Amazon Bestseller in "Visionary Fiction" "When I first decided to go back and read those old notebooks, I was desperate for answers. But my old self said: Look closer. Read between the lines. I left you secrets. Secrets that will take you on a terrifying journey. And if you survive that journey, you'll have more than just answers. You'll have everything." Hollywood screenwriter Ben Cross is broken-hearted after the death of his young daughter. Even though he knows it's impossible, he still wants his little girl to have the Hollywood ending she deserves. And so Ben begins a desperate personal quest, searching for some sign from her. Consulting self-help gurus, philosophers, and religion, he derives a set of principles that reinforce his belief that everything can still work out. First, he applies those principles to finding that sign from his daughter. Then he applies them to his writing--to his career--to everything else in his life. Along the way, he discovers which principles work and which don't. Meanwhile, at Ben Cross's side, the reader finds himself transported on his own spiritual odyssey, learning fundamental truths about how to live, how to maintain a career, and how to overcome cruel and unexpected setbacks. Based on the author's own life, Under an Orange Sun, Some Days Are Blue is a unique and unforgettable story that offers fresh insights on how to find the inspiration to meet and conquer life's greatest challenges.
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"Under An Orange Sun" is a distinctive blend of literary storytelling, raw emotion, and motivational fiction.
About the Author
Irving Belateche has written screenplays for Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, and other studios. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
Irving Belateche is an author, screenwriter, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. He's written screenplays for Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., and other studios.
He's worked with producers Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction), Gavin Polone (Gilmore Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm), and Joel Silver (The Matrix) as well as directors Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) and Roland Emmerich (Independence Day). Belateche adapted the first Hugo award winner, The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, for Paramount and producer Robert Evans (Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby).
His first novel, Under An Orange Sun, Some Days Are Blue, was based on his journey as a Hollywood screenwriter after the loss of his daughter. It's a deeply moving and inspirational story that offers unique insights on how to face and conquer life's greatest challenges. The novel is a bestseller in Visionary Fiction on Amazon.
With H2O and The Disappeared, Belateche returned to the genres for which he's best known, science fiction and supernatural thrillers. H2O is a science fiction thriller about a future where knowledge has disappeared and curiosity will get you killed. The Disappeared is a short story about one man's battle to survive his growing invisibility.
Belateche lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
I too read Under an Orange Sun Some Days Are Blue in one sitting. The story is told vividly, and is profoundly moving. Although the book deals with moving forward after the death of a child, I found the Principles detailed in it could be applied to many situations.
I loved this book. It's bold, honest and deeply moving. I never dreamed I'd be leafing back through a book on grief with hi-lighter in hand, dog-earing pages for tips on motivation and process, but that's what I've been doing. Thanks for sharing this.
Like the other reviewers, I read it in one sitting and couldn't put it down. I thought it was unique and great, and also very moving. The Principles were devised to succeed at screenwriting, but they apply to just about any career ambition. Definitely worth a read.
I have to admit it. Every time I open a new book on dealing with grief, I have certain expectations and assumptions about what the book will be like. And I admit it, this time I was wrong.
This is not your typical grief book.
Yes, it is the story of a father who lost his daughter to cancer, and yes, it is unbearable to imagine beyond words.
But words must be used when writing a book. And it is even more necessary when your profession is a writer. And when you are experiencing writer's block, and nothing seems to be working to get you through it, it seems natural to put down on paper the issues of what is wrong, and to try and solve your way through the problem by using logical steps.
But grief doesn't work like that. Grief must be experienced. It is a journey that you cannot circumvent, it is not a short walk to the end.
Without giving away too much of the family's lives, the author tells of his struggles to get back into his daily routine and churn out the product that has supported his family for many years. He doesn't share with many of his colleagues the heartache he feels over his loss, his deadworld, and instead tries to incorporate the grief into his life by minimalizing it and putting work into the forefront of his days. But the grief of losing his daughter causes him to sink lower into a funk, and only by acknowleging the pain of loss does he begin to emerge and go back to writing.
Even though this book is presented as a novel, I know there is truth behind it. And it is the truth that makes it sing.... He touches on some of the aspects that many of us grieving parents face: the world that keeps on spinning even when we feel that it should have fallen off its axis; trying to figure out WHY did our child get cancer in the first place and why wasn't there a cure; the stupid things people say to grieving parents when they think they are being comforting; looking for a sign from our dead child, or even that life is going to get better. And of course, the poetry that is shared is bittersweet when we find new meanings after our child has left us.
But it is of course the writing, the making of a living for his surviving family that consumes the author. And rightly so. For it is hard to find a new normal when you are struggling to make it though daily life of providing enough food, clothing and shelter for those who are still living. His dealings with co-workers who don't really get what he is going though, and his self doubts over whether he will rise back to the successes he once had are very identifiable to many of us.
I found this book to be unusual and absorbing. As a long-time reader of self-help books, I found the author's description and application of the common themes from that genre to be very recognizable and fascinating. The portrayal of the author's struggle to call forth the creative genius, especially in the context of his need for commercial success, reminded me of Elizabeth Gilbert's Ted Talk where she talks about believing in a "muse" that seems way too magical for the 21st century: [...] The author uses spare and direct language to describe how he copes with the death of his young daughter and seeks to summon his writing muse. I was surprised at how natural it was for these two themes to be combined in the story. The explanations about aspects of the business of Hollywood were exotic and interesting to me since they are completely foreign to my normal life. By the end of the book, I was really rooting for the author's scripts to get to the screen! Part of me would like to see a sequel where the author wins an Oscar, but the point of the book seems to be that success can be defined in a lot of ways that don't involve things like winning Oscars.
I read the book in one day and cried through most of it. I shared the death and loss of the child and could understand the amount of emotional energy needed to continue in a very competitive career. The path to being creative was new to me and made for absorbing reading.
I thought this book was going to be about the loss of a daughter. Instead it was about moving on with a hole in your heart. And how can you do that? The narrator dives into his old notebooks to see what got him through rough patches in the past. He is a little odd in his approach to his writing career. He has a variety of "Principles" that he applies to help him achieve his goals. Or he had applied them with some success in the past. But the death of a child is not like a rough patch, it is a life changing event that leads to a changed life. This book is a little bit memoir, a little bit motivational, a little bit movie industry. You can sense the narrator's sadness and his struggle to come to terms with his stalled career while dealing with the death of his daughter.
I read that others could not put down "Under and Orange Sun" once they had started the book. I know why. The work is simply compelling, riveting, deeply moving and powerful. Belateche writes with such raw yet nuanced honesty as he carries us along on his profoundly personal quest to make sense of a world after an unspeakable loss of a child. Although an intimate account of one screenwriter's journey, the discoveries Belateche uncovers are universal. This book is inspired. Belateche is a master storyteller. I highly recommend this book.
