Congratulations You’re On Kindle, Now Finish The Movie

Nine of my novels are on Kindle now, so you can find me digitally, if not in bookstores, and Random House has assured me that three more will be on Kindle soon. One of the top 2 questions people ask me is: Why aren’t your novels in bookstores anymore? It’s very simple. When you write a novel every year, you get a place on the shelf. After 12 years and 9 April Woo novels, Over His Dead Body, For Love and Money, and Sleeper, I’m making movies now, looking to be on a new kind of list. April Woo lovers are finding that hard to take. They love her. They want to see her actual wedding. They want to know if she had children and how many, and how crazy Skinny Dragon Mother is as a grandmother. If only I could read more in the series myself, I’d be so happy. I loved the series, too. But authors are not easy to control. As indeed very little in life is.

Happy National Recovery Month

Happy National Recovery Month. We’re celebrating in Tampa on September 25, where Secret World of Recovery Will be shown at the David Straz Center of Performing Arts. www.DACCO.org, Reachoutrecovery.com

This is the news that April Woo fans have been waiting for, since. Well, ever since all the CSIs, The Bones and Monks and other wonderful series began. Wonderful novelist Amy Bloom is the show runner, developing the pilot now. All people can talk about is who will play April? Who will play April?

I have no idea. It’s not up to me. All I can say is the series is set in Coney Island. I’m thrilled about that because all the deals that didn’t work out included some doozies. Can we do it in London and have April be Indian? Can we do it in Seattle and have her be Japanese. Can we do it in Los Angeles and have her be half and half something? Well, no, no and no. So, she’s Chinese, in Coney Island with the Russian mob, the strippers and Mafia. So great. I can’t wait to see it.

I spent the summer filming The Silent Majority, Lindsey and my new feature documentary about prevention and recovery programs that are working. We filmed Drug-free youth in North Port; Teen Court in Sarasota County Florida and Nassau County New York at Hofstra Law School. We filmed Road Recovery, a New York based organization that brings celebrity musicians to mentor the Road Recovery band of teens in Recovery. Road Recovery teens composed and performed all the music for the film.

April Woo Being Developed For TV Series By CBS

Happy National Recovery Month. We’re celebrating in Tampa on September 25, where Secret World of Recovery Will be shown at the David Straz Center of Performing Arts. www.DACCO.org, Reachoutrecovery.com

CBS has signed on for the April Woo series.

This is the news that April Woo fans have been waiting for, since. Well, ever since all the CSIs, The Bones and Monks and other wonderful series began. Wonderful novelist Amy Bloom is the show runner, developing the pilot now. All people can talk about is who will play April? Who will play April?

I have no idea. It’s not up to me. All I can say is the series is set in Coney Island. I’m thrilled about that because all the deals that didn’t work out included some doozies. Can we do it in London and have April be Indian? Can we do it in Seattle and have her be Japanese. Can we do it in Los Angeles and have her be half and half something? Well, no, no and no. So, she’s Chinese, in Coney Island with the Russian mob, the strippers and Mafia. So great. I can’t wait to see it.

I spent the summer filming The Silent Majority, Lindsey and my new feature documentary about prevention and recovery programs that are working. We filmed Drug-free youth in North Port; Teen Court in Sarasota County Florida and Nassau County New York at Hofstra Law School. We filmed Road Recovery, a New York based organization that uses music to help teens in recovery. Rock musicians mentor the Road Recovery band. Road Recovery teens composed and performed all the music for the film and will be featured at our Rock and Run our two day event in Sarasota on October 21 and 22nd where we will film the concert for the film.

I never thought I would produce a film like the Secret World of Recovery. I never thought I would be making films about young people finding new ways to help themselves and friends stay sober in a drinking and substance using world. I never thought I would sponsor a rock concert, never mind a sober rock concert.

All the bad things in my life that I never wanted to happen, happened, but all the good things that are happening now I never thought would happen, either. So, as this new fall season is upon us, on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 we have a lot to remember. A lot to think and talk about. So many challenges face our country and communities. But even those among us who are living and suffering with the addiction of someone they love (or a bad habit of their own that they can’t seem to break), we still have a lot to be grateful for and a lot we can do to help others and ourselves.

I am committed to educating people about addiction and recovery. There is a lot to do to highlight the programs that are working, and the tools that help people stay sober after their rehab is complete. Watch for our website Recoverme.com Watch for our news about our book All’s Forgiven, A Mother and Daughter’s Journey from Addiction to Recovery and Beyond.

And watch for a new April Woo novel. Who knows, she may return in print as well.

Leslie and Lindsey Glass Writing Memoir

There is a lot of news. My daughter, screenwriter Lindsey Glass, and I are appearing on Daytime on Aug 10, 2011 to talk about our documentary The Secret World of Recovery. It is our first national TV appearance and we are delighted to have the opportunity to talk about recovery and making a film about it–and where it’s heading. Our renovated website is being designed and will launch in september as Recoverme.com. We have begun shooting our second documentary, The Silent Majority, about activist teens who are staying sober.

We are also excited to report that we have signed with Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management this week to represent our memoir.  Here’s the description that will appear on her website.

All’s Forgiven, A Mother and Daughter Journey From Addiction to Recovery and Beyond, is a compelling memoir that reads like a novel. By turns it is gritty, terrifying, maddening, dark, laugh-out-loud funny, touching, and ultimately triumphant.  Bestselling novelist, Leslie Glass (authorleslieglass.com), beloved world wide for her April Woo suspense series, and her comedy screenwriter daughter, Lindsey, travel through the stages of addiction and recovery from Lindsey’s first treatment for an addiction to pills and alcohol when she was a junior at Johns Hopkins, through 8 years of misdiagnosis, denial and blame on both sides, estrangement, dozens of fixes that didn’t work, jobs that didn’t pan out, marriages that failed, and geographical relocations to acceptance and the kind of recovery that is satisfying, joyful and most important, lasting. By the end of this powerful true story of redemption, Leslie and Lindsey have traveled across the country to make “The Secret World of Recovery” (secretworldofrecovery.com) a feature documentary about recovery in America; they have started the nonprofit, Reach Out Recovery (reachoutrecovery.com) and become recovery advocates with a powerful goal to help bring Recovery from addiction into the mainstream as a hero’s journey and a cause for celebration.

We can’t wait for you to see it.

Author Makes Recovery Movie

A year and a half ago, I started a website called Ilovequitters.com to open the discussion about addiction and recovery to a mainstream audience. I had no idea how big the story is. Addiction is the number 1 health issue in America, and is an epidemic world wide as well. Our work to tell the recovery story quickly got bigger than our site’s ability to tell it. Ilovequitters shut down this week for a major overhaul. It will return as recoverme.com in the fall. Oh, yes. And the crime writer is writing a new book and making movies.

And there is a reason that my daughter Lindsey, co-producer and co-writer  with me on The Secret World of Recovery and blogger on Ilovequitters, and I are entering the recovery world to make our films. We know firsthand how hard it is to carry the burden of secrecy while dealing with a disease no one wants to talk about. I had done it before with the cancer of both my parents in a time when there was no support for cancer victims. With recovery twenty years later, it was harder, and even lonelier. I was the parent of a recovering addict, and didn’t know what to do to be a better parent to her and take care of myself.

These days people are proud to be cancer survivors. It should be the same for recovering addicts, but it is not. Support for cancer and other diseases has become a national obsession, but support for recovery is largely an underground secret many people are afraid to explore. The wreckage of addiction costs the nation $45o billion dollars a year, but little of that money goes to treatment, prevention, research and help for families. When it comes to recovery every family is on its own.

Most people don’t know how to identify addiction in their loved ones, or that recovery is even possible. Lindsey and I are now using the power of film to bring hope and dignity to millions of people who are stigmatized by the disease and need to see that they are courageous heroes, too.

Last summer we made The Secret World of Recovery, a feature documentary about recovery in America. It also tells our own journey of  recovery. The first screening was a community outreach event at the Sarasota Film Festival on April 10th. The festival organizers were astounded, and no one was more surprised than we were, when a sold out audience of 1650 people of all ages jammed the Center of Performing Arts to see the film, and to give it a standing ovation.

In the coming months the Secret World of Recovery will be shown at international film festivals, community and corporate events, and for addiction professionals. Lindsey and I are writing a book and  working on our feature comedy, Rehab Is For Quitters. This summer we are filming a new documentary about teens from 13-19. Stay tuned for news.