The winners of the Scribe awards were announced late Sunday afternoon at the San Diego Comic-Con. The convention is in its 38th year and drew more than 120,000 attendees.
The winners are:
· Speculative Fiction, Best Novel Adapted—Superman Returns by Marv Wolfman
· Speculative Fiction, Best Novel Original—30 Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead by Stephen Niles and Jeff Mariotte
· General Fiction, Best Novel Adapted—Snakes on a Plane by Christa Faust
· Best Novel Original—Las Vegas: High Stakes by Jeff Mariotte
· Young Adult All Genres, Best Novel—Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Portal Through Time by Alice Henderson
· Grandmaster, honoring career achievement in the field: Donald Bain
Max Allan Collins, president of IAMTW, said: "The San Diego Comic-Con is the perfect place to kick off our Scribe Awards. It's a virtual world's fair of popular culture, and the members of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers deal with some of the most famous fictional characters of all time."
The IAMTW was formed in 2006 by Collins, author of Road to Perdition and the USA Today bestselling CSI novels, and Lee Goldberg, author of many Monk and Diagnosis Murder novels. The organization is dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of tie-in writers and providing a forum for tie-in writers to share information, support one another, and discuss issues relating to their field. There are more than 150 members of the IAMTW, including authors active in many other professional writer organizations, including the Writers Guild of America, the Mystery Writers of America, the Western Writers of America, and the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Collins said: "We've banded together to bring recognition to individual excellence in our field, as well as to shine a light on all of the writers who create the books that put movies on the printed page, and bring popular TV characters to life in prose. Working with characters from another medium, created by other writers, is a challenging task. Readers worldwide have responded to these books by buying them in the millions, and the creative minds responsible deserve some applause."
About the winners:
Donald Bain is the author or ghost/author of nearly 100 books, many of them bestsellers. They encompass both fiction and non-fiction, and include such categories as murder mysteries, westerns, comedies, investigative journalism, food, business, psychology and historical dramatizations. Among his books, the airline comedy, Coffee Tea or Me?, published almost 30 years ago, together with its sequels sold more than five million copies worldwide and was the basis of a television movie-of-the-week. His current project, a series of more than two dozen original paperback murder mysteries for Signet, are written “in collaboration" with TV's most famous mystery writer, Jessica Fletcher of "Murder, She Wrote," who exists only as a fictitious character. He is married to Renee Paley-Bain, also a writer, who collaborates with him on the Murder She Wrote series.
Christa Faust calls herself a writer with a fetish for noir cinema, tattoos, and seamed stockings. Among her books are Snakes on a Plane, Final Destination III: The Movie, Friday the 13th: The Jason Strain, A Nightmare on Elm Street #2: Dreamspawn, and Twilight Zone #5: Burned/One Night at Mercy, all published by Games Workshop.
Alice Henderson has been writing since her father gave her his old Underwood manual typewriter when she was six. From early on she wrote tales of the supernatural, spooking herself as she pounded away on the typewriter in her childhood turn-of-the-century house. Her passion for writing only grew, and she wrote her first novel at age eleven. She earned her B.A. in Literature and Language at Webster University, where she began writing screenplays. She once worked for Lucasfilm Ltd., where she wrote for video games, both manuals and strategy guides, including the manual for Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. In 2001, she became a full-time freelance writer.
Jeff Mariotte has written more than thirty novels, including original horror epic The Slab, and Stoker Award nominated teen horror series Witch Season, as well as books set in the universes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Las Vegas, Conan, 30 Days of Night, Charmed, Star Trek and Andromeda and a novelization of the movie Boogeyman. He is also the author of more comic books than he has time to count, including the original Western series Desperadoes, some of which have been nominated for Stoker and International Horror Guild awards.
Stephen Niles is one of the writers responsible for bringing horror comics back to prominence, and was recently named by Fangoria magazine as one of its "13 rising talents who promise to keep us terrified for the next 25 years." Niles is currently working for the four top American comic publishers - Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse. Currently ongoing at Image is the creator-owned series Bad Planet with co-writer Thomas Jane, and The Cryptics with artist Ben Roman.
Marv Wolfman is known for his work in comic books, movies, television, animation, children's books, theme park shows and rides, video games, novels, and internet animation. His newest non-fiction book is Homeland, The Illustrated History of the State of Israel, which covers the founding of the country from the time of Abraham to the present. His novel, Crisis on Infinite Earths, based on his award-winning 1985 comic, was published April, 2005. The first printing sold out in less than three weeks and the second printing sold out a few weeks later. The trade paperback was released in April, 2006. Superman Returns was published June, 2006.
