And now it's Another Me!

I cannot explain how excited I was when I was told that the film of my book was no longer to be called, Panda Eyes, but was going to revert to the original title, Another Me.  I always liked that title. I thought it was intriguing, and captured the spooky nature of the story too.And, did anyone ever notice that if you take away the A in Another Me, what you are left with is, Not Her Me ? So it is Another Me which is going to have its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival. Still can't believe I am typing those words. It's a dream come true, a goal reached, something I used to think was beyond my wildest dreams( who am I kidding? Nothing was beyond my wildest dreams!) But now, it's going to be premiered and is also going into competetion in Rome beside several other fantastic movies. All I know is that this is going to be a quality film. I know that because I know the marvellous people who have worked on it. Isobel Coixet, fabulous director who also wrote the screenplay, Rebekah Gilbertson and Nicole Carmen Davis, producers, cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu and all the rest of the wonderful cast and crew. Couldn't be anything else but quality.
   Well, thanks to the wonderful Mary Hoffman I now know I can add to and edit this! I am a slow learner. But I did want to add how this amazing journey for me began. I can still remember hearing on a radio Scotland programme which hosted a creative writing item regularly. ( Time for one again, methinks!) that they were looking for a Scottish ghost story for their latest competition. I knew I had to go in for that one. And I started to think of misty lochs, and ruined castles, and ghostly pipers on the battlements...then, I remembered I lived in Greenock. Not a lot of castles here. I lived in a high flat, 13th floor,  I worked in the local mill. .And to get to work I used to walk up a long narrow flight of steps, and on dark winter evenings when I would be coming home from work, sometimes the fog would drift in from the river and I could see nothing, in front of me, or behind me. Just the fog. And then I would hear footsteps coming down those steps and I would frighten the life out of myself thinking of the scariest thing I could imagine coming out of that fog.  I never had any doubt what that something would be. Another Me. and of course throughout the world myths and legends abound about doubles, doppelgangers, wafts. Your own double, your other self without a soul. In Scotland we all them fetches. and the legend says if you come face to face with your fetch it means you are going to die very soon. No wonder I was scared. So I wrote my ghost story about a girl who was being haunted by herself as she walked up and down those stairs. It won the competition, but it was one of those stories that just wouldn't let go, and the book, Another Me, grew from there....and now, I'm going to see it on the big screen. From such a simple beginning! I can't wait to see the film, hope you can't either!!