How local author Laura Preble took her complicated heroine to Hollywood
She is a germaphobe whose fear of what she might inhale, touch or somehow ingest keeps her mostly confined to her house. She also suffers from trichotillomania, a condition that causes people to compulsively pull out their hair. Then there is that obsession with her therapist. More on that later.
When they look at the heroine of Laura Preble’s 2020 novel “Anna Incognito,” most people would see a mess. But to Preble’s shock, some key people read her book and saw a movie. After two years and more than 20 script rewrites, the Rancho San Diego writer is seeing it, too.
In addition to being the author of five novels, including the “Queen Geeks” young-adult series, Preble is now an awardwinning screenwriter. So far this year, Preble’s adaptation of “Anna Incognito” has scored best-script honors at the California Indies Film Festival and an honorable mention in the Big Apple Film Festival and Screenplay Competition.
Her unproduced script has
also been selected for inclusion in such festivals as the Boston Independent Film Awards and the LA Independent Women Film Awards.
Like any screenwriter, Preble knows that not all scripts become movies. But even if “Anna Incognito” never makes it from the page to the screen, the 60-yearold writer has already been on an adventure that she did not see coming. Which is probably just as well.
“I was thinking writing a
screenplay would be pretty much the same as writing a novel. I thought, ‘It’s a story. It’s dialogue. I’ve done that.’ But it’s not the same,” said Preble, who retired from her job as a librarian at Monte Vista High School in June of 2020.
“With the first draft I wrote, I realized, ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have any idea.’ It was much more difficult than I thought it would be.”
When Preble wrote the novel