I Am a Tie-in Writer

Submissions Open for Audio Scribes

2011-12-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

Our apologies for the delay in putting the Audio Scribes category together. Because this category was assembled late in the year, we are extending the entry deadline to March 1st for this category only. Official language for guidelines for Audio submissions has not been developed, but programs fit the following general guidlines: Audio entries represent full-cast radio-style plays, not readings of short stories or novels, of licensed tie-ins based on games, television shows, movies, etc. Audio entries are first published on CD or MP-3 and not first broadcast on radio. If, after publication, the audio was picked up and aired, that is considered a secondary market. Audio entries must be forty minutes or more in length. Please send published version (i.e., the audio on CD or MP-3 as marketed). If that is not possible, include with your copies of the audio information on publishing. Audio entries must bear a 2011 copyright. Contact the IAMTW at tieinwriters@gmail.com for a list of judges to send your entries to.

IAMTW Suspends Annual Dues for 2012

2011-09-22T14:01:00.001-07:00

These are tough financial times...and writers, particularly those in the tie-in field, are hurting.

We want to do our small part to help out.

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers is suspending annual dues for current and new members effective immediately and on through 2012...dues will be re-instated on January 1, 2013.

That doesn't mean we'll be shutting down and riding out the economic storm...quite the opposite.

We'll continue to introduce our members to tie-in editors and licensing execs with our quarterly mailing of member credits and contact info...we'll continue to put out TIED-IN, our newsletter about tie-in writing...we'll continue to give out the Scribe awards for excellence in media tie-in writing...and we'll continue to moderate our highly popular private discussion board for media tie-in professionals.

And over the next month or two, we will also be renovating our website, freshening up our Facebook presence, and adding an audio category to our Scribe Awards.

We hope this will not only help our current members but also draw some new professional tie-in writers into the fold.

Tied-in to terror - John Passarella on Supernatural: Night Terror

2011-09-16T02:17:00.000-07:00

Cavan Scott braves things that go bump in the night to talk to author John Passarella about his new Supernatural tie-in novel, Night Terror

What can you tell us about Night Terror?
Night Terror is set late in season six of Supernatural, which followed the huge apocalypse arc that concluded in season five. I was told right up front by the editor that my book should be a "monster" book, not anything dealing with the angel/demon mythos that had ostensibly concluded.

The premise of my novel is that a sleepy town in Colorado becomes terrorized by nightmares that come to life, which includes everything from B-movie monsters to natural disasters to Nazi zombies.

I tried to include classic psychological and anxiety-driven nightmare situations along with the type of fantastical nightmares young sleepers might have. My family brainstormed with me around the dinner table a couple evenings in a row to help me come up with assorted nightmares.

Of course, the Winchester brothers head to the town to stop whatever is causing the nightly mayhem, and soon realize that because of their horror-filled personal histories (for example, one brother has spent time in hell; the other was possessed by the devil), they had better not fall asleep, perchance to dream.

How did you come to write for Supernatural?
I've been a Supernatural fan since the first season's first show and my enjoyment of the show has grown as the mythos has become richer. My wife is a huge fan, as are my two sons, so my writing Night Terror was almost as exciting for them as it was for me. I reclaimed some of the cool factor father's tend to lose in the eyes of their children once they hit their teen years.

Do you think you have to be a fan of a show to write a successful tie-in?
Every writer would probably have a different answer to that question. My answer is yes, I need to be a fan of the show. That might limit my options for writing tie-ins, but I need to feel the same elevated level of excitement and intensity for tie-in projects that I have when I'm writing my own novels. I would never want to take on a project where I felt I was going through the motions of writing just to earn a pay check.

Did the storyline change much from the original outline during the writing process?
Not a whole lot. The biggest changes were subordinating the ultimate cause of the living nightmares in the overall plot, accelerating the story and expanding the scope of the nightmares.

I talked to [show-creator] Eric Kripke's assistant on the phone and she suggested adding a town-wide tragedy to the mix to expand the "reason" for the monster's appearance. She also told me to take a "no censors, no budget" approach to the novel, meaning I should show more violence than they are allowed on network television and take advantage of the cost-free special effects afforded by printed words on the page.

One fansite said Night Terror has the feel of a Supernatural feature film, so I think I succeeded on that front.

How did you first start writing tie-in books?
After my first, co-author novel, Wither, came out, the San Francisco Chronicle reviewed it and said that it "hits the groove that makes TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer such a kick."

I was a huge fan of Buffy and reading that review, I thought, maybe I could write a Buffy tie-in novel. I approached Lisa Clancy, the editor of the Buffy books at the time with that quote and my stated enthusiasm for the show and asked how I should go about being considered to write one of the novels.

She told me to write a complete 10-12 page outline and a scene featuring all the main characters, which would ensure I could write their voices. That was the first time I wrote acomplete book outline from start to finish in such detail before writing the book itself. I decided if I couldn't nail the characters' voices in the sample chapter, I wouldn't bother submitting the proposal.

Members of my family were also fans of the show, so I asked some of them to read my sample chapter and let me know if I had accurately captured the voices. They thought I did, so I submitted my proposal and it was accepted.

While writing that novel, Ghoul Trouble, the editor said I would be a good fit for the new Angel tie-in novels and asked if I would consider submitting a proposal for one. That book became Angel: Avatar. A few years later, the new editor called with an open slot for another Angel novel, and that turned into Angel: Monolith.

For Night Terror, Cath Trechman, the Supernatural tie-in editor at Titan Books, found me through my website, saw I had written other tie-ins and wrote supernatural thrillers, thought I would be a good fit and asked if I'd be interested in submitting. So, other than my first inquiry for Buffy, each tie-in book has resulted from an editor contacting me, and that's always a good feeling.

What was the biggest lesson you learnt when you first started writing tie-in material?
As I mentioned, if I hadn't been able to make the characters sound on the page the way they sounded on the screen, I would have stepped away from the tie-in world. I had heard stories of otherwise successful writers who had tried and couldn't do it. I hadn't tried before so I didn't know.

I think that's the first thing you have to learn about yourself as a tie-in writer. Can I capture the character voices, then the tone of the show, then develop a story that feels compatible with the show's universe?

Also, the deadlines are much tighter than for general fiction -- two to three monthsis very common -- so you have to work fast. That's where having the book completely outlined is invaluable. No worries about writing yourself into a corner or experiencing writer's block. Any logistical, story structure problems would have cropped up much earlier, in the outline stage.

You also write non tie-in material. How important is it to you that you create your own sandpit rather than just playing in someone else's?
Obviously, with your own novels, you have complete creative freedom and expression. It's your creation, your spell to weave. You can kill off any ofyour characters, take the story in any direction you want. Your story's success equates to your success.

With a tie-in novel, you have to return everything the way you found it. You can't kill off lead characters (unless you can resurrect them convincingly) or alter the show's canon.

I alwaysdescribe media tie-in novels to readers I meet as having the feel of lost episodes. It doesn't change what you know from the show, but if you enjoy the show then the book is something you should also enjoy.

Creatively, with tie-ins, the setup work – character development and world-building – is already done for you so you can jump right in to the story. On the publication side, the tie-in novel will have a limited readership. By that, I mean it will be a tough sell to anyone unfamiliar with the show.

And, since tie-ins are work for hire, you basically get your payment up front and there's little chance of earning much else from a title no matter how successful it is.

Of course, odds are the show has more fans than the average mid-list writer. So you hope fans of the show who do read the tie-ins will like your work enough in that world that they're willing toventure into your own worlds.

All of my tie-ins have been for supernatural properties and since my own novels are supernatural thrillers, my odds for crossover readers are better than they'd be if my own novels were westerns or romance novels. Even with Night Terror, a few early readers have already emailed me and said they want to try out some of my own novels, such as Shimmer. So that's the best case result.

What's the biggest challenge of writing a tie-in novel?
Nailing the voices and tone of the show. You have to be a good mimic in your writing. Writers strive to develop their own voice, characters and style. When you tackle a tie-in project, the licensed property's characteristics take precedence. It's not necessarily harder or easier, but it's a different skill set. Being a fan of the show certainly helps when you're trying to fit something into the existing show's continuity without repeating something that has been done before.Supernatural was in the middle of its sixth season when I began work on Night Terror and I was familiar with all that history. Even show, I flipped through the show guides to refresh my memory of previous episodes.

What top tip would you give someone who's desperate to become a media tie-in writer?
What works for me and what always comes first is being a fan of the show for which I want to write a tie-in. When I can't wait for the next episode to air, I know I have enough enthusiasm for the show to translate that energy into a successful tie-in novel.

What helped a lot with Supernatural: Night Terror was having access to current scripts. For a while I had access to scripts that were five or six episodes ahead of what had aired. As a viewer, I was very accustomed to hearing the characters on screen. The scripts showed me those voices on paper, which is where I had to create them. Initially, this was to show me how Sam's soul would be restored to his body, since my novel would take place after that event and I needed to be cognizant of the details. But it soon became apparent to me that the scripts were a great asset to have to immerse myself in the voices of the characters. I referred to them often during the writing process.

Supernatural: Night Terror by IAMTW member John Passarella is available now from Amazon US, Amazon UK, B&N and all good bookshops.

For more information about the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers go to www.iamtw.org

When You Write About A Spy: Lessons Learned From Having Michael Westen In My Head For 3 Years

2011-09-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

[Reposted from Tod Goldberg's blog] My latest Burn Notice book -- The Bad Beat -- came out this summer and since it's also my last Burn Notice book, after five of 'em, it feels like a good time to put a bow on the experience by talking about it a bit. First, since I've done it for all the previous books, a little behind the scenes info about the new book:

1. I completed the book on October 7th of last year and though it's the longest of the five books by about ten thousand words, it's exactly the same number of pages as the previous books...276 pages. Which either means I used very small words in the previous books or the people at Penguin are really good with margins and white space. Anything you happen to see in the current season of the show was written after I finished the book, as usual. So that means, as usual, for the fucktards who persist in writing to tell me I'm not keeping canon, uhm, and I mean this with all due sincerity, please, eat a bowl of dicks.

2. As usual, I like to use people I know in the book. The client in the book is named Brent Grayson, which is the combined names of my two nephews. There's a character named Marci, named for a woman who won a contest on the USA Forum. She wanted to be bad ass and I feel I've done her justice. One of the villains in the book is named Mark McGregor, after a childhood friend who asked to be in the book and what better way than to make him an evil genius? One of Michael's aliases is Kurt Riebe, which is the name of a former student of mine's boyfriend. Again, he asked, so he got in. Rest assured if someone has a name in the book, they're named for someone. It turns out a lot of people want to see their name in a spy novel. Who knew?

3. The book touches on one of my current obsessions: do we need notaries? I mean, really, aren't they all just fronts for illegal actitivites? There are three businesses I do not quite understand still existing in the 21st century: notaries, piano stores and waterbed repair shops.

4. I decided, since this was going to be my last book, that it would be fun to use Sugar, who appeared in the first episode of the show. It's one of the coolest things about the show, in my opinion, in that Matt Nix and the writing staff have always recognized when they have really good secondary characters who can be reused. I've used Barry in every book because he's fun to write, but I always like it when the show reuses villains as clients or as sources. I like the idea of shifting allegiances, which seems particularly fun when dealing with criminals. And as luck would have it, Sugar appeared in last week's episode, too, so it's good I didn't kill him off or make him into a post-op trannie or something.

5. The first line of the book begins "When you're a spy..." and then you'll have to figure the rest out for yourself.

Since I finished the novel 9 months ago, I've had some time to think about what it was like to spend three years with Michael Westen rattling around in my head. I learned a few things, like I now know how to blow up a lot of shit using common household items. I know so many capers and scams and ways to illegally make money that I'm actually a pretty good person to know if you want to start a criminal enterprise. I know how to, uhm, Burn Notice anything, which is a pretty decent bar trick. So those are good things to know just generally, as a human. As a writer -- which I recognize makes me at least partly human -- writing Michael Westen taught me how to write series fiction and, beyond that, how to pace commercial crime fiction. See, previously, the crime fiction I wrote was decidedly not series and decidedly not commercial, really. (And I would argue that I never really set out to write crime, specifically, even if Living Dead Girl and Fake Liar Cheat and a bunch of my short stories are, you know, stories about crimes.) At any rate, writing the books required a completely different skill set -- the deadlines alone required that they be almost completely plot and voice driven, which is somewhat different than my other work which tends to be character and setting driven. Writing Burn Notice has changed the way I approach crime fiction, which is good since the novel I'm writing now -- more on that in a moment -- is a pretty straight crime novel.

A bit about the deadlines -- I typically had three or four months to write the books, which was truly grueling and, at times, more than a little dispiriting, because I knew if I spent more time on the books that they'd be better. I wrote the first two books right after each other, the first in 60something days, followed by a month off and then I wrote the second book in 90 days. And, I regret to say, the second book sucks. I had a terrible cold for pretty much the entire writing of the book, which is why, uhm, it doesn't make any sense. Again, sorry about that. I had much longer breaks between books after that point -- and by that I mean three months or so -- which made them better, I hope. But because the deadlines were so close, I also had to learn to not be an obsessive rewriter, which meant I had to keep a pretty tight plot, which meant I did more outlining than usual...and by that I mean I outlined anything at all, which I typically don't do. I also ended up trusting myself more. Usually when I'm working on something new, I show drafts to my wife or to my agent or trusted friends to get some feedback, but I just didn't have the time to do that with these books and the result is that I ended up needing to be honest with myself. Not an easy thing for any writer.

When I first wrote about this endeavor in the LA Times, I said that I'd come to the conclusion that "I had to start thinking of myself like a musician covering a hit song -- in order to make it my own, I had to tweak it a little, give something of myself in the process and make it fresh and new to the fans who already love the original by adding additional elements they might not be expecting. Think "Walk This Way" by Run-DMC versus Aerosmith's original. Same song, different experience." By the time I finished this final book, my feelings were unchanged. It's hard to write about a character that belongs not just to the creator of the show, Matt Nix, but also to the show's writing staff and, most importantly, to the millions of people who have an experience with that character on TV each week. So I tried to do what I could to carve out my little piece, which I was grateful Matt let me do, by adding my own flourishes here and there.

One of my other goals with the books was purely personal: I wanted to increase my profile as a crime writer, because I knew what I wanted my next novel to be and I thought having a few hundred thousand new fans wouldn't hurt that project. My plan all along was to write a novel based on the main character in my short story "Mitzvah" (which first appeared in Las Vegas Noir and then later in my collection Other Resort Cities), a hitman hiding out in Las Vegas as a rabbi. Then a funny thing happened along the way to that plan: the producers of Justified optioned the story and then sold it to FX for a potential series. Now who knows if the show will ever happen -- in my career I've sold a lot of things to Hollywood, some big deals, some small deals, some medium deals and I've learned not to get too excited until such time as I see my name on a movie or TV screen -- but what it made clear to me was that if I was going to write that novel, well, I'd be wise to get on it. So since I finished writing my last Burn Notice book, that's exactly what I have done. I hope to be done in October and then, well, we'll see what happens.

Nothing is assured for any writer, of course, so leaving the security of writing the Burn Notice books -- I was offered the chance to continue the series -- was a calculated risk. But the fact is, also, I was ready to move on to other things. I've written 11 books in the last 11 years, plus another book I couldn't sell because it wasn't very good, plus countless short stories, plus essays and book reviews and, and, and, and...which is to say I've always gone on to something new and its worked out well. The other truth is that every character I've ever written still visits my mind periodically -- you spend enough time pretending to be someone else, it's the least you can expect -- and as I've written my new novel I've had to tell Michael Westen to pipe down a few times and that, well, is actually pretty damn cool.

First Do No Harm

2011-09-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

King's River Life Magazine recently interviewed IAMTW member Dr. D.P. Lyle on his new ROYAL PAINS tie-in, "First Do No Harm." Here's an excerpt:

DPL: By profession I’m a cardiologist and I practice in Orange County, California. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. I grew up in Alabama where I attended the University of Alabama for college and the University of Alabama College of Medicine for medical school and internship. I then moved to Houston, Texas where I did my residency in internal medicine and then my cardiology fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute. After that I moved to California and have been here ever since.

Marilyn: How you came about being chosen to write the Royal Painsnovels based on the TV series.

DPL: This came about from my friend Lee Goldberg. He writes the Diagnosis Murder and the Monk media tie-in novels and he was approached about doing the Royal Pains series. He suggested me to the publisher and that’s how it began.

Marilyn: Will you tell us a little bit about the process of putting a TV series into book form?

DPL: Basically when you write a tie-in novel you are using someone else’s characters and creating stories based on the series. This means that there are restrictions regarding what you can do since they control the characters. You can’t go too far afield. So basically you’re taking someone else’s characters and creating a story around them, which of course must be approved by the creators from the beginning and throughout the project. It’s been an interesting and challenging process. I’ve learned a lot, which was my main goal in taking on this project. It’s a new type of writing for me.

What We Do To Keep Ourselves Interested

2011-09-10T21:55:00.001-07:00

[Reposted from Lee Goldberg's Blog]

I write books more for myself than for my readers. I figure if I am not entertained, my reader won't be, either. Author Christa Faust feels the same way...

A reviewer recently accused me of creating a “Mary Sue” character in my Supernatural tie-in COYOTE’S KISS. For those who don’t know what that means, a “Mary Sue” is a too-perfect wish-fulfillment character that represents the author’s own idealized persona.

While I freely admit that the character in question is a wish-fulfillment character, it’s a completely different kind of wish. I created that character not because I’d like to be her, but because I’d like to fuck her. After all, we tie-in writers have to do something to spice up the daily grind.

I don't think I've ever created a character in a book or a screenplay that was a personal fuck fantasy figure. I'll have to try that one of these days...but I doubt it will be in a Monk novel.

Tied In To Writing

2011-07-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

In the few weeks leading up to the Scribes, author Jonathan Maberry ran a terrific series of lengthy, detailed interviews with the Scribe nominated tie-in writers on his Big Scary Blog about the nuts-and-bolts of their craft. Here's an excerpt from his discussion with the authors nominated for "Best Speculative Original:":

BIG SCARY BLOG: Talk about your process for creating a media tie-in book.

MATT FORBECK: If I’m not already familiar with the basis of the book, I immerse myself in it as best I can and become a fan of it too. As I do that, I look for story hooks, little “what about that?” or “wouldn’t that be cool?” bits. Those become the seeds of the novel. Once I have that, I write up an outline, get it approved, and dig in for real.

JEFF GRUBB: I think all media projects have a core ethos, an underlying truth about them. The original creators of the project may not know what it is, and in fact it may evolve over time. One of the goals I have when working on a media tie-in book is to dig down and find that piece, find that core ethos, and remain true to it in the story. Guild Wars 2 is very much about people coming together to fight a greater threat – that is one of Dougal Keane’s major conflicts in the book.
DAVID MACK: It’s a lot like most other writers’ processes, I imagine. Either I solicit an editor for a shot at writing for a particular license, or they approach me. Either way, if it’s a property I know well, I might already have ideas ready to pitch and develop. If it’s one that I’m curious about but don’t know intimately, I’ll dig in and immerse myself in it until I start to get a feel for its big picture, its characters and its broader storytelling arcs.

Next, I’ll try to find a story that interests me and seems to offer some new angle that neither the show nor its existing tie-in titles have explored. In some cases, such as a tie-in line that’s been running for a while, an editor might ask me to craft a story specifically to advance a part of an ongoing narrative.

Then I write a proposal, just a few pages, to see if my general idea is what the editor is looking for. Once we settle on an idea, I prepare a much longer and more detailed full outline that can be presented to the license-holder for approval. Once we get the green-light, I go to work on the manuscript.
To stay in the right mindset while working on a given franchise, I’ll try to listen to music soundtracks from it (if they’re available), and have DVDs ready for reference and quick refreshers on characters’ speech patterns, etc. Online references are also often invaluable tools, especially for a series that is still in production while one is working on it. Thank Heaven for the invention of wiki reference sites!

SEAN WILLIAMS: Well, firstly, I have to make sure I know the property sufficiently well to do it justice. With Star Wars or Doctor Who, say, that would be easy: I’ve been a fan of them for decades. Depending on the kind of project, the next step would be to get right down into the details of the story and character, since they’re the aspect of the tie-in most important to get right, at least in the early stages. This is always accomplished in collaboration with editors and other stakeholders in the project–the people who own the property, basically. I’m not just telling a story for me: in a real way I’m just channelling something for someone else. But that is a fun process, and a challenge, one I take very seriously. There are snafus sometimes, without a doubt, but whether I have one month or one year to write a tie-in, I give it the same energy and consideration I would give one of my own books. To do anything less would be to cheat everyone involved.

The entire series of interviews is well worth your time, regardless of whether you are into tie-ins. There's a lot of great insights into the craft and business of writing books shared by the authors, all of whom are experienced, hard-working pros.

Scribe Award Winners Announced

2011-07-23T00:57:00.001-07:00

The winners of the Scribe Awards, honoring excellence in media tie-in writing, were awarded Friday at a ceremony at Comic-Con in San Diego by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers Author Peter David was honored as this year's Grandmaster, and engaged in a lively discussion about his career, and tie-in writing, at the ceremony, which was hosted by Max Allan Colins and drew a packed house.
Nancy Holder won the award for best original novel in the general fiction category for Saving Grace: Tough Love. The honors for best original novel in speculative fiction went to Nathan Long for Warhammer: Bloodborn: Ulrika the Vampire. This is the second time Long has won a Scribe for his work in the Warhammer franchise.
The Wolfman by Jonathan Maberry snagged the Best Adaptation/Novelization award while Nathan Meyer won for Best Novel, Original or Adapted, in the Young Adult category with Dungeons and Dragons: Aldwyns Academy.

COMING FULL CIRCLE: HOW TO CHANGE TIE-IN CHARACTERS WHILE KEEPING THEM THE SAME

2011-06-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

I ruminate on the challenges of writing a tie-in book that has to fit seamlessly into a series that's still running on the Soap Opera 451 Blog:

The most difficult thing I, personally, found about writing a tie-in was that stories (outside of those stream of consciousness things everyone feels compelled to experiment with in college) require the protagonists to learn something, and then to grow and change as a result of it. (As a writing mentor once said, "Your story needs to be about the most interesting thing that ever happened in this character's life. If this is not the most interesting that ever happened to them, then throw away the story you're currently writing, and write about that.")

Good advice, if you're writing a stand-alone novel. But, as part of a series (not to mention part of a television series), that can be tricky...

Especially if the series you're writing about is going on even as you're composing your story.

With a tie-in, what you want to do is have your character learn something, grow and change... and still be the same person they were when the story started. I visualized the journey as a rope, of which you then tie up the loose ends. Your hero/heroine have to come full circle and end up in the same place they started, so that their adventure may be neatly slipped into the fabric of the main (more important) text - the show, without causing barely a ripple.

More, here.

Scribe Awards and Grandmaster Announced

2011-04-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

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
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.

Burn Notice: The Reformed

2011-01-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

From Tod Goldberg's blog

My second-to-last Burn Notice novel,"The Reformed", comes out today, to be followed this summer by my last Burn Notice novel, "The Bad Beat," so in honor of that, and because my ego demands that I tell you all every small, insignificant detail about my life, here's a bit of background information about the writing of the book. (If you'd like signed copies of the book -- or any of my books, for that matter -- I suggest you contact the fine people at The Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles: They'll have signed copies after this weekend. And if you live in Los Angeles, I'll be doing a booksigning this Saturday at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks at 2pm, along with my brother Lee, who'll be signing his latest Monk book.)

1. The client's name is Eduardo Santiago. He's a Cuban gangster who has been....wait for it...reformed. I don't know a lot of Cubans. But one I do know is the excellent writer Eduardo Santiago, author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss and a former student of mine. So when I started the book, I used his name as sort of a place holder for another non-Eduardo Santiago name. But then, after 300-some pages of him being Eduardo Santiago, well, he became Eduardo Santiago for good. Sorry Eduardo.

2. There's a hard-as-nails-and-other-cliches-friend of Sam's named Chris Alessio. Chris and I went to elementary and middle school together and then I didn't seem him for 25 years. When I finally did see him, I found out he was damn near a professional paintball player and wrote extensively on paintball stuff for a variety of different magazines. So when I needed information about paintball markers and needed a hard-as-nails-etc bad ass, he became Chris Alessio.

3. Julia Pistell, whose name appears in this book as a person who has had their identity stolen, went to graduate school with me and is one of the best humans alive. She happened to be visiting Wendy and me last January, when I was in the middle of the book, but didn't have a title yet. However, the fine people at Penguin needed a title and needed it right now, except that right now happened to be while Julia, Wendy and I were eating lunch at a deli in Palm Desert. So I said to Wendy and Julia, hey, anyone got a title? And Julia came up with The Reformed. (This was after The Godfather was rejected.)

4. I finished writing this book last March. I started it in December 2009. So, at that point, I'd read the scripts through the middle of season 3. I tell you this so when I get the inevitable email from someone asking me why X happened when Y happened in Season 4, I can remind them that Season 4 didn't exist when I wrote this book, even though it does now (which is why Jesse isn't in the book). Generally, as with all the books I've written in the Burn Notice series, I try to keep them evergreen so they don't work in lockstep with the seasons and can be read any time.

5. There are swear words in this book. Just to clarify my position on you being offended by swear words: Oh, go fuck yourself. This isn't a kids book. Nut the fuck up. You don't like it? Don't buy the fucking book. Really. Have a great day!

Mystery Scene is Tied In

2010-11-26T23:51:00.001-08:00

The current issue of Mystery Scene magazine (with Dennis Lehane on the cover) includes a rave review of TIED IN: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Writing and some photos of vintage tie-ins. Reviewer Jon Breen says, in part:

If this is the Golden Age of anything in the popular fiction field, it may be the tie-in novel [...]There have always been formidable writers doing tie-ins, but they have generally been dismissed, not unreasonably, as quickies tossed off for a fast buck. That image has been improved somewhat by the quality work of editor Goldberg, the late Stuart Kaminsky, Max Allan Collins, and some of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers members contributing to this volume. [...] With it's helpful how-to tips and articles, the book is primarily directed towards other writers, and established pros at that. But many fans and scholars will enjoy the inside-the-business stuff.

Breen goes on to single out chapters by David Spencer, John Cox, and Max for praise. I hope this will give a jolt to sales of the book, proceeds of which go to support the IAMTW. Lee

Tie-In Synergy

2010-11-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece on the shrewd way that Hyperion has handled publication and cross-promotion of their CASTLE tie-in novels. They said, in part:

Publisher Hyperion, which had success with similar projects connected to sister company ABC's soaps "One Life to Live" and " All My Children," decided to bypass a traditional TV tie-in and instead go with a Richard Castle-authored book after seeing the greenlit pilot. Castle's name alone appears on the books, without any nod to a real-life scribe. "The main character's a writer! How perfect is that?" says Gretchen Young, an executive editor at Hyperion and its editorial director for ABC Synergy.
[...] The show plays with fiction and reality: On it, Castle has talked about his upcoming publication commitments with his agent (yes, Hyperion will be publishing two more) and played poker with real-life mystery writers James Patterson and Stephen J. Cannell, who died in late September.
In an upcoming episode, "Heat Wave" — a novel written by a fictional television character — has been optioned by Hollywood. "It gets very meta in the show," Marlowe admits, laughing.
And in person. As part of Hyperion's release last year of "Heat Wave," Fillion appeared as Castle at two Southern California bookstores.

It's not a new idea. The MURDER SHE WROTE books are written by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain, and she was a mystery novelist, too. But the producers didn't integrate the tie-ins into the TV series as cleverly as the CASTLE folks have (or at all, if memory serves). But now that HEAT WAVE has become a bestseller, you can expect more TV tie-ins to follow their example...

tie-in writers guest blogging!

2010-09-06T20:27:00.001-07:00

During the Labor Day weekend, as Dragon*Con was taking over Atlanta and WorldCon was taking over Melbourne, I decided to run a series of guest blogs by fellow tie-in writers, give them all a chance to talk about what they do to a (hopefully) different audience.

Here's what we got:

Robert Greenberger on Superman.

Aaron Rosenberg on Eureka.

Joan Marie Verba on Thunderbirds.

Steven Paul Leiva on his original character the Fixxer.

Steven Savile on Stargate SG1.

Paul Kupperberg on Archie.

Nancy Holder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Crusade, and more.

Diana Botsford on Stargate SG1.

Dayton Ward on Star Trek: Vanguard.

Check it out!

TIED IN: "The Most Fascinating, Entertaining, and Honest Book About The Writing Life..."

2010-08-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

From author/editor/publisher Ed Gorman's blog:

I say this without a whit of exaggeration TIED-IN edited by Lee Goldberg and written by Lee and other members of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is the most fascinating, entertaining and honest book about the writing life I've ever read.

With writers such as Max Allan Collins, Tod Goldberg, Nancy Holder, Donald Bain, Greg Cox, William Rabkin and many others dealing with their experiences of converting movies, tv shows, movies and games into novels, we see the pleasures and frustrations of this particular craft. And in the process we see what life is really like for professional writers. Max Collins' piece on converting his own Road To Perdition to conform to the movie script for the tie-in; his dealings with the Dick Tracy movie were even stranger. Nancy Holder's take on visiting the set of the tv show she was novelizing shows just how brutal fourteen hour days are for everybody involved in creating the episodes. A number of writers use a page or so of script to show how it looks as prose after they've done their work--extremely helpful.

Greg Cox tells some fascinating stories about writing sequels then prequels and keeping storylines straight; and Lee does an excellent job setting the book up with his piece called Tied In: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Writing.

TIED-IN is rich with humor, lore, wisdom about the writing life and Lee Goldberg is to be commended for editing it with such verve and style.

And his brother Tod is to be commended for writing the best line in the book. Lamenting that his literary novels have not sold a great number of copies, he writes "I'd need the Jaws of Life to pull me on to the bestseller list."

James Cameron disses novelizations -- in other news, sun rises in east

2010-08-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

James Cameron provided the following gem while discussing his forthcoming Avatar novel with MTV:

I didn't want to do a cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and kind of makes s--t up. I wanted to do something that was a legitimate novel that was inside the characters' heads and didn't have the wrong culture stuff, the wrong language stuff, all that.

Yeah, heaven forfend a writer make shit up. That might be, I dunno, fiction or something!

More seriously, novelizers have to make shit up because a movie only has a long short story's worth of actual plot in it. If you're gonna get a novel-length story in there, you have to add stuff.

Whether or not that shit is true to the film generally depends on the level of cooperation the film studio provides the publisher of the novelization. As a for-instance, the producers of Darkness Falls were hugely helpful, providing me with a ton of backstory that didn't make it into the final cut of the movie. As another, the producers of Resident Evil: Extinction encouraged me to add a ton of material -- lots and lots of "making shit up" -- to bridge the gap between Apocalypse and Extinction, and also to fill in what was happening with the Jill Valentine character. As a third, Serenity had fourteen hours of televised episodes of Firefly as additional background.

And sometimes producers don't cooperate at all and the novelizers don't have a choice to make shit up. That's not hack work, that's writing and creating. But, y'know, it's just prose, so it doesn't count. It's not real writing, not like a script is.... *rolleyes*

As ever, I am amused by the fact that a writer who adds plot and characterization to an existing story in order to make a movie into a novel is dismissed by people like Cameron as hacks, while screenwriters who (ahem) hack away at a novel's story and remove huge chunks of it in order to whittle it down to a movie's length get their own Academy Award category.

This is why we formed the IAMTW, to combat this obscene prejudice against our craft. Ignorant comments like Cameron's are a good reminder of how far we have to go.

Tudors Novelization Wins Praise

2010-08-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Massie, the Scribes, TIED IN and the IAMTW all get some attention in this article in the Waynesboro News-Leader. They say, in part:

As a writer of original works, Massie's "Tudors" projects presented her with some unique challenges.

Massie, 56, was sent scripts for each episode and then wrote the season into one book at the same time it was being filmed in Ireland.

The books had to be loyal to the show, but the scripts, as they tend to be, were scant in details and description.

So Massie had to conduct historical research to bring the story alive on the page.

"The script would say something like, 'King Henry enters the room. He sits on a chair. He starts to talk,'" she said. "I had to fill in details of the way things looked, what they ate, how long did it take to get from London to Hever Castle (by horse and carriage). Things like that."

TIED IN - The Paperback

2010-08-04T18:37:00.001-07:00

For those of you without a Kindle, the trade paperback edition of TIED IN is now available here. It will soon be available on Amazon as well.

TIED IN Ties Up Rave Reviews

2010-07-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Our first reviews for TIED IN have started coming in...the first is from the Television Obscurities blog... and it's a rave. They said, in part:

TIED IN doesn’t focus solely on television tie-ins. It also covers movie novelizations, comic book tie-ins and computer game tie ins. But that actually makes it even more valuable and more interesting.

[...]my favorite essays were those that did focus on television tie-ins, especially David Spencer’s wonderful “American TV Tie-Ins from the 50s through the early 70s,” which delves into the history of television tie-in novels and examines several of the writers from those decades, including William Johnston, Keith Laumer and Michael Avallone.

TIED IN is a fascinating exploration of the media tie-in business.

Novelist James Reasoner has given TIED IN a rave. He says, in part:

For someone like me, who’s very interested in the history of popular fiction, the highlight of TIED IN is David Spencer’s “American TV Tie-ins from the 50s Through the Early 70s”, which is almost a book in itself. It’s a fascinating historical discussion of how the TV tie-in novel originated and evolved over the years and touches on many of the books I was buying and reading when they were new. This article really brought back a lot of good memories for me. Along similar lines, also of great interest to me were fine articles by Paul Kupperberg about comic book and comic strip tie-in novels (I read a bunch of those, too) and Robert Greenberger about the connection between pulp magazines and tie-ins.

TIED IN is available as an e-book right now, with a print edition coming out soon. Either way, I don’t think you can go wrong. It’s informative, entertaining, and a must-have if you have any interest in tie-in fiction. Highly recommended.

And Bill Crider also gives the book kudos. He says, in part:

I started reading, and I was fascinated. I kept right on reading, long past the time I'd intended to stop. This is really interesting and entertaining stuff.

I started with Tod Goldberg's essay on writing the Burn Notice books, moved on Jeff Mariotte's "Jack of All Trades," got really caught up in Max Allan Collins's "This Time It's Personal," kept right on going through the great round-table discussion, and read three or four more of the essays, including one that harks back to my era, David Spencer's "American TV Tie-Ins from the '50s to the Early '70s." All I can say about that one is that I'm glad I have my copies of John Tiger's I Spy novels because I'm sure a lot of people are going to be looking for them now.

I still have a few more essays to read, and I'm really looking forward to them. I was genuinely surprised at how much fun I had reading this book, and I'm sure most of you would like it, too. It's currently available in electronic format only, but a paperback is on the way. Check it out

Scribe Award Winners Announced

2010-07-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Scribe Awards/Media Tie-in Writers Panel

The International Association of Media-Tie-in Writers presented the fourth annual "Scribe" awards, honoring such notable franchises as CSI, Criminal Minds, The X-Files, Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars, and Dr. Who. Nominees on hand include Alina Adams (As the World Turns), Max Allan Collins (G.I. Joe), Keith R. A. DeCandido (Star Trek), Stacia Deutsch (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), Jeff Mariotte (CSI), Nathan Long (Warhammer), and Dayton Ward (Star Trek). The event was hosted by moderator Collins and awards presenter Lee Goldberg (Monk).

Following are the nominated works. Winners are highlighted in bold.

BEST NOVEL (GENERAL FICTION)

As The World Turns: The Man From Oakdale by "Henry Coleman" & Alina Adams
CSI: Brass In Pocket by Jeff Mariotte
Psych: A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Read by William Rabkin

BEST ORIGINAL NOVEL (SPECULATIVE FICTION)

Star Trek Vanguard: Open Secrets by Dayton Ward
Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. Decandido
Warhammer: Shamanslayer—A Gotrek and Felix Novel by Nathan Long
Terminator Salvation: Cold War by Greg Cox (Tie)Enemies & Allies by Kevin J. Anderson (Tie)

BEST ADAPTATION (GENERAL & SPECULATIVE)

Countdown by Greg Cox
GI Joe: Rise Of The Cobra by Max Allan Collins
The Tudors: Thy Will Be Done by Elizabeth Massie

BEST YOUNG ADULT (ORIGINAL & ADAPTED)

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs by Stacia Deutsch And Rhody Cohon
Bandslam: The Novel by Aaron Rosenberg
Thunderbirds: Deadly Danger by Joan Marie Verba

GRANDMASTER: WILLIAM JOHNSTON

(pictured: Keith R.A. DeCandido, William Rabkin, Alina Adams, "Elizabeth Massie," Max Allan Collins, Dayton Ward, Stacia Deutsch)

TIED IN - The Book

2010-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is pleased to announce the publication of TIED IN: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Writing, edited by Lee Goldberg.

Tie-in novels are books based on pre-existing media properties -- like TV shows, movies and games -- and they regularly top the national bestseller lists. But as popular as tie-ins books and novelizations are among readers, few people know how the books are written or the rich history behind the hugely successful and enduring genre.

This 75,000 word book is a ground-breaking collection of lively, informative, and provocative essays and interviews by some of the best-selling, and most acclaimed, writers in the tie-in business, offering an inside glimpse into what they do and how they do it.

Contributors include Alina Adams, Jeff Ayers, Donald Bain, Burl Barer, Raymond Benson, Max Allan Collins, Greg Cox, William C. Dietz, Tod Goldberg, Robert Greenberger, Nancy Holder, Paul Kupperberg, Jeff Mariotte, Elizabeth Massie, William Rabkin, Aaron Rosenberg, David Spencer, and Brandie Tarvin.

Our hope is that our organization, through efforts like this book, can enlighten readers about who we are and what we do, as well as explore the diversity of our work and the rich history behind it.

TIED IN is currently available in an e-edition on Amazon and Smashwords (and soon on the iBookstore and Barnes & Noble). A trade paperback edition will be published later next month.

Watch the Skies

2010-07-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

Coming soon... TIED IN: THE BUSINESS, HISTORY, AND CRAFT OF MEDIA TIE-IN WRITING... essays and interviews by Max Allan Collins, Nancy Holder, Raymond Benson, Elizabeth Massie, Donald Bain, Alina Adams, Tod Goldberg, and Greg Cox, to name a few.

Reader Mail

2010-07-13T21:06:00.001-07:00

This email came to Lee Goldberg's agent, who forwarded it to him:

"Could you tell me the name of the Dalmatian and her owner shown on the cover of the Lee Goldberg book Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out?"

The Giveaway: Behind The Music

2010-07-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

(From Tod Goldberg's blog)

My third Burn Notice book, The Giveaway, comes out today, so in honor of that, here are a few behind-the-scenes details:

1. Most of the characters in the book are named for real human beings. The client, Bruce Grossman, is one of the fine critics at Bookgasm.com, and as a thank you for him sending me a really great bootleg of a Replacements concert, he is now forever immortalized as an old bank robber with mommy issues. Likewise, one of Sam's buddies is a man named Rod Lott, which happens to be the name of the editor of Bookgasm.com. Rod's a great lover and champion of crime fiction, so I thought making him a strange friend of Sam's was only the right thing to do. Brenna Fender, yet another friend of Sam's, won a contest on the Burn Notice message board on the USA network site and now, well, now she's a bad ass.

2. This is the first book in the series that has the client's POV, for a little while at least. And thus far it's the only one, but who knows since I'm only 20 pages into the 5th book now. I've been tinkering more and more lately with how to do the other parts of the book that aren't in Michael's pov, so that the books have a bit more depth. So in this one you get Michael's pov, Fiona's, Sam's and the client's. Oh, and the car talks, too.

3. I finished this book in the summer of 2009, so if you're curious where my Burn Notice mindset was, I'd read the scripts up through the end of the second season and the first couple of episodes of season 3. As usual, however, I haven't attempted to integrate the burn notice management angle all that much, simply because by the time the book comes out -- i.e. today -- that part of the story has changed dramatically. I try to drop in small bits when I can so that readers who've seen all the episodes and read all the books will get some sense of continuity, but hopefully you can pick this book up if you've only seen last week's episode (whenever last week might be) and not be lost or confused.

4. A tiny plot point from this book became the genesis of my 4th Burn Notice book, called The Reformed, which is due out in January. Which was a good thing, because I had no fucking idea what I was going to write about next.

5. The plot for this book came to me one night while watching a documentary about the origin of biker gangs. I already knew that I wanted to write about a bank robber who robbed safe deposit boxes, but didn't know quite where that would lead me other than that I wanted him to rob a biker gang. Matt Nix suggested that he hit their stash house and it all came together.

My Semi-Annual "Swearing Is Bad But Killing People Is Fine!" Email Exchange With A Burn Notice Fan

2010-07-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

(From Tod Goldberg's blog)
As the title of this post suggests, I tend to get at least one email every time a new Burn Notice book comes out regarding the use of swear words in my Burn Notice books. Now, mind you, it's not as if I have Michael Westen calling everyone he meets a dirty cunt or a dripping cum slut or anything like that. In my current book, the word fuck is used five times, all in dialog. The word shit is used 10 times, also all in dialog. Keep that in mind as you read the following exchange:

I very much wanted to enjoy your latest book, The Giveaway, but all of the swear words were really objectionable to me. Why did you feel like you needed to use the f-word and the s-word? They never say those words on the show and it doesn't add anything to the realism for you to have them saying it in your books, plus it turns a lot of people off. I won't be reading your Burn Notice books if you continue to have swear words in them.

Normally, I try not to respond to emails like this unless it is late at night and I've had a bad time writing, because if I do it in the daylight hours, it feels like a waste of my nominal creative talents. But, well, I had to ask this person a very important question:

I understand that you might find swearing offensive, but you do realize that, say, a member of a biker gang might have somewhat salty language? (Never mind a former spy, a former Navy SEAL and a gun runner.) But I have to know: Did you find it offensive that Fiona essentially paralyzed a guy in the book by beating him with a bat? Did you find it offensive when all those bikers were murdered? How about when one of the characters was found dead in his bathtub covered in acid? I guess what I'm asking is: You find the word fuck more offensive than wholesale violence and murder? So will you continue to read my books if I keep up the same level of death and destruction provided no one says the word shit? Is a word somehow worse than a dead human being? How about the fact that Michael and Fiona have pre-marital sex? What's the worse sin here?

The reply came this morning:

The death and murder are for entertainment purposes only. It's not real. So it's not the same thing. Everything that happens on the show is fake so it's not the same effect as reading those words. That's why it's worse to have swearing. Reading those words and hearing them in my own head is not pleasurable for me.

To which I replied:

You're aware the books are fake, too, right? And only for entertainment purposes, too. So basically what you're telling me is that if you hear swearing on television or in a movie, and presumably if you witness murders, it's okay because it's not in your voice in your head? That's fucking crazy.

...and I've surprisingly not received a response yet.

A Novel Promotion for Tie-Ins

2010-07-13T20:59:00.001-07:00

Penguin-Putnam, has found an unusual way of promoting their tie-ins...

Congrats to Penguin TV Tie-In Emmy Nominations!
We wanted to congratulate all the nominees for the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards!
Here are the list of nominees from Penguin TV tie-ins:

The Pacific
Outstanding Art Direction For A Miniseries Or Movie
Outstanding Casting For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries Or Movie (Part 5 and 9)
Outstanding Costumes For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special (Part 3)
Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special (Part 8 and 9)
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Miniseries Or A Movie (Part 5, 9, 8)
Outstanding Main Title Design
Outstanding Makeup For A Miniseries Or A Movie (Non-Prosthetic)
Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup For A Series, Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Outstanding Music Composition For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special (Original Dramatic Score)
Outstanding Miniseries
Outstanding Sound Editing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special (Part 5)
Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Miniseries Or A Movie (Part 2, 5, 8, and 9)
Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special (Part 1 and 5)
Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special (Part 8 and 10)
True Blood
Outstanding Art Direction For A Single-Camera Series
Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series
Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup For A Series, Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Outstanding Drama Series
Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series
Monk
Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics
Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series
Burn Notice
Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series
Psych
Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Original Dramatic Score)

Return to Cranford
Outstanding Art Direction For A Miniseries Or Movie

Kudos to Penguin for a) taking pride in their tie-ins and b) trying to get some extra attention for them.

Some of the Greats

2010-05-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

One of the real delights of writing tie-in fiction is being able to add one's own little touches to the overall quilt of stories that exist about beloved fictional characters. During my career, I've been invited to write about a wide spectrum of the characters I grew up loving, including Spider-Man, Superman (and other DC Comics characters--Jonah Hex fans, take note, if you like the Jonah Hex movie, Jonah has only ever appeared in one novel, my DC Universe: Trail of Time), Conan, and more.

Recently I've received copies of two anthologies that contain stories I wrote about a pair of the characters who have been in my favorites list even longer than those mentioned above. Those books, both published by Moonstone Books, are The Phantom Chronicles, Volume 2, and Tales of Zorro.

The Phantom is, of course, also known as The Ghost Who Walks. He was created by Lee Falk (who also created Mandrake the Magician) in 1936 as a comic strip character, and he has appeared in numerous novels, comics, movies, and TV shows. The Phantom comic strip still runs today, albeit with a different creative team. He was the first character to wear the skintight suit and pupil-less mask so common in superhero comics. When I was a boy, I clipped the strips from the newspaper and pasted them into scrapbooks so I could read his adventures as one long story instead of in daily increments.

The Phantom Chronicles, Volume 2, was just released by Moonstone Books in trade paperback and hardcover editions. Other contributors in the book include Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Robin Wayne Bailey, and many more. My story, a traditional hardboiled tale set in postwar San Francisco featuring PI Phil Cleveland, is called "The Leopard's Eye."

Zorro is Johnston McCulley's great champion of human rights in early California. The masked, cloaked figure of justice is one of literature's truly brilliant creations, one of the inspirations from which Bob Kane created Batman, and being asked to write a story about him (and, in the process, getting to meet Guy Williams, Jr., son of the Disney TV Zorro [the only real filmed Zorro, in my opinion] and to handle one of his father's screen swords]) is a double honor I'll never forget.

The book came out last year in trade paperback, and it includes stories by luminaries such as Elizabeth Massie, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, Peter David, Nancy Holder, Greg Cox, and more, along with an introduction by Williams and a foreword by Isabel Allende.

Although Tales of Zorro came out last year, I just got my hands on the limited edition,and it's a beautiful piece of work. In addition to being signed by all the above, except Allende (but including interior artist Ruben Procopio [who, incidentally, is a fine sculptor--I have his Mighty Mouse maquette standing in a place of honor here at the ranch], trade paperback cover artist Douglas Klauba, editor Richard Dean Starr and publisher Joe Gentile), it's numbered and held in a gold-stamped slipcase. It's the first anthology of Zorro short fiction ever published, and contains many fine stories. There's also a super-limited lettered edition, that comes with a lithograph signed by the contributors and an original sketch by Ruben Procopio, making each copy truly a one-of-a-kind item. Either one would be an asset to any book collector's library. My story, which leads off the collection, is "Mission Gold."

Moonstone Books manages to scoop up some of the most outstanding characters anywhere, including Buckaroo Banzai, Kolchak, the Green Hornet, Doc Savage, Honey West, Johnny Dollar, and many more.

Getting to write about characters like The Phantom and Zorro is a true pleasure, and one of the best arguments I can think of for being a tie-in writer in the first place. Thanks to Moonstone for making it possible, and to the late Falk and McCulley for creating these characters in the first place!

Jessica Fletcher Storms Nashville

2010-04-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

IAMTW members Donald & Renee Bain took Nashville by storm with their new MURDER SHE WROTE book "Nashville Noir." Here they on a local Nashville newscast:

http://www.wsmv.com/video/23105083/

2010 Scribe Award Finalists Announced

2010-03-17T20:15:00.001-07:00

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is pleased to announce the finalists for the fourth annual Scribe Awards, which honors excellence in the field of media tie-in writing for books published in 2009. The winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held at Comic-Con International July 22-25 in San Diego.

2010 SCRIBE AWARD FINALISTS

BEST NOVEL (GENERAL FICTION)

AS THE WORLD TURNS: THE MAN FROM OAKDALE by "Henry Coleman" & Alina Adams
CSI: BRASS IN POCKET by Jeff Mariotte

PSYCH: A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO READ by William Rabkin

BEST NOVEL (SPECULATIVE FICTION)

STAR TREK VANGUARD: OPEN SECRETS by Dayton Ward

STAR TREK: A SINGULAR DESTINY by Keith R.A. DeCandido

WARHAMMER: SHAMANSLAYER—A GOTREK AND FELIX NOVEL by Nathan Long

TERMINATOR SALVATION: COLD WAR by Greg Cox

ENEMIES & ALLIES by Kevin J. Anderson

BEST ADAPTATION (GENERAL & SPECULATIVE)

COUNTDOWN by Greg Cox

GI JOE: RISE OF THE COBRA by Max Allan Collins

THE TUDORS: THY WILL BE DONE by Elizabeth Massie

BEST YOUNG ADULT (ORIGINAL & ADAPTED)

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon

BANDSLAM: THE NOVEL by Aaron Rosenberg

THUNDERBIRDS: DEADLY DANGER by Joan Marie Verba

GRANDMASTER: WILLIAM JOHNSTON

Unreality SF Story of the Year winner!

2010-03-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Una McCormack, whose Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel The Never-Ending Sacrifice, won Unreality SF's Story of the Year competition!

Unreality SF Story of the Year finalists announced

2010-03-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

Unreality SF has revealed the finalists for their Story of the Year poll. The award is for TV tie-ins of any kind, and the list includes novels, audios, comic books, and nonfiction.

Here's the full list of nominees:

Being Human: The Road

Farscape: D'Argo's Lament

Doctor Who: The Angel of Scutari

Doctor Who: The Final Chapter

Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Daleks

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Never-Ending Sacrifice

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Losing the Peace

Star Trek: Vanguard: Precipice

Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon

Torchwood: In the Shadows

Voting is open until the end of this week: Sunday 14 March. So go vote!

IAMTW’s GRAND MASTER SCRIBE AWARD, THE FAUST, GOES TO THE GENRE’S MOST PROLIFIC PRACTITIONER, WILLIAM JOHNSTON

2010-01-04T01:15:00.000-08:00

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is bestowing The Faust, its Grand Master Award for excellence, to author William Johnston, the writer of over a hundred tie-in novels and the most prolific practitioner of the craft, it was announced today by organization co-founders Max Allan Collins and Lee Goldberg.

Johnston was born in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1924. He joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the Pacific. He worked as a disc jockey, advertising executive, magazine editor, and PR man before his writing career took off in 1960 with The Marriage Cage, a comic mystery that earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that book with a slew of pulp titles for Monarch Books, ranging from light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor Starrtrilogy) to soft-core erotica (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing).

Johnston’s medical novels dovetailed with his first tie-in assignments -- original novels based on the TV series The Nurses, Doctor Kildare and Ben Casey. Those books, published between 1962 and 1964, were so successful that his next original medical romance, Two Loves Has Nurse Powell, was presented as “From the author of Ben Casey.”

In 1965, Johnston wrote an original novel based on the TV comedy Get Smart. The book was a huge success, leading to nine more novels over the show’s five-season history and making him to “go-to” guy for sitcom-based tie-ins. He wrote books based on Captain Nice, Room 222, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Monkees and F-Troop, among others.

But his TV tie-in work extended far beyond sitcom adaptations. He wrote books based on Ironside, Dick Tracy, The Young Rebels, The Iron Horse,Then Came Bronson, and Rod Serling’s The New People, to name a few. He even adapted the cartoon characters Magilla Gorilla and Snagglepuss into books for children.

Johnston also penned many novelizations, including the pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon and the high school drama Sons and Daughters. His feature film novelizations include Klute, The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, The New Interns, The Priest’s Wife, Lt. Robin Crusoe USN and his final tie-in project, Gore Vidal’s Caligula (under the pseudonym “William Howard”).

After retiring from fiction writing, he opened his own bar, which he operated for many years. He currently resides in San Jose, California.

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (www.iamtw.org) is dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of tie-in writers, educating people about the craft and business of tie-in writing, and to providing a forum for tie-in writers to share information, support one another, and discuss issues relating to their field.

The Faust, the IAMTW’s Grandmaster Award, is named in honor of Frederick Faust (also known as Max Brand) and is given annually. The award recognizes a writer for their extensive and exceptional work in the tie-in field. Past honorees have been Donald Bain, Alan Dean Foster, and Keith R.A. DeCandido.

Novelist Talks Her Trial by PURIFYING FIRE

2009-11-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

Novelist Laura Resnick talks on the Novelists Inc blog about writing her first tie-in, THE PURIFYING FIRE, an original novel based the game MAGIC: THE GATHERING.

The creative team at Wizards of the Coast, which owns Magic, had created an excellent Writers Guide, as a private working document for novelists, which was immensely helpful to me. They also gave me numerous links to specific pages on their vast website, thus whittling down the overwhelming sea of available information to just the stuff I really needed. The game’s creative team met with me by conference call to discuss the game, the setting, and its characteristics with me, and to answer my questions. My editor was readily available with information, answers, and feedback whenever I needed it. And the editorial team, in charge of the whole series of books that create an overall story arc for these characters and this world, gave me notes about where they’d like the story to start, a few things they’d like to see happen, and where they’d like the story to end.

She elaborated on the experience in another post:

And although I’d never before had to write a novel about something I was so totally ignorant of (i.e. the Multiverse of Magic: the Gathering) I had recently finished a year of graduate school, where you spend most of your time writing authoritative research papers about subjects that were totally unfamiliar to you only a few weeks earlier. So getting up to speed fast on a subject, and figuring out just how much background material you need to learn and command, and avoiding certain pitfalls that appear when you haven’t had time to learn a subject like the palm of your hand… these were all habits I had developed in academia and now applied to my gaming tie-in novel (since, among other things, the deadline was also much tighter than what I’m used to).

It's an interesting perspective from a "newbie" to the world of tie-ins.

Sprinting the Marathon

2009-11-12T18:58:00.000-08:00

IAMTW Member Karen Traviss wrote this article about writing STAR WARS tie-ins back in March 2006 for the Emerald City website...but her insights are as relevant today as tey were three years ago. Here's an excerpt:

From the writer’s point of view, media tie-in fiction is harder and actually requires more original thought and creative effort than creator-copyright — provided you treat it and the readership with the respect both deserve.

The only people who believe it isn’t harder and requires less creativity are those who haven’t actually done it, or perhaps those who think they can coast on tie-ins and just phone it in. But readers can spot lack of effort a mile away in thick fog, believe me, and they’ll never let the writer forget it.

The craft involved is more difficult. Having a foot in both camps, I can tell you that it’s very easy to create your own characters and story arcs; the only holes you find yourself in are those of your own making, and if you need to kill off a major character or blow up the universe to fix them, you can do it.

It's a terrific article. Be sure to check it out.

The Rigors of Tie-in Writing

2009-11-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

Over at Jeff Vandermeer's blog, authors Dan Abnett and Mark Charan Newton discuss the challenges of writing tie-ins vs non-franchise fiction. Here's an excerpt:

Mark Charan Newton: You see it frequently these days – a literary fiction star such as Jonathan Lethem wanting to write a comic strip for Omega the Unknown, or Jodi Piccoult writing a Wonder Woman series. There’s a sense of reverence and pedigree involved. It has cool factor. But those authors are writing for a franchise that is not creator-owned. It’s not their world; the characters are often not their own. But let’s go the other way. For an author to write tie-in fiction – that is, fiction connected to a franchise or character, that isn’t technically owned by the author – it is still treated as a gaucherie by the majority of genre fans. The books suffer by not getting proper review coverage, and sometimes they are not even considered as ‘real’ works. Why do you think tie-in fiction is treated as the second-class citizen of the genre world?

[...]Dan Abnett: There are any number of contributing factors, and many of them are inevitably contradictory. Let’s start with a basic assumption: if you write as a hired gun, you must be in it for the dosh. You don’t really care what you’re writing. Therefore (obviously), you’re just crapping it out, words per square inch. In other words, tie-in fiction MUST by the very nature of its manufacture, be poor, disposable and second-rate.

It’s possible that an awful lot of people think this. They may not even mean to think it. There’s also a possibility (actually, a very high probability) that an awful lot of people in what I’m happy to refer to as “my line of work” believe that’s what other people think.

I think it’s worth getting this out of the way right at the start: writers of tie-in fiction may, sometimes, involuntarily, feel slightly guilty. They may be, involuntarily defensive. They know what the perception can be, and it contaminates them slightly. Tie-in writers can be their own worst enemies.

[...]Mark: It’s interesting you mention the money as a perceived incentive, and you’re quite right. But I suppose without naming names, there have been writers who have been strapped for cash and wanted to do tie-in fiction because they thought it was easy money. Hang around at a convention bar and you’ll hear those stories. So, as an aside – you’ve written both original fiction and tie-in fiction, so which do you find is easier?

Dan: I actually think it’s harder to write for franchises in many ways, as you’re constantly checking (or you damn well should be!) that you’re remaining true to the source, in terms of detail, fluff, character and style. It’s quite demanding to be so engaged, so ‘on’, permanently policing your actions within the boundaries of someone else’s property. In your own work, you only have to check with yourself about where the edges are. This labour is OF COURSE counter-balanced by the creative efforts involved in original invention – let me just say that before anyone has an indignant spasm.

The Winner is Me

2009-08-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from James Swallow's blog)

My Scribe Award (mentioned downblog) arrived in the post, and it is shiny, in all senses of the word. The pointy ends mean it could double as an improvised weapon, should the need arise. As promised, here is a picture of the gong itself, in pride of place.

That, and a day at pub spent with my mates nerding out has brought a busy-but-fruitful week to a relaxing close. I also got a late birthday gift from m'colleague Peter J. Evans, this extremely detailed foot-tall diorama of Indiana Jones fleeing a giant stone ball. Along with a box of next month's Black Library book releases and an advance copy of IL-2 Sturmovik for the XBox 360... It's been a good week for swag, too.

Earlier, I joined fellow scribes Scott Andrews and James Moran to discuss an upcoming project which I hope to be talking about in the next few weeks, and then later it was off to Brighton to visit Black Rock Studios to discuss some gaming related things (which I'm also NDAed into non-discussion thereof). While I was there I got the opportunity to chat briefly to Randy Nelson, one of Pixar's top guys, who was visiting on a workshop tour. It was interesting to hear Randy talk about how Pixar put together story for their movies; like I always say, it never hurts to listen to someone who makes more money doing your job than you do...

End of One Era, Start of Another

2009-08-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Bestselling author Karen Traviss talks on her blog about her difficult decision to make IMPERIAL COMMANDO #2 her last STAR WARS novel...and about the unique challenges tie-in writers face. Here's an excerpt:

Tie-in work is, by its very nature, subject to a lot more unexpected change than other writing - it's someone else's copyright, and the writer has to live with that. It goes with the territory. That's why professional tie-in writers don't get emotionally attached to what they're working on. It's not that I take the task casually; but it's not my property, and the stewardship of it is always temporary. A pro has to be able to shrug, move on, and say: "Okay, nobody died, and the cheque didn't bounce - result! Next?"
But as a writer, I have a moral deal with you, the reader - if I hook you with a story, my part of the deal is to follow through and give you a satisfying outcome. If changes beyond my control mean I can't give you that, then I won't do a half a job. You deserve better than that.

Scribe Award Winners Announced

2009-07-28T19:15:00.001-07:00

The 2009 Scribe Awards were handed out a ceremony and panel at Comic Con in San Diego on Friday. Participants included James Rollins, Max Allan Collins, Tod Goldberg, Matt Forbeck and Keith R.A. DeCandido, who was honored as this year's Grandmaster for excellence in the field. The winning books are marked with asterisks.

GENERAL FICTION
BEST NOVEL—ORIGINAL

**CSI: HEADHUNTER by Greg Cox

BURN NOTICE: THE FIX by Tod Goldberg

CRIMINAL MINDS: FINISHING SCHOOL by Max Allan Collins

BEST NOVEL—ADAPTED

**INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL by James Rollins

DEATH DEFYING ACTS by Greg Cox
THE TUDORS: KING TAKES QUEEN by Elizabeth Massie
THE WACKNESS by Dale C. Phillips
THE X FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE by Max Allan Collins

SPECULATIVE FICTION

BEST NOVEL—ORIGINAL

**STAR TREK TEROK NOR: DAY OF THE VIPERS by James Swallow

GHOST WHISPERER: REVENGE by Doranna Durgin
RAVENLOFT: THE COVENANT, HEAVEN'S BONES by Samantha Henderson

STARGATE SG-1: HYDRA by Holly Scott20& Jaime Duncan

BEST NOVEL—ADAPTED

**HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY by Bob Greenberger
THE MUTANT CHRONICLES by Matt Forbeck
STAR WARS—THE CLONE WARS: WILD SPACE by Karen Miller
UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS by Greg Cox

YOUNG ADULT—ALL GENRES

BEST NOVEL—ORIGINAL

**PRIMEVAL: SHADOW OF THE JAGUAR by Steven Savile
DR. WHO: THE EYELESS by Lance Parkin
DISNEY CLUB PENGUIN: STOWAWAY! ADVENTURES AT SEA by Tracey West

BEST NOVEL—ADAPTED

**JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3D by Tracey West
IRON MAN: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Stephen D. Sullivan
THE DARK KNIGHT: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon

THE GRANDMASTER AWARD

KEITH R.A. DeCANDIDO

Scribe Awards Ceremony Announced

2009-06-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

Third annual presentation of the International Association of Media-Tie-in Writers (IAMTW) "Scribe" Awards, honoring excellence in tie-in writing in such notable franchises as CSI, Criminal Minds, The X-Files, Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars and Dr. Who, will be held on FRIDAY JULY 24 3-4:30 pm at Comic-Con in San Diego in Room 4. The ceremony will be followed by a panel discussion with the nominees, including James Rollins (Indiana Jones), Matt Forbeck (Mutant Chronicles), Bob Greenberger (Hellboy), Keith R. A. DeCandido (Farscape), Stacia Deutsch (Dark Knight), Nathan Long (Warhammer), Tod Goldberg (Burn Notice). With moderators Lee Goldberg (Monk) and Max Allan Collins (GI JOE).

Tied-In

2009-06-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted from Lee Goldberg's blog)

Today at the California Crime Writer's Conference several writers sheepishly asked me "so, how do you get into this tie-in business?" as if they were asking me how to get into writing porn movies. Now that the book biz is tightening up, and mid-list writers are being dropped all over the place, tie-ins are beginning to look good to some authors who never would have considered them before.

The same thing happened to me during the WGA writer's strike...writer who once gave me a hard time about doing the MONK & DIAGNOSIS MURDER books while I was also writing & producing TV shows would say to me that they were "interested maybe trying that tie-in thing, you know, just for fun." Not because they needed a job, of course, but "just for fun." Uh-huh.

For some reason, when times are hard for writers, tie-ins get a lot more respect. I don't know why...for that matter, I don't understand why writers regard them with disdain when times are good. But that's one of the reasons Max Allan Collins and I formed the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers a few years ago...to educated people about tie-ins and to gain more respect for the genre. Slowly but surely, the organization is making a difference.

Speaking of which, there's an Q&A interview with me over at Talking With Tim about the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and tie-in writing. Here's a taste:

the reason more creators don’t try to keep their TV series alive in print after cancellation is because publishers simply aren’t interested, which is no surprise if you think about it. The incentive for publishers to do tie-ins is to capitalize on the huge audience that a hit show draws and the enormous publicity that surrounds it. It also offers a level of confidence in what ordinarily would be a gamble. The book is, in essence, a pre-sold concept with a built-in audience and supported by millions of dollars worth of FREE promotion. The TV show itself, as well as the advertising and promotion that the network does, becomes free publicity for the books. Success, wide recognition, a strong concept and major promotion are what makes a publisher interested in tie-ins.

But once a show is cancelled, the incentive to do tie-in books instantly evaporates...

Behind the Music of BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME

2009-05-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

(Reposted from Tod Goldberg's blog)

It's hard for me to believe this, but my first tour of duty on Burn Notice is just about over -- pending, of course, a new contract -- as today is the official release date of my second Burn Notice novel, The End Game. I am about 30 days from being done with my third Burn Notice novel, called The Giveaway and that will then be 18 months, 3 books and 180,000 words. The publisher hasn't told me if there will be more, though I understand the first one has done well and the fans seem to like it and it was critically well received, which is always nice. Writing these books is certainly a different kind of experience for me -- I write them very, very quickly. More quickly than I'd like, really, but the turn-around time on them is such that I really only have about three months to write each one and have a normal life in-between. And by normal life, I of course mean a normal writing life, which in this case means that while I wrote those three books these last 18 months, I also completed a new short story collection -- Other Resort Cities -- which will be out in October and which I am exceptionally excited about as well, wrote dozens of book reviews and essays and articles and also have a day job directing an MFA program in creative writing. So it's been a challenge to write quickly and lucidly while keeping the voice of Michael Westen in my head all the while.

So, The End Game. Here's a little Behind the Music on it:

I knew I wanted to do something somewhat sports related and so Wendy and I hatched the basic plot one evening over pizza. I had the plot of the novel written on scraps of receipts and such and when I presented it to Matt, he liked it but also suggested I talk to Rashad Raisani, a staff writer on the show, who had a similar idea that was just too expensive to shoot. That week I came into the BN production offices for a couple of days while they broke the episodes of the second season so that I could get the flavor for the changes the show was going to take, as well as get an idea where the show was going in season three, too, since obviously my books are written not at the precise same time that the show is written. (For instance, I've been getting the scripts for the 3rd season over the course of the last month or so, but by the time I turn in The Giveaway, I'll probably have only seen the first 9 episodes on paper.) Rashad kindly gave me the notes he'd written up about these very cool yacht races and I incorporated some of that research into the book, plus I picked his brain on a few ideas I had on the caper itself, since that had been one of the things he was still trying to work on when they ditched the idea. So it was very cool to have someone who basically was on the same wave-length with me before I actually started the writing. I then spent three months writing the book...and then I wasn't happy and added a new chapter from Fiona's pov when the copyedits came in, which probably didn't thrill my publisher, but it felt like something was missing. I've been tinkering a lot with adding different povs into the books -- Sam's, Fiona's, and in this new book I'm writing, you get the client's pov for a chapter, too -- because that's the one thing I'm really able to do that you can't get on the show. Plus, it's fun for me as a writer. Writing in the same voice in back to back books, as I did essentially with The Fix and The End Game, which were written with very little break in between, can be boring, frankly, so in order to stay inspired and excited about a project, writers trick themselves on their down days, they add new POVs, they blow up a boat, they kick someone in the head, they bring in a new character, whatever.

As in The Fix, there are a couple of inside jokes for folks in the know. A villain is named for two friends of mine, one of whom is a big time famous author. A mutual friend of mine and Matt Nix's shows up briefly, by full legal name at least, The husband of a well-known romance-author-friend of Wendy's appears as a former NSA agent. Two other friends end up as one very odd therapist (the same two friends also ended up in The Fix as an odd character named James Dimon...but now I've used all of their combined names, so they won't be in the next book...I guess I better make some more friends...) and several sentences begin "when you're spy" because, dammit, that's what the people want and I am a people pleaser.

(Though, despite that, I'm not going out on the road to please the people for this book as it unfortunately is being released right when the new book is due. But fear not people, as I'll be touring the world in the fall for Other Resort Cities and will happily sign all the Burn Notice books you'd like. But if you really want a signed copy of The End Game, I suggest you contact the wonderful people at eitherMysterious Galaxy or the Mystery Bookstore, both of whom have a bunch of signed stock. )

Star Trek Screenwriters Pick Their Favorite Tie-Ins

2009-05-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

The LA Times asked Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, screenwriters of the new STAR TREK movie, to pick their favorite TREK tie-in novels. Their choices were:

"Best Destiny" by Diane Carey (Pocket Books, 1993). "A beautiful imagining of Kirk's childhood and how it shaped him to love the stars."

"Spock's World" by Diane Duane (Pocket Books, 1988). "If Mr. Spock is your favorite character, this is amust read. The relationship he forges with Dr. McCoy finally gets the nuanced treatment it deserves."

"Prime Directive" by Judith and Garfield Reeves Stevens (Pocket Books, 1990). "One of the best incarnations of the original bridge crew, with every character given equal consideration and full development, against the backdrop of a real-deal science fiction story."

"Ex Machina" by Christopher L. Bennett (Pocket Books, 2004) "A great example of how a 'Trek' novel can fit within 'canon' while existing between the movies we love."

Tying-in at LA Times Festival of Books

2009-04-26T20:06:00.001-07:00

IAMTW Members Tod Goldberg (BURN NOTICE), William Rabkin (PSYCH) and Lee Goldberg (MONK) signed their books at the Mystery Bookstore booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. BURN NOTICE creator Matt Nix (pictured below with Tod Goldberg) made a surprise visit and signed some books for delighted fans.

The End Game Has Got Game

2009-04-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

IAMTW Member Tod Goldberg's BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME got a rave from Rod Lott at Bookgasm, who says, in part:

It is fun, capturing the show’s joyous, jubilant essence, but not, sadly, shots of well-endowed women in bikinis. [...]The book is quick, snappy and forever mirthful — just like its source material. And until that starts back up in the summer, this is a fine substitute for a weekly fix.

Appreciating Garforth's Avengers

2009-04-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Novelist & TV writer Stephen Gallagher (perhaps best known here for creating THE ELEVENTH HOUR) stumbed on tie-in writer John Garforth's blog:

Garforth wrote four Avengers novels for Panther Books in 1967. Two years earlier Hodder and Stoughton had put outDeadline and Dead Duck, two rather classy tie-ins written by Peter Leslie but with Patrick Macnee credited as their author... which seemed as transparent and ludicrous to my eleven-year-old self as it does now.

Both had their virtues. Leslie's books read like a literary source from which the show might have been adapted; Garforth's Panthers were shorter, racier, and had a more contemporary feel to them. All were true tie-ins as opposed to novelisations; which is to say, they were original works based on the series' characters, and not pre-existing scripts adapted into prose form.

Check out Stephen's appreciation and, of course, Garforth's blog.

On An Award Tour With a Mic in my Hand

2009-04-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

(reposted from Tod Goldberg's blog)

I keep forgetting to mention that I'm a finalist for (which means I'll lose) a Scribe Award for my first Burn Notice book, The Fix. The IAMTW gives these awards in recognition of excellence in writing tie-ins and such, which means, essentially, I am excellent. Or I am a finalist to be excellent. Typically, I lose these kinds of awards (there was the LA Times Book Prize, the SCBA Award, the 57,000 Pushcart Prize nominations that have garnered me 2 Special Mentions etc. etc. etc.), though I did win the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, which was awesome, and I once won a free dinner at Quiznos at a raffle, so, yeah, close, but not excellent.

At any rate, the awards are given out in July at Comic-Con, which means I now have a reason to bust out my V uniform and full regalia, so that's cool, and I'd like to fucking win for once, okay? In case I don't, however, the good people at Las Vegas CityLife, where I'm a book critic,interviewed me on the topic on their blog today:

JK: Burn Notice is a great property, but what other TV shows, films and games are you itching to tackle?
TG: None. I wasn’t itching to tackle Burn Notice, but the show runner, Matt Nix,[and I] have known each other for a long time, I love the show and when it was offered to me it sounded like a ton of fun, which it has been. So I don’t see me writing any others, candidly, so don’t go running to the bookstore to read my take on, you know, My Two Dads: The Novel.

Scribe Award Nominees Announced

2009-03-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is pleased to announce this year's nominees for the 2009 Scribe Awards, which honor excellence in licensed tie-in writing—novels based on TV shows, movies, and games. The nominees for this year's awards are:

Best General Fiction Original

BURN NOTICE: THE FIX by Tod Goldberg
CRIMINAL MINDS: FINISHING SCHOOL by Max Allan Collins
CSI: HEADHUNTER by Greg Cox

Best General Fiction Adapted

DEATH DEFYING ACTS by Greg Cox
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL by James Rollins
THE TUDORS: KING TAKES QUEEN by Elizabeth Massie
THE WACKNESS by Dale C. Phillips
X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE by Max Allan Collins

Best Speculative Fiction Original

GHOST WHISPERER: REVENGE by Doranna Durgin
RAVENLOFT: THE COVENANT, HEAVEN'S BONES by Samantha Henderson
STARGATE SG-1: HYDRA by Holly Scott & Jamie Duncan
STAR TREK: TEROK NOR, DAY OF THE VIPERS by James Swallow

Best Speculative Fiction Adapted

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY by Bob Greenberger
THE MUTANT CHRONICLES by Matt Forbeck
STAR WARS - THE CLONE WARS: WILD SPACE by Karen Miller
UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS by Greg Cox

Best Young Adult Original

DR. WHO: THE EYELESS by Lance Parkin
PRIMEVAL: SHADOW OF THE JAGUAR by Steven Savile
DISNEY CLUB PENGUIN: STOWAWAY! ADVENTURES AT SEA by Tracey West

Best Young Adult Adapted

IRON MAN: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Stephen D. Sullivan
THE DARK KNIGHT: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohen
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3D by Tracey West

The highest honor the IAMTW can bestow is the Grandmaster Award, which recognizes a writer for his or her extensive and exceptional work in the tie-in field. This year's honoree is KEITH R.A. DeCANDIDO. He has written over thirty novels, most of them original tie-ins or novelizations. His work includes many Star Trek novels, as well as original books in the CSI: NY and Supernatural tie-in series, to name just a few.

The Third Annual Scribes will be awarded at a special ceremony at Comic-Con in San Diego July 23-29. (Specific date and time to be announced)

The IAMTW also awards two Special Gaming Scribes, honoring excellence in game-related tie-ins. Those awards are given at GenCon in Indianapolis August 13-16 2009 (http://www.gencon.com/2009/indy/default.aspx. Specific date and time of the ceremony to be announced) The nominees are:

Special Gaming Scribe - Best Original

EBERRON: THE INQUISITIVES, THE DARKWOOD MASK by Jeff LaSala
DRAGONLANCE: DEATH MARCH by Jean Rabe
EBERRON: THE DOOM OF KINGS by Don Bassingthwaite
WARHAMMER: ELFSLAYER by Nathan Long

Special Gaming Scribe - Best Adapted

THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT: BEYOND THE DARK PORTAL by Aaron Rosenberg & Christie Golden
THE MUTANT CHRONICLES by Matt Forbeck
METAL GEAR SOLID by Raymond Benson

For more information about the IAMTW (I AM a Tie-in Writer), please visit our site at www.iamtw.org

Congratulations to all the nominees and special thanks to all of our judges for their hard work.

(Pictured: Keith R.A. DeCandido)

Story of the Year

2009-03-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Unreality SF is a British web site dedicated to tie-in fiction of all sorts. In honor of their first anniversary, they held open voting to determine the "Story of the Year." After the nominating process, they listed the top ten vote-getters, and held another open vote to determine the winner. The nominees included novels and audio dramas, plus a short story, most in the realm of Star Trek and Doctor Who (the exception was a 4400 novel).

Yesterday, they announced the winner and full rankings:

1. Star Trek: Destiny: Gods of Night by David Mack
2. Doctor Who: The Eyeless by Lance Parkin
3. "Good Queen, Bad Queen, I Queen, You Queen" by Terri Osborne (in Doctor Who: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership)
4. A Gutted World by Keith R.A. DeCandido (in Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions)
5. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Greater than the Sum by Christopher L. Bennett
6. The 4400: Wet Work by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
7. Doctor Who: The Raincloud Man by Eddie Robson (audio)
8. Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles: The Prisoner's Dilemma by Simon Guerrier (audio)
9. Doctor Who: Brotherhood of the Daleks by Alan Barnes (audio)
10. Doctor Who: Almost Perfect by James Goss

podcast discussion of media tie-ins

2009-03-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm one of the hosts of a twice-monthly pop-culture podcast, The Chronic Rift. On alternate episodes, we have a Roundtable discussion, during which two of the hosts are joined by a professional and a fan in the field of whatever we're discussing. In the past, we've covered Doctor Who, Live-Action Role-Playing games, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the evolution of horror, whether or not science fiction has been predictive of the future, and so on.

The newest episode has just gone live, and in it we discuss media tie-in fiction. Hosts John S. Drew and myself are joined by IAMTW member Jeff Mariotte and "Complete Starfleet Library" web-master Steve Roby to discuss the ins and outs of tie-in fiction.

You can subscribe to The Chronic Rift on iTunes, or download episodes directly from either the Rift web site or from podOmatic's Rift page.

On Other Blogs...

2009-03-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

David Mack and Keith R.A. DeCandido get some love from the Euro Crime blog.

Words For Hire

2009-03-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

The February-March 2009 issue of The Bulletin, the magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, features a Q&A interview by IAMTW member William Dietz with Paula Block, Senior Director of Product Development at CBS Consumer Productions (aka Paramount, Viacom, etc.) and Lee Goldberg, IAMTW co-founder and author of the MONK novels.

Bloggers Praise IAMTW Members

2009-01-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

Three IAMTW members got some lavish praise from bloggers today. Bill Crider rediscovered Scribe Award winner Christa Faust's novel HOODTOWN. He says, in part:

So you have murder, masked wrestlers, some spicy sex, a fast-paced narrative, and a well-constructed world that's a lot like our own but different. Or not. You can read whatever metaphorical meaning you want to into the prejudices against Hoodtown and its people. I'm not going there.

If you liked Money Shot and you're waiting eagerly for another Christa Faust novel, wait no longer. Get this one. I'll bet you won't be disappointed.

Mystery File gives the star treatment to Scribe Grandmaster Donald Bain and Jessica Fletcher. They say, in part:

The first Murder, She Wrote novel came out in 1985, and there’s at least one that’s scheduled for 2009, a span of years that’s even longer than when the TV program was on the air. It’s quite a track record [...](Jessica Fletcher)also tells the story in her own words, and what is quite remarkable is that Donald Bain as the author has her voice down cold.

And French journalist Thierry Attard raves about Lee Goldberg's latest MONK novel. He says, in part:

Mr. Monk is Miserable, his latest Monk tie-in novel, is a perfect sample of the art of this master storyteller. Should you be a fan of the Monk tv series or not, as the show itself regularly flirts with the self-conscious formulaic Tony Shalhoub one-man show. But the talent of Lee Goldberg is to build totally original novels with familiar figures. His reinventions of Adrian Monk's frustrations and anxieties are so wonderfully and joyfully crafted that many of his readers already wish an adaptation of his new Monk Book for the television series.

Thanks to all those bloggers!

You Are Number Six

2009-01-09T00:50:00.000-08:00

MediaBistro is glad you can watch classic episodes of THE PRISONER for free online at the AMC website...but what they would really like to see is a reissue of the 1969 tie-in novel by Thomas M. Disch...and the never-produced tie-in 1976 comic by Jack Kirby.

PSYCH: This Time It's Not Personal

2009-01-07T11:00:00.001-08:00

(Cross-posted from William Rabkin's blog)

Someone asked me on another forum what the hardest thing was about writing my first Psych novel, A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read. I figure I might as well answer here, too.

The really tough part of the first Psych book was coming up with a story. And that was strange for me, because I’ve done zillions of mystery stories over the years. I’ve got a graveyard of fictional corpses that fills entire city blocks. But Psych made me rethink everything I know about crafting a story.

Usually when I’m trying to come up with a new episode for a series, I start with the show’s central character. Almost every good detective hero I’ve written about is driven by some kind of obsession. Dr. Mark Sloan is compelled to solve murders because he sees crime the same way he sees illness and he’s sworn to the Hippocratic Oath. Monk desperately has to put the world back into order or he’ll go mad. Nero Wolfe needs to prove he’s smarter than everyone else around. So when I’m thinking about a new episode, I ask myself what kind of crime and what kind of criminal will compel my hero to act. What kind of plot can I use to explore the inner life of the detective.

But Shawn Spencer isn’t driven to solve crimes. He isn’t pursued by psychological demons. He does it because… it’s fun.

There’s just not a lot to explore there…

So I first went to the bag of tricks all TV writers reach into when we can’t figure out how to give our stories some emotional weight. Shawn’s dad is kidnapped. He discovers he’s got a long-lost brother who’s accused of murder. His buddy from ‘Nam is in trouble.

These are what we big-time TV writing professionals call “crap.”

Then I realized I needed to stop thinking about the way I go about developing stories and start figuring out what would work for Psych. One of the show’s great charms is that Shawn doesn’t have any great emotional need to solve these crimes. He’s not driven. He just kind of ambles through the stories.

That word was my breakthrough. Ambles. Because when I think of ambling, I think of Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty ambling through their parody of Hope and Crosby’s Road pictures in an old SCTV sketch. And that led me to the real Hope and Crosby and the real Road pictures, and the way their characters would be inside the story and at the same time outside commenting on it.

That became my starting point for Shawn. Yes, he’d be investigating the crimes, but at the same time he’d be watching the investigation like a jaded viewer. It wouldn’t be enough for him to find the solution to the crime — he would need to find an entertaining solution. He would build theories based not on logic or evidence, but on maximum narrative pleasure. And he’d be right.

Once I had that, everything else fell into place.

Well, maybe not everything, but that’s another post…

On Writing Dr. Who

2009-01-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

Death Ray Magazine has a lengthy interview with IAMTW member Lance Parkin about his Dr. Who tie-ins:

The creative process with The Eyeless was an odd mix this time. I’ve written a fair few Doctor Who books, and that’s not really the challenge any more. The challenge this time is that the tenth Doctor books have this immense audience. You can buy them in Asda, and they’ll be 3-for-2, front of house, at the major bookstores. With my previous books, I knew my name had a little capital – I could get away with stuff because I’d written Just War or The Infinity Doctors or whatever, so I was given the benefit of the doubt. This time, most of the people who read my book have no idea who I am, a lot will barely notice the author’s name. You’re not allowed old monsters or the sort of continuity in-jokes I love that half the audience won’t get, now.
With The Eyeless, I’ve got quite a straightforward story – 15 years ago, a giant alien fortress arrived on an alien planet, killed everyone there. The Doctor arrives, determined to deactivate the Fortress, a sort of Guns of Navarone-type mission. The Doctor’s all on his own. It’s the sort of plot that would work on telly… But then, it’s a novel, so it ends up being quite introspective. There’s stuff beneath the surface. I’m hoping it works on two levels: action-adventure stuff, and plenty of it, but also if you’re looking, you’ll find plenty of stuff you’ve not been told directly.

CHARACTER SPEAK

2008-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

As Alina Adams, I "co-wrote" a book with Henry Coleman - a fictional character on the soap opera "As The World Turns."

Below is an interview that actor Trent Dawson, who plays Henry, graciously gave about "our" book. His kind words are much appreciated, as is the unique perspective of the actor who brings to life a character I was entrusted to create in novel form:

AS THE WORLD TURNS' Henry Coleman and Alina Adams' joint venture, The Man From Oakdale, hits bookstore shelves on Jan. 6. What's it about? Well, an irate Lucinda hires Henry and Vienna to track down an AWOL Lucy and Johnny. As you might expect, wackiness ensues! Soap Opera Weekly chatted up Henry's portrayer, Trent Dawson, about what a fun read it is — and also about Henry's "jug ears."

Soap Opera Weekly: So...The Man From Oakdale. Henry's secret career as a novelist has been revealed!
Trent Dawson: Yes, pretty secret (laughs)!

Weekly: When did you hear that the show was doing a Henry-centric tie-in novel?
Dawson: I heard about it back in January [2008], and I went, "Okay, whatever," and then in August they were like, "We need a jacket cover picture." I said, "Really?" I still didn't think it was going to happen, but it did! I have been reading it; it's a fun little ride.

Weekly: What do you think so far?
Dawson: I don't know why I haven't had this conversation with [ATWT's and GUIDING LIGHT's creative content producer] Alina Adams, but she has a very good grasp on the characters. It's interesting to see them through Henry's perspective. It's an enjoyable read.

Weekly: I took it on the commute home with me, and was laughing out loud like a crazy person.
Dawson: I don't wanna diminish its value, but it's a good subway book (laughs). I was doing the same. It's funny.

Weekly: She really has Henry and Vienna and their banter down, and Margo and Tom are perfect.
Dawson: What I like is that she's actually writing from the perspective of Henry, so it's actually slightly exaggerated, but it's exaggerated on the right points. That's what's very smart about the book for fans: She's hitting the right buttons and going one step further, because Henry's pretty theatrical.

Entire interview at SoapOperaWeekly.com.

I've said it before....

2008-12-20T17:43:00.000-08:00

...but it bears repeating. I was going to post this elsewhere on teh intarwubs, but then my Life's-Too-Short-O-Meter went off, and I didn't post it.

But I saved the text and reproduce it here:

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo was a media tie-in work-for-hire. If Pope Julius II didn't like one of the frescoes, then Michelangelo hauled ass to change it, because the Pope was the one who commissioned the work. In fact, Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor and hated painting, and didn't particularly want to paint the ceiling, but he did it because he was a working artist and Pope Julius was the guy paying him.

The myth of starving artists, and of artists who create whatever they want in order to fulfill a vision regardless of what lesser minds want is just that: a myth, mostly perpetuated by artists who can't sell their work. Most of the greatest works of art in the history of humanity weren't created because the artists had a great vision they had to share with the world, they were created because the artists were paid to do it: the Parthenon, Shakespeare's plays, Michelangelo's ceiling, they were all commissioned pieces. And if the person doing the commissioning wanted changes, then the artist changed it.

(Originally posted on my LiveJournal.)

"Vanguard Open Secrets" revisions completed!

2008-12-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted from Dayton Ward's blog:

Given the length of time that's passed since the last book in the series (Reap the Whirlwind), one of the suggested additions was a sort of "Previously on..." recap for certain points in the series which will be relevant to the new book's plot. I also added a bit of tweaking here and there in order to better set up Dave Mack's still-in-development story for the fifth book. Not sure where things will go from here, but I'm confident the series will continue.

The whole process was sort of bittersweet, given that I was acting on editorial suggestion and direction from the guy who's no longer working for the company. As I don't believe he's ever steered me wrong when it comes to this kind of thing, I felt compelled to honor as many of his requests as was feasible. Turns out it was pretty much all of 'em.

On today's docket: Finishing the notifications to all writers who submitted to theSpace Grunts anthology, and completing the chapter I'm working on for the Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins novella Kevin and I are writing.

Farscape comic book preview!

2008-12-06T15:20:00.001-08:00

The first issue of the new Farscape comic book that I'm scripting from a plot by series creator Rockne S. O'Bannon has a release date of 24 December 2008. Published by BOOM! Studios, with artwork by Tommy Patterson, and covers by both Joe Corroney and Dennis Calero, the four-issue miniseries will pick up where The Peacekeeper Wars left off. Rockne considers it an official continuation of the series (season 5, if you will), much like the Buffy season 8 and Angel season 6 comic books from Dark Horse and IDW.

There's a six-page preview and an interview with Rockne at MTV's Splash Page, a seven-page preview (but no interview) at IO9, and an interview with me at The Pulse. Please do check it out, and look for the first issue on Christmas Eve.

It's been a truly magnificent experience working on this comic book. I wrote one of the Farscape novels, House of Cards, in 2001, and also wrote three short stories -- two for the official magazine, one for the role-playing game -- and it's a great joy to return to this universe, doubled by being able to collaborate with the show's creator. I first met Rockne at the publication party that Henson threw for House of Cards, and we've stayed in touch over the years. We've been on frighteningly similar wavelengths for this (which should scare him more than it does me), and it's been a ridiculously easy collaboration.

IRON-clad Praise

2008-11-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

IAMTW member Stephen Sullivan's IRON MAN: THE JUNIOR NOVEL got a rave review from Bookgasm:

This summer's IRON MAN was, in my opinion, one of the best comic book movies made — certainly my current favorite, replacing the reigning champ of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE after 29 years. The beauty of the film — besides pitch-perfect acting and characterizations, seemingly effortless special effects, and the tight package in which it is all wrapped up — is the simplicity of the story: a man brought down by his own ego finding redemption through service to the world. The subtlety of his unfolding salvation provides the adult viewing experience that drew all those hundreds of millions dollars to the box office. For the young 'uns, it was the coolness of a guy who's been knocked down by bullies, but gets back up to fight back and win.

And that's how it plays in IRON MAN: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Stephen Sullivan, featuring eight pages of photos from the film. Sullivan is faithful to the screenplay, while downplaying many of the too-grown-up motivations that might confuse his younger readers. It is, as I say, a good story and difficult to ruin, and Sullivan brings the right tone and style to keep things moving at a brisk pace that should keep even the kids who have seen the movie enthralled.

The "Ghost" Writer

2008-11-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Ann Arbor News recently published a feature on IAMTW Member Steve Piziks and his new "Ghost Whisperer" novel THE PLAGUE ROOM. The author discovered that there were some advantages to this tie-in assignment compared to the others he has done...

Piziks is no stranger to writing novels based on TV series, such as "Star Trek" Voyager" and "Battlestar Galactica" (the current series). He's also written movie novelizations of 2003's "Identity" and 2004's "The Exorcist: The Beginning."
One of the challenges he ran into when writing this book was learning that "Ghost Whisperer" doesn't have the fan following those other shows have. If Piziks needed to fact-check something quickly, he didn't find any fan sites on the Internet with detailed plot summaries of each episode, as he did with "Voyager" and "Galactica." Instead, he had the DVDs of the series, particularly the first season which is when his novels occur, to fall back on. However, since "Ghost Whisperer" is set in the present, it made writing it easier.
"I didn't have to explain any science. I didn't have to figure out why some bit of futuristic technology couldn't solve the conflict. And the cast of 'Ghost Whisperer' is much, much smaller.
Melinda, her husband, Jim (played by David Conrad in the TV series), and Andrea (Aisha Tyler) were the only characters I had to get 'right,'" said Piziks. "There was less continuity to worry about, since I was working with the first season. All the other characters I created myself, which meant they could do whatever I wanted them to do."

Worlds within worlds

2008-11-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

In the four-month period between the end of July and the end of October of this year, I had four novels released.

One was an original supernatural thriller called River Runs Red, a terrifying story that builds on real-life occult researches conducted by the U.S. government, combining them with the experiences of three people in El Paso, Texas who had a bizarre and terrible encounter in a cave twenty years ago, with lasting consequences. Finally, it’s a story about gods, monsters, and a possible apocalypse. It was released in late September, and it’s gathering good reviews, and I am, I think, justifiably proud of it.

The other three are tie-in novels. The first, published in July, is 30 Days of Night: Eternal Damnation. It’s hard-hitting, straight ahead horror, based on the best-selling vampire comic book 30 Days of Night, which became a movie last year. The original creators of the comic, Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, are friends, and when I had a day job as an editor, I edited the comic. So when Steve got the chance to write three novels based on his creation, he asked me to be his collaborator.

CSI: Miami: Right to Die came out in August. This one is based on the most-watched dramatic TV series in the world, the popular spin-off to mega-hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. I also have a history with CSI: Miami—I wrote the first graphic novel based on the show, and even went to the set to present copies to the cast, an event filmed by Access Hollywood (which cut me out of all the aired footage, although the book made it on). As it turns out, this is the final CSI: Miami novel, as Pocket Books dropped the license.

And finally, right around Halloween, came the one I’m really here to talk about: Spider-Man: Requiem.

One of the true joys of writing tie-in fiction—a pleasure authors who only pen original fiction (and especially those who look down their noses at tie-ins as being a lesser breed) never know—is being able to immerse oneself in beloved characters and their worlds. Spider-Man falls into that category for me. I’ve been reading his comics since the ‘70s (and have read back into the earlier stories, from the ‘60s). He’s a global icon, star of TV shows and movies and many other novels. But like most comic book fans, to me none of that other stuff is what really matters. It’s the comics.

Spider-Man wasn’t like Bruce Wayne, wealthy and handsome, with a glamorous babe on each arm. He wasn’t like Superman, invulnerable to almost everything (and I’ve written a novel about him, too—DC Universe: Trail of Time). At the beginning he was Peter Parker, a nerdy high school kid who lived with his aunt, who was haunted by his failure to prevent his uncle’s murder, who wasn’t rich or particularly popular with women. As he grew up, he became a little more skilled with the opposite sex, until he had an almost Archie-Betty-Veronica-ish triangle going with Gwen Stacey and Mary Jane Watson.

Stuff happened. There have been decades of stories, and changes made. The Green Goblin murdered Gwen Stacey. Peter married Mary Jane. More stuff happened.

I have not consistently read Spidey through the years, but when I was offered the job of writing a novel about him, I went back and did some catching up. And the comics were nearly as good as I remembered—some better, some worse, as different creative teams and editors dictated the events of his life over time. But while I was writing, there happened to be what I considered a terrible editorial decision. Peter made a deal with the devil—a deal that I thought the character, as developed over many years, would never agree to—with the result that he would not be married to MJ anymore, and would have no memory of the years they were together. It was a way of pushing the reset button, of extricating future creative teams from what was considered confining continuity, and perhaps of making the Spider-Man in the comics conform more to the one in the huge hit movies, who was not married.

But breaking up Peter and MJ? Sacrilege.

So in Spider-Man: Requiem (which, since it’s what I tend to write most often, is also a supernatural horror story in the form of a Spidey story), Peter and Mary Jane are still married, together, absolutely madly in love. It’s set in the Marvel Universe, but before the events that tore them apart. And it’s clear, in the novel, that nothing—no deal with the devil, no editorial fiat—will sever that bond.

A tie-in writer can’t change continuity. But he can—carefully—comment on that continuity, and can sometimes set a book in a time period that is more suited to his ideal version of the character.

Most importantly, he can play in the glorious sandboxes that formed his imagination, in the worlds he loves. And be paid for it. What could be better?

Other beloved universes I’ve been able to write in recently include Conan the Barbarian’s Hyborian Age, and the worlds of Zorro and the Phantom. I just had a story accepted for an anthology about a particular horror-writer’s universe that I can’t talk about yet. All these things are labors of love. And yet, I make a living at it.

If there’s a better way to make a living, I don’t know what it is.

Salvaging Terminator Salvation

2008-10-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

(This is cross-posted from IAMTW Grandmaster Alan Dean Foster's Blog)

Did you ever get the feeling you'd forgotten something? It's been a bit more insane (insanier? insaniest?) than usual here, hence this delayed October update. I am contrite (actually I'm an Independent).

In part this was engendered by the need to completely rewrite TERMINATOR:SALVATION. Actually, a complete rewrite was not requested by the publisher. As is common with films, especially large and complex productions, many things changed between the version of the screenplay I was given to novelize and the final shooting script. The publisher requested four specific changes to bring the novel more closely in line with the final version of the film. This was thoughtful of the editor, since as I read through the final shooting script I encountered numerous other instances where the screenplay had been altered from the version I adapted. Being either a) a glutton for punishment or b) a trufan, instead of simply rewriting the four specified scenes, I rewrote the entire book. I simply cannot do a half-assed job because I am proud of my work, because I need to feel comfortable with the finished manuscript, but most of all because all of you miscellany-pickin' happy readers are always looking over my shoulder. So now the book conforms (hopefully) far more closely to the film that would otherwise have been the case.

Such intense work depends on whether my brain, my fingers, or my eyes will give out first. Fortunately, in this instance all three (just barely) held up until the end. I'm sure the sight of me (literally) staggering around my study as I struggled to keep my balance due to failing eyesight and having sat for so long in front of the computer would have made for an amusing photo-op.

COLD FIRE is now out in the November Analog. FREE ELECTIONS, the first new Mad Amos Malone story in a while, went off to my agents. This week I hope to finish TRANSFORMERS:Infiltration, the original novel that will provide a bridge between the first and second films. After that, I will cool my hands in a bowl of ice preparatory to embarking for three weeks in Malta, Tunisia, and Morocco in the company of James Gurney. I need the break and the sounds of the souk and the empty desert should provide one. Despite unpredictable visa policies that change from moment to moment, we're going to try and get into Libya for at least a day or two. Perhaps the Libyan ambassador to Tunisia is an SF fan. I've encountered readers in stranger places.

A Fantastic Book

2008-10-13T11:50:00.001-07:00

IAMTW member Steven Savile's book "Fantastic TV: Fifty Years of Cult Fantasy and Science Fiction" is now available for pre-order on Amazon in advance of its December release. The book also features contributions from many other IAMTW members.

Mutant Chronicles is Out

2008-09-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Matt Forbeck's blog)

Today’s the big day. My novelization of the Mutant Chronicles film is officially on sale! Run on down to your friendly local bookseller and pick up a copy of your very own—or download an eBook version from your favorite online purveyor of such marvels.

As I’ve said here before, I had a wonderful time working on this book. Fred Malmberg, Jay Zetterberg Leslie Buhler, Leigh Stone, and Thommy Wojciechowski at Paradox were, as ever, a true pleasure to work with, and the same goes for Keith Clayton and Sue Moe, my excellent editors at Del Rey.

The film’s not out here in North America yet, so this is your best chance to get your hands on the story and picture it in your head instead. If you’re still on the fence, check out this short excerpt for a free taste of the whole dish.

Can I Send You My Monk Novel?

2008-09-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted from Lee Goldberg's blog)

This email is so stupid, that I have to wonder if it was sent as a prank:

I realise you will get this quite a lot and are probably sick to death of people asking but I have completed a novel about Adrian Monk and wondered if I could send you the synopsis. I wouldn't presume to step on your toes but I have four great plots and have worked them into what I believe is an entertaining thriller.

I know this isn't the usual protocol of approaching people about a manuscript and I should probably go through an agent so I appreciate that I may not recieve a reply. You may also have the sole rights to the Monk novels either way thank you for your time reading this and if you do take a chance and want me to send the synopsis I am sure you will not be disapointed.

Although I have my doubts that the email is legit, I answered it as if it was. Here is what I said...

Why on earth would I, the author of the MONK novels, be interested in reading your MONK novel? Would you send a spec Spenser novel to Robert B. Parker? A spec Inspector Rebus novel to Ian Rankin? A Harry Bosch novel to Michael Connelly? Not that I am comparing myself to Parker, Rankin or Connelly, I am not in their league...I am just trying to make a point about how idiotic your request is. I can't imagine how you could have thought that it was a good idea.

Then again, I can't imagine why you would write an entire novel on spec about a character you didn't create and don't own. I didn't create MONK, either...nor did I write a MONK novel on spec. I was hired by the creator of MONK and Penguin/Putnam to write MONK novels for them ..and now I have a multi-book deal that makes me the exclusive author of the books for several years to come.

I recommend that you write original novels that are NOT based on any pre-existing movie or television property. Tie-ins novels are assignments given to established writers by publishers who have licensed the characters from the studios...you don't simply send in a spec HOUSE or THE CLOSER novel to a publisher and hope for a sale.

On top of that, why would you send a novel to another author in the hopes of getting a job (not just any job, but his job)? Authors don't hire authors, publishers and editors do.

PSYCH Out

2008-09-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a sneak peek at the cover for A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO READ by William Rabkin, the first in a new series of original novels based on the TV series PSYCH. The book comes out in January from Obsidian, the fine folks who publish the MONK. MURDER SHE WROTE, CRIMINAL MINDS, and BURN NOTICE tie-ins.

Del Rey and LucasBooks Announce Extension of Star Wars Publishing Contract and New Multi-Book Series

2008-09-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

(From the Official Star Wars Site:)

Maintaining a relationship that began more than 30 years ago, LucasBooks and Del Rey are slated to publish another 45 Star Wars titles from 2009 through the end of 2013. The titles will include 35 novels and 10 nonfiction books.

Since 1976, when Judy-Lynn del Rey took a chance on an unknown movie called Star Wars and published the tie-in novel to unprecedented bestsellerdom, Del Rey Books has published a wide range of Star Wars titles, including movie and video game tie-in novels; original series and stand-alone novels; as well as character guides and non-fiction film books. Every hardcover Star Wars novel from Del Rey/LucasBooks has been an instant New York Times bestseller, and 2008 saw Star Wars in the #1 spot twice on the New York Times list with Revelation, the eighth book in the recent Star Wars: Legacy of the Force series, and with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the tie-in to the upcoming video game from LucasArts. In 2007 alone, the total number of Star Wars books printed under the Del Rey/LucasBooks imprint was over 1.5 million copies.

"Our relationship with Lucasfilm is treasured," said Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of the Random House Publishing Group. "We are extremely proud of our Star Wars publishing program, which is the cornerstone of the Del Rey list."

Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing, said "The legacy of Star Wars publishing began with Del Rey. "For more than 30 years they have been a superb partner with an unflinching commitment to keep Star Wars fans informed, entertained and enthralled."

Among the titles launching in 2009 are the first three in a new Star Wars multi-book, multi-author story arc following directly in the footsteps of the Legacy of the Force series. The nine-book, three-author series, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi, will break new ground by being the first multi-book Star Wars series to be published all in hardcover. The series, which will be published over the space of three years, will launch in April 2009 with Outcast, by Aaron Allston; the other two authors planning and penning the nine novels will be Christie Golden and Troy Denning. Also to come is The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, to be released in 2010 in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of that film, along with a continuation of the hugely successful series of Star Wars Essential Guides.

How-to

2008-09-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, my in-box has recently been filling up with e-mails from people who think they would like to try writing media tie-in books and want to know how one gets started in the field. I've had the question once or twice in the past, but since it's suddenly becoming more common, I thought I would post my response to one of them here--so that I can simply point at it in the future, rather than writing it out every time.

If any other tie-in writers have additional tips, please put them comments to this post, or in a separate post of their own.

The key fact to keep in mind about writing official tie-in fiction is that it's licensed. That means that (for a price) a publisher has licensed the rights to publish the novels from the (in the case of TV shows--the process is essentially the same for books based on comics, games, movies, etc.) TV production company or network that owns the original show, or the "property."

Once a publisher gets the license, then an editor working for that publishing company looks for writers to write the novels. The writers are approached and offered a contract before even beginning to write the novel--it's the reverse of the usual novel-writing approach of writing a book and then looking for a publisher. This means that for the most part, tie-in writing jobs go to writers of whom the editor is aware.

When a writer has reached a deal with the publisher, the first step is a detailed outline, which the publisher then gets approved by the licensor (the TV network or production company). If the outline is approved then the writer can get busy writing the book. When it's done, the whole thing goes in for approval, and then is eventually published.

What this means for new writers is that the first thing you need to do is to become known to editors. This can best be done by developing a track record of professional publications, either with original novels, short stories, games, comic books, or some combination thereof. Then you can go to editors with a proven history of being able to write publishable material.

There are occasional opportunities in tie-in work for new writers. I believe there's an annual Star Trek short fiction anthology, for example, that accepts the work of previously unpublished writers. There might be more such anthologies around. And the occasional novel line that will accept proposals from new writers, too. It can't hurt to figure out who the editors for the novel lines that most interest you are and dropping them a note asking if they're accepting proposals--the worst they can do is say no, and then you've started the process of making yourself known to them, so that when you come back later with some professional credits under your belt, they'll remember you.

Finding out who edits what can be a challenge, but you can start by checking acknowledgments and dedications in the published books, and of course those ever-handy search engines. As a last resort, you can call or write to a publishing company and ask whoever answers.

Tie Ins top UK Bestseller List

2008-08-30T00:53:00.000-07:00

From the Telegraph:

Philip Pullman is the bestselling children's author so far this year. According to the latest figures from Nielsen BookScan, sales of his works generated £2.3 million. He is closely followed by Jacqueline Wilson (£2.2 million) and Francesca Simon (£2 million).

However, the bestselling children's hardback fiction was the BBC TV tie-in In The Night Garden: Little Library, which sold 154,198 copies.

Tie-in Up the NY Times Bestseller Liss

2008-08-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

In his Los Angeles Times essay on Sunday, IAMTW member Tod Goldberg touched on the enormous popularity of tie-in novels. IAMTW member Sean Williams reports that his STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED has hit #1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. We suspect his tie-in won't be the only one on that list on 9/7. This week, Eric Van Lustbader's tie-in ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE SANCTION is #2 and IAMTW member Karen Traviss' STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS is #19.

It Burns When I Pee...Metaphorically Speaking

2008-08-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted from Tod Goldberg's blog)

In my ever expanding desire to promote literacy through narcissism, I've written an essay in this Sunday's LA Times about the writing of The Fix. Here's a snippet:

You could spend your entire life sitting in Starbucks next to people hunched over laptops, and you'd never hear a single one of them divulge that their dream is to write a television or movie tie-in; you know, those novelizations that magically appear in the airport bookstore rack with the screen stars on their covers.

Me? I've published two novels and a collection of stories that have afforded the kind of notoriety one rarely reads about: I've lost all the awards I've ever been nominated for, my most ardent fans number in the tens of hundreds, and I'd need the Jaws of Life to pull me onto the bestseller list. In short, a career in the literary fiction trenches, where acclaim is something you hang your hat on, since you haven't made enough money to buy a hat rack.

You can read the rest here or in tomorrow's print edition.

The Two Goldberg Brothers You Meet in Heaven

2008-08-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted from Tod Goldberg's blog)

As I think everyone knows, I'm a huge, huge Mitch Albom fan, so imagine how happy I was to learn that his next book, after The Four Chinese Gymnasts You Meet In Pre-School, would be called The Two Goldberg Brothers You Meet In Heaven! And keep an eye out for the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on the book, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as me and Levar Burton as Lee, with special guest appearances by Rosie O'Donnell as our sister Linda and Illeana Douglas as our sister Karen...

In celebration of this exciting honor, my brother Lee and I have decided to go out on the road to meet the people who will be so inspired by us next year at this time. This weekend we'll be making two appearances and, just for kicks, thought it might be fun to sign some of our own books, too. I'll be signing The Fix and Lee will be signing his 145,032nd Monk novel.

Here are the details:

First, this Saturday at 1pm, we'll be at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks. If you happen to be one of the many people who've threatened to kill us over the years, this would be a good one to attend as our sisters will be there, too, and you can take out the whole family.

Then, three hours later, at 4pm, we'll be at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood. My understanding is that for this event they are anticipating over 150,000 people, but my numbers could be slightly off.

If that still doesn't satisfy you, I anticpate stopping off at the Starbucks on the 210 in Rancho Cucamonga at about 7pm and would be happy to sign anything you might have then, too. Alternately, I might roll by the Baja Fresh across from Ontario Mills at about the same time, so watch this space for continuous updates.

More STAR TREK translations

2008-08-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

(From Dayton Ward's blog)
Thanks to a heads-up from defcons_treklit, I can verify that CrossCult, the publisher responsible for German translations of the first three Star Trek: Vanguard, plans to publish a translation of Open Secrets, and release their edition (titled Offene Geheimnisse) in May 2009 simultaneously -- or, pretty close, anyway -- with the regular English-language version. You can see their page for the entire Vanguard series here.

According to the site, they also plan to translate the existing line of Star Trek: Titan, beginning in November 2008.

Woo to the mutha-effin' Hoo.

The Latest News from Karen Traviss

2008-08-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Karen Traviss' website) Talking of endearing rogues in saucy armour, ORDER 66, book four in the Republic Commando series, is out on September 15. After that, the books continue as IMPERIAL COMMANDO. (Because that nice Emperor Palpatine said so.) Other upcoming Star Wars books from me include a Boba Fett novel and an essential guide to the military. (See theDel Rey interview.) I'm also working on a new series of my own that's a bit of a departure from the Wess'har Wars and my usual SF, as well as what I can only describe as "other projects" at this stage. So no rest for the wicked. It's a grand life if you don't weaken!

The Oh-So-Tiresome "Canon" Discussions

2008-08-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

You know why every single discussion about canon on the Internet (and elsewhere) is stupid?

Because nobody has once asked Christopher Nolan or Jon Favreau if they're "worried" or "concerned" about the fact that neither Iron Man nor The Dark Knight are canon. I, meanwhile, get that question all the time...

I'm constantly hearing from assorted keyboard monkeys talking about how they won't read tie-in fiction because it isn't canon, which is why they read the Star Wars novels -- which, by the by, aren't canon, either, and anyone who tells you they are is lying, and as evidence I point you to a) the history of the Fett family and b) the upcoming Clone Wars animated film, which I bet won't be consistent with the various CW novels and comics (not to mention the Genndy Tartovsky animated shorts) that are allegedly canonical -- and yet I bet not a single one of them has refused to see the most popular movie on the planet because it isn't canon.

And it isn't. The Dark Knight is based on the Batman comics that have been published over the years, but they make no effort to be consistent with them, and ignore them as they see fit. They're not canon. The "canon" of Batman consists of the various comic books published by DC Comics.

No, what we have here is the fact that, in this country, we view things on screen as more real than things in print. Part of it is simple numbers: more people watch TV and movies than read books and comic books. That's why when you adapt a novel into a movie, you've got an entire Academy Award category to yourself (and other adapters like you), but when you adapt a movie into a novel, you're a talentless hack who's just in it for the money (never mind that screenwriters are far better compensated for their work than prose writers).

The people who say they won't buy a Buffy novel or a Star Trek comic book because it's not canon are most likely lying, unless they have also refused to see The Hulk, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, any of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films, etc. for the same reason. It's just a feeble justification for a prejudice against prose in general and against tie-in fiction in particular.

Keith R.A. DeCandido has written flipping great wodges of tie-in fiction, including thirty novels, seven novelizations, twelve novellas, twenty-one short stories, a bunch of comic books, and a partridge in a pear tree in the universes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Classic BattleTech, Command and Conquer, CSI, Doctor Who, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Marvel Comics, Resident Evil, Serenity, Star Trek (in all its incarnations, plus some new ones), StarCraft, Supernatural, World of Warcraft, Xena, and Young Hercules, and not a single frapping one of them is canon. So there. Find out more about Keith at his web site at DeCandido.net or his blog at kradical.livejournal.com.

Comic Con and the Scribes

2008-07-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

(This is cross-posted from Lee Goldberg's blog. That's a picture of Alan Dean Foster and Lee on the left)

My daughter Maddie and I left the house yesterday for Comic Con in San Diego at 5:30 am and walked through the door of the convention center at 8:30. The Scribe Awards weren't until 2, so we roamed around the exhibition floor for a few hours.

The Scribe Awards and Tie-In Panel was sparsely attended at first, but by the time we were mid-way through, we built to nice-sized crowd. Our 2008 Grandmaster Alan Dean Foster gave a thoughtful, and very funny, speech on the lack of respect tie-in writers get from the publishing industry and their fellowAlan Dean Foster and Lee Goldberg writers, despite the huge success of tie-in books. He applauded the International Association of Media Tie-In Writer's efforts to change that and to increase the awareness of tie-in writing in the mainstream media.

Other panelists included Andy Mangels, Max Allan Collins, Steve Leiva, Kevin J. Anderson, William Dietz and Stacy Deutsch. I must admit, though, that I was distracted for much of the panel by an audience member who had long hair and a beard on one half of his face and was bald and clean-shaved on the other. I couldn't help thinking that he was a man born to drive Adrian Monk insane...

The Scribe Nominees and Winners (noted with asterisks) are below:

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)

BEST SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON by Kevin J. Anderson
**STARGATE ATLANTIS: CASUALTIES OF WAR by Elizabeth Christensen
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Q&A by Keith R.A. DeCandido

BEST GAME-RELATED ORIGINAL (SPECIAL SCRIBE AWARD)

HITMAN: ENEMY WITHIN by William C. Dietz
FORGE OF THE MINDSLAYERS by Tim Waggoner
**EBERRON: 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
**NANCY DREW AND THE CLUE CREW #10: TICKET TROUBLE by Stacia Deutsch & Rhody Cohon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ADAPTED

**THE 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS by Steven Paul Leiva (nominee & winner)

Trek Stuff

2008-07-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

From Keith DeCandido's blog) As many of you probably know, a bunch of new Star Trek prose projects were announced at Shore Leave 30 this past weekend. Full news stories can be found at Trek Today, TrekWeb, and TrekMovie.com.

I already posted the covers to A Singular Destiny and Mere Anarchy. Here's what else of mine was announced:

There will be another Corps of Engineers compilation next year, Out of the Cocoon, which will be published in December 2009, and which will include four eBooks (the title story by William Leisner bill_leisner, Honor by Kevin Killiany, Blackout by Phaedra M. Weldon [info]meharet, and The Cleanup by Robert T. Jeschonek and a new minipedia compiled by me. (The current plan is to try to do two trades per year that collect eBooks. We'll get Mere Anarchy and Out of the Cocoon in 2009. Still to come are Slings and Arrows and the final three COE volumes, What's Past, Turn the Page, and Remembrance of Things Past.)

In August 2009, there will be an anthology called Seven Deadly Sins. This will feature seven novellas picking an alien species (or, in one case, an alternate universe) that represents one of each of the seven deadly sins.

Big surprise -- I'm doing the Klingons, who represent wrath. Can't say much about the story just yet, but I can say it'll be my first time writing 23rd-century Klingons, which I'm looking forward to.

Here's the whole lineup:

Pride: the Romulans, by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
Envy: the Cardassians, by James Swallow
Wrath: the Klingons, by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sloth: the Pakleds, by Jimmy Diggs
Greed: the Ferengi, by David A. McIntee
Gluttony: the Borg, by Marc Giller
Lust: the Mirror Universe, by Britta Dennison

River Runs Red Cover

2008-07-06T11:19:00.001-07:00

I saw that the cover for my new supernatural thriller River Runs Red (Penguin/Jove, October) was starting to show up at various places online--but it's the early "solicitation" cover, and it has Brian Keene's generous quote from the front of Missing White Girl on it instead of the correct David Morrell blurb, so I thought I'd post the right version here. The book earned some lovely blurbs from other writers who I'm honored to be linked with in print, and which I'll share at another time. RRR is the second book in the loosely linked "border trilogy" that began with MWG and ends next year with Cold Black Hearts. You might have to click on the picture to enlarge it enough to read... (Crossposted from Jeff Mariotte's blog)

The Fix: Behind the Music and an Excerpt

2008-07-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

A month from now my first Burn Notice book, The Fix, will be released into the wide world. I'm already well into writing the second book and thinking about the third one, too. It has been an odd process for me for several reasons, not the least of which being that I am typically a pretty slow writer, tend to agonize over every word and have a micro manager's attention to detail as it relates to marketing, art and advertising. I've been spoiled in a way because with Simplify, for instance, my great publishers at OV Books actually listened to my rants and things worked really, really well. (And it should be noted: I am hoping to have good news shortly about my new collection of stories.) With The Fix, it was an entirely different experience. I wrote the book in about 70 days. I have no micromanaging tendencies concerning anything with the art or marketing, particularly since its hard to complain about television ads running on USA, a huge web presence on USA's site and assurances that the book will be in every store in the known universe. Unlike my previous books where I've toured the nation, I'm doing a limited amount of touring this time around -- I'll post the schedule shortly, but it's primarily in the west -- focusing mostly on mystery and crime book stores, which have always shown me a tremendous amount of support for my previous books, and festivals. The reality is that this book will probably sell itself. The other reality is that my ego won't allow me to stay home and hope that happens.

I would be lying if I said writing this book wasn't a challenge. It absolutely was. I've never written a traditional crime novel. Anyone who has read my work in the past will tell you that linear storytelling isn't exactly my calling card. Nor is having a narrator who is reliable. Of course I've written linear work in the past. And of course I've written reliable narrators in the past. But one thing I don't think I've ever written is a hero, even an ironic hero like Michael Westen. My characters tend to be pretty fucked up and of course Michael is fucked up in his own way, too, but not in the "he may have killed his wife and daughter" sort of way. The challenge for me was to convey him on the page in a way that made me enjoy writing him and also was true to Matt Nix's creation.

Which brings up another challenge: I had to remember to be funny. My tendency in writing fiction is the opposite of what I do here on this blog. And of course this blog isn't even really me -- it is some blog version of myself, some stylized version of my life and opinions (I don't say the word fucktard all that often, really) -- so if you pick up a book of mine looking for whatever is you find here, you're going to be disappointed. One of the more common things I hear when I meet people at book signings and such is, "I bought your book thinking it would be really funny. But this is really different. It's serious!" Which I guess is the hazard of keeping a blog. At any rate, I gave myself the freedom with The Fix to let go of some of my literary pretension, leaving that for the short fiction I wrote this year, and hopefully found a voice that would give readers what they want in terms of the humor of Burn Notice.

After the book comes out, I'll post some other interesting stuff about the book -- including a little bit about the Easter Eggs I put in the book, which will be part of a contest I'll run here for people who happen to be fans of the entire family of Goldberg siblings and can spot all of the allusions I've made to previous works by all of us -- including some stories about the actual writing of scenes and such (there is one notable scene that occurred while I was literally freezing to death in Vermont).

Until then, Penguin has posted a pretty extensive excerpt -- the entire first chapter -- here. The spacing is a little funky in places -- some of the dialog gets shoved together in odd ways -- but it will give you a nice flavor for the book.

(Crossposted from Tod's blog)

IAMTW at BookExpo

2008-06-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

IAMTW co-founders Lee Goldberg and Max Allan Collins signed their Scribe-nominated MONK and CRIMINAL MINDS novels at the BookExpo convention in Los Angeles last weekend. Other Scribe honorees featured at the convention included Marv Wolfman (SUPERMAN RETURNS) and Christa Faust (SNAKES ON A PLANE), while 100s of galleys of Steve Saville's new TORCHWOOD tie-in were quickly snapped up from the Titan Books booth by booksellers and librarians.

Has New York Become Too Safe To Write About

2008-05-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

IAMTW Grandmaster Donald Bain was among the mystery writers interviewed by the New York Times on how crime writers are adapting to a safer city.

As New York celebrates the sharp decline in crime — earlier this year the city revealed that the 494 homicides in 2007 were the fewest since reliable police statistics became available in 1963 — the crime writer may be the only New Yorker for whom that drop is not an unequivocal blessing. Just as the breakup of the Soviet Union caused problems for writers whose plots hinged on the dark doings of the cold war, so New York’s crime writers are wondering where to find grist in a far safer city.

[...]Sometimes New York’s crime writers grow wistful about the bad old days for unexpected reasons, as was the case with Donald Bain, the highly successful author of more than 30 “Murder, She Wrote” books along with other crime novels.
In January, Mr. Bain was the main speaker at a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America, held at the National Arts Club, opposite Gramercy Park.
At dinner in the club’s high-ceilinged dining room, Mr. Bain, a tall man with a white beard, reminisced about the early ’90s, when his daughter lived on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. Her apartment building was next to a social club run by Vincent Gigante, a k a the Chin, the mobster whose associates used to sit outside the club, playing cards and drinking late into the night. If one of the men saw his daughter emerging from the subway station a few blocks away, Mr. Gigante dispatched one of them to walk her home safely.
The other writers at the table laughed, but their laughs were tinged with nostalgia for a vanished version of New York that could hand you a scene, just like that.

Monk Galley Giveaway

2008-05-16T00:06:00.001-07:00

I have two extra, bound galleys for MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY which I will be giving away at random.

Here's the deal...post a review of your favorite MONK novel on Amazon and send me a copy of it by June 1st at: lee AT Leegoldberg DOT com.

I will put the names into a hat and select two winners at random to receive a signed galley. Please be sure to include your snail mail address in the email. Winners will be announced here.

The Scribe Awards and How You Can Enter

2008-05-06T11:33:00.001-07:00

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.

Scribe Award Nominees Announced

2008-04-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

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. We are proud to announce this year’s 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)

BEST SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON by Kevin J. Anderson
STARGATE ATLANTIS: CASUALTIES OF WAR by Elizabeth Christensen
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Q&A by Keith R.A. DeCandido

BEST GAME-RELATED ORIGINAL (SPECIAL SCRIBE AWARD)

HITMAN: ENEMY WITHIN by William C. Dietz
FORGE OF THE MINDSLAYERS by Tim Waggoner
EBERRON: 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
NANCY DREW AND THE CLUE CREW #10: TICKET TROUBLE by Stacia Deutsch & Rhody Cohon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ADAPTED

THE 12 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 novelizations in 1975 of the STAR TREK animated series and his subsequent novelizations 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.

Lee Goldberg interview on Geekerati Radio

2008-03-10T21:48:00.001-07:00

Tie-Ins Dominate Bestseller Lists

2008-03-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

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 10 on the NYT list. Congratulations to them both!

Ms. Tree On TV?

2008-02-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

This could be a very big year for Max Allan Collins' MS. TREE. ComicMix reports that a new MS. TREE novel (based on the comic book) and a TV pilot are on the way.

Well, it turns out Our Gal Friday (that's a joke, but you've got to read Ms. Tree to get it) may be headed to the small screen. In an interview with Comics2Film, Collins disclosed the Oxygen Network has "gone beyond an option (and paid) the purchase price." They've assigned two screenwriters to the write the first movie, both women, and it's being regarded as a pilot for further movies and possibly a teevee series.

Obviously, things have been held up a bit by the WGA strike, but Collins took his original treatment and turned it into Deadly Beloved, a paperback novel published last December by Hard Case Crime. Cooler still (since Collins is the author of about a million mystery novels, including the aforementioned Heller boos, and teevee/movie tie-ins, including many of the C.S.I. books) the cover was painted by Ms. Tree artist Terry Beatty.

Considering other Hard Case covers have been provided by the likes of all-time paperback mystery master painter Robert McGinnis and Marvel Zombie cover king Arthur Suydam, Terry's in some pretty heady company.

I Am Michael Weston

2008-02-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

From IAMTW Member Tod Goldberg, author of the Burn Notice novels...

Since the first week of December, when I sat down with Matt Nix to talk about writing the first book based on his show Burn Notice (called The Fix), I've pretty much spent all of my writing time, my waking time, much of my sleeping time, a considerable amount of free time, trying to think like Michael Westen. This means I spend a lot of time imagining I am doing spy shit. I now know how to blow stuff up really well using household items. I'm prTubbsetty handy in a fight. I've got witty rejoinders coming out of my ass. I know the streets of Miami like I'm fucking Philip Michael Thomas (I mean that literally -- I imagine if I were fucking Philip Michael Thomas that he'd drive me around a lot showing me places where he filmed episodes of Miami Vice, pointing out precisely where it all went so terribly, terribly wrong...).

In the past, I've generally written fiction without a deadline, which is actually a far more preferable way for me to work. I like to navel gaze. I like to ponder. I like to play Madden for three of four hour stretches. And the result is that it took me three years to write Living Dead Girl, two years to write a book that I ultimately decided sucked, ten years to write Simplify (of course, those were all stories...), a year and a half to write Fake Liar Cheat, about 18 months to write a new collection of stories (which I'm putting the final touches on now, too) and I imagine it will take me about a year or so to write the next big book I plan to write, which, as I've told many people over the years, will be about the Salton Sea in the 1960s. I've done the research. I know the characters. I have the story. But for a long time, I haven't been prepared mentally to write it. It's not a tremendous amount of fun to write a novel -- it requires monastic patience from those who love you and monastic personal patience -- particularly not a novel like Living Dead Girl, which really took the wind from me for a long time. I imagine this Salton Sea novel will be like that, too. I need to write it. I yearn to, really, but I also don't look forward to the kind of mental torture that sort of work puts on me. It happens the same way with stories, really -- there were two this year that did it to me -- one in Barrelhouse called "Walls" and one in Hot Metal Bridge called "Palm Springs", both of which got nominated for the Pushcart, so maybe I did something right -- but at least with a story, it's done with in two weeks, a month.

But...this Burn Notice book? It's a fucking hoot. Minus the 2 weeks I was in Bennington and the two weeks I had fucking Captain Tripps, I've spent every day from the first week of December writing The Fix. And it's true that not every day is a good day, as Ice Cube would agree, there are however many days where I feel like if I saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp it just might say Tod G's the pimp. I can see the finish line from here, maybe another 10 days to go, maybe slightly longer, and while I'll be happy to stop thinking I'm Michael Westen and to start thinking about these two short stories I've been putting off since December, I must say that writing this sort of comic noir is pretty damn fun to do. I've got two more to write after this one, each with a substantially longer deadline, thank god, and I've really had to teach myself that I don't need to have an unreliable narrator facing some sort of mortal pain in every line, like many of my stories and novels previously have had, and that it's okay to just have fun, line by line, day by day, writing for the entertainment of it all. I've been asked by a lot of people why I decided to do these books and my answer has been the same each time: It seemed like it would be pretty cool. It seemed like I'd reach about 50,000 more readers than I usually do. It seemed like a great way to learn, again, how to write something completely out of my comfort zone, to challenge myself in new and interesting ways. And the end result? Well, I guess you'll know in August.

Mr. Monk and the Parallel Universe

2008-02-24T15:43:00.001-08:00

I thought the two-part MONK season finale was great, but it points out one of the pitfalls of writing a tie-in series while the TV show that it is based on is still in production. It means that there are going to be some continuity miss-matches between the TV series and the books...and there's nothing that can be done about it.

I finished my book MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY back in October 2007 and it will be published in July 2008. In between that time, the MONK writers wrote, produced and broadcast the season finale. I am now well into writing MR. MONK IS MISERABLE, which comes out next winter...by the time I deliver that manuscript, the MONK writers will have just begun writing the season seven scripts. You can see the problem.

Andy Breckman, the creator and executive producer of MONK, knows in advance what I will be writing and approves the storylines. But I certainly don't expect him or his staff to feel creatively bound to any of the events or details that I create in my books. The show comes first. That said, there are bound to be diehard fans who expect strict continuity between the books and the TV series ...and they are going to stumble over a few miss-matches.

Both my book and the finale, "Mr. Monk is on the Run," involve Monk encountering a man with six fingers on one hand. That's actually okay. A fan could assume that my book takes place before the events in the season finale. In fact, it only reinforces Monk's attitude towards the "second" man with 11 fingers that he meets. The book and the episode would fit together pretty well chronologically, "factually," and even emotionally, if not for the last scene of the two-parter.

Oh well.

I have a disclaimer in my books that warns readers that, while I try hard to stay close to the continuity of the show, the long lead time of the books makes that next to impossible (an entire season is produced between when I turn in the book and when it comes out).

I read all the scripts and I talk to Andy about what he has in mind for the season ahead, but even so, continuity problems are bound to happen. Hypothetically, for example, Sharona may come back on the show some day and the story they come up with may have nothing to do with MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS (and, unless they adapt the book, won't acknowledge those events at all).

I don't obsess about the miss-matches and neither does Andy. He once said to me that, in his mind, the Monk TV series and the Monk books are separate entities...the same characters in parallel universes...and while they are consistent with one another most of the time, there are bound to be some differences now and then.

There's the TV shows and there are the books. They are not one in the same. He is okay with that and so am I. I hope that most of the fans will be, too.

Where the Wild Tie-In Writers Are

2008-02-04T15:15:00.001-08:00

More and more high profile authors are turning to tie-ins. Dave Eggers, author of A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, is writing the novelization of the movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's picture book WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. The novelization will be based on the script by Eggers' and director Spike Jonze, which expands on Sendak's 300-word book. Publishers Weekly reports that the novelization was Eggers' idea but it was Sendak who lobbied Eggers to be the one to write the tie-in. Harper Collins will publish the book, Eggers' first since 2000 not to be published under his own McSweeney's banner. It was not an easy deal to craft:

The publisher acquired world rights to the novel about a year ago, in a deal that involved not only Eggers but lawyers from Warner Brothers, since a tie-in book was already part of the movie contract. Intellectual property rights of both Sendak and HarperCollins (Where the Wild Things Are was originally published by Harper & Row) also had a bearing on terms. As [editor Dan] Halpern put it, negotiations involved “many different moving parts.” But the goal was always to have any tie-in book published by a Harper imprint, per the preexisting deal between Warner Brothers and Harper, which owns publication rights to the Wild Things franchise. Sendak, who has since been affiliated with other houses, agreed “there was something correct” about Harper doing Eggers's book.

Latest News from IAMTW Members

2008-02-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

Karen Traviss and Sean Williams have been nominated for the Phillip K Dick Award.

Christa Faust's novel MONEY SHOT received a rave review in Crimespree Magazine and so has Max Allan Collins' AMERICAN GANGSTER novelization.

Latest News from IAMTW Members

2008-01-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

Max Alan Collins has signed to do the novelization of MUMMY 3 (he did the previous two plus SCORPION KING) and X-FILES 2.
William Rabkin has signed a three book deal to write original novels based on the USA Network series PSYCH. The first one comes out in January 2009.
Tod Goldberg has signed a three book deal to to write original novels based on the USA Network series BURN NOTICE. The first book comes out in July 2008.
Robert Greenberger is writing the novelization of the feature film HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY

Richard Curtis on Tie-in Writing

2008-01-01T17:05:00.001-08:00

Legendary agent Richard Curtis writes a lot about the publishing business and he's had some things to say about tie-in writing. Among them:

Tie-ins are kin to souvenirs, and in some ways are not vastly different from the dolls, toys, games, calendars, clothes, and other paraphernalia generated by successful motion pictures and television shows. Those who write them usually dismiss them with embarrassment or contempt, or brag about how much money they made for so little work. Yet, when pressed they will speak with pride about the skill and craftsmanship that went into the books and assure you that the work is deceptively easy. And if you press them yet further, many will puff out their chests and boast that tie-in writers constitute a select inner circle of artisans capable of getting an extremely demanding job done promptly, reliably, and effectively, a kind of typewriter-armed S.W.A.T. team whose motto is, "My book is better than the movie."

We don't necessarily agree with him about the motto, but we certainly take pride in the work.

Mel Odom on Tie-In Writing

2008-01-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

We stumbled onto this interesting interview, conducted seven years ago, with novelist Mel Odom on tie-in writing. He says, among other things:

"A lot of 'regular' authors look down on media tie-in authors because they figure 'You're not doing real work. You're not really being a writer. You're doing knock-off stuff.' There have been a lot of 'regular' writers who try to do what Chris Golden and I do, and they can't because they don't assimilate the world enough, or they're trying to bring too much of their own stuff to it. Media tie-in writing is really tough, because you have to be strong writer, and walk-in there and tell the best story you can, while at the same time you have to set your ego aside and do it 'their way' to a degree, as far as 'Buffy would never do this.' 'But, when I was a kid, I would do that...'

He wants to make sure that his books are more than just a screenplay in book form:

I feel that a lot of people, why they try to do novelizations, they squeeze the dialogue in between text descriptions. You know, 'They were sitting in a restaurant. He had pancakes, and she had a milkshake, and he said...' You know, and there's a lot of novelizations that read that way. I don't want mine to read that way if I can. I want to give them a book that has legs. If you do a really nice book, it may have legs and be out there longer than the movie is. The movie will come and go in a month or two, but if you write the book really well, there will still be people ordering it for a long time after the film has left theatres. There's something about a book."

Yes, there certainly is.

IAMTW Supports The WGA

2007-12-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-24T19:33:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

From Kevin J. Anderson, on the exciting life of a tie-in writer...
----------------
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

2007-10-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

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).