My Blog

Gross Points

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It pays to be the co-author of a James Patterson novel. Publishers Weekly reports that frequent Patterson collaborator Andrew Gross has signed a lucrative three-book deal with William Morrow.

The first book in the trio, and Gross’s single
credit debut, The Blue Zone is planned for a 2007 release. The three
titles, which were acquired in a world rights deal from Simon Lipskar of Writers
House, are hoped to be the beginning of a new franchise headlined (instead of
sub-headlined) by Gross or, as William Morrow senior v-p and publisher Lisa
Gallagher put it, "the beginning of a long and prosperous partnership." Morrow
isn’t certain how or if Patterson’s name will appear on the cover of Gross’s
first solo effort.

They can put Patterson’s name on the cover of my next book if they want.

Agent Pleads Guilty

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The Albany Times Union reports that agent Martha Ivery, who also ran a sham self-publishing company, has admitted to defrauding scores of aspiring authors out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Ivery admitted guilt to 15 counts of mail fraud in connection with taking money
from would-be authors. She also pleaded guilty to one count of credit card fraud
and one count of bankruptcy fraud, all felonies, in U.S. District Court in
Albany.

Ivery, 57, has not been offered a plea bargain. She faces up to 20 years in
prison on the mail fraud charges, 10 years on the credit card charge, and five
years on the bankruptcy charge. Ivery also could be fined as much as $250,000.

"There would be no defense on this case and it would be prudent on her part
to change her plea," said Ivery’s attorney, Richard Mott of Albany. "She
realizes the proof would be overwhelming … she wishes to demonstrate to the
court she has full contrition."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Capezza said he also was looking for restitution.
Prosecutors say she took as much as $700,000 from 200 writers.

Ivery defrauded prospective authors from 1997 to 2002, prosecutors said. She
presented two different identities: publisher of Press-TIGE Publishing Co., and
Kelly O’Donnell Literary Agency Inc.

After hooking authors by advertising in Writer’s Digest magazine and on the
Internet, the O’Donnell agency represented the authors and led them to the
publishing company. Fee requests kept coming, but books were rarely published.

Ivery’s company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in 2002, but she
then created another business, New Millennium Publishing House Inc. She is
scheduled for sentencing April 28.

A.C. Crispin, a science fiction writer who works with the scam-busting site
www.writerbeware.com, said the organization started watching Ivery six years
ago.

"This case, unlike the other ones we followed, really got personal," said
Crispin, a Maryland author. "She made death threats to us, and stalked us
online. I plan to go to the sentencing."

Author AC Crispin and all the others at WritersBeware should be congratulated for the wonderful work they do on behalf of writers everywhere. It takes guts to be as unrelentingly vigilant as they are ferreting out publishing scams  — and without the recognition and appreciation they deserve for their volunteer efforts.

Let’s hope this case serves as a warning to the publishing scammers who seem to be all over the Internet these days, taking advantage of the deseperation and gullibility of aspiring authors.

Here’s are three  simple ways to avoid being suckered by a publishing scam:

Never pay to be published.
Never pay an agent (they make their money by taking a commission from your sales).
Never pay a reading fee.

Brilliance for the Price of a Big Mac and Fries

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Maverick_log_3It’s the best deal on DVD — for $5.99, including shipping, you can get set of three classic episodes of MAVERICK from DeepDiscountDVD. My copy just arrived today. The set includes "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" (as fresh today as it was 50 years ago), "Pappy," and "Gunshy," the hilarious spoof of GUNSMOKE. MAVERICK was a ground-breaking show in its day and paved the way for  the likes of MOONLIGHTING, THE NIGHT STALKER,  and THE ROCKFORD FILES.

MAVERICK also holds the distinction of being the only show revived three times in three years on three networks. For more about that, there’s an excerpt from my book  TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS on the jump:

Read more

Self-Pubbed Cop Gets Press

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The LA Times profiled Dean Fulcher, a Santa Ana homicide detective who has self-published a novel for teens, a book without vulgarity or sex that he describes as "The Hardy Boys meets Nancy Drew." He took the book to Tate Publishing, which charged him $4000 to publish and market his book. But if he sells 5,000 copies, which even he agrees is unlikely, they claim they will reimburse him.

The article doesn’t explore whether he tried to sell the book to a publisher, why he opted to go to a vanity press, or how he is going about marketing his novel…but rather veers into a much more interesting topic: why cops write:

Marilyn Olson, president of the Public Safety Writers Assn., which has more than
50 members across the country, said law enforcement was a field that lent itself
to writing because of its many different elements: technology, crime and
camaraderie.

"They have a wealth of material," she said. "In many cases,
it’s bottled up and they want to do something with the stories they
have."

Many retired police officers, Olson said, write as a way of
staying connected with their old jobs.

Others, like Fulcher, do it for
therapeutic reasons.

"It’s kind of hard to stop thinking about the job,
even on the weekends," he said, adding that he would constantly second-guess
himself about whether he missed key evidence in an unsolved case. "When I get
into this, I don’t even think about work. It’s a good way to escape reality for
a while and get into the story."

Joseph Wambaugh, the most famous police
writer, said he started because he simply had stories he needed to get
out.

Wambaugh, who joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1960,
worked as a cop for 10 years before his first novel, "The New Centurions," was
published.

It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks.
Since then, he has written 15 more books.

"I was kind of an anomaly, a
freak," the 68-year-old Wambaugh said of his success. "I love to see cops write.
I wish there were more."

Although Fulcher encounters a wealth of material
in his job, he doesn’t think it would be right to use it.

"Dealing with
murders, I get really close to the families," he said. "It’s almost like I feel
I’m being disloyal to them if I use something that happened to them in my
story."

Equalizer Returns

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As I first reported back in April,  a movie version of THE EQUALIZER is in the works. The latest newsiin Variety  is that producer Mace Neufeld has talked The Weinstein Company into picking up the rights and footing the bill for developing the feature.

"The Equalizer was one of my favorite TV series of hte 1980s, because the writing was always smart and very unpredictable," said Harvey Weinstein.

No director, screenwriter or cast have been attached yet — but wouldn’t it be great if Tarantino took a crack at it?

Dating Remaindered Men

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Harley Jane Kozak’s book DATING DEAD MEN has been remaindered…meaning the publisher is going to sell their stock of unsold copies to booksellers by the pound (so the formerly $24.95 books will end up in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble for $4.98).  When your books are scheduled to be remaindered, the publisher first offers you the opportunity to buy as many copies as you like for a buck or two.  Harley writes:

Anyhow, a few days later, when the actual Remainder Notice from Random House
arrived in the mail, it turned out to be 2,740 books @ $1.43 a book. Meaning
that the two thousand dollars I’d rounded it off to turned out to be . . . a
tiny bit more. Okay, $3,918.20. Plus tax.

Which led to another not-so-fabulous dilemma.

Where does one put 2,740 books?

It’s a hard offer to resist. I know, because I’ve fallen for it. I have hundreds and hundreds of copies of BEYOND THE BEYOND and MY GUN HAS BULLETS in my garage. Now, a decade after they were published, I have resorted to giving them away in bookbags at conventions and at signings for my new books — using them, basically, like promotional bookmarks. Even so, I’ve hardly made a dent in my stockpile. My advice to Harley — resist the urge. Buy a 100 of each and let the rest go to the remainder bins of America.

 

Unfinished Greene

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Graham Greene’s treatment for NO MAN’S LAND, a film script he never wrote, and his unfinished short story THE STRANGERS HAND, are being published together in one volume early next year by the University of Texas. The Wall Street Journal reports that NO MAN’S LAND was written in the period between Greene’s novels THE HEART OF THE MATTER and END OF THE AFFAIR and that the pages have lanquished for over thirty years in the University’s archives. I can see the academic interest in Greene’s movie treatment and unfinished story…but is there any real entertainment value in it for readers?

Screenwriters Getting Press

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The media relations committee at the WGA must be giddy — the LA Times is giving screenwriters a lot of attention lately. For example, today they did a short profile of Robin Swicord, discussing how she went about adapting MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. It sounds like it was an unusual process:

"I had to go absolutely unprepared to the first meeting," she said. "I
hadn’t read the book since it came out. When I came into the meeting,
it was clear he had a movie in his head."

After she left, she
reread the book and began to take notes. "I wrote an outline of what
the movie might look like," she said. "Mostly, I wrote 18 pages of
musing on aspects of the book — the thematic lines that drove the
narrative of the story. I e-mailed him that. He contacted me and asked
me to come to another meeting."

Hired the next day, Swicord
spent six weeks working on a 70-page outline that resembled a
screenplay without dialogue. "It was the film completely envisioned
with casting and location breakdowns. The idea was that they would be
able to take that and start going to work. Rob had to cast without a
screenplay. It was intense."

On top of that, while she was writing, another writer was simultaneously doing the rewrites:

Because Swicord was still off working on the script as rehearsals
began, Marshall brought in scribe Doug Wright to make changes when
needed.

"Some of the lines got tweaked," Swicord says, adding that Marshall promised her that 99% of her script would remain intact.

"He was as good as his word," she adds.

On Sunday, the LA Times, did a lengthy article about the rewrites that plagued FUN WITH DICK AND JANE before, during, and after production. Then, in another article the same day, the paper did a superficial examination of the credit arbitration process on both FUN and MEMOIRS, as well as a few other movies.

Moviemaking has been a collaborative business since Day 1, but rarely
have so many screenwriters converged on so few screenplays. While some
upcoming holiday films may be credited to just one writer, that hardly
means just one writer wrote the whole movie.

In some cases, producers and studios throw different writers at
different sections of a story, adding a joke here, some action there.
In other instances, a writer — or team of writers — does a
top-to-bottom rewrite.

The Writers Guild of America is then asked to sort out who did what and award the credits as it deems proper — a process that invariably leaves someone out in the cold. For example, while only
three writers were credited for the first "Charlie’s Angels" movie, no fewer than 17 scribes took a whack at its script.

Sticking to the Character

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I got this email query today:

I have a question about novels based on tv shows.   When you write a
novel based on the tv shows how do you keep the characters lives from developing
beyond what has happened on the tv show?  Or do their lives develop differently
from their lives on tv?   Does that make sense? 

The short answer is that I worked hand-in-hand with the producers of  MONK to make sure my books are running on a parallel course, development-wise. And if I do create some new backstory (as I have done to some degree), that it’s acceptable to the creator of the show and consistent with what that have done or intend to do.

For more detailed informati0n on how tie-ins are written, check out the many articles at the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers website.