Writing

Scribe Awards and How You Can Enter

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The
Fourth Annual Scribe Awards are now open for submissions. The Scribes,
presented by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers
(www.iamtw.org), honors excellence in licensed tie-in writing—novels based on TV shows, movies, and games. Here are the submissions guidelines:

The
Scribe Awards and How You Can Enter

The IAMTW will present SIX AWARDS in THREE CATEGORIES for books (& comic
books and graphic novels) published in 2008. We will also honor one
"Grandmaster" for career achievement in the field.
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SPECULATIVE
FICTION
(Science Fiction, Fantasy, Supernatural Horror)

BEST NOVEL (original) – A licensed, original novel using pre-existing
characters or worlds from a movie, television series, computer game, play, or
an existing series of novels (i.e., new novels extending a literary franchise,
i.e., DUNE, James Bond, etc.)

BEST ADAPTATION – A licensed novelization based on an existing
screenplay, whether a feature film, episodic teleplay, computer game, script,
or play.

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GENERAL FICTION (Mysteries, Thrillers, Westerns, Suspense, Historicals, Psychological Horror, Romances)

BEST NOVEL (original) – A licensed, original novel using pre-existing
characters or worlds from a movie, television series, computer game, play, or
an existing series of novels (i.e., new novels extending a literary franchise,
i.e. DUNE, James Bond, etc.)

BEST NOVEL (adapted) A licensed novelization based on an existing screenplay,
whether a feature film, episodic teleplay, computer game, script, or play.

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YOUNG ADULT (All Genres)

BEST ADAPTATION (defined as above)

BEST NOVEL (original) (defined as above)


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GRANDMASTER (For Career Achievement)
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The Fine Print Regarding The Categories…
 
For a
category to go forward, three submissions leading to at least two nominations
must pertain. In the case of a category falling short of submissions and/or
nominations, entries will be transferred to the nearest appropriate category —
for example, BEST GENERAL (Adapted) category would go into an overall BEST
NOVEL (Adapted) category that would include both Speculative and General
submissions. 

In the case of BEST ADAPTED (YA) or BEST ORIGINAL (YA), should submissions
fall short of the minimal two nominations requirement, entries would shift into
either BEST SPECULATIVE (Adapted) or BEST GENERAL (Adapted), depending
upon the genre.

In the event a combining of categories becomes necessary in a given
year (i.e., BEST NOVEL Adapted) the judging committee is authorized (but not
required) to give more than one Scribe, reflecting the combined
categories, if the committee members feel such recognition is warranted.

Horror entries have been divided into "Supernatural Horror" under
SPECULATIVE and "Psychological Horror" under GENERAL. This is a
judgment call the authors and then committee chairs must make, depending upon
whether a submitted horror novel is more grounded in reality than the
fantastic. Should a committee chair reject a title on this basis, the chair
will forward all copies of the submitted book to the appropriate committee
chair, and inform the author of the decision.

Should the author already have submitted another title to the other committee,
the author will be given the opportunity to choose which of the two titles he
or she wishes to have considered (since we have a one-book-per-category
submission limitation).

The future of the Special Game-Related Scribes will be decided after this
year’s Gen-Con. If we decide to continue this award, game-related submissions in the Speculative Original and Adapted
Categories will be simultaneously considered by those category judges for the
"Best Game-Related" Scribes. A gaming-related book submitted in those
categories is simultaneously eligible for both the "regular" and
"game-related" Scribe Award.


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How The Scribes Are Judged

The judging committees are made up of three of your peers from within the organization,
writers who know the unique obstacles and restrictions that tie-in writers
face, because they are tie-in writers themselves. The judges will read all the
submissions in their category and select both the nominees and the winners (a
system patterned after the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller
Writers, and the Private Eye Writers of America, among others).
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Rules for Submission
  • Authors can submit multiple titles, but only ONE BOOK PER CATEGORY/ONE CATEGORY PER
         BOOK (i.e. you can’t submit the same book in two different categories or multiple titles in one category. Authors who’ve done several books in any one category need to pick the one title that seems strongest and submit only that).
  • Only authors can  submit their books for consideration but we encourage you to have your
         editors/publishers send the actual books on your behalf so you don’t have to raid your author’s copies or pay the postage.
  • Judges can submit their work, but obviously not in the categories they are judging.
  • The book must be a licensed work published for the first time between Jan 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008. Only books with a copyright date of 2008 will be eligible for consideration. Though novels published through December 31, 2008, are eligible, entrants are required to get copies of eligible work into the hands of the category judges no later than December 1st, to allow adequate time to review the titles. Galleys are acceptable.
  • All entrants MUST include a cover letter with each book. The cover letter must include
         the following information: the Category you are entering, Title of the
         Book, Name of the Author, Publication Date, Editor & Publisher, and
         email & "snailmail" addresses and phone numbers for the  author and editor.
  • A copy of all submissions—the book and cover letter—should be sent to each judge in the category you are  entering and to the IAMTW. Please send an email to tieinwriters@yahoo.com for the list of  judges and their mailing addresses. IAMTW members can find the list in the MEMBERS  ONLY section of the IAMTW site.
  • Submission is free for any IAMTW member. Non-members must pay a $10 fee for each submission to cover our costs (payable via Paypal or by check to IAMTW, PO  Box 8212, Calabasas, CA 91372).
  • A list of all  the books submitted will be posted on the IAMTW site and updated regularly. The
         nominees will be announced, to entrants and the media, in March 2009. The Scribes  will be awarded in July 2009 at a location and date TBD.

The Edgars

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P5010027
One of the great things about the Edgars, besides meeting so many terrific authors, is all the free books you get when the ceremony is over. I just lugged up to my room two bulging bags of books to send back home. But you don’t want to hear about that, you want to hear about the Awards…

Well, as Edgar chair, I’ve known who the winners are for a while now and I nearly bit off my tongue not leaking the news to Tana French and Susan Straight that they were winners when I met them at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend. Also Matt Nix, executive producer of BURN NOTICE, won as well…news that my brother Tod (who is writing the BURN NOTICE books) and my publisher Kristen Weber (who is publishing the BURN NOTICE books) would have loved to have known in advance. That’s Tana and Matt in the photo to the left and the Southern California contingent of MWA in the photo to the right…P5010025_2
Jim Warren, Naomi Hirahara, Leslie Klinger, Pat Smiley, Doug Lyle, Deborah  Atkinson and yours truly.

Al Roker was a funny host, and he even said "fuck" a few times, which is kind of weird to hear coming from him. As a number of people noted, he was like a thinner, blacker, Tod Goldberg.  I sat with my agent Gina Maccoby and my publisher, which is always nice, and I did a lot of schmoozing before the event, though I was too tired to hang out in the bar afterwards.

Galleycat’s Ron Hogan has posted more pictures from the pre-Edgars reception here.

A complete list of winners follows after the jump.

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Killing Castro

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Cover_big
Hard Case Crime is reprinting a long-lost Lawrence Block novel called KILLING CASTRO. It’s a book Block wrote under a pseudonym fifty years ago. And if this excerpt doesn’t whet your appetite for more, you don’t have a pulse:

The taxi, one headlight out and one fender crimped, cut through
downtown Tampa and headed into Ybor City. Turner sat in the back seat
with his eyes half closed. He was a tall, thin ramrod of a man who was
never tense and yet never entirely relaxed. His hair was the color of
damp sand, his eyes steel gray. His lips were thin and he rarely
smiled. He was not smiling now.

The stub of a cigarette burned
between the second and third fingers of his right hand. The fingers
were yellow-brown from the thousands and thousands of cigarettes which
had curled their tar-laden smoke around them. He looked at the
cigarette, raised it to his lips for a final drag. The smoke was
strong. He rolled down the window and flipped the butt into the street.

Night.
The street lights were on in Ybor City, Tampa’s Latin quarter. Taverns
winked seductively in red and green neon. Cubans, Puerto Ricans and
Negroes walked the streets, congregated around pool halls and small
bars. Here and there butt-twitching hustlers were rushing the season,
looking to catch an early trick before the competition got stiff.
Turner watched all this through the taxi window, his thin lips not
smiling, not frowning. He had bigger things on his mind than corner
loungers or early-bird whores.

He was thirty-four years old, and he was wanted for murder.

What’s amazing about it is that he was so good from the get-go, long before he would achieve all his well-earned honors and accolades.

Scribe Award Nominees Announced

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Iamtwlogo02_2
The Second Annual Scribe Awards, presented by the International
Association of Media Tie-in Writers, acknowledges and celebrates
excellence in licensed tie-in writing — novels based on TV shows, movies, and
games.  The IAMTW is proud to announce this years nominees for the Scribe
Award.

BEST GENERAL FICTION ORIGINAL

CSI NY: DELUGE by Stuart M. Kaminsky
MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS by Lee Goldberg
MURDER SHE WROTE: PANNING FOR MURDER by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
CRIMINAL MINDS: JUMP CUT by Max Allan Collins

BEST GENERAL FICTION ADAPTED

AMERICAN GANGSTER by Max Allan Collins (nominee & winner)N221557

BEST SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON by Kevin J. Anderson

STARGATE ATLANTIS CASUALTIES OF WAR by Elizabeth Christiansen
STAR TREK: Q&A by Keith R.A. DeCandido

BEST GAME-RELATED ORIGINAL (SPECIAL SCRIBE AWARD)

HITMAN by William Dietz
FORGE OF THE MINDSLAYERS by Tim Waggoner
NIGHT OF THE LONG SHADOWS by Paul Crilley

BEST SPECULATIVE ADAPTED

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION by Keith R.A. DeCandido
52: THE NOVEL by Greg Cox
30 DAYS OF NIGHT by Tim Lebbon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ORIGINAL

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE DEATHLESS by Keith R.A. DeCandido
GOODLUND TRILOGY: VOLUME THREE: WARRIORS BONES by Stephen D. Sullivan
Clue_crew
NANCY DREW AND THE CLUE CREW #10: TICKET TROUBLE by Stacia Deutsch & Rudy Cohon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ADAPTED

TWELVE DOGS OF CHRISTMAS by Steven Paul Leiva (nominee & winner)
The Grandmaster Award honors a writer for his extensive and exceptional
work in the tie-in field. This year’s honoree is ALAN DEAN FOSTER.

Foster’s books include his
ground-breaking novelisations in 1975 of the STAR TREK animated series
and his subsequent novelisations of the first three ALIEN films, BLACK
HOLE, STARMAN, OUTLAND, PALE RIDER, ALIEN NATION and, of course, STAR
WARS (writing as "George Lucas"). He is also the author of scores of
original novels as well as the story for the first STAR TREK feature
film.


The Scribe Awards will be given at the Comic-Con Convention in San
Diego in July. The Special Gaming Scribes will be awarded at Gen Con Indy in August.

The IAMTW is dedicated to enhancing the professional and public
image of tie-in writers…to working with the media to review tie-in
novels and publicize their authors…to educating people about who we
are and what we do….and to providing a forum for tie-in writers to
share information, support one another, and discuss issues relating to
our field (via a regular e-newsletter, our website, and our active discussion group).
Our members include authors active in many other professional writer
organizations (MWA, PWA, WGA, SFWA, etc.) and who share their unique
perspectives with their fellow tie-in writers. Our name itself is a declaration of pride in what we do: I AM a Tie-in Writer. You can find out more about the IAMTW at our website.

Tie-ins Dominate Bestseller Lists This Week

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IAMTW Member Karen Traviss’ REVELATION, a STAR WARS tie-in, is number  one on both the New York Times and the Publishers Weekly mass market paperback bestseller lists. Another tie-in, TOM CLANCY’S ENDWAR by David Michaels (a pseudonym for an IAMTW member) is number nine on the PW list and number ten on the NYT list. Congratulations to them both! This just goes to show that critics may scoff at TV and movie tie-ins, but the public loves them.

Our Worst Script

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I published the post below on this blog in July 2006…and forgot all about what I said I’d do at the end. Now I am following through…

Ken Levine writes today about the worst script he and his partner ever wrote.

In 1993 my writing partner, David Isaacs and I did a short run series
for CBS called BIG WAVE DAVE’S starring Adam Arkin and David Morse. It
ran that summer, got 19 shares, kept 100% of MURPHY BROWN’S audience
and was cancelled. At the time CBS had starring vehicles in the wings
for Peter Scolari, Bronson Pinchot, and the always hilarious Faye
Dunaway so they didn’t need us.

We were given a production order
of six with three back-up scripts. We assigned the first two back-ups
to our staff and planned on writing the third ourselves. When the show
was cancelled we put in to CBS to get paid for the additional scripts.
They said fine, but we had to turn in the completed scripts. Gulp!

Bill
Rabkin and I had almost the exact same experience on SEAQUEST. We’d
already turned in the outline for  episode 14 when we got canceled.
But in order to get paid for the teleplay, we had to write it. We did
it in one day, while we were packing up our office. I still live in
fear that some sf fan will stumble on a bootleg draft at a scifi
convention, post it on the net, and people will think we actually write
that bad. I’m in Germany now, or I’d post an excerpt. I’ll try to
remember to do it when I return.

Darwin
UPDATE March 8, 2007:  Okay, here’s an excerpt from "About Face,"  the script Bill and I wrote in a day to get our script fee. We knew no one would ever read it. All you need to know to follow along is that Piccolo a man with gills and Darwin is a talking dolphin (I’m not kidding).

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Sisters-in-Crime Wrestles with POD

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Now that anybody with a credit card and the email address of a Print-on-Demand company thinks they can call themselves a publisher or a published author, professional writers organizations have been forced to carefully define what it means to them to be a "publisher" or a  "published author" to deal with the issue. Now even Sisters-in-Crime is acknowledging the problem.

It seems that the abundance of POD titles in the Sisters-in-Crime’s annual  "Books-in-Print" catalog has rendered the publication useless to the booksellers and librarians it was intended for. As a result, Sisters-in-Crime is changing their rules about which titles can be listed in the publication. 

According to a member mailing by Sisters-in-Crime president Roberta Isleib, from now on only books that meet "marketplace standards" will be included in the listing.

Following are the criteria for a book that meets marketplace standards:

Is returnable.

Is offered at standard industry discounts

Is available through national wholesaler, such as Ingram or Baker and Taylor

Is competitively priced

Has a minimum print run of 1,000 copies

(We believe that the minimum print run of 1,000 copies shows a publisher’s intent to place the book in the marketplace. It is the same number used by Authors Coalition to determine a ‘published book.’)

Any titles that do not meet one of the standards may be petitioned on a case-by-case basis, so long as all other requirements are met.

[…]POD reprints of titles that met industry standards when originally published will be included in the print BIP.

The Mystery Writers of America enacted guidelines this year that excludes print-on-demand "publishers" from their Approved Publishers list. There was, predictably, a lot of foot-stomping in the blogosphere among the POD crowd, who predicted a mass exodus of members from the MWA as a result of the changes. In fact, the exact opposite occurred — the change actually resulted in a surge in membership renewals and new memberships. We now have more members than ever before.

But unlike the MWA, Sisters-in-Crime has a much more flexible membership policy and includes among its active members many people who’ve had their manuscripts printed using a POD press and consider themselves "published authors." Expect an uproar.

Tired of the Cliches

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Strattons1
I love mysteries, but I’m burned out on all the cliches. I won’t read about one more drunken, divorced cop with a tragic past.  I wish more authors had the same attitude as author Laura Wilson.  She writes in RED HERRINGS, the UK Crimes Writers Association newsletter (and in Shots Magazine), that she consciously avoided the cliches when she started her new series:

I decided, at the outset, that I did not want DI Stratton to be a conventionally flawed crime protagonist. He is neither a drunk, a compulsive gambler, nor an adulterer, and his psyche isn’t scarred by past personal tragedy — but nor is he a hero of lonely integrity walking the mean streets or a Dixon of Dock Green-like, salt-of-the-earth embodiment of law and order. He is an ordinary man with a realistic background […] lower middle class and father of two, he lives with his family and works in the West End. He is an intelligent, humorous man, but with rudimentary education; cynical, but kind and humane; happily married, but with a wandering eye. Above all, he is pragmatic.

S is for Sloppy Editing

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Sisforsilence
I have a theory that when an author becomes really, really big, the editors don’t read the manuscripts very closely, if at all. That’s especially true with Robert B. Parker. His books are usually laced with errors (for instance, in his latest Jesse Stone novel, STRANGER IN PARADISE, the spelling of the name of a big estate keeps changing).  What brings this to my mind today is a sentence on page 169 of Sue Grafton’s S IS FOR SILENCE that really boggles me. Her heroine Kinsey Milhone is in a sleazy motel room and makes this observation:

My bedspread smelled musty, and I was happy I didn’t see the article about dust mites until the following week.

How could she have been happy about something that hadn’t happened yet?!