In The Neighborhood

Ray O’Conor, author of the book, “She Called Him Raymond: A True Story of Love, Loss, Faith and Healing,” dons his “smart glasses” at a worktable inside the Saratoga Springs Public Library, where he is flanked by a laptop computer, a pair of three-inch binders and a trusty thermos. “Today I’m working on a section of the screenplay that involves the occasion on which Helen – who is my mother, and one of the two main characters in the story - and Raymond, the aspiring young aviator she meets by chance in New York, are going to her mother’s tenement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen so he can ask for her hand in marriage. “The reason I got the notion to do this is I’ve been doing a lot of reading presentations of the book and almost without exception someone in every audience says, ‘I love the story. I think it would make a great movie.’” O’Conor goes through some notes provided him by his friend Scott McCloud, a retired former head of the English Department at Ballston Spa High School, and who is one of a dozen or so people who have offered to read through the screenplay and offer suggestions. “I spoke to some people in the film business in Hollywood. No one has optioned the story yet but there was enough interest to encourage me to undertake writing the screenplay. It probably will take a couple of years. I’ve been working on it since about this time last year.” O’Conor is also a multi-tasker of words and story ideas. “I’m working on another book: the story of the guide who took my friends and I to climb to Mt. Killimanjaro in Tanzania a little more than four years ago. The man has an extraordinary story. His name is Protus Mayunga and he lives in the Catskills now with his wife and his five kids. I’d like to take another trip to Africa with him to visit the town he grew up in. I want to take my time with the story, to make sure it’s done right.”