Flirting with a pilot

Years after I wrote my “Jayson” sitcom pilot, I was approached by a development executive about putting “Jayson” on TV. It was in 2006, right after I published the “Best of the 80s” and “Best of the 90s” collections and made my first appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con. Billy Cogar from Here! TV, a premium cable channel for LGBT audiences, introduced himself and asked for my press kit and copies of my books.

I figured I’d never hear back from him, or that I would phone and phone him until he finally broke down and served up a warmed-over rejection like: We’ve decided not to move forward on your project. But no, he actually got back to me within a week – and served up a piping-hot rejection. He told me that he loved the books, they made him laugh, he was going to keep them around the office for others to read but – there’s always a but – the material was dated and the situations weren’t sexy enough for their premium subscriber.

Dated? Well, the material is from the 80s and the 90s. It says so right on the cover.

Not sexy enough? Well, a running joke in the series is that none of the characters ever get any.

Billy invited me to write a “Jayson” pilot script anyway, bearing this feedback in mind. I told him I couldn’t write a pilot for these characters that met those criteria. But maybe I’d write something else for him that did. I never did.

But Billy’s feedback, along with the feedback I was getting at conventions, did inspire me to start writing new “Jayson” stories, culminating in my first graphic novel, “Jayson Goes to Hollywood” (2008), followed by “Jayson Gets a Job,” which I’m working on right now.