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Hello, Rest of My Life
Rick Lenz, author
When Danny Maytree, an ambitious young 1970s film actor, met Samantha on a blind date and fell in love, he decided he no longer cared about Tinseltown stardom. He still acted sometimes, but he became a writer too.
Now married and in their seventies, they find a dog whose faded tag has the name “Tali” and a Beverly Hills phone prefix from fifty years earlier.
Writing a time travel novel in 2021, Danny gets a call from a mysterious, velvet-voiced acting agent. He has a meeting tomorrow in Beverly Hills. Tali, in one of their singular “conversations,” questions Danny’s motives.
Now, Danny is in Beverly Hills—not at the meeting, but in the elegant home where he lived in 1974, forty-seven years ago. He is twenty-seven again, bewildered, but with a second chance at his Hollywood dream.
He doesn’t want it, because Sam is not in this world.
Unhappy in his new “now,” he realizes his journey back to “Kansas” hinges on the magic of film. A sharkish agent helps him navigate Hollywood’s rocky shoals. A worldly-wise teen and a New Age fortune-teller offer spiritual advice. And a sexy wicked witch throws a monkey wrench in his path.
Reviews
Lenz (The Alexandrite) spins an introspective tale of time travel about a former Hollywood actor. Danny Maytree, now in his 70s, lives a blissful life with his wife, Sam, in Beverly Hills, having long ago given up his dreams of stardom to devote himself to Sam and start a new career as a writer after they met 40 years earlier. One day, he’s somehow transported back in time to 1974, six years before they met, after he was separated from his first wife and before his acting career dried up. He’s 27 years old again, but all he wants to do is reunite with Sam, so he hatches a plan to make a movie about their love, hoping it will reverse the time travel. With an unexpected gift of $50,000 from Stanley Kubrick, he wrangles the production amid sessions with a skeptical therapist. There are also surreal encounters with Valory Valentine, a mysterious personal assistant to various stars with a knack for premonitions; a teenager who spouts wisdom; and the appearance of Danny’s dog from 2021, all of which pushes Danny closer to finding a way back home. It gets off to a slow start, but Lenz does a good job describing the fraught film production. There are a few too many ingredients, but they mostly coalesce into an alluring adventure. (Self-published)
