Creating K Pax Or Are You Sure You Want To Be A Writer

In November, 2001, I was sued, along with almost everyone else connected with the film version of my novel K-PAX, for plagiarizing an Argentinean movie called Man Facing Southeast (the suit was later dismissed). At about the same time, dozens of letters arrived from fans asking where the ideas for the book/film originated. Together, these developments led me to ponder how my difficult life had led me to become a writer, and how I came to write K-PAX in particular. The resulting memoir includes excerpts from unpublished work, and ends with a chapter of advice for other would-be novelists.

Audiences never have a lukewarm opinion of a Subiela film. They either love it passionately or hate it profoundly. That Eliseo Subiela (Buenos Aires, 1944-2016), an original and sensitive thinker, survived, and indeed throve in economically challenged Argentina while garnering more accolades abroad than in his own country, is a tribute to his grit, intelligence, imagination and persistence of vision. With an astounding list of prizes and honors, he was a world-class auteur. Even when he was making a TV commercial, his surreal style and poetic sensibility were unmistakable. This book represents the culmination of 20 years of research and personal correspondence with Eliseo Subiela. Through ten scholarly studies and five interviews, it sheds light on his life, esthetics, obsessions, struggles with madness, and, of course, his films. It addresses his earlier career in advertising, lifelong artistic influences, screenwriting techniques, critical reactions to his films, and what Subiela's example has to offer aspiring filmmakers, especially those in Latin America.

Adapted into a major motion picture of the same name starring Kevin Spacey, Gene Brewer's K-PAX has touched the hearts and expanded the horizons of readers around the world--a thought-provoking masterpiece of modern-day fiction. Psychiatrist Gene Brewer doesn't have a diagnosis for the mysterious new patient who calls himself "prot" (rhymes with goat). But this strange and likeable man cannot be--as he claims--from the planet K-PAX. Or can he? Prot knows facts about space that are confounding the experts. He is soon revealing Dr. Brewer's own deepest pains and most sublime longings. And his tales of K-PAX have other patients competing to go along with him when he heads "home". Now the doctor is racing the clock to find prot's true identity before he losses a man whose "madness" might just save them all. . .

From the author of the highly acclaimed, New York Times bestselling novel Pax comes a gorgeous and moving middle grade novel that is an ode to introverts, dreamers, and misfits everywhere. Ware can’t wait to spend summer “off in his own world”—dreaming of knights in the Middle Ages and generally being left alone. But then his parents sign him up for dreaded Rec camp, where he must endure Meaningful Social Interaction and whatever activities so-called “normal” kids do. On his first day Ware meets Jolene, a tough, secretive girl planting a garden in the rubble of an abandoned church next to the camp. Soon he starts skipping Rec, creating a castle-like space of his own in the church lot. Jolene scoffs, calling him a dreamer—he doesn’t live in the “real world” like she does. As different as Ware and Jolene are, though, they have one thing in common: for them, the lot is a refuge. But when their sanctuary is threatened, Ware looks to the knights’ Code of Chivalry: Thou shalt do battle against unfairness wherever faced with it. Thou shalt be always the champion of the Right and Good—and vows to save the lot. But what does a hero look like in real life? And what can two misfit kids do?

Five years to the day, almost to the second, after he disappeared form the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, leaving his host body in a catatonic state, the being known as prot (rhymes with goat) has returned. Now, in sixteen more sessions with psychiatrist Gene Brewer, prot reveals that he has come back to escort a chosen few to his home planet, K-PAX. K-PAX is an idyllic planet free of the pain and suffering of earth. Prot has incredible insights into how to cure that suffering, and his radical ideas have made him a celebrity. Now, legions of people are longing to follow him home. But Dr. Brewer has heard it before. Five years ago, he discovered another person buried deep in prot's personality: Robert Porter of Montana. The mystery of Robert's illness and of prot's true origins lie deep within Robert's shattered psyche. Now Dr. Brewer must race against the clock to unlock the secrets of Robert's traumatic past and not only save his patient but maybe humanity.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. “Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER

Rick Stanton was a promising professional baseball player with dreams of playing in the major leagues and starting a family with his young wife, Francesca, when World War II changed everything. Rick returns from the war with his body broken and his dreams shattered. But it was not just body and spirit he sacrificed for the war. He and Francesca volunteered their beloved dog, Pax, for the Army's K-9 Corp, not knowing if they'd ever see him again. Keller Nicholson is the soldier who fought the war with Pax by his side, and the two have the kind of profound bond that can only be forged in war. Pax is the closest Keller has to a sense of family, and he can't bear the thought of returning him to the Stantons. But Rick and Francesca refuse to give him up. Instead, an arrangement is made: Keller will work as Rick's live-in aide. And thus an unlikely family is formed, with steadfast Pax at the center. As they try to build a new life out of the ashes, Keller and Francesca struggle to ignore their growing attraction to each other, and Rick, believing that he can no longer give Francesca what she needs and wants, quietly plans a way out. All three of them need healing. All three of them are lost. And in Susan Wilson's A Man of His Own, Pax, with his unconditional love and unwavering loyalty, may be the only one who can guide them home.