OUR LAGUNA: Naming and honoring Laguna’s heroes

Local film makers and the heroes they filmed were honored by the My Hero Project at the Laguna Hero Fest May 29 at [seven-degrees].

“This was the first Hero Fest that specifically honored local film makers and heroes in and around Laguna,” said project director Wendy Milette. “There was a real sense of a community celebration.”

Among the honorees:

 Coastline Pilot columnist James Pribram and the film “Eco-Warriors: Guardians of the Surf;”

 Shawn McGillivray, for his film about the late Joey Masella, a youngster with a rare and fatal disease;

 Laguna Beach High School student Addie Rubin, who produced with Milette a film on Friendship Shelter that honored founder the Rev. Colin Henderson;

 Adam Kaufman, a Thurston Middle School student whose film debut focused on fellow student Luke Stevens, who lost his family home in the Bluebird Canyon landslide;

 Laguna College of Art & Design student St. George Thompson, who produced “Gary Birch: Multimedia Guru” about the former LCAD dean;

 A Laguna Beach High School production about Make-a-Wish Foundation and Tori Begen, a two-time cancer survivor and now a foundation activist;

 Laia Hensen of the Community Learning Center for its peace program;

 Dorothy Meyers for her participation in the Laguna Laughter Club founded by Jeffrey Briar;

 A film about the Laguna Beach High School Surfriders Club that tests beach water for pollution directed by Milette, a former Laguna Beach public school teacher who now teaches film making at LCAD.

The Hero Fest was partially funded by a grant from the Arts Commission.

My Hero Project was founded by Jeanne Meyers, Rita Stern and Karen Pritzker in 1994.

“We began the project because we had children, and we wanted to provide them with role models in contrast to the negative violence in the mass media,” Meyers said.

DVDs of the event will be made available to city schools. Segments of films are expected to be shown on KOCE, dates to be announced.

“Our goal is to make the Hero Fest an annual event,” Meyers said.

BY GEORGE! A REAL TREAT

More than 65 fans of Elizabeth George showed up at the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club on Sunday to hear her talk about her books, ask questions about how she writes them and get autographed copies of her latest thriller, “Careless in Red.”

“I adore her stuff,” said Laguna Beach resident Evangeline Crockett, who brought her daughter, Cassandra, “10 ¾” to the book-signing. “We are both readers.

“And Cassie and I are writing a children’s book.”

The appearance of the award-winning, bestselling author was a coup for the club and the independent Laguna Beach Books, owned by Jane Hanauer at the Old Pottery Place, whose employee Patrick Coleman arranged the event with publisher HarperCollins.

Independent bookstores can get lost in shuffle when big chain stores are nearby, but not in Laguna, which has two independents as well as several used-book sources, such as the Friends of the Library and the Assistance League’s Turnabout Shop.

Book-loving club member Stephany Skenderian co-chaired the event with Coleman and Hanauer.

“It was based on the club trying to bring this kind of event to the woman’s club,” Skenderian said. “It is sort of our new mission.”

Mission accomplished.

Unlike many writers, George is articulate, perhaps due to her former profession as a teacher.

She was named teacher of the year during her tenure at El Toro High School where she taught English. She didn’t quit her day job until she sold her first novel, “A Great Deliverance,”

“Careless in Red” is her 17th book, which brings back her popular character, Thomas “Tommy” Lynley, a Peer of the Realm who chose the unlikely career of law enforcement.

The book picks up the story of Lynley, left hanging two books ago, when George killed off his pregnant wife.

“I made sure he would take time off and not get up the next morning and go to work as if nothing happened,” George said.

Asked why she did away with Lynley’s adored Helen, George said, “Happily ever after ends a novel; it doesn’t begin one.”

That is a problem when you have ongoing characters.

“I bet if you stopped 20 people on the street and asked them the name of the main character of ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ not one would remember it,” George said. “Characters are not important in plot-driven books.”

George begins every book with extensive research of the location she is considering. Then she creates her characters.

She said she has no idea who they will be when she starts.

“Of course, I have a generic list: the victim, the mother, the father,” George said.

But only one is created to do a specific thing — the murderer.

Her next step is naming the characters, vital to her. She said Dickens was a genius at names — citing Uriah Heep.

The inspiration for Lynley was George’s love of names with hyphens and commas, such as Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowden, Earl of Snowden. And that of course, helped determine Lynley’s back story and his character.

So why would the American George fly in the face of conventional wisdom, which advises neophytes to write about what they know, and choose to people her books with an English aristocrat, his family and associates, the commoners who enforce the laws of the land and the inner workings of elite Scotland Yard — all foreign to George.

Even the language.

An elevator is a lift in England and it doesn’t start elevating on the first floor — that’s one story up. The shoes George wore Sunday were what Americans call sneakers. In England they are called trainers — with red high-tops a staple in the wardrobe of Lynley’s detective partner Barbara Havers.

“I have a long-, long-time interest in England, “George said. “I started writing stories in high school before I ever visited England. I never wrote about what I knew.”

However, after immersing herself in the nooks and crannies of England, and the idiosyncrasies and dialects peculiar to her characters, she is doing something right. Awards include the Agatha, named for Agatha Christie, the Anthony, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and the MIMI, Germany’s prestigious prize for suspense fiction.

The 623-page hardcover edition of “Careless in Red” is available in book stores, listed at $27.95.

OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, 92652; hand-deliver to Suite 22 in the Lumberyard, 384 Forest Ave.; call (949) 494-4321 or fax (949) 494-8979.