Friends & Lovers

Secrets of Midland Heights was a nighttime soap opera that premiered after the huge success of shows like Dallas and Knots Landing - both pinnacle dramas that began the nighttime soap craze in the 80s. The show was different in that it had a focus on teenagers who moved through various affairs and betrayals with their parents. I started to watch the show because it was produced by the creators of Dallas and Knots Landing and because it featured kids my age.

I was disappointed when CBS canceled the show after only eight episodes. It had a time slot on Saturday nights, therefore, not really finding an audience. It was even nominated for a People’s Choice Award.

After the show’s cancellation, I took pen to paper and wrote storylines about teenagers in a fictional small town called Laurel Falls. These were plotlines of discovery rather than soapy skullduggery. Loren Firestone was discovering that he was gay; his cousin Garan Christopher was discovering her sexuality with various boys; Lee Williams was discovering his manhood while having a soft spot for his friend Loren. Rounding out the characters were Jordache Martin, a troubled young man, and a tragic family named Denning. I did not carry on the story beyond a collection of pages that told each character’s story.

When I graduated high school and worked in tobacco fields while waiting for the date of my swearing in as an Airman, I started to think about my characters and their stories. I had some time on my hands once tobacco season was over. I created evil Len Roberts, who would be caught in a herpes scare and would be electricuted in a flooded basement. I got rid of the Dennings and Jordache Martin and moved headstrong Kayla Templeton to town.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, was the beginning of a little soap opera that I created entitled ‘Laurel Falls.’

(smile)

I wrote ‘Laurel Falls’ over a four year period while I was in the Air Force - choosing not the write individual episodes but rather condensed storylines to keep my creative imagination active. My central core of teenagers graduated high school went to college and lived through many a tale of sex, blackmail, secrets and love.

Loren had grown up and had come out of the closet while Garan became the town vixen. Lee was incorporated into some stories before I shipped him out of town. By this time, Loren and Kayla had become best friends. Loren fell in love with running back Spider Wiley, whose own coming out was quite the scandal and he and Loren left town for a better life. Spider had introduced the wealthy Wiley family to the story beginning with his cousins Nathaniel and Morgan. Nathaniel would later fall deeply in love with Kayla and Morgan had had a notorious affair with their brother Christopher’s young wife Tanya. The affair had occurred years before and Tanya and Christopher were divorced when the Wileys were introduced.

Kayla falls in love with porn star Baren Holmes, who does not want to give up his career for her. Baren starts out his reign as a bad guy but ends up being a nice man before being wrapped up in a story about a mysterious videotape involving a post-op transexual and a murderous porn producer. Baren soon falls in love and leaves town. A serial axe murderer is loose in Laurel Falls and kills off several characters, and is revealed to be a mentally unbalanced character named Hope.

Christopher had fallen in love with Kayla’s younger brother Lenorse Templeton, an ex-male model who had taken control of his grandfather’s tiny network of radio stations and was building it into a communications conglomerate. Jackson Wiley - Nathaniel’s, Morgan’s and Christopher’s father, forbid Christopher to see Lenorse or risk loosing the inheritance he’d been working his entire life for. When Christopher can’t fight his love for Lenorse, Tanya comes to town to announce that they were never legally divorced. Morgan wanted he and Tanya to finally be in love, but Tanya chose sexual satisfaction over love - as she states that Christopher is the only man that can satisfy her. Some strange love triangles develop and I kind of went over the top with Morgan, Tanya, Christopher, Lenorse and, soon, Luke Oliver whom Lenorse would meet on vacation only to discover that Luke was on his way to Laurel Falls to claim his birthright as the son of Victor Lacoste, a self-made millionaire who later turned out to be a serial rapist.

After Loren and Spider, Lenorse and Christopher became my focus couple. They endured many break-ups and rendezvous and schemes and one-sided love affairs and even an engagement between Christopher and sweet little Kelsey Hunter. While Christopher’s life is wrecked with turmoil, Lenorse builds his company and has a relationship with Luke while he is still in love with Christopher.

Ivey Templeton comes to town to wreck havoc on the Templeton family - which includes Kayla and Lenorse’s mother Jeri. It seems that Jeri’s long forgotten and missing husband, Brian, was a womanizer who fathered a number of children from a number of women around the country. Ivey becomes the town bitch, yet warms up to the Templeton family over time.

Garan was written out of the story and moved on after marrying a rich man who turned out to be in love with another woman.

More Wileys and Templetons show up later in the story ending with Brian Templeton’s return to Laurel Falls. Brian and Lenorse get into a power struggle. Luke threatens Christopher’s life because Luke is also in love with Lenorse. Kayla and Nathaniel can’t have children because he’s sterile.

(can’t stop laughing)

When I was on the downward spiral of my endless pursuit of writing these and more stories down, I created the down-to-earth Chastain family. Big brother Paul was a money-loving corporate climber while his sister Blake gets pregnant by a lover, looses her memory and can’t remember her love for the father of her child. Instead, she finds herself still in love with an old beau.

More characters come and go leaving a trail of lust, broken hearts, revenge, murder and even a story involving emotional incest. I think the last thing I wrote was a confrontation involving twins Trevor and Tracey Cruise and some prominent citizens inside of an office building where gunshots ring out in the night. After that, my tirade with my soap opera was over. I had moved to California and had some discovering of my own to do.

I wrote ‘Laurel Falls’ first on a thick notepad and then in a couple of spiral bound notebooks. Some of my later pages were lost when I moved from a friend’s house and into the the Los Angeles city limits. It kind of stuck with me through the years, as I cherished the imagination it helped give birth to.

Later, when I moved to Seattle and had not written a thing for a couple of years, I dug up ‘Laurel Falls’ and revised it to be the story of the Wileys and the Templetons. I toned it down a bit, though.

The new story involved lifelong best friends Helene and Jeri, who had caught the attentions of a wealthy law student named Palmer Wiley. Helene ended up marrying Palmer while Jeri settled with womanizer Brian Templeton, who would leave her with two kids: Kayla and Lenorse. Helene dies of cancer and is survived by her husband, at the time a Senator, and three sons: Nathaniel, Christopher and Spider.

  When the story begins, reporter Kayla Templeton returns to her hometown of Laurel Falls, Virginia - a suburb of Washington, D.C. - after her divorce from Rodney Jaredson. Lenorse Templeton has moved the headquarters of his communications network to Washington, D.C. thus settling in Laurel Falls.

The Wiley and Templeton children had grown up together. Old feelings between Kayla and Nathaniel develop, even while he is having an affair with his brother Christopher’s young wife Tanya and impregnating her. Christopher and Tanya’s sex life is dead because Christopher is gay...and a quarterback in the NFL. It seems that Christopher and Lenorse have been in love with each other since they were teenagers, but Christopher, of course, must keep his sexuality a secret.

In the meantime, African American attorney Ivey Templeton is hired at the law firm of Wiley & Associates when Palmer is set to retire and Nathaniel has visions of a political career. Ivey is the illegitimate daughter of Brian Templeton, who is had been missing for years and thought to be dead.

I don’t and have never expected ‘Laurel Falls’ to go anywhere. I never expect to do anything with it. Like I said, I used it as a way to keep my creative imagination fresh. I thought I’d write this little essay about it, just to keep myself writing something in hopes that I can write if not everyday then most days.

I had a lot of fun with ‘Laurel Falls’ as I’m sure you can imagine. And it sometimes kept me busy during trips halfway across the world and boring days in the barracks when most of the guys in my squadron were addicted to General Hospital and Days of our Lives.

I guess ‘Laurel Falls’ was a way to first get my anger out over the cancellation of Secrets of Midland Heights. And it became more of something else over the years that I wrote it. Sometimes, I did write out a scene here and there but, mostly, it was just for fun.

And in case you’re wondering about the original story: Lenorse and Christopher end up together after Tanya is run out of the Wiley family and Christopher decides to be his own man.