Producer for Movie Negotiations with Sony Pictures

Sept. 7, 2012 - PRLog -- In further negotiations with Sony Pictures for a 3-part series, author Barbara Reed and her publicist John Byrnes (John Byrnes & Assoc.) are now considering proposals from interested producers.  Several characteristics make this project unique, most notably the opportunity to release commercial songs performed in the movies to the mainstream marketplace.

With a lifelong career as a singer-songwriter, Reed writes the highly acclaimed Liz Hanlon series with authority and know-how, giving a bird's eye view of the modern music business to viewers, and making them wish they were having as much fun as Liz.

ABOUT The Liz Hanlon mysteries and HIT music . . .

Just when you thought you’d reached your dream reality brings you back with a jolt.
Singer-songwriter Liz Hanlon is feisty, headstrong, and has no trouble speaking her mind.   With chestnut brown hair, a captivating smile, and a trim figure she maintains by jogging, she can turn heads when she enters a room, but it’s usually her cobalt-blue eyes that people remember.  She’s exceptionally talented, able to deliver the songs she writes with the polish and presence of the accomplished musician that she is.  She’s been chasing her dream in the music business since childhood, but in this series she does it while facing life-threatening situations that sometimes force her to re-examine her previously held view of right and wrong.  
On occasion, her sardonic wit causes raised eyebrows and dropped jaws.  She was determined to become a fulltime musician even when others told her she was crazy.  Don’t set your sights so high, they’d say.  Have another career and play music on the side.  She ignored their advice; music was her life.  “It’s a sink or swim world,” she’d argued.  “All or nothing.  Besides, you only get back in life what you put out, so I’m putting . . .okay, bad example . . .”
Protagonist Liz experiences every musical situation imaginable.  When the series starts in "High Notes Are Murder," she’s stuck in low-paying piano-dump gigs, where she receives chilling notes from a stalker who claims her beautiful music is too good for others.  He plans to take her away where she will spend the rest of her life performing only for him.  With the search for the stalker ongoing, Liz is suddenly offered a chance for international fame by headlining live TV concerts.  The notes stop; the stalker seemingly disappears.  Then, hours before the first show, she discovers the body of her young cousin at the foot of the stage.  With help from an eccentric investigator, Liz identifies the killer, also connecting him to a music business scandal from twenty-five year ago.  But her revelation creates another problem.  Revealing the killer’s identity connects her favorite uncle to the same scandal.  Her family name, as well as her own, could be ruined.  With her career in its budding stage, can it withstand such a connection?

"Harmonic Deception" begins on the star-studded night of Liz’s first CD release party.  Her performance could make her career, and the night is magical until three teenage girls in outlandish disguises burst into the LA nightclub with assault weapons.  Within minutes, two hundred patrons are held hostage, stripped of their cell phones and valuables.  One man is dead, two others wounded.  There seems no way out until Liz improvises a musical code and shouts it to her band mates who are hiding behind the stage curtain.  The code triggers a call to 9-1-1 forcing the girls into an unplanned getaway, but not before the shooter snaps belligerent remarks that convince Liz this crime is personal and she is the target.
Desperate to expose the shooter before she attacks again, Liz seeks help from an eccentric investigator and her brother, an attorney, but neither they nor the police detectives believe the crime was personal.  Her career is on hold and she worries that another hint of scandal could destroy her fragile career.  She must find this killer.  But why would a stranger want to ruin her?  
   Clues lead to the gang’s shooter and Liz sets up a trap.  In a pre-dawn stand-off, she wrestles with her growing desire for revenge, finally shooting in self-defense.  It would appear to be over, but an unresolved issue from the past comes to light and it changes everything . . .