Orville's moving on
Christmas, readers should finally be able to discover ''The Secrets of the Emerald Isle.''
At least, that's the plan for the first public step in taking Falmouth author Ted Murphy's teen detective Orville Jacques into a new international series of book adventures and then onto the big screen.
(Staff photo by Vincent DeWitt)After five years of Hollywood negotiations, Murphy is about to sign with a new publisher has just won a slot with top youth-oriented firm Buzz Marketing Group and has Phoenix Pictures readying a movie script with screenwriter Greg Taylor (''Prancer,'' ''Jumanji,'' ''Harriet the Spy'') for possible release in 2007.
''It's finally taking off,'' Murphy says.
Murph Orville are known locally for The Belltown Mysteries, a six-book series set in a thinly disguised Falmouth. ''The Secrets of the Emerald Isle'' takes Orville to Ireland and is the first in a world-travel trilogy slated to kick off ''The Backpack Mysteries.'' The books will be prequels to the ''Belltown'' series, Murphy says, and will explain how a 14-year-old Orville first becomes a detective.
''He's a fish out of water'' in Ireland, Murphy explains. ''The poor kid ends up by himself, and he has to make his own way through.''
He notes how much kids identify with Orville because ''he's a regular kid.'' In the new books, he plans to change his hero's last name from ''Jacques'' to ''Jakes'' because ''it's easier for kids to read,'' but then take the young detective to France to find out the original spelling.
''Right now it's 'Where else can I take him?''' Murphy says. ''It's a big world.''
The author's own world expanded last month when Buzz Marketing Group agreed to take on ''The Backpack Mysteries.'' The company describes itself as ''the premier by-youth-for-youth marketing and communications agency,'' which specializes in market research, content generation and trend spotting using focus groups and youth surveys.
Murphy says the connection with the new publisher is through Buzz. The firm's clients, according to its Web site, include big publishing names such as Scholastic and St. Martin's Press, along with companies like Esprit, Nike, CosmoGIRL! and Clairol.
The author, however, says he can't go on record during negotiations as to the identity of the new publisher. ''All I can say is that I'm totally excited and I won't be selling books out of the back of my car anymore.''
Shannon Murphy, CEO of Encounters Studios and no relation to Ted Murphy, says the plan is to release ''The Secrets of the Emerald Isle'' in December and the next two books completing the trilogy (the second will
likely be titled ''Secrets of the Followers'') in four-month increments.
The stories are strong on Irish folklore and mysticism, but ''it's not 'Harry Potter' mystical,'' she says. ''It's real kids with real things that could really happen.''
She and Ted Murphy also hope the publisher will then re-release the ''Belltown'' series. He has been working to update scenes and technology - with cell phones and instant messaging key to today's teens' lives, for example - from the books he wrote a decade ago.
The initial ''The Secrets of Belltown,'' which the author as T.M. Murphy set in places he knew and with characters based on friends and acquaintances, was published in the mid-'90s. Three adventures followed, but the run ended when the publishing house was sold to a textbook company. In 2001, the author found a new publisher, which released ''The Secrets of Code Z'' and ''The Secrets of the Twisted Cross,'' plus re-released the first four titles. All were marketed only in the Massachusetts area, though, and are again out of print.
Also five years ago, Ted Murphy signed with Encounter Studios, a small production company, and it shopped the stories around Hollywood before the current deal with Phoenix Pictures was sealed in June. Encounter's efforts ''went to the 11th hour'' with a couple of other companies, but the author was concerned by how much they wanted to change his work.
Phoenix Pictures is headed by Mike Medavo Arnold Messer, and has such films as ''Holes'' (2003), last summer's ''Stealth'' and the coming remake of ''All the King's Men,'' with Sean Penn, to its credit.
Ted Murphy was happy with the choice of Phoenix after seeing how it adapted ''Holes'' to film and was thrilled when Taylor agreed to be screenwriter last year.
''Watching his movies, I know he's going the keep the heart of Orville,'' he says. The author notes that Taylor summered every year on Martha's Vineyard as a child, ''so has a whole East Coast mentality'' and, like him, grew up as a fan of the Hardy Boys mysteries.
Shannon Murphy talked last summer of a straight-to-DVD series for Orville's stories, but says there was later discussion about turning at least one into a theatrical film, and ''The Secrets of the Emerald Isle'' was chosen. She hopes that ''if all the stars and moons align,'' filming could begin this summer in Ireland with a 2007 release date if not, the target for filming is early next spring. Encounter is working closely, she says, with the Irish Film Board and production companies in Ireland.
''If the first feature is a tremendous success, we obviously plan to follow that with a series of feature films, though some of the smaller books could go straight to video,'' she says. ''We want the books out seven or eight months ahead. The books really have to stand alone.''
Shannon Murphy says any film takes three to five years to be made in Hollywood, but Ted Murphy acknowledges it's been hard to endure that slow process.
''What I do to get by is I watch 'Biography.' You always hear 'He's an overnight success,' but you watch 'Biography' and you see that they put in the time everybody puts in the time.
''Yes, it seemed like a slow process, but it's not just my process, it's the process. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' took six years (to get the movie made) and that was a best-seller. ... It has felt slow at times, but any major thing in your life that you want to accomplish takes time.''
What has kept the author going, he says, is the supportive people on Cape Cod - kids who still stop him in the supermarket and tell him how much they love his books.
When not writing in the past decade, Ted Murphy has worked as a private writing coach, taught classes for Cape Cod Writers' Conference and visited several schools as a guest author. He says he's tried to take his own situation with the Orville books as an opportunity to teach his students about the challenges that may be faced and the perseverance needed to be a successful professional writer.
(Published: March 25, 2006)