Patricia Scarlett spent much of her professional life making things happen in the world of Canada’s film and television industry first as a high-achieving international sales executive at TV Ontario then as the driving force behind two companies she founded, Compass International and Media Business Institute (MBI).
She recognizes that the world of film and television as highly exclusive in the eyes of many.
Also having travelled to and participated in a lot of the industry events including all the major festivals from Toronto, to New York to BANFF to Cannes in the south of France, she has had the opportunity to observe the unbridled competitiveness and what she describes as “the foolishness of the industry.”
So we should take it all with a grain of salt.
“I’m not saying that the industry is not important but truth is, we’re not curing cancer or solving any of the prevailing problems around the world… so we have to put it all in perspective,” she told the CONTACT recently. “However, I do understand people’s fascination with what goes on in the film and television industry.”
And it is that place where privilege and self-importance live that provides the backdrop for Scarlett’s debut novel, Blinded by the Brass Ring, the first in the Jewelle Joseph Series.
The book offers readers a glimpse into the intriguing world of travel and film as well as the dramatics in the lives of an Afro-Canadian family, as Jewelle (JJ-to her friends) sashays through life as a well-heeled international television sales and distribution executive who wants more.
On the job at TV3, JJ is on the hunt for a major promotion; on the home front she’s looking for stability and calm between her divorced parents and in her love life, she’s in search of reassurance.
Through it all, readers get to accompany her as she travels the world visiting the trade shows and highfalutin festivals that are important markers of the film and television industry.
Scarlett says Jewelle who was raised by her parents to get to the top of the heap, sacrificing friends and family along the way is a combination of four remarkable women whom she has known throughout her life.
And Blinded by the Brass Ring, published by Baraka Books, draws from the many pages of the journals that have been part of her personal and professional life from way back.
The former Montrealer says it took her about a year and a half to write the book.
Book Launch
Montrealers are invited to Patricia at the Jamaica Association of Montreal, 4065 Jean Talon W., on April 1, from 2 to 5 PM for the launch of Blinded by the Brass Ring
Patricia Scarlett’s Blinded by the Brass Ring is delightfully intriguing
