In His Prime> Portland man turns project from writing class into his first novel

Brent Askari tried churning out a set number of pages every day. The 30-year-old author even planted himself in front of his computer for a certain number of hours each week. But in the end, he found that the best way to finish his first novel was “just to keep noodling around with it.”

“Not Ready for Prime Time” is set in Portland, a locality Askari is very familiar with. His mother, a professor at the University of Southern Maine, lives just outside the city. It is just one of the places the “nomadic” writer calls home. He also spends time writing in Washington, D.C., where his father is a professor at George Washington University, as well as New York and Los Angeles.

Askari’s writing style is about as permanent as his address. His plays have been produced in Belfast and Washington, D.C., a television script appeared on HBO, and Langley Productions, of “Cops” fame, has optioned a screenplay. In all, the actor-writer turned writer-actor, has four novels in various stages of completion, including the one just published.

Best known in Bangor for his performances with the Penobscot Theater Company during the mid-1990s, Askari has all but given up acting, although he did appear in a Portland production last year. He will return to Bangor to read from his novel at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, at Borders Books, Music and Cafe.

“Not Ready for Prime Time” is the story of 22-year-old Justine and is narrated in her voice. She was abandoned by her mother at the age of three, “dropped off at my aunt Lenore’s kitchen table with a note, $50, and a bright orange Popsicle, promising to be back in 10 minutes; she never returned.” As Justine struggles to find and define herself and her future, she reconnects with her mother.

“Basically, [Justine] is me,” confessed Askari in a phone call from his mother’s home. “Somebody said to me, `I bet you wrote as a woman because of the distance it allowed you.’ I hadn’t thought about that before, but I think they were absolutely right.

“Although Justine’s completely different from me on the surface, I think that surface distance allowed me to get very personal in a way which I probably would’ve been afraid to if it’d been the story of a guy around my age. … [Justine] is really no one in particular. She is a type of person … those edgy intelligent, creative, slightly or sometimes aggressively screwed up younger women who are deep down very sensitive and trying to find a sense of self-worth.”

The book began as an exercise in Askari’s Portland writers’ group. A fellow member asked him to complete the sentence, “My mother named me Justine because …” That is how the novel’s heroine begins to tell her story in the opening paragraphs.

“My friends thought it was cool, different from what I’d done in the past, and encouraged me,” he said. “I just kept working on it every so often, tooling around with it, discovering things about this person as I went along.”

“Novelist” was not the handle Askari expected to be known by when he last visited Bangor. In a January 1995 interview with the NEWS, Askari announced that he had signed with high-powered theatrical agent Helen Merrill. She was to find performance venues for his plays. However, the relationship never really gelled and Merrill died a couple of years ago without getting any of his plays produced.

Currently, Askari is concentrating his creative efforts on screenwriting, rather than his novels, plays or poetry. Askari is not sure what sent him down this writer’s path. He has always had an interest in the arts, but for the first five years of his life, was determined to be a magician.

“For either Christmas or my birthday, I got my first magic set,” he said. “I opened the manual that revealed all the magicians’ secrets and realized that they were all just tricks. I had thought they were creating something out of nothing. Yet, I think that is what draws me to writing and the arts — the opportunity to create something from nothing.”

Tamela Glenn of Stillwater met Askari when the two starred in PTC’s “Crucifer of Blood” in early 1995. A few years ago, Glenn founded Theatre of the Silver Dragon, a children’s company based in Orono. She writes nearly a dozen plays a year for her young performers. She has read much of Askari’s work, including the just-published novel when it was titled, “Yellow Snow Cones.”

“Brent has a stong voice that’s the same in every piece he writes,” she observed. “I can hear Brent’s voice in everything he writes. He has a childlike quality that is real optimistic, yet vulnerable, as well as a quick mind. Also, he is fascinated by culture from the Twinkie to caviar. He examines the bubble gum and the wrapper.”

Reviews of “Not Ready for Prime Time” have been mixed, but Askari is not discouraged. He knows from his experience as an actor that reviews are subjective and often don’t affect how many people come to see a play or buy a book.

“It’s just an opinion,” he calmly observed. “So I try to keep that perspective. Of course, you want a reviewer who’s going to reach lots of readers to have a favorable opinion, but you can’t control it. You can only try to do the best on the writing end. After that, it’s out of your hands.”

Just because his fictional female alter ego is not ready for prime time doesn’t mean Askari isn’t. After his appearance in Bangor, the writer will head for the Big Apple, where he will polish the script for a horror film destined, he hopes, for the big or small screen.

“My partner, Chum Langhorne, and I set out to answer the question, `Who would we want to see killed in a horror film?”‘ Askari explained, a gleeful tone creeping into his voice. “The answer was the cast of MTV’s `Real World.’ So, we’re writing a slasher movie where the cast of a `Real World’-type show start dropping like flies.”

This is just the kind of movie Justine and her aimless circle of friends would love.