ABOUT The Author
Ken Luber
Ken Luber is an American Film Institute graduate in writing and directing. He has written for film and television and directed theatre in Los Angeles, Idyllwild, and in Hemet, CA where he received the Inland Theatre League’s Outstanding Director Award. His musical, “Esperanza” for which he wrote the book and lyrics with music composed by Saverio Rapezzi, premiered at the Pearl McManus theatre in Palm Springs, CA. He is the author of the novel “An Angel, A Dealer, The Deal,” “The Sun Jumpers,” and is presently finishing his third novel.
Ken lives with his artist/author wife, Kathy Harmon Luber, in Idyllwild, CA.
For several years he has taught immigrant adults the English language and they in turn have taught him the glowing spirit of the human race.
Screenplays
Road Goddess
She’s 35 yr old, dumped by her husband and stuck with selling an 18 wheeler – until she learns to drive it across America and finds another lover on the road.
(Under option, in pre-development.)
She’s My Mother
Two women of disparate backgrounds uncover murder & a sex-trafficking ring. They find themselves captives, struggling to survive. An ex-GI son & a fearless daughter risk their lives to save them.
(Under option to SWE-films.)
That Planet is Dancing
Wally’s an ex-TV fitness guru selling jewelry and trying to get voice-over jobs. Q’s a wannabe rapper driving a cab. Strangers to each other, what are they doing together on a spaceship saving a planet 446 thousand miles from Earth?
Teach Me to Dance
Children don’t know everything. An interracial love story that dances across the ages.
Hold Everything
A cash-strapped East-coast university, an aging Black football coach a young, Black drama Professor, a Russian gangster billionaire, an LA home invasion, and a doomed marriage – stuffed into an action-comedy with a sweet, romantic touch.
Howzer
Writer-director
the story of two westward bound runaways, twelve and fourteen, who leave the comforts of their Midwest home to seek the adventures of Los Angeles and beyond, attempting to explore the secret world of adult life."
(Warner Bros. distribution)
Heartsong
1929 - At an abusive Catholic Boarding School on a South Dakota Indian Reservation, a defiant Black nurse joins forces with teenage students loyal to their heritage and finds herself enmeshed in a murder mystery - inspired by true events.
(Producer: Sonny Skyhawk)
Field Trip Lost in Space
Six hundred years in the future, from an elite military academy, celebrating their h.s. graduation, the class zooms into space for their final field trip. But things go terribly wrong. They crash-land on an unknown planet, inhabited by giant, deadly spiders and a band of ruthless kidnappers. The Field Trip students are lost and doomed, with no communication to Earth and Central Command. Finally, after a great deal of pressure, Cole West, the country’s greatest intergalactic pilot and grandfather of one of the graduating students, is released from prison to find the Lost Field Trip.
TV Series
“Club Soda”
“Bring back the ‘40s!”
The faces were young, as were those of the Junior Hostesses, drawn from sororities, church leagues and other volunteer agencies - girls whose best intentions were to show the guys a good time, fill their loneliness, soothe their fears, listen to them, love them, remind them that someone would be there when they got back, that someone cared very deeply about them. “For all we know” became the anthem of a generation.
“It’s My Money”
ANDY FRANK is a thirty-six-year-old, Black ex-football terror in the NFL until a heart transplant operation tackled his career. Now settled with his seventy-three million dollars in an old Victorian mansion, Andy is persuaded by a business partner to take on a boarder, Boshay, a saleswoman with a seven-year old Tibetan/Chinese son, Ming-Ming. She likes the idea of having a male role model for her son. Andy likes the comfort of a ready-made family and, of course, the real, practical need of having someone near to help out with tasks he is limited in doing or simply can't do. Andy is also a convenient baby-sitter for Ming-Ming when Boshay has out-of-town sales trips. Supporting characters in-and-out of the mansion are Andy’s sister, Janelle, who runs his foundation and programs mentoring high school student-athletes, Lou Capota whose deceased wife’s heart rests in Andy’s chest, his doctor who likes to bet on ball games, and an assortment of comedic football buddies still in the game.
Novels
An Angel, A Dealer, The Deal
She picked him up in a beachfront bistro. He thought he was going to Seattle. She knew he was beginning the longest journey of his life. He didn’t know when he got in her car that she was an angel. She didn’t know when he bought her a beer that she had loved him four hundred years ago. Nor did she know that together she would risk her angelic rank to save this drug dealer’s soul. Their journey spans centuries and continents, terrifying forests and raging seas as their love takes hold and the secret of human transformation is explored.
(on Amazon; paperback & e-book)
Falling from the Sky
He’s 17 yrs. old, a high school wrestling star living in a small Midwest town. She’s a 17 yr. old mother with a nine-month-old son. She lives in Scotland 500 yrs. ago and her son has been abducted. Billy and El are fated to meet.
The Sun Jumpers
He thought of Sita, the beautiful kanta-wing who had captured his heart. Like Ty , she was born on the banks of the river, and like Ty she believed in a world greater than the warren of caves, cliffs and forest in which they dwelled. Her vivid smile spoke to her name, Sita, which in the Kishoki language meant “heart smile.” In her dreams she traveled to places Ty had never been. She called it star-stepping. But even she did not know of the plan that consumed her teenage lover’s thoughts, a plan that hurtled them into the 21st Century. Nor could he know that someday she would be a shaman.
(on Amazon; paperback and e-book)
(TV series optioned by G7 Animation)
Children’s Books
Lynn Ryan
THE LITTLEST SEED
Lost in a storm, the littlest seed flies across the world in the beak of a black crow, searching for his mother.
TEJAN AND THE LOST SOCCER BALL
Seven-year-old Tejan, crossing the sea with his best friend Mariama to find his lost soccer ball he made out of rags and a junkyard inner tube, finds in his search an even greater treasure.
SCOTTY’S GREATEST TREE TRICK
A brother and sister find Scotty the squirrel dying on a river-raft and bring him home, where his greatest tree tricks save the family from poverty.
MOLLY and MILTY – A Love Story
When Mr. Duparlo brings home Milty, a big floppy rescue dog, the house cat, Molly, freaks out, until a hero rises out of the flames to capture her heart.
Plays
HEAVEN ON THE LOOSE
A Metaphysical Comedy in Two Acts
The Almighty Creator – His Majesty, aka Izzy – looks down on Earth, His creation, with despair and severe disappointment. Seeing the mayhem, hatred and warring mankind, His initial reaction is to dump the Earth and start over… But not so fast. His Soul Consort, Lady Gina – equal to Him in every aspect of power and dimension – demands that He abandon His plan. He finally relents on the condition that three good people can be found on Earth. Chosen for this mission is the recently deceased Mexican gardener, Marcos, but when Marcos gets distracted, Izzy’s loyal assistant, Sameer, the deceased Indian soul from Mumbai, is sent back to Earth to find Marcos. Amidst this confusion, the 18th Century Scottish soul, Diana, confronts Lady Gina with the profound questions of life and death. How the world is saved, through humor and pathos, is at the heart of “Heaven on the Loose.”
BLU WATER
MICHELANGELO, PERHAPS HISTORY’S GREATEST SCULPTOR, famously said: “I SAW THE ANGEL IN THE MARBLE AND CARVED UNTIL I SET HIM FREE.” … So it is with Blu Water, the Native angel/ spirit who rises out of a massive stone Shawn is working on. The arrogant sculptor dismisses her as a bag lady, refusing to believe in her wisdom and power and threatens to call the police… Until an ex-girlfriend drops by, in town for a film audition, and feels the intimation of Blu Water as a soul-sister. And the wealthy philanthropist who commissioned the sculptor arrives, insisting that it be moved to a more visually accessible place for his hospitalized grandson and reluctantly reveals his pathway to wealth and the disturbing torment it has brought him and his family. Mr. Kitzler, the jaunty Black Hospital Building Supervisor arrives, bringing with him his Ethiopian-born mother. The brew of psyches and hearts, stirred by the presence and aura of Blu Water, draws people to reveal their willingness to survive and live, and enlightens Shawn with a new pathway to continue his artistic and spiritual journey, even as jaunty Mr. Kitzler and Shawn’s ex-girlfriend fly off to Spain together.
ESPERANZA – THE MUSICAL of HOPE
From winning glory and gold on the field to losing it all in terrible life choices, STREET, the once great running back, STICK, the once can’t-miss baseball slugger and PEARL, the one-time tennis phenom all find themselves stuck with each other in a rundown sports bar. Each is waiting for the bar phone to ring, hoping a call will change their destinies. But the joint is going to be foreclosed at midnight, just as were the service plans on their cell phones. The cagey bar owner, a former mouthpiece for the mob, is coming back to throw them out, box-up papers that might indict him and toss the key to the bank. Not so fast. Enter, TAJ, Street’s high school sweetheart, now a mature, divorced woman, who won’t let Street forget his betrayals. Enter LALO the broke Chilean sports publisher who has loved Pearl since he first saw her on TV when she was a tennis wunderkind. Enter Stick’s doddering, nearly blind, one-time sports agent RITZO about to inherit thirty-five mil from his hospice-challenged mother. Bouncing back and forth between the agent and the bar is HOPE FLANAGAN, the street-savvy ex-hooker-chanteuse updating Stick on the condition of the agent’s dying mother. So it is that out of a rundown sports bar, on the rough side of town, Esperanza is born, powered by the music of hope for those who have played the game, and for those who have lifted their spirits out of the ashes of defeat to rise-up once again.
Full Production, MSJC: 4/14, 15, 16 & 4/21, 22, 23 of 2023
What people are saying …
HEAVEN ON THE LOOSE
“Heaven on the Loose, a new play by Ken Luber, is a glass of champagne, witty and funny… perfectly timed for our current political culture, divided and uncertain.”
– LaDonna Harrison, editor, author Our Divide
“A suddenly woke and deeply disappointed God wants to scrap it all and start anew, Can a Mexican immigrant and a wise-cracking woman save the universe?...funny and provocative.”
– Eduardo Santiago, award-winning author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss
“Heaven on the Loose, a feast of canny wisdom with the emotion of poetry and a little humor on the side … leaves you feeling comfortable talking with your creator and knowing the existence of enduring love.”
– Lisa Evans, poet and photographer
AN ANGEL, A DEALER, THE DEAL
“An Angel, A Dealer, The Deal … is a thrilling novel with all the components of the very best storytelling, rendered in beautiful, vivid and lyrical prose. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.”
– Natalie Bates, author and editor
“I found An Angel, A Dealer, The Deal… to be a very unique combination of a crime novel meets spiritual quest. A little Dashiell Hammett; a little Carl Jung.”
– Deborah Smaller, San Diego, CA
“I couldn’t put An Angel, A Dealer, The Deal down. I read it in two days and wanted more. Luber’s characters jump to life with his descriptive imagery. The character Traine is a great example of karma and hope. Can’t wait for Luber’s next book.”
– John T. Pederson, Milwaukee, WI
THE SUN JUMPERS
“The Sun Jumpers clearly showcases author Ken Luber’s genuine flair for creating a consistently compelling, original, memorable story populated by deftly crafted characters and replete with unexpected twists and turns. Highly recommended for school and community library Science Fiction and Fantasy collections.“
– Midwest Book Review
“A lighthearted romp that’s permeated by humor regarding adolescent antics, 20-something angst, and a wealth of inevitable culture-clash misunderstandings. But it also deals with some serious issues, including modern-day bigotry (the Kishoki are a dark-skinned people), the sometimes-troubled relationships between parents and offspring, and the need to find and follow one’s own truth.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“The Sun Jumpers is a smooth, perfectly paced novel with witty dialogue and incredibly endearing characters. The author combines the hilarity of four cave-teens transported to a modern world with the deeper themes of courage, integrity, loyalty, and love.”
– Reba Hilbert, editor
“A witty yet moving tale of teenage love, the power of friendship, and how bravery and a willing heart can save an entire people The Sun Jumpers clearly showcases author Ken Luber's genuine flair for creating a consistently compelling, original, and memorable story populated by deftly crafted characters and replete with unexpected twists and turns.”
– Children’s Bookwatch
“Fun, light-hearted, escapist fiction is what I was in the mood for, and this novel The Sun Jumpers fills the bill…. I also enjoy the lovely prose and the eloquent insights of Sita in particular. Even Ty has his occasional moving speeches with quotable quotes. In all, it's a story 21st Century YA readers are sure to enjoy.”
– Carol Kean… Goodreads
“Ken Luber’s The Sun Jumpers is a light young-adult fantasy novel …. the frothy fun of time travel to ponder whether supposedly advanced civilizations are as advanced as presented. … offers food for thought about how different cultures and experiences shape human experience and perception.”
– Susan Waggoner, Foreword Clarion Reviews
“I loved the story behind this book … a fun, very positive/happy read following the adventures of a group of teenagers who end up 10,000 years in the future… trying to get to grips with the modern world and is a story of deep friendship, love and acceptance in a sometimes difficult world. Luber is skilled at making you stop and think without …. ruining the light-hearted, playful theme.”
– United Kingdom Book Reviewer
HOWZER
“No one who sees Howzer will doubt that Laurence is a promising new filmmaker.”
– Reynolds, Hollywood Reporter
“Howzer shows Laurence more than able at presenting his material in literate and attractive visual terms … .adept at getting good performances from his cast.”
– Goff, Variety
“The fantasies about the world in the minds of youngsters is explored with delicacy and compassion in Howzer… this first film effort of Ken Lawrence, it’s writer-director … executed with polish and dedication.”
– A.H. Weiler, The New York Times
“In Howzer, Ken Laurence demonstrates an uncommon talent at casting and plot and person creating. Casting is extraordinarily good.”
–Winsten, New York Post
“In Howzer, Ken Laurence, a former Fellow at the AFI, uses his skill to elicit strong performances from the two young, unknown leads and a supporting cast of well-known character actors.”
– Bruce Rubin, Creator of Film, Whitney Museum
“Howzer is a film that unconsciously awakens morals…. No loopholes, no unjustified reactions, nothing except a firm and sometimes harsh look at the world of a twelve year old boy…”
– Today’s Filmmaker
