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FREDERICK LOUIS RICHARDSON

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, former U.S. Marine and columnist for the

Kansas City Star, the author appeared in the Robert Altman film "Kansas City."

Black Rush is his first novel, for which he had been awarded a grant from

the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

For his latest article click here.

For his blog post click

I met Frederick Richardson only six (6) years ago, but feel as if I have know him for ages. That is because I got to know him through his writings. So, I feel as if I know him as I would William Wadsworth Longfellow, Ernest Hemingway, mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau. Like those writers, Frederick has a unique ability to create characters and circumstances which not only captures the reader's interest, but provides them with a distinct appreciation for his creative moods.

In his first novel, BLACK RUSH, Frederick Richardson combines not just a vivid imagination, but an obvious love for creating characters that his readers can identify with and appreciate. He has the ability to transform ordinary situations into extraordinary events and isn't this what authors are supposed to do? However, many fail at this task. Frederick does not.

—Robert Harris

Authors who work in less traditional genres for black readers—thrillers, horror and science-fiction—relish the opportunity to make their work known. For Frederick Louis Richardson, author of BLACK RUSH, a horror tale about a vampire aboard a Middle Passage ship in the late 1700's...

"( It) is worth the struggle to introduce folks to a genre that's been around forever. We're able to do a lot more with the genre, as we have lived with racial terror our whole lives."

Richardson sees a world of opportunity for black writers. The horror category has universal applications.

—Yawandale Birchett, Washington Post

FOLLOW THE AUTHOR ON

TangoRomeo13 @Spirit_Walking oh come on...your rants are enlightening and entertaining at the same time! Ha :) via Echofon in reply to Spirit_Walking

@Spirit_Walking

Where the HORROR ends the TERROR begins...

when man creates woman and Frankenstein takes a bride.

Hi Frederick, Just to update you, I am about half way through your screenplay and have made some comments and minor corrections. Also, I was wondering on how you eventually wanted to make it into a movie. In my mind I think it could be made into a fantasy/action/horror movie the likes of VAN HELSING (2004) which is PG-13 so some minor alterations may need to be made. Would that be something that you think would fit your idea of where you want to take the screenplay marketing wise? If not, what movie do you think would be the style/direction that you would like to take the screenplay? Nesrin _____________________________________________________________________________ Nesrin, Again, thank you for your commitment. I agree with your outlook that "The Modern Prometheus" could compete in the marketplace as a fantasy/action/horror film. However, my vision is one of a lurid tale of "romantic conquest" involving dark passions, gothic sensationalism, 18th Century Grand Guignol and classic European grotesque. Moreover, the primary theme of Mary Shelley's novel is one of parental abandonment, and the primal thrust of my adaptation is that of implied racism; both themes elevate the narrative of "Prometheus" beyond the one used to tell the story in Van Helsing so, consequently, the screenplay is more adult-oriented. I would imagine at this stage it's leaning toward an "R" rating but could be modified for a (hard) PG-13, while keeping in mind that the issue of effeminate male ambiguity (Shelley’s) is omnipresent. My adaptation of "Frankenstein" offers a different view of this classic horror story--that is, one of sexual tension facing Victor Frankenstein throughout his entire crisis with the Creature. Ironically, there is no discovery here that actually requires rewriting the book's drama, only its history. Shelley's original story is, in fact, a cultural touchstone and reminder of the primal fear behind every debate (scholarly and colloquial) which has arisen regarding her best work about the differences between two people...and among us all. Not withstanding the above, I'm wide open to all ideas and any suggestions you have developed in the course of reading the screenplay (bless your heart) and any reflections you may have. Frederick ____________________________________________________________________________ Frederick, I apologize for misleading you in anyway and perhaps this wasn't clear from our initial conversations but I am not prepared to support and work on any material that is not going to be family friendly for film production. Although I think your ideas are interesting and engaging, if you feel that your material is only suitable for adult audiences then I will have to withdraw my involvement. I am sorry if this was not obvious from the beginning and I hope that no further confusion or misunderstanding will result. Nesrin _____________________________________________________________________________ Sometime in the late 19th Century the Vatican commissions the legendary monster hunter Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing to rid the world of that omnipotent creature of darkness, Count Dracula and his three notoriously undead, very sexy brides. I can’t help but smile at the puritanical notions about R-rated human sexuality while viewing highly stylized violence as PG-13 entertainment. Immodestly preposterous and commercially viable, whether or not artistically pleasing, a film like Van Helsing (2004) is excruciatingly in service to its benefactors. The travelogue-narrative with its rushed, contrived action keeps up a breathless pace with kaleidoscopic film editing that uplift the audience’s expectations and satisfies the studio’s commerce demands. And coming smartly dressed in the garb of its genre no doubt is why the rating board for the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Rating Administration liberally handed the movie its PG-13 consent decree. Cinema at its best manipulates emotions, enlarging the fictional characters in order for the audience to reconcile the story and themes with issues in their private lives, personal experiences and faded memories. At the same time, movies must not detract from its offer of entertainment. Such is the parallel universe to which we flee in going to the movies. In no small way, you can imagine fantasy/action/horror movies fuel the motion picture industry and drive the manufacturer of our most popular diversion. My screenplay, however, is an intimately scaled drama of ambiguous motives and moral dilemmas (even though based on a theoretical being). Mary Shelley’s novel in the early 19th Century was a mind-blowing, game-changing literary conceit occurring in a place scary and not far away—where sex and violence logically intersect. And yet Shelley’s seminal science-fiction is telling a deeper, more personal story; and rather than chase diminishing commercial prospects, I’ve given the adaptation some serious body heat. Van Helsing offers some justice for accusing the film of suggesting “violence is fun” stocked as it is with plenty villainy and lots of weapons. The somber and absorbing sex and violence as presented in my screenplay “The Modern Prometheus” follows a darker scenario in human behavior. So, I suspect family friendly is code for— “It’s not the violence, stupid; it’s the sex!” By Frederick Louis Richardson Copyright © 2008 DreaMerchant ® All Rights Reserved
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Screenplay by Frederick Louis Richardson Based on the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus By Mary Shelley Since publication of the first edition in March of 1818 Frankenstein has never been out of print. Never. After spending a little more than a year composing the best prose ever written by a nineteen-year-old, Mary Shelley created far more than a 19th Century Gothic Romance but founded nothing less than the genre of science fiction as it’s come to be known. However, in Shelley’s novel the character of “Igor” nowhere exists. Neither does a castle buzzing from the vibrant hum of machinery; nor is there any chance of lightning’s cracking spark galvanizing the dead into a quickening. The sleepy hamlet of Geneva, Switzerland is never awakened torch-lit by frightened villagers with angry pitchforks threatening retribution, because nowhere in evidence is there a “doctor” Frankenstein. Obviously, the book joins that long list of first-class novels that most know about but very few have actually read. THE MODERN PROMETHEUS as written by Frederick Louis Richardson is not yet another cinematic re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s work, but an opportunity to experience a potential film…before it becomes a movie. While no less epical than the novel it’s drawn from, Richardson’s screenplay wonderfully redeems the author’s magnificent “monster”—the Creature born almost matter-of-factly in a makeshift laboratory (written with only a few sentences by Shelley) and depicted vaguely as something huge, a sort of clumsy happenstance of amateur workmanship by a 26-year-old science student named Victor Frankenstein. Commonly regarded as hideous, presented here as a rejuvenated African, “the being” as Shelley always intended is something more human and yet faithfully a thing-in-itself. But, moreover, Richardson has captured with cinematic expression what no film on the subject ever has: *Mary Shelley’s feminine* point of view*. Appealing and appalling, the Creature pleads with his “father” Victor Frankenstein to create for him an equally hideous bride. Under siege by primal doubts, this misshapen and misunderstood man-made man through raged and outrage speaks eloquently* (as he does in Shelley’s novel) trumpeting passionate declarations about his loneliness and need for acceptance. And although he loathes the way he looks, the Creature is convinced that all his troubles will go away if true love can be his. His pain and persecution as experienced in late 18th Century Europe strikingly parallels the horrors of child abandonment and the abdication of parental responsibility that resonates with tragic Shakespearean sensibility, much of what we find among juvenile outcasts in our society today. Movie buffs, cineastes, fans of Shelley, science fiction enthusiasts and scholars of the Romantic Era will find common ground in Richardson’s faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. The Modern Prometheus © Copyright 2008 DreaMerchant® All Rights Reserved.
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by Annette Southard
	In your first novel…why vampires?
	How do you create such diverse characters as you do in “Black Rush”?
	What does it feel like to be a published author?
	When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
	Are you working on a book now?
	What can you say about your new novel?
	Does your publisher give you any guidelines to follow?
	What attracts you to genre fiction?
	What do you want readers to take from your book “Black Rush”?
	What’s your writing day like?
	What advice would you give to anyone who would like to write?
	What are you reading now?

Book Collector

reviews


Q:	In your first novel…why vampires?
A:	I love the genre. But I don’t really write about vampires per se in “Black Rush”. I write about people with certain predilections. In the story their partiality for blood is a metaphor for addiction. Actually, there are a number of bloodsuckers in the book. The vampires just happen to call a bit more attention to themselves.
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Q:	How do you create such diverse characters as you do in “Black Rush”?
A:	Everybody I know is a character, and a writer is a student of human moves. If you listen closely and you observe without prejudice or bias, real life will trump fiction any day of the week. Obvious comparisons aside, I found my vampires smack dab in the middle of Washington D.C. meandering among residents of the predominantly African-American neighborhoods, peopled by black drug dealers on U Street and their white clientele who drive across the city from Georgetown. (In the book the vampires are black; among their victims is the white middle-class.)
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Q:	What does it feel like to be a published author?
A:	It’s a great privilege but an enormous responsibility you’re given, this power to paint pictures with words. If just one reader opens the book, the author is instantly mentoring. This carries a special import for those who write children’s books. A child’s mind is a blank slate, whatever the recurring topic or theme. That said, I don’t think any author should ever be a shrinking violet; fact is many probably aren’t even capable of blowing anyone’s mind, but just to know you have the potential….
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Q:	When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
A:	Tinker Bell came into my bedroom when I was around 11 years old. I didn’t find out until later that she was my muse, one of the nine goddesses of literature whispering inspiration. First, it was those pesky high school English theme papers; so I’m glad she stuck around. Telling stories, I suppose, is something I tumbled to as a child. After Tinker Bell came into my life, putting the words down on paper became my obsession—writing poems and plays and songs and even letters to the editor.
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A:	Are you working on a book now?
A:	I recently completed a screenplay based on a novel for a future film project; I’m finishing a murder mystery for publication this year; I’ve started a biblical novel to be published next year; and in my spare time I’m developing a science fiction tome—it’s going to be a very large book. I’m kind of crazy, a sort of sub-species of Homo Sapien, but it’s always important to be putting your craft to work.
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Q:	What can you say about your new novel?
A:	Until it’s published, not much—but like “Black Rush” the book is honest about being what they call ‘a D.C. novel’ in the sense that it involves blacks and whites and all those cultures and colors in between. Believe me, Washington is not Capitol Hill. That’s only one of many neighborhoods inside the Beltway where all these cosmopolitans live. The new novel centers upon a murder which sets up the protagonist to ride a rollercoaster investigation through a web of interlocking mysteries leading to a surprise ending. It sounds like “The DaVinci Code.” I know my publisher hopes it is.
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Q:	Does your publisher give you any guidelines to follow?
A:	Make it interesting, damn you! (laughs) No, not really. Every novel must find its niche. But no matter how interesting or well-written a novel is, without publicity and promotion and advertising and marketing it will fail.
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Q:	What attracts you to genre fiction?
A:	It’s fundamental. Simply put, it tells a story. Storytelling, I believe, poses tough questions and promotes critical thinking by challenging complacency and opening up debate. Genre fiction, if it’s any good, should be asking the hard questions—sometimes loud and often unreasonable questions. But when it’s all coming from a vampire people might listen. If they don’t, then you write about extraterrestrials. Maybe that’ll work.
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Q:	What do you want readers to take from your book “Black Rush”?
A:	I want them to look at the front cover and say, “Damn, this looks good!” And then after reading the last page, maybe think “How sweet.” But then have that bitter aftertaste, knowing there’s this messy, bewildering mélange of utter sadness dwelling on a gritty patch of civilized modern life where the unspeakable happens and other horrors occur too often. We can see there are worse things than vampires; drinking blood just seems somehow easier to swallow than delving into any of that.
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Q:	What’s your writing day like?
A:	My muse becomes my mistress and my wife becomes my widow. Writing is not a team sport so it’s essential that I enjoy my own company during which time, well, time itself becomes irrelevant along with the phone ringing, my wife calling or the sky falling, until I perform a kind of alchemy I never quite feel worthy of. Okay, to talk about it is somewhere between boring and horrendous but I revel in it. I get up as early as daybreak, if not earlier, sit at my laptop in my office with my music—Ennio Morricone—and for hours on end play with my computer. Then, but only if I’m lucky, after about three years or so I come out of my office, kiss my wife and hand her the manuscript for “Black Rush”.
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Q:	What advice would you give to anyone who would like to write?
A:	I would advise that writing is not something you would like to do. If it is, then you might do it well enough maybe to get published but you won’t survive as a writer in the long run. You’ll eventually go on to do something else. On the other hand, if you feel you have no choice but to write, then you know there are forces at work here that must be obeyed. Consequently, you’re never not writing—forgive the double negative. Having said that, don’t worry yourself sick about lagging pace or unoriginality in style or things of that sort, at least not in the first draft. Just get it on the page. You can cut and edit once you have something that’s worthwhile. Most important is don’t waste your time. If what you’ve written so far you cannot commit to, a deep-bone commitment of maybe a year or more of your life, a year you know you will never get back, then DELETE THAT SUCKER! Try something new. Now this brings me to the last thing, which actually is the first: have a story to tell. Quirky characters and quaint dialogue is wonderful but a novel in search of a narrative is a rudder in search of a ship. A book without a story is the worse thing you can spend your money on.
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Q:	What are you reading now?
A:	I read EVERYTHING. Nothing escapes my notice, especially when I’m researching. You name it; I’ve peeked at it…technical manuals, textbooks, the Internet, a fold-out menu from a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. And I’m a huge fan of David Kelley. But you don’t read David Kelley; you listen to what he writes, say, for “Boston Legal”. It’s dramatic literature and he’s a remarkable talent. As you can see, I spare myself nothing. Okay, if I start listing the books, I will leave you with a misimpression. I’ll just say it’s a short list and Poe is on it.
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HAVE A QUESTION? Frederick@dreamerchant.com

COMING NEXT YEAR...THE NEW NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF BLACK RUSH

The ROCOCO Paradox