IAMTW Supports The WGA

IAMTW Members Lee Goldberg, Christa Faust, Steve Leiva, and William Rabkin walked the picket line together Dec. 19 in the rain with hundreds of their fellow TV crime writers outside the headquarters of the AMPTP.
It was a terrific event that once again demonstrated how amazingly unified and determined the Writers Guild is. The AMPTP has greatly underestimated the Guild's dedication to their cause. Celebs participating included the stars of NUMBERS, CSI, THE UNIT, RENO 911, BONES, and DEXTER and showrunners like Carlton Cuse (LOST), Shawn Ryan (THE SHIELD), Rene Balcer (LAW AND ORDER) and Naren Shankar (CSI).
Pictured are Lee and Christa, and William Rabkin with Robert Patrick, star of THE UNIT.

Smoking with the Boys

IAMTW member CHRISTA FAUST was interviewed in the Dec. 3 issue of Publishers Weekly and talked about what winning our Scribe Award has meant to her...

Self-described “pulp writer” Christa Faust, who recently won an award for her novelization of the 2006 film Snakes on a Plane, celebrates another coup with the January release of Money Shot: the first female writer in Dorchester’s neo-noir Hard Case Crime imprint.

You won the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ Scribe Award for Best General Adapted for your novelization of Snakes on a Plane. How did you get that job?

It was an assignment. Originally it was called Pacific Air Flight 121 and the [Samuel L.] Jackson character was just a generic action hero.

Novelizations need to be completed before the film is shot, sometimes before it has even been cast, in order to be released at the same time as the film. The amazing Internet buzz for SOAP didn’t gear up until I was nearly finished. In fact, we had to do some last-minute scrambling to get hold of a final draft of the script that included the famous “motherfucking snakes” line in time to meet my deadline.

Is the award great, or what?

The award itself is a wonderfully cheesy golden star that sits in a place of honor beside my desk with other bits of writer’s mojo like my letter from Richard Prather and a small statue of the Blessed Virgin dressed as a Dominatrix.

Some people look down their noses at media tie-in work and think of tie-in writers as a bunch of soulless hacks just out to make a buck. I love tie-in work and have infinitely more respect for hard-working writers like Lee Goldberg and Max Allan Collins than I do for self-styled literary geniuses who are still sitting in mom’s basement polishing their unpublished masterpiece. It was a hell of an honor to be recognized by my fellow tie-in writers. They really understand how tough the job can be.

Tod Goldberg's Burn Notice

From Tod Goldberg's Blog:

I just signed a three-book deal to write original novels based on the show Burn Notice for Penguin. How this came about is how many things come about when you're not expecting them -- your brother calls you from a scratchy phone in Germany and says, "Hey, do you like the show Burn Notice?" You reply, "Yeah, I love it. It's like an Elmore Leonard novel crossed with Steven Soderbergh's direction and a dash of Albert Brooks' mother issues for good measure. Why?" And then twenty minutes later you're on the phone with your agent, 36 hours later you're making demands of the publisher, 72 hours later you're sitting down with Matt Nix, who is your oldest and dearest friend's fraternity big brother, and who grew up down the street from you in Palm Springs and who has several of the same childhood friends as you, and also wonders how that very quiet, but very large, kid brother of Jason Homme became Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and who you've known via emails for years, but never really in person, and you're discussing the show he created, Burn Notice, and then, about 100 hours later, you're figuring out just how on Earth you're going to meet your first deadline -- February -- without getting hooked on crank (again).

It's a unique opportunity for me sales-wise. When you write literary fiction, as I sort of do, it's not unusual to count sales in 4 digits as a success. And while I've earned a good reputation critically (I mean, you know, after Fake Liar Cheat...) for my work, I've never been a huge seller and this series of books will open me up to an audience that, heretofore, did not exist to me. I've always straddled the line between crime fiction and literary fiction, the result being that no one is quite sure where to shelve my books. Now I'll have these crime novels and the literary fiction, too. Plus, I love the show, it's fun to be working with Matt, and I now have a good (tax deductible) reason to go to Miami.

The second thing, and equally exciting thing, is that I finished my new short story collection this week (which I think will be called Where You Lived...but it could be called The Salt...or...The Models...or, well, I have 12 choices) and, after Thanksgiving, it will go out into the world to find a happy home. I think I know where I'd like that home to be, but it should be interesting to see where it all ends up. All I know for certain is that by the end of 2009, I'll have four new books out...which makes me a little sick to my stomach...

Returning to Earth

From Kevin J. Anderson, on the exciting life of a tie-in writer...
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Climbing out of the black hole and seeing light and catching my breath again.

At the end of July I was in San Diego for Comic Con International to ramp up for the release of THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON. On August 3, I left for three weeks of book signings for SANDWORMS OF DUNE. Starting in Seattle, Brian Herbert and I went to Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Livermore, Half Moon Bay, Pasadena, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The book debuted at #4 on the New York Times, selling 20% better than any of our previous Dune novels.
One morning Brian and I got up at 4 AM and we each did 15 call-in radio interviews on drive-time programs by 7 AM. Another day, we got to our hotel at 9:30 PM. I went to bed, and got up again at 1:30 AM to make it to an LA television studio by 3:00 AM to do 18 satellite TV interviews by 8:30 AM, got back to the hotel for a one-hour nap before leaving for a booksellers¹ lunch, after which we drove 3 hours down to San Diego, grabbed a quick dinner, did a nighttime signing which ended at 9 PM, then we drove back to our hotel in LA and arrived by 11:30 PM.

Brian took a train back home to Seattle the next morning, while Rebecca and I stayed in LA to help teach the Writers of the Future workshop and present the awards. We came home, had a few days to do laundry, then we were off to DragonCon in Atlanta for Labor Day weekend. Afterward we had three days at home before leaving for a month in Australia and New Zealand to tour for METAL SWARM. We did signings and interviews in Christchurch and Auckland, NZ, then flew to Brisbane, Australia, to be guests at the Brisbane Writers Festival, then flew to Perth for school talks, library talks, and book signings, then more signings in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and then to
Canberra for the ConFlux science fiction convention. The last few days I came down with a terrible cold and full-blown laryngitis, so Rebecca had to do most of my panels and workshops with me gasping a few comments from the sidelines. It was a lot of work, but while I was there METAL SWARM was the #1 bestselling SF/F book in Australia and SANDWORMS was #5.

I tried to recover from the cold/flu for two weeks at home, before HarperCollins sent me out for eleven days to promote THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON -- Denver, Salt Lake City/Provo, then Reno (to be guest speaker at the National School Librarians¹ Conference), then Phoenix, Madison, Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Every day, my basic routine was to get up at 6 AM, get to the airport, fly somewhere, land at around 11:00 AM, get my luggage, meet the driver/escort, grab lunch (usually a Subway sandwich or something equally fast), go around to 8-13 bookstores to do drop-by
signings, get to my hotel at about 4, check e-mail, take a shower, change clothes, get picked up at 6 for my 7 PM signing, go out to dinner afterward at around 8:30, get back to the hotel room again by about 10 and go to sleep, then get up the next morning and start it all over again.

And throughout all this I was doing a full-fledged rewrite on my 750-page final Seven Suns novel, which I delivered four days ago.

Now, I sold a lot of books, met a lot of fans, got a lot of media coverage. But this was completely exhausting, and I have not yet fully recovered from the cold/flu I got in Australia six weeks ago. The only thing worse than having a frantic book-signing tour is NOT having any tour, so I¹m not complaining. I missed seeing a lot of friends as I raced through town on overdrive, but I just didn¹t have any time or opportunity for socializing. And I thought writers were supposed to be reclusive...

KJA

Mr. Monk and the Finished Manuscript

It's 10:07 pm here in Los Angeles and I just finished writing my sixth MONK novel, MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY. This means I will be delivering my book to my publisher two weeks early, which will buy me a little time to relax before plunging into the outline for my seventh MONK novel.

MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY will be out in hardcover in June to coincide with the summer season premiere of the TV series.

My fifth MONK novel, MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE, comes out in hardcover later this week...which is a bit of an experiment, since this will be the first MONK book release that doesn't coincide with a MONK season premiere. It will be interesting to see how the book fares without the benefit of the promotion that accompanies the TV show (but my fourth MONK novel, MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS, comes out in paperback in January, when the new episodes of MONK return).

To The Max

IAMTW co-founder Max Allan Collins optioned his graphic novel JOHNNY DYNAMITE to Dick Wolf Productions for a new TV series. And in more good news for Max, Publishers Weekly has given his new book, DEADLY BELOVED, a rave review. They say, in part: "Collins skillfully ties up a multitude of branches into a big bloody bouquet one would expect from the author of THE ROAD TO PERDITION. Sharp and satisfying, this is another must-have for fans of the Hard Case Crime imprint."

DOUBLE THE FUN

There appear to be two tie-in novels on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best-seller list for 10/7/07.

Jonathan's Story (by Julia London and I) at #7, a tie-in to the daytime soap, Guiding Light; and Dexter in the Dark at #11, a tie-in to the returning cable drama, Dexter.

If you want to stretch a point, you can even consider #9, Bones to Ashes a sort of tie-in, though, in this case, the forensic book series predates the TV series, Bones.

ALINA ADAMS

HBO Embraces Tie-Ins

When you think of tie-ins, you probably imagine one movie novelization or one of the hundreds of STAR TREK original novels. But now tie-ins are going up-market. Publisher's Weekly reports that HBO is aggressively developing it's TV tie-in publishing program. They are hoping to repeat the success of cleverly-packaged and hugely successful books like SEX AND THE CITY: KISS AND TELL, which was sold in a fake alligator shoebox.

HBO v-p of licensing and retail James Costos, who joined the company in July 2006, said he has a mandate to “raise awareness for all of our licensed merchandise, which certainly includes books.” Costos said the cable channel is looking to highlight the HBO book line by taking advantage of its midtown New York retail store, Web site and newsletters, as well as through its broadcasts.

Almost all of the HBO titles come from Melcher Media and the distinctive packaging of their tie-ins come with a hefty price-tag for consumers. But that hasn't slowed sales. In fact, it's a selling point.

Melcher Media president Charles Melcher contends that HBO titles “reinvented the TV tie-in, which used to be priced under $20 and mostly filled with old scripts.” HBO titles like Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills or Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Book, said Melcher, can sometimes feature scholarly research but, most importantly, they all have the complete involvement of the shows' casts of actors.

“HBO wants the books to be more than just a way to make money,” Melcher said. “They want their creative people to be happy. Like the TV shows, these aren't just books; they're HBO books.”

Upcoming HBO tie-in titles getting the "high-end" treatment are The Sopranos: The Complete Book, ' Entourage: A Lifestyle Is a Terrible Thing to Waste, and Rome.

“The books are an extension of the shows and a natural must-have for fans and viewers. The revenue will follow if we continue to deliver quality books,” said Costos.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Julia London, a NYT best-selling romance author, tried her hand at tie-in writing this summer, co-authoring "Jonathan's Story," as part of television's oldest soap opera, "Guiding Light's" 70th Anniversary celebration.

Julia writes on her site:

This was a classic “work for hire” situation: the Guiding Light crew wanted a book with a specific story, and they needed an author to write the book. I was approached about writing the book by my publisher, who had a detailed plot the Guiding Light folks had developed, and one that would tie in to their show....So then I took the Guiding Light outline and turned it into a novel. The turnaround was much quicker than I am accustomed to, but I had lots of help from several people at my publishing house and at Guiding Light, who read the book numerous times to make sure it was true to their characters and their show. The result was a collaborative process, and I think the end product is good.

While writing a tie-in was a new process for Julia, NOT writing one was new for me. I had written GL's sister soap, "As The World Turns," tie-in novel, "Oakdale Confidential," the previous year (though, in the first edition, for storyline purposes, I'd been credited as "Anonymous").

This time around, a newborn daughter limited me to merely writing the detailed, chapter by chapter outline based upon a story idea provided by the show, then, at the end of the game, polishing Julia's final draft to make sure it sound like "Guiding Light." I had one baby at home, but this was my first time handing off another "baby" to a total stranger to do with as she liked!

Like Julia said, "Jonathan's Story" did prove to be a very collaborative process between writers, "Guiding Light" executives and publisher. Read Julia's take about it on her blog, then check out my version in the next issue of the Tie-In Writers Newsletter -- coming this Fall!

ALINA ADAMS

Another Tie-In Writer

You can add the name of best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Herman Wouk to the list of tie-in writers. SLATTERY’S HURRICANE is something of an oddity in Wouk’s career. It’s usually not included in the lists of his novels, and I’d never even heard of it until I happened to run across a copy recently. As it turns out, this paperback original published in 1956 is a novelization of a 1949 movie based on a story by Wouk that was published in the slick magazine AMERICAN. Why there was a seven-year gap between the movie and the novelization, I have no idea. But while this is a minor work compared to Wouk’s blockbusters like THE CAINE MUTINY and THE WINDS OF WAR, it’s a highly entertaining book and well worth reading.