How Catherine Combes Came to Be
A character reference to the Solace Creek Stories
Catherine Combes, the six-foot five inch former basketball star, now a Boulder-Springs Metroplex police detective, is a key player in many of the Solace Creek Stories.
An interesting irony is that the voters of Colorado (excuse me, could that be a tinge of red in the neck area?) brought her into existence on the evening of November 3, 1992, when the election results for the horrid Amendment 2 were announced on television.
I had just completed a screenplay “Love Your Eyes” featuring a male detective named Harper. The script was circulating on that fateful November evening. When the results were announced, the immediate reaction from creative communities world-wide, Hollywood, New York, Toronto, Berlin, etc was “We won’t touch ANYTHING from Colorado!”
That night, with the help of global search and replace, Jess Harper became Catherine Combes, and some new scenes were added to build her character. Interestingly, Harper is back in the updated version of Love Your Eyes as Jesse Hartwood, Catherine’s boss.
She’s become a close friend over the years and I have a large acrylic painting of her in my office, looking over my shoulder as I process words…
ttfn, rlc
