust.
With this said, of course, the third book in the
Pinnacle series is going to be pushed back—this new project is just too important to me, too close to my heart, to be put off. I hope you’ll agree that it’s worth it.
Michelle