Scribe Award Nominees & Grandmaster Announced

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N327137 The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers is proud to announce the 2011 Scribe Award nominees for excellence in licensed tie-in writing —  novels based on TV shows, movies, and games – and this year’s Grandmaster, honoring  career achievement in the field.

This year’s Grandmaster is Peter David, who has worked in television, film, books (fiction, non-fiction and audio), short stories, and comic books. He’s the acclaimed author of over fifty novels, many of them New York Times bestsellers. His extraordinarily prolific output of consistently excellent books includes two dozen original Star Trek novels, three Babylon 5 novels and novelizations of such major motion pictures as Spiderman, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk. 

David is also one of the most successful and acclaimed comic book scripters in the business with popular runs on such titles as Supergirl, Star Trek, Wolverine and, in particular, his work on The Incredible Hulk franchise (in comics as well as books). His many awards include the prestigious Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. He lives in New York with his wife Kathleen and their three children.

Our 2011 Scribe Nominees are:

GENERAL ORIGINAL

CSI: SHOCK TREATMENT by Greg Cox

BURN NOTICE: The Giveaway by Tod Goldberg

MIKE HAMMER: THE BIG BANG by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane

MURDER SHE WROTE:  The Queen’s Jewels by Donald Bain

PSYCH: The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin

SAVING GRACE: TOUGH LOVE by Nancy Holder

SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

GUILD WARS: GHOSTS OF ASCALON by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb 

STAR TREK: MIRROR UNIVERSE: THE SORROWS OF THE EMPIRE by David Mack  MUSORROWS_01-tt

STAR WARS: FORCE UNLEASHED II by Sean Williams

SUPERNATURAL: HEART OF THE DRAGON by Keith R. A. DeCandido

WARHAMMER: BLOODBORN: ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE by Nathan Long

BEST ADAPTATION

FINAL CRISIS by Greg Cox

GOD OF WAR by Matthew Stover & Robert E. Vardeman

THE WOLFMAN by Jonathan Maberry

BEST YOUNG ADULT

ALPHA & OMEGA: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Aaron Rosenberg

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: ALDWYNS ACADEMY by Nathan Meyer

THUNDERBIRDS: SITUATION CRITICAL by Joan Marie Yerba

The Fifth Annual Scribe Awards will be given at a ceremony and panel discussion held during Comic Con International in San Diego in July 2011. Details will be announced soon. 

 

 

Daniels on the DEAD

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Booklife has posted part two of their terrific, indepth interview with James Daniels, author of DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES. And if you want to know why we signed him up, and why we're so excited to have him writing on our series, all you have to do is read this excerpt:

What was it about Lee and Bill’s “dark mythology” that got you excited?  What direction did you take in?

 James L. Daniels: I love the fact that the central character in the series is a loner who travels endlessly in search of the answer to a mystery, which will heal both himself and others.  To me, this type of tale hearkens back to the Grail legend, which I incorporated into Ring of Knives.  I think that Matt is the modern-day equivalent of the medieval knight errant, and also of the gunslinger-in-a-white-hat, who is his American descendant. This set-up is an incredibly flexible template for storytelling, and it allows the author to take it in any direction possible.  I’ve seen brief summaries of the stories to come, and they range from gritty urban shoot-em-ups to gothic Lovecraftian lore.  It’s wonderful stuff.  My own brand of pulp is derived pretty directly from Edgar Rice Burroughs; he’s the one (along with “The Uncanny X-Men”) who first snagged my attention as a twelve-year old, and those old-style heroics never cease to move me.  So I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from John-Carter-type stories and fashioned my own tale, which I dressed up in the trappings of Clive Barker, fed raw meat, and unleashed.

What is up with Mr. Dark, anyway?

James L. Daniels: That’s a good question, and every author in the series is going to come up with their own interpretation.  Lee and Bill have been enormously generous letting the writers contribute to the development of the Dark Man’s nature. And it’s interesting, because – like Matt’s character – the Dark Man is an archetype that’s incredibly versatile.  A blogger recently implied that Lee and Bill may have borrowed the evil-clown idea from Todd McFarlane’sSpawn series.  But this is nonsense.  The  unpredictable trickster is one of the oldest characters in fiction.   McFarlane’s Violator was begat by Stephen King’s Pennywise who was begat by Jerry Robinson’s The Joker, who was begat by Edgar Allen Poe’s Hop-Toad, who was begat by Mr. Punch, who was begat by Shakespeare’s Fool, who was begat by Harlequino (and perhaps Sir Thomas Malory’s Merlin), who was begat by Loki, who was begat by Raven (Europe), Coyote (America), and Spider (Africa).  They are all manifestations of the same principle.  What is that principle?  Every writer of the Dead Man will come to his or her own conclusions.

For myself, however, that principle is Entropy, and the madness and despair that arise from our recognition that all our efforts will ultimately end in death.  The major challenge of life is to withstand – and maybe even overcome – that terrible prospect.  In the Welsh Grail legend “Peredur”, the hero is frequently tormented by a black hag who reminds him at every turn that all his acts of valor are causing more harm than good.  That hag, portrayed eight hundred years ago, is the direct ancestor of Mr. Dark.  And you don’t have to be a medieval knight errant to know who she is.  I’ve seen her.  And I bet you have, too.  How we deal with her terrible message is the biggest challenge that we face in life.  And one of the ways we learn to deal with it is by reading about others who confront it head-on.  Matt Cahill is a hero because he does just that.  That’s why it’s a thrill to read about him.  That’s why, when we read about him beating the devil, we set down the book hopeful and happy, believing – for a time – that we can, too.

Check out the rest of the interview for some revealing insights into his creative process.

DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES out now!

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RING OF KNIVES is the second book in the DEAD MAN series, which readers and book critics alike are already hailing as "an epic tale" that compares to the best of Stephen King and Dean Koontz…

Matthew Cahill is an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does. Now for him each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about, a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

RING OF KNIVES

Matt believes a madman may hold the secret to defeating Mr. Dark, the horrific jester with the rotting touch. But to reach him, Matt must infiltrate a lunatic asylum, where he is soon caught up in a spiral of bloodshed and madness. His only chance of escaping with his life and sanity intact is to face the unspeakable terror that awaits him deep in the asylum's fog-shrouded woods…within the Ring of Knives.

BONUS FEATURES include:

* an excerpt from DEAD MAN #3: HELL IN HEAVEN by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin

* an excerpt from GHOST BRIDE, the new novel by James Daniels.

This is James Daniels' first published novel! 

I first encountered James' writing several years ago through his brother Michael Daniels, who was a screenwriting student of mine at UCLA (and who has gone on to great success as a producer of ONE TREE HILL and VAMPIRE DIARIES). Michael asked me as a favor if I would look at his brother's book and offer him some advice.

I was immediately struck by James' obvious talent and vivid prose. The problems with the book had more to do with focus and structure than with the writing itself. But I was so impressed with the writing, with his fully-realized and compelling characters, sharp dialog, and strong voice, that I recommended him to my literary agent, who worked with James for some time in an effort to get the book published. Although the book didn't see print, which is a damn shame, I remembered it with fondness and always kept my eye out for opportunities for him.

When Bill Rabkin & I came up with THE DEAD MAN as a book series, we knew we wanted the roster of writers to be a mix of seasoned pros and exciting new voices…and James was the first name that came to mind. It's an enormous thrill for us to be the first to bring James into print and to introduce him to a wide audience. I have no doubt he's going to have a long and successful career as a novelist…he is too good not to.  

You can help…by snagging a copy of his first book today.

The Bobble-Head Elvis

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LEEGOLDBERGWILLIAMRABKIN_TheDeadMan_RingOfKnives_FINAL (1) Booklife has a great interview with James Daniels, author of DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES. Here's an excerpt:

What do you think of being on the roster with guys like Bill Crider and James Reasoner?

James L. Daniels:  It’s pretty intimidating.  Virtually all of the other authors writing books for this series are Pulp Fiction Gods… some of them have written hundreds of novels, many of them have published in a dozen separate genres, some have created best sellers… And then there’s unpublished me.  If Lee’s lineup of authors is like a row of statues of Greek deities in a museum, I’m the bobble-head Elvis that someone set down between Zeus and Athena.  No joke.

So The Dead Man project is awesome, because…?

James L. Daniels:  It’s a dynamite project because the set-up they’ve created is brilliantly flexible, so every book can have a different feel, a different emphasis, a different angle; can explore a different aspect of their dark mythology, and still be true to the spirit of the original.  The stories are structured to be fast, fun, and action packed, with a generous helping of chills along the way.  It’s a wonderful project, and I’m really, really grateful to be a part of it.

 

UK Agents Declaring War over E-Rights

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The Bookseller reports that UK agents are refusing to accept the line from publishers that 25% is a fair rate for e-royalties. They insist that print and e-deals be seperate.  Agent Sonia Land got so frustrated that she and her client Catherine Cookson are e-publishing her backlist themselves.

Land has warned book publishers they will lose control over authors’ digital backlists unless they improve their royalty offer.

Land this week announced her decision to publish 100 of Catherine Cookson’s novels as e-books through her company Peach Publishing, bypassing Cookson’s physical publishers Transworld. Other agents warned against the move, one calling it "tantamount to a declaration of war".

In a column in this week’s Bookseller, Land called on publishers to up their rates from 25% to 50% of net proceeds from e-books to secure digital rights.

Land said the publisher forced her hand by not showing an interest in Cookson’s digital rights. She said: "I’ve been thinking about this for a year and a half. They never approached me with a deal, but I think they knew I wanted a better offer."

Speaking about publishers in general, Land said: "The thing that really annoys me is that they won’t even negotiate a decent rate . . . They say ‘25% is perfectly reasonable’. They need to stop pretending it’s so expensive. I’ve just done it. I can do my sums."

 

 

The Talk on Talk

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Lee Child, James Scott Bell, Jon Land, Joseph Flynn, Jim Duncan Heywood Gould and I are talking on the ITW Site this week about how to craft dialog that reflects character. It's an interesting discussion. Here's a tidbit:

Heywood Gould: 

You are what you say.

Dialogue is character. If you know who your characters are, where they come from and what they want, then you know what they will say in a given situation. Characters are not one dimensional. They don’t speak the same way to everyone in their lives. A cop will not speak the same way to his wife and kids as he does to his colleagues or to suspects.

Dialogue is strategy. Do your characters decide to coax. coerce, seduce, charm to get what they want. Dialogue will expresses their strategy.

Dialogue is style. People use dialogue to project an image of themselves. Do they want to be considered smart, funny, professional, truthful. They will use dialogue to show that they belong to a certain group—political party, profession, gang…

The best lines are often the ones drawn from real life. I like to eavesdrop. People say things a writer could never make up. A conversation can crystallize a character. I like to draw people out. The best advice I ever got was from my City Editor at the NY Post:
“Shut up and listen.”

[…]Lee Child: 

I once won an award from the Fort Worth evening newspaper (I think it was) for “natural dialog” … which mine isn’t … and nor is anyone else’s. Dialog in books is very far from natural. Many above have extolled eavesdropping, which I love too, and it’s very instructive to notice how incoherent, stumbling, gappy and repetitive real-life conversation is. If we were “natural”, a book would be 1,000 pages long.

So the trick is to make something grossly unnatural sound natural. And it’s very hard to do that. The “X” factor is subtle and elusive. I think we all agree that dialog is where poor books fail. Poor dialog sounds amateur. Good dialog can suggest stress, accent, and pace, just with a few black marks on white paper.

Publishing As We Knew It Is Called…what?

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In the midst of the big e-revolution in publishing, nobody has quite figured out how to characterize publishing as we knew it, way back in the day (2010). Terms like "traditional publishers," "dead tree publishers," "NY publishers," and now "legacy publishers" have been thrown around, but none of them has stuck (though "legacy publishers" seems to gaining traction lately). How do you think we should refer in our discussions of the business to what we used to think of, in a general sense, as "publishers" and "publishing"? 

More Eisler vs. Hocking

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There's a very interesting conversation between authors Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking on literary agent Ted Weinstein's blog today.  Hocking kicked off the interview by sharing some eye-opening numbers:

I have self-published eight full-length novels and one novella since March or April of 2010. I thought it was April 15th, but Amazon emailed me on my "anniversary" and said it was March 15th. I've sold somewhere over a million copies in that time (it was 1,030,768 when I last added up totals last Tuesday). I don't know the exact amount of money I've earned, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 – $2 million. 

[…]I also have paperbacks made through CreateSpace, and those are available on Amazon and my blog. My paper sales are minor when compared to my total. I think it's around 10,000 copies sold in paperback, compared to over a million in ebooks. The royalties I'm getting on my paperback sales are much smaller than my ebook royalties, too. 

As for the St. Martin's deal, I haven't actually signed anything, and I don't know the exact terms of it. What I do know is that the offer was over $2 million for four books world English rights, and the royalty rate is on line with the industry average. 

She went on to say that she formatted books and did the covers herself but hired freelance editors to proof them. She also did all of her own social networking PR. Only recently has she brought on an artist, an assistant and an accountant. She has agents handling the sales of foreign and subrights.

My friend Barry wasn't quite as forthcoming as Hocking about his sales figures and earnings (he's an ex-CIA agent, after all)…

Let's see, eight books total, six with Putnam, the most recent two with Ballantine. Off the top of my head, I don't know how many units sold total (hardback, paperback, digital). How much I've earned… also a little hard to say. Some of the contracts have earned out, some not, and there are foreign sales in at least 20 different languages. But the advances have been six and seven figures and I've been making a good living writing for the last decade or so.

Unlike Hocking, he's been at this a lot longer. And he's had the benefit of publishers handling most of the tasks that she took on herself. He says:

I have a circle of family and friends who are all talented editors, for example, and I would never release a book before hearing from each of them. On cover design, I've been consulted, with different results with different publishers. On publicity and marketing, same. I guess the short way of explaining my experience on working with legacy publishers on various packaging, marketing, and publicity matters would be to say, these are areas I've long wanted to be fully in charge of. I've always carried a lot of the weight when it comes to marketing and promotion, and have been disappointed more than once by my publishers' packaging decisions, so the way I see it, going indie won't represent much work that I haven't been doing myself anyway, plus I'll get to make my own decisions. Plus for me, I think indie will be more lucrative.

A big reason behind Barry's decision to leave "legacy" publishing for self-publishing was the money. It just made more financial sense to go out on his own now.

In a typical legacy deal, the author gets 14.9% of the retail price of a digital book. So when my of my publishers sells one of my digital titles at $9.99, I get $1.49 of that. When the same title is self-published at $2.99, I keep 70% of the retail price, or about $2.10. And if fact, I plan on pricing my first self-published novel, The Detachment, at $4.99, which would mean a $3.50 per unit royalty for me. So I don't have to sell as many self-published books as I did legacy; in fact, I can sell far fewer and still come out ahead.

A big reason behind Hocking's move in the other direction was distribution and name recognition. She wants to reach a larger audience, and become a household name, something she thinks a publisher is better positioned to do for her than she can for herself. She wrote on her blog:

I am fully aware that I stand a chance of losing money on this deal compared to what I could make self-publishing.

I honestly didn't do this for money. But let's not forget that as much money as I've made, James Patterson made $70 million between June 2010 and July 2010. Legacy houses (is that what we're calling them now?) have made a lot of authors very rich.

So what do I actually want out of this deal? What do I hope to gain?

Career stability. As an author, I'll never really have one. Each book I come out with could bomb and could be the one that turns readers off me forever. Any day, my books could just stop selling. And I know that going with a house isn't going to change that. Any author can stop making money any day.

James Patterson has a book out now that has incredibly low reviews, some of the lowest I've seen for any book, and that book is still selling like crazy, and I can find it Target and Walmart. Even the sequel to the book, which the reviews say is even twice as awful as the original, is selling like crazy. Why? Because James Patterson wrote it. (Or more accurately, because his name is on the cover).

I want that. Not the writing bad books thing. I'll always strive to write a product that people enjoy. But I want to be a household name. I want to be the impulse buy that people make when they're waiting in an airport because they know my name.

That, I think, is as close to career stability as I can get. And that's why I took the deal.

Clearly, these are two different authors at two very different places in their careers who, from where I am sitting, have made the right moves for their unique situations.

Barry has been at this awhile and has been doing well. From what I can tell, Barry isn't after Patterson-esque ubiquity, he just wants to make more money from his work than he's being offer from publishers right now. And I am willing to bet that he will, even if he sells far fewer copies than he would have before. 

Hocking is just starting out at a time when publishing is undergoing seismic changes. Beyond being very talented, Hocking is obviously one very sharp young woman. She knows what she wants and what it will cost her to get it. And she's okay with that. But some chide her for it, like Macy Halford at the New Yorker. She says: 

Even though Hocking seems to care about quality, her desire for Patterson-style ubiquity is troubling. She seems to think of herself as a corporation in a way that few writers do, speaking of herself as a commodity with complete ease—she understands that her blogging and tweeting selves are marketing tools, but she doesn’t seem either to mind or to view them as entirely separate from her writing self. 

Which is part of the secret to her success.  What writer out there wouldn't want Patterson's ubiquity? Or for that matter, Stephen King's or Michael Connelly's or Nora Robert's? Kudos to Hocking for acknowledging it and for leveraging her success in self-publishing so shrewdly that she might actually achieve her goal.

There's a lot to learn from Eisler and Hocking. The big lesson? There isn't just one approach to publishing any more. You now can, and must, find your own path that fits your talent, your skills, your experience, your goals and your potential. 

REMAINDERED to The Beaches

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Mb_film_festival REMAINDERED has been accepted by another festival (our fifth, since the film was completed in October, for those of you who are counting). We've been selected by the 6th Annual Myrtle Beach International Film Festival, named one of the 25 best festivals MovieMaker Magazine in 2009 for independent film makers. It runs April 19-23 in Myrtle Beach.  We'll post more details as soon as we have them.

This news comes on the heels of us learning that REMAINDERED has also been selected by the Big Island Film Festival in Hawaii, May 11-15  at the Mauna Lani Resort. The Festival was picked by Moviemaker Magazine as one of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the nation and we're eager to find out for ourselves if they deserve it.