Month: March 2006

The Thrilling Thrillers

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Itwlink
The International Thriller Writers  Association has announced the first nominees for their annual Thriller Award… and they are:


BEST NOVEL
PANIC by Jeff Abbott (Dutton)
CONSENT TO KILL by Vince Flynn (Atria)
VELOCITY by Dean Koontz (Bantam)
THE PATRIOTS CLUB by Christopher Reich (Delacorte Press)
CITIZEN VINCE by Jess Walter (Regan Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
IMPROBABLE by Adam Fawer (William Morrow)
THE COLOR OF LAW by Mark Gimenez (Doubleday)
COLD GRANITE by Stuart MacBride (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
PAIN KILLER by Will Staeger (William Morrow)
BENEATH A PANAMANIAN MOON by David Terrenoire (Thomas Dunne
Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
SLEEPER CELL by Jeffrey Anderson (Berkley)
PRIDE RUNS DEEP by R. Cameron Cooke (Jove)
UPSIDE DOWN by John Ramsay Miller (Dell)
THE DYING HOUR by Rick Mofina (Pinnacle Books)
EXIT STRATEGY by Michael Wiecek (Jove)

BEST SCREENPLAY
MATCH POINT, screenplay by Woody Allen
SYRIANA, based on the book by Robert Baer, written by Stephen
Gaghan
CACHE screenplay by Michael Haneke
OLDBOY screenplay by Jo-yun Hwang, Chun-hyeong Lim, Joon-hyung Lim, and
Chan-wook Park; story by Garon Tsuchiya
MUNICH,screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth; based on the book by
George Jonas

The awards will be given at Thrillfest in Phoenix in June.

Drive to the Big Screen

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Variety reports that Universal Studios has bought the James Sallis novel DRIVE as a feature film vehicle for Hugh Jackman. This is a coup not only for Sallis, but for Poisoned Pen, the small Phoenix-based press which published the widely-acclaimed novella. Sallis is also the author of the Lew Griffin PI tales set in New Orleans.

In other mystery/thriller book news in the trades today, Paramount Pictures has hired X-MEN scribe David Hayter  to adapt Bob Reiss’ soon-to-be-published novel BLACK MONDAY for the screen.

The Double Life

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Dm7
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day…here’s an early peek at the cover of DIAGNOSIS MURDER #7: THE DOUBLE LIFE, which comes out in November (Click on the photo for a larger image).

The Price of Amazon Connect

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Authors who’ve taken advantage of Amazon’s Blog service need to be careful what they post — because they’re forfeiting any rights to their work. I’ve just been alerted to a troubling clause in the Amazon Connect Terms of Service:

"For all Author Materials that you post or submit in connection with the
Program (including any trademark or similar rights in them), you hereby grant
Amazon a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual and irrevocable right and
license throughout the world in any media to: (1) use, reproduce, publish,
translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display all of your
Works."

I think the Amazon Blogs have helped publicize me and my books (I’ve seen an uptick in my Amazon sales rankings and in traffic to my website since launching the blog). I’ve been mostly "repurposing" material from this blog over there.  But now I will seriously curtail the kinds of things I’m posting, holding back anything that might have value if compiled into another literary work  (like anecdotes about the TV biz, screenwriting advice, essays on the mystery field, etc.). I don’t want to grant Amazon free rights to my writing. It’s a shame, because the Amazon blog will suffer because of their ridiculous copyright grab.

Another Great Way to Procrastinate

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Spenser_credit
AOL is offering a bunch of old TV shows from the Warner Brothers vault for free download…among the offerings is the SPENSER FOR HIRE episode "If You Knew Sammy," guest-starring William H. Macy. This is the episode that launched my TV career. It’s the first  script Bill Rabkin and I ever sold… we wrote it on spec and the folks at SPENSER actually bought it and shot it without changing a word (our first TV experience was blessed in a lot of ways). Among the other offerings on AOL Television are episodes of MAVERICK, BABYLON 5, KUNG FU, THE FBI, and THE FUGITIVE, to name a few.

Not So Wonderful Wonder Woman

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Mark Evanier tells the story behind a five minute WONDER WOMAN demo-pilot that producer William Dozier produced during the 60s heyday of TV’s BATMAN.  You can watch the whole demo on his blog, too.

Why didn’t his version of Wonder Woman sell? Well, watch it and
see. What’s usually the case when a network commissions a brief demo
film instead of a full pilot is either (a) they have so much faith in the premise and creative team that they don’t feel the need to waste the time or money…or (b)they have so little faith in the project that, though they’ve been
pressured into giving it a try before the cameras, they don’t want to
waste the time or money. Guess which was the case this time.

Monk Envy

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Natalieblog_1
My latest Natalie Blog is now up at the USA Network’s Monk site:

In some ways, I envy Mr. Monk. He has direction in his life. He
knows who he is, what his talents are, what he was put on this earth to do. He’s
known since he was a kid.

Monk was born to be a detective. And he’s brilliant at it.

I’m not sure what I was born to do, what I’m good at, or where my life is
going. I’m sure there are other people like me, but I still feel like the only
one who didn’t arrive with pre-installed software.

When are they going to do the MANIMAL movie?

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Gabekaplan
First Owen Wilson was in STARSKY AND HUTCH. Then I SPY. Or was it the otherIce
way around? Doesn’t matter. Now his brother Luke Wilson has lined up TV redo of his own. Variety reports Luke is up to play Bobby Ewing in the DALLAS movie. Offers have gone out to John Travolta to play J.R., Jennifer Lopez to play his wife Sue Ellen, and Shirley MacLaine to be Miss Ellie. Meanwhile, Ice Cube is remaking WELCOME BACK KOTTER for the big screen with himself in the title role that was originally played by Gabe Kaplan. Really. I’m not making this stuff up.