Books

Novelization Sparks Book Series

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It’s not unusual for tv tie-in novels to continue long after the TV series they are based on have ended ("Star Trek," "Murder She Wrote," "Buffy," "Diagnosis Murder" etc.) But in what may be a first in the book-biz, Elizabeth Hand’s novelization of the "Catwoman" screenplay has sold so well, it has sparked a series of original novels from Del Rey. What makes this news even stranger is that the execrable  "Catwoman" movie tanked at the box-office.

The success of the "Catwoman" novelization is also notable for another reason. More and more novelizations and tie-ins are being written by established novelists as opposed to anonymous scribes writing under house names (though such pros as Lawrence Block, Jim Thompson, Walter Wager, Dennis Lynds, and Harry Whittington wrote tie-ins and novelizations).   Elizabeth Hand is an established author of  Gothic horror and romance novels. Undoubtably, that experience made the "Catwoman" tie-in a cut above most of the novelization hack-work out there… and perhaps  tantalized her readers into sampling a book they otherwise wouldn’t have bought.

Max Alan Collins is perhaps the best example, regularly penning novelizations ("The Mummy," "Saving Private Ryan") as well as original TV tie-ins ( "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "Dark Angel").  Edgar winner  Stuart Kaminsky is writing original "CSI: New York" books and Edgar winner Thomas H. Cook wrote the novelization of USA Network mini-series  "Taken."

The availability of name-writers to pen novelizations may have less to do with publishers trying to raise the quality of tie-in merchandise than with the obliteration of the mid-list.  Authors who might not have been available,  or interested, in tie-ins/novelizations before are now glad to accept a quick paycheck for eight weeks-to-ten weeks of work. And now, with the lure of  that quick paycheck turning into a long-running gig, more authors may be lining up for tie-in opportunities.

While authors and publishers benefit financially, readers are getting better-written novelizations and tie-ins.  So is it a win-win situation? Not really. There is one serious downside.  More and more valuable bookshelf space is being taken up by merchandizing tie-ins while fewer and fewer original paperbacks are being commissioned from new authors.

Susan Sontag, Dead at 71

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Author, essayist and National Book Award Winner Susan Sontag died today at the age of 71.

Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died today. She was 71.

Sontag died at 7:10 a.m. today, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

The hospital declined to release a cause of death. Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.

— Tod

Libraries Love Mysteries

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The Library Journal and USA Today report that mysteries are the most-borrowed novels in the nation’s libraries.

"We’ve
done book-buying surveys over the years, and it always comes out that
mysteries are the first and romance is a close second," says Francine
Fialkoff, editor of Library Journal. "I do think this (list)
just confirms that libraries are huge lenders of mysteries. Almost
every one of the popular fiction (titles) is a mystery.

"Another thing about libraries that it is so clear when you look at this list is who the favorite writers are."

Among
authors who consistently turn up: mystery writers Patricia Cornwell,
Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, Michael
Connelly; romance writers Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, Danielle Steel;
and thriller writers John Grisham, Stuart Woods, Dan Brown.

About
4,000 libraries report the number of times books are borrowed or put on
hold. The list is posted at www.libraryjournal.com 20 times a year.

1. Trace by Patricia Cornwell.

2. R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton.

3. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

4. Are You Afraid of the Dark? by Sidney Sheldon.

5. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich.

So…why is it that mysteries get so little respect?

Lewis Perdue v. Dan Brown

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Lewis Perdue, my former journalism prof at UCLA, caused quite a stir a while back in the national press when he charged that large chunks of THE DAVINCI CODE were lifted from his novels.  Now he’s filed his lawsuit, which you can read for yourself here. The detailed, side-by-side comparisons between THE DAVINCI CODE and Lew’s DAVINCI LEGACY  and DAUGHTER OF GOD are especially interesting…

Another Scam that Preys on the Self-Published

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I’ve been getting this come-on in my emailbox for days now:

Why join BooksToFilm.com? Some of the best movies have been based on
books – Cold Mountain, The Godfather, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil, Prince of Tides, Forrest Gump, L.A. Confidential.
Your book could be next! Wouldn’t you like to have your book or screenplay made
into a movie? 

BookstoFilm.com publishes 2 catalogs per year which are
distributed to over 2500 film producers, directors, studios, and film agents
nationwide.  Get your full-page color ad in our catalog containing book
summary, book review, book photo, book ordering information, author bio, author
contact information, and representation information.

Email us today at
info@bookstofilm.com to get your listing in our Catalog.

It’s a fascinating bit of bullshit.  They list a bunch of books that have been turned into movies, the subtle implication being that this catalog had something to do with it.

It didn’t.

None of those books became movies because of this catalog. In fact, the folks at bookstofilm don’t list a single book that has sold to TV or film because of the catalog.

Gee, I wonder why…. could it be, because there aren’t any? Studio & Production Company execs find out about books the old-fashioned way…they read bestseller lists, they read reviews, they talk to agents, they read book industry trade publications, they attend the BEA, they talk to publishers, and they walk into bookstores.

If you visit the bookstofilm website, they make a big deal out of saying they are based in Wilmington, NC…

…fondly known as "Hollywood
East" and home of Screen Gems Studios. Screen Gems is the largest full service
motion picture facility in the United States east of California.  Wilmington has
been the heart of the North Carolina film industry for over two decades. A few
local projects have been Domestic Disturbance, Year of the Dragon, The
Hudsucker Proxy, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles, Billy Bathgate, Day of the Jackal, One Tree Hill, Matlock
and Dawson’s Creek .

They say that as if mere proximity to the Screen Gems soundstages, or just breathing that Wilmington air, gives them legitimacy and insider access to Hollywood.  They list no other qualifications or credits…what a shock.

Only a fool would read this material and think that they are paying for anything besides an ad in a piece of junkmail that’s going to end up in garbage cans throughout L.A…. assuming the catalog is actually sent out to anybody besides the suckers who take out ads.

Pity the poor, self-published author who falls for this transparent scam.

Rose at todays-woman.net reports that bookstofilm  is being run by John Weaver, the same guy behind WritersUniverse.net,  a program that purports to get "book store orders" from brick-and-mortar store for self-published authors (I talked about WritersUniverse.net here a few weeks ago).  Do you see a trend here? I bet it’s only a matter of weeks before Weaver launches a service to get self-published authors publicity in 100s of publications and thousand  of TV and Radio broadcasts.

Blog for Buzz?

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Author Dave Zeltserman has started a blog. Why?

Several reasons. One to be quite candid, to try to
create some buzz for my books. One of them has the potential of being
big. The editors looking at it now are calling it a high concept book.
A crime novel centering around outsourcing. Hasn’t been done before –
at least not that I know of. More about Outsourced in future posts.

When I started this blog, I certainly didn’t do it because I thought it would get me buzz…or more readers or viewers, though I certainly mention my books and TV shows a lot. Then again, writing books and TV shows is what I do, and is very much a part of who I am, so it would be hard for me to have a blog without talking about those things

So why did I start a blog? I did it because….hell, I don’t know. Probably for the same reasons I have a website with a discussion board and why, for many years, I ran a BBS for screenwriters from a computer in my garage.  I guess I like to yak and gossip and rant and pontificate about things that interest me. I like to publish. I like to broadcast.

It runs in my family, that’s for sure.

My Mom had a weekly newspaper column for years, wrote a non-fiction book, and has a blog now.

My brother Tod, an acclaimed literary novelist, has a weekly newspaper column and a website.

My  sisters Karen and Linda have individual websites, a shared website and a shared blog... and in November, their first book is coming out.

My father Alan was TV anchorman, my Uncle Burl was a DJ (and is now a bestselling author of true crime novels)…so the media is in our blood. And what is a blog, if not another form of print & broadcast media?

Do you think blogs actually create buzz for an author? Has it created buzz for me? Will it create buzz for Dave? Let me know.

More on Michael Gruber

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It’s common knowledge now that Michael Gruber has been ghosting Robert Tanenbaum’s legal thirllers… because Gruber is telling everybody about it. This week, Gruber is interviewed in Publisher’s Weekly, the industry trade magazine, and discussing his ghosting days in detail.

Gruber and Tanenbaum’s mothers are sisters and raised their sons in New York
together. Tanenbaum went on to become a successful trial lawyer, and when one of
his cases became nationally famous, the publishing house Franklin Watts (now a
division of Scholastic) asked him to write a novel about his legal adventures.Hook1
Knowing his cousin could write, Tanenbaum contacted Gruber. "He called me up,"
Gruber remembers, "and said, ‘I’ve written a hundred pages. Would you have a
look at it?’ " Gruber hesitates before explaining his reaction to Tanenbaum’s
hundred pages. "It was the kind of novel by somebody who doesn’t know anything
about writing novels," he says diplomatically. "So I called him, and I said,
‘This is unsalvageable. It’s not a novel, it has no characters, no plot,
nothing.’ He said, ‘What should I do?’ I said, ‘Look, for half the advance, I’ll
write your novel.’ On the basis of that we got another contract, for a lot more
money. And so I went into business."

In the acknowledgements of Tanenbaum’s bestselling "Butch Karp" novels, he always thanked Gruber, who ghosted over a dozen novels for his cousin.  The partnership began to fall apart when Gruber tired of sharing the cash and not the credit.

The cousins became "somewhat estranged" when Gruber said he wanted to have a
relationship with Tanenbaum’s publisher (previously, Gruber didn’t interact at
all with any editor or publisher). This didn’t go over well with Tanenbaum, and
when, thanks to Gruber’s pressuring, Tanenbaum revised his contract so that it
would have Gruber’s name in it, Gruber had to agree that he wouldn’t make any
claim for copyright, and tensions increased.

"It’s very sad," Gruber laments. "You can imagine, being a writer, you write
all these books, but you never experience the life of a writer." He lays out one
scenario: "You’re at a party, and you say, ‘I’m a writer.’ Someone says, ‘Oh,
have you been published?’ ‘Yeah, I have seven million books in print.’ ‘Really?
What’s your name?’ ‘Oh, I don’t publish under my own name.’ "

Resolved, published in 2003, was the last Tanenbaum book Gruber was
involved in (though Tanenbaum continues to publish books, the most recent of
which, Hoax, received mostly tepid reviews). Their relationship now?
Gruber answers, "Zero."

Gruber’s first novel under his own name was TROPIC OF NIGHT, a thriller that has sold 300,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. His new novel VALLEY OF BONES is getting a big push from his publisher (hence the profile in PW and full page ad) and a 100,000 copy first printing. Alerting the fans of Tanenbaum’s books that they were actually written by Gruber can’t hurt his sales, either. Although the publisher decided not to refer to Gruber’s relationship with Tanenbaum in any of their publicity material, that didn’t stop Gruber from making sure word got out.

Personally, I think Gruber should have kept his mouth shut. He made a deal with Tanenbaum to ghost his books and was paid handsomely for  it… to reveal the arrangement now seems malicious, self-serving, and unprofessional to me.  Everybody loses… Tanenbaum, his readers, and Gruber, who comes off as a jerk.

I wonder who is writing Tanenbaum’s books now…. heard any rumors?

Writing Sex Scenes

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Author Laurell Hamilton talks on her blog about the difficulties of writing sex scenes when you just aren’t in the mood.

I’m supposed to do a sex scene today. Usually it’s not a problem, but today was one of those rare days when I’m just not in the mood…

Most of the time the biggest problem with writing a sex scene for me is the fact that with real sex you have the actually sensations, the immediacy of your own bodies reactions. In a book you have only words, black and white, only words to try and convey so many amazing experiences. Words seem so inadequate for it sometimes. But on one of the rare days when I get up and sex just isn’t the first thing on my mind, then a sex scene becomes a different kind of challenge. How do you get in the mood when you aren’t? How do you capture that mind set when what you’re doing in real life is refinacing your house, or walking the dog. How do you stay in the mood when the mundane world is so busy you aren’t even thinking about your own sex life let alone a fictional character’s love life?

When she lived alone with just one small dog she had an unconventional solution to breaking that particular form of writer’s block.

I put on lingere, lit candles around the computer, and tried to treat it almost like a romantic evening with a real person. It actuallly did help. There’s something about slipping on the thigh highs and black satin and lace, with some unhealthy but kick-ass shoes, that just does it for me.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly how I dress when I write DIAGNOSIS MURDER.

I haven’t had to write a sex scene in some time, but when I do, I don’t try to be slick about it, or make an effort to get my readers excited. I try to make it real in the context of everyday life, not RED SHOES DIARY.

In the first draft of my first book, .357 VIGILANTE, my hero was impotent, unable to get it up because of all the violence in his life. When I turned the manuscript in to my editor, he was shocked.

"The hero can’t be impotent," he cried. "This is a men’s action adventure novel. Not only does he have sex, he has GREAT sex!"

So I rewrote the sex scenes. I made them utterly ridiculous. They defied logic. They defied gravity. All the hero had to do was glance at a woman and she’d collapse into multiple orgasms.  A few days after I turned the manuscript in, I got a call from my editor.

"I read the sex scenes," he said.

I figured what he was going to say next was that the book was rejected and my contract for two more was canceled. I was wrong.

"Not only were they hot," he said, " they were real."

I was relieved…and deeply depressed. If those scenes were real, than my love life was pathetic. Or, at least, more pathetic than I already thought it was.

The last time I wrote a sex scene for a book was for my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which is coming out next fall. The sex is urgent, sloppy, awkward, and funny. Not the least bit erotic but, I hope, real.  Here’s a snippet from it:

I’m afraid the surprise and excitement were too much, because I came in about three minutes. But I don’t think Carol minded, it calmed me down and allowed me to concentrate real hard on getting her off. And believe me, it took my complete attention. Pleasing a woman, especially Carol, isn’t easy and with me, at least, there’s a lot of potential for embarrassment and humiliation…

If you’re a writer, what is your approach to writing sex scenes… and if you’re a reader, how do you feel about reading them?

Reading the Proofs

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I always look forward to reading & correcting the page proofs/galleys — the final, typeset version of  my books.  I haven’t out-grown the thrill yet. To me, that’s when a book truly feels real. And reading it isn’t a chore, except for the time it takes away from my other work.  But author Sandra Scoppettone doesn’t feel the same way about her galleys.

Having to read it again is hideous.  I don’t feel like reading it.
It’s interrupted my writing schedule.  In fact, it feels like torture
having to read it.  But this will be the last time.  Once a book is
published I never read it again.

It’s usually been such a long time since I finished writing the book that it feels as if what I am reading was written by someone else.  I enjoy it. That said, I don’t go back and read my books again, not that it’s any kind of hard-and-fast rule with me. It has just worked out that way. There are a lot more things out there that I’m interested in reading than my own work.

How do you other authors out there feel about reading your galleys?

More of the Same

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Publisher’s Weekly has given Adrian McKinty’s new novel HIDDEN RIVER a starred, rave review, describing it as:

… an
outstanding and complex crime novel that should appeal to fans of hard-boiled
Celtic scribes such as Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin.

No wonder, since the hero, Alexander Lawson, shares so many similiarities to Bruen’s Jack Taylor and Rankin’s John Rebus.  Two guesses what Lawson’s story is. He’s  "a
down-and-out ex-cop with a heroin habit,"  booted from the Belfast homicide squad for stealing heroin from an evidence locker.  I bet the police Captain is still out-to-get-him,  and that his personal relationships are a mess… and yet women still are inexplicably drawn to him. Of course, there’s more to this novel than just that…

This is not only an expertly crafted suspense novel but also a revealing
study of addiction.

Of course it is. I haven’t read the book, but I feel like I have already. Many, many times…