MORPHINE DREAMS A decade ago, Charlie Brewster was on the Hollywood "A" list. Three best sellers, two hit movies, and one bomb later he lives in an apartment in Santa Barbara. As he once critically said, "It was hard to write with a coke spoon in one hand and a bottle in the other." Charlie now knows more waitresses at Denny's than maitre d's in Beverly Hills and he is okay with that. In the ensuing years he came to terms with fame's fleeting moments and lives his life with quiet equanimity. However, a bout of cancer has him worried about the brevity of life. It is time to reassess what went right and what went wrong. Why did he never make a relationship endure? Maybe his therapist was right? More importantly why can't he finish his romance novel? Morphine Dreams is a richly told tale. Using piquant wit and nostalgia for friends and places gone by, Charlie regales the reader with delightful anecdotes of his life as he reflects on the events of the past year. Beginning in October, as a wildfire burns in the Montecito hills, Charlie wonders how he came to be in a hospital bed at 58. It took him forty years to find his literary voice and only five years to lose it. Searching for answers, Charlie goes back to the previous New Years when Julie and he were still an item. Through the next twelve months, fraught with holidays, Charlie lives life while he remembers people and events from the past. While in the hospital he finds some new friends and makes surprising discoveries about himself and the things he loves and people he loved. At the same time, he finally talks about Lisa. The girl he refused to mention for forty years but who lived never far from his thoughts. Morphine Dreams is a fictional memoir. The story-line drifts back and forth in time. Charlie Brewster is an engaging and likable writer who is also burden with faults, the most notable being his inability to maintain a relationship. He also struggles with the memory of thwarted love.
About the Author: Rich Foster lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Elaine, and two grade school age sons. He was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. For the past thirty-five years he has resided on the west coast. In college, he wrote a column for the Wheaton College, Record. The administration did not appreciate his cynicism. Upon graduation he wanted to be a novelist. Unfortunately, lacking life experience, he found little to say. In preparing to be a writer he traveled to over forty-five countries, circling the globe twice. He spent two years running yachts in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. In the intervening years he worked in counseling programs, land surveying, yachting, construction, and sales. These diverse experiences aided his literary efforts. In the late 1990's he shared an original script idea. A film director encouraged him to write the script. Nine hundred pages and countless revisions later, he had a 110-page finished script called Rochambeau. In the following years, Foster penned, another screenplay and five novels. His first novel, The Death of Alan Chandler was adapted from his second screenplay Rich Foster has five novels and one screenplay available at Amazon.com, TheBookPatch.com and on Kindle Select The Death of Alan Chandler Cast the First Stone A story of revenge and recovery ADX PraxisA detective-spy thriller. Lasting Doubts, A second detective novel featuring Harry Grim. Morphine Dreams A fictional memoir Rochambeau - a screenplay Death of Alan Chandler in script format Currently he is working on: Fatal Chances A third Harry Grim novel. Visit him at: Blog Site: richfosterbooks.com E-mail: richfosterbooks@gmail.com