The Senders of Shaula began as  a series of letters that my ditzy character Jane Malthus sent to then-President Bill Clinton and his Chief of Staff Leon Panetta in an attempt to use humor to convince them to push for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT.)  The letters talked about houses being painted in paisley, hamsters hoarding radioactive sunflower seeds, parades including full-sized aircraft carriers, and using thousands of boom boxes to melt all the runners in the Boston Marathon so the Senders could harvest the radioactive isotopes found in human tissues  (the legacy of our atom bomb atmospheric testing days.)  It was all great fun.  The story found structure as a screenplay I entered in the Monterey Film Commission’s screenwriting contest in 2005 . Not a winner, but at least it made the first cut. Then the screenplay was revamped with input from Donie Nelson, a writer’s consultant involved in development of television movies, but I did not feel I had the personality to get into pitching so I turned to other things.

Consult WILPF National www.wilpf.org for information on why we need to lobby Congress and the President to support the core values of the CTBT.