#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
We’ve had lots of submissions for the first annual Scribe Awards for Excellence in Tie-in Writing arriving over the last few months inside the dormant volcano where the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has its world headquarters…but we could use even more.
The Scribe Awards and How You Enter…the details are after the jump:
In case I forgot to mention it, my seventh DIAGNOSIS MURDER book, THE DOUBLE LIFE, is now available in finer bookstores, truck stops, and places of worship nationwide.
I like to think of THE DOUBLE LIFE as the second book in an unofficial trilogy that began with DIAGNOSIS MURDER #5 : THE PAST TENSE and that will conclude in May 2007 with the eighth and final DM novel, the appropriately titled THE
LAST WORD.
You can order your very own signed and/or personalized copy of THE DOUBLE LIFE from the friendly mystery babes at Mysteries To Die For, who will gladly send your order anywhere in the world…and to most State and Federal prisons.
Sandra Scoppettone has written 18 novels. She must, on some level, love to write. But it seems like doing it for her is agony.
I feel like throwing the manuscript into the water and deleting all
copies on my computer and back ups. I know I won’t. But I wonder how
much of my discouragement is laced with my bookstore blues.Still,
I’m on page 178 and I feel I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going
or who these people are. My closest friend just told me she wishes she
had a tape to playback to me because I always say these things.But this time it’s real.
It’s always real. And she doesn’t need a tape playback — all she has to do is look back at her blog, where she left virtually the same post about her last book. She’s been successful, critically and financially, as a writer. A couple of her books were even made into movies. So she’s had plenty of validation over the years that she’s really good at what she does. But it’s not enough. It never is.
But what this post proves is that no matter how long you do this, or how successful you are, this job never gets any easier. I’m not sure what’s harder — the writing itself or overcoming your insecurities about your writing.
I know how Sandra feels, though not quite to her angst-ridden extreme. I love to write, I need to write, and even when I am in creative hell (which is often), I am usually enjoying myself more than I am suffering… otherwise, why would I keep doing this?
UPDATE 11/10/2006: Sandra elaborates on her feelings about writing.
This guy should follow Nick Bold’s lead and take out an ad for himself in Variety.
William Simon sent me this link to a Chris Cornell song "You Know My Name" from for the new 007 movie CASINO ROYALE. I hope this isn’t actually the theme song…because if it is, it’s the dullest 007 title tune since Garbage’s "The World is Not Enough."
The Hollywood Reporter gave a deservedly rave review to my friend David Breckman’s hilarious pilot UNDERFUNDED, which the USA Network is quietly burning off tonight at 8 pm. It’s about a spy for the Canadian Secret Service and it’s great fun, closer to THE ROCKFORD FILES than GET SMART.
Why is it that nothing about Canada can be taken seriously? Is it the
speech pattern that ends everything in "Eh"? The fact that the populace
seems so sweetly guileless and lily-white? The complete lack of
pretension? Whatever the case, the Great White North takes one on the
chin again in this lighthearted and surprisingly entertaining subtle
procedural spoof, a rare TV movie that plays it all for laughs."Underfunded"
is a production freak of nature: a movie filmed in Canada (Vancouver)
that’s actually about Canada, featuring no name stars and a scrappy,
unassuming, take-nothing-seriously tone that proves mostly endearing.
Kudos to USA for greenlighting something this far outside the telepic
norm.
Now if only USA would greenlight the series…
This advertisement was in Variety yesterday (click on it for a larger image):
All Nick has really done with his $5000 is announce that he’s a clueless moron to all the entertainment industry executives enjoying their morning bowel movement.
But in his own way, he has performed a public service. His advertisement is actually a primer on how NOT to sell your novel, TV series, movie, game show, photography, music, or 1997 Honda Civic to Hollywood.
(Oh, and here’s a helpful hint to all the future Spielbergs, Camerons, Eastwoods and Nicks out there — before you set out to write your next book, TV series, movie, game show, song, or ad in Variety, you should know that an apostrophe S doesn’t make something plural).
I couldn’t resist checking out his site. Among his projects for future Spielbergs, Camerons and Eastwoods is a treatment for THE RETURN
FOR MAGNUM PI, which he registered with the WGA in 1994 despite the
fact he doesn’t own the underlying rights. Since then, he’s apparently changed his name from Nick Oliva to Nick Bold, perhaps to embrace the new boldness of his writing. I also read the first five pages of his important new book. Here’s one of my favorite passages (the italics are his):
I felt my heart pounding in an uncontrollable tidal surge of affection as we sat and laced up our skates.
And this:
She embraced herself and gracefully slid her hands down opposite arms, creating bountiful cleavage that she stared into before looking over to me, offering herself with an outward shrug of her right shoulder much the way a cat lifts its bottom.
He’s threatening to give this novel away free, but I think even that is charging too much. I wonder if Nick is a member of the Colonial Fan Force? If not, he should be.
UPDATE 11-20-06: He ran the ad again today…because there were typos on his website. He didn’t bother to correct the grammatical errors in his ad, though. What a moron.
Variety reports that Lena Headey has been cast in the title role of THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, the Fox pilot based on the TERMINATOR movies. I’ve never heard of her, have you? Headey takes over the role from Linda Hamilton, who I had an enormous crush on as a kid. David Nutter is directing the pilot, and he has an unbroken record of success, so it’s a safe bet you’ll see this on the air in the fall. Josh Friedman wrote the script, and he’s no slouch, either.
I was part of a panel discussion yesterday at the Writers Guild with
Jan Nash, executive producer of WITHOUT A TRACE. In the midst of the
discussion, she mentioned how difficult it has been coming up with
tie-in novels for her show. Her frustration, she said, was that none of
the books have been able to capture the highly-visual nature of the
franchise…and that in prose, the books come across as simply "a
flat missing persons story" that doesn’t feel at all like WITHOUT A
TRACE. The problem, she said, has been coming up with a way to make the
books as distinctive as the series, to find a story-telling frame-work
that matches the unique flashback gimmick of the show. I don’t know if
her creative frustration with the books has anything to do with the
rumored licensing problems between Warner Brothers Television and Warner Books, which recently shelved the three completed tie-in novels that they commissioned and were planning to release in 2007.
I understand what Jan is talking about. I faced the same issue when I tackled the MONK books. How could I convey the humor and the melodrama when so much of what makes Monk work is visual? I think that I solved the problem by telling the stories first-person from the point-of-view of Natalie, Monk’s assistant. That gave me a framing device that allowed me to "observe" Monk from a distance and, at the same time, add a level of intimacy with the characters that isn’t possible on television. So while my books don’t mimic the experience of watching MONK, they have their own unique voice that offers a fresh experience for fans of the show and one that makes stories stand apart from other mysteries. At least that was my goal.
My boxed set of the real first season episodes of BAYWATCH arrived from the UK this weekend. I’d forgotten how good the production values were and how truly awful the writing was (and yes, I am talking about my own scripts). The theme song from the first season was Peter Cetera’s "Save Me," and the title sequence was carefully cut to match the song. Cetera’s song is gone and some awful crap by Kim Carnes has been slapped on in its place. The problem isn’t so much the song, but the fact that the moves in the song don’t match the edits in the main title sequence so it feels out-of-sync, like dubbed dialgoue that doesn’t follow the movements of the actors’ lips. What I don’t get is why they couldn’t substitute "Save Me" with the "I’ll Be There" theme from the syndicated seasons…
