FrankMarcopolos.com – Home of ALMOST HOME

EXT. – GREENWICH STREET, NYC (TRIBECA), IN FRONT OF IVY’S BAR – DUSK

FADE IN FROM BLACK.

A ruggedly handsome MAN, with the kind of good looks that let you know he knows how to handle a firearm but also pets his neighbor’s puppy whenever the opportunity presents itself, is walking briskly toward Ivy’s Bar. His breath is visible from the cold, his gloved hands hidden inside his black Alfani overcoat, which tops a black Fred Perry zip-up sweater, white tie, white Van Heusen button-down collar, and black slacks. His square-toe Kenneth Cole Reactions gleam with high shine. The left lapel of his overcoat is adorned with a “Ron Paul 2012” button.

The street is color-bled and bleak, while the interior of the restaurant beams with vivid and vibrant colors.

The MAN walks in and greets another MAN like a long-lost brother, smiling and hugging him.

MAN #1: Alex! M’man!

MAN #2: Frank! Long time.

FRANK: Yeah, bro. But I need to thank you.

ALEX: For what?

FRANK: For waking me up. What’s been up is, I shifted my mentality, y’know. Based on some of the stuff you were telling me about last year, and I got my humanity back, or whatever you wanna call it. I realized that I have personal sovereignty because it was provided by my creator—NOT the government or any other outside entity. It’s a direct connection between the source of all consciousness and my own consciousness. Plain and simple.

ALEX: Exactly right. Yup. Glad to see you finally came around, buddy!

FRANK: Yeah. But it does mean that I am responsible for the quality of my life, which can be scary. Especially ‘cause my life could still, y’know, use improvement in so many areas. That’s scary, it really is. Y’know, uhh, I’d always thought that the government had my best interests at heart, I really did. I’d grown up thinking that while politicians might screw up here and there, and there might be some corruption occasionally, y’know, overall, overall they try to do the right thing for the people. I now realize we’ve all allowed politicians to have way too much power over our lives. We’re kind of complicit in their actions, and, in the same way, it’s up to us to remedy the situation.

ALEX: Yeah, self-reliance, personal sovereignty, and preparedness, it turns out, are forms of empowering wisdom. After that initial shock of fear, your mind quickly moves into a realm of supreme empowerment. That wisdom, that illumination, can then be used, like a floodlight to enable you to see what for so long was ensconced in ever-darkening shadow: your true nature, which is divine, your true mission in life, and your everlasting truth.

FRANK: Yes! Exactly! These days, I wake up daily with a crazy-cool energy, ready to keep fighting the good fight with an irrepressible smile all over my face.

ALEX: Right, I get you. Me too, man. And how did it start? Like everything always starts. By you making a choice, a decision.

A pretty blonde BARTENDER in a blue V-neck T-shirt leans over the bar, toward ALEX and FRANK, revealing an alluring view of her significant cleavage.

BARTENDER: ‘Scuse me. You guys want a drink or what?

ALEX and FRANK turn their heads away from her, look into the camera, and raise their eyebrows.

They’re expecting an answer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Frank Marcopolos began writing as a kid in the evenings after summer days of competing—always unsuccessfully—against the older neighborhood kids (the evil “teenagers”) in the P.S. 207 schoolyard. After long, hot days of sporting failures, he discovered that by writing stories, his fictional heroes (almost always coincidentally named “Frank”) could always end up saving the day from the taller, menacing forces arrayed against them. He usually composed these stories by flashlight as he wrote in a black-and-white Mead notebook while seated on a shelf in his bedroom closet.

For some reason, this love of creating alternative—glory-promising—realities never died within him, and continues to this day. (Thankfully, his boyhood habit of naming all of his main characters “Frank” has died, however.)

Frank still lives in Brooklyn, New York, not far from that very schoolyard where he spent so much of his youth failing at various sports. He notes with sadness that the current trend in public education is to chain up all schoolyards during the summer, presumably so that the painted-on-cement bases can’t be stolen.

Frank rocks a cable-free lifestyle, and always knows where his towel is. ALMOST HOME is his debut novel. From 2000-2006, he was the editor of the critically acclaimed literary zine, THE WHIRLIGIG.