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| Hollywood vs. the Author |
It’s (almost) every author’s dream to sell their book or
series to Hollywood. But most know very little about the actual process, despite the vague
and slightly terrifying rumors—which authors tend to ignore as exaggerations, too
completely absurd to be real.
My friend Stephen Jay Schwartz, former Director of
Development for Wolfgang Peterson, has assembled a great list of authors who
have sold books to Hollywood, authors who have worked as screenwriters,
showrunners, TV producers, and authors who have written movie tie-ins.
My own essay, A Woman
Wouldn’t Do That, recounts some of the surreal experiences I had in
development hell during my ten years as a working screenwriter—before I snapped
and wrote my first novel. I compare the two jobs – screenwriting vs. writing
books— and talk about how I came full circle, back to Hollywood, once I had
written a successful novel series that was a natural for the fantastic new age
of television we’re in.
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| The Huntress Moon series |
There’s a lot to learn here, from Michael Connelly’s
harrowing experience with fine print (and how he triumphed over it, by betting
on himself with Bosch), to Larry
Block’s hilarious recount of the vagaries of casting, to Tess Gerritsen’s
heartbreaking and timely reminder that a bad judge makes bad judgments—that we
all have to live with.
Between us all, we cover the good, the bad, the horrific, and
the flat-out unbelievable.
And the audiobook, out December 5, is really a treat - it's read by all of the authors, ourselves!
So if selling your book to Hollywood is your dream, you owe it to yourself to check out
these valuable lessons before you sign on that dotted line.
Stephen Jay Schwartz, editor, with essays by Lawrence Block, Michael
Connelly, Gregg Hurwitz, Andrew Kaplan, Tess Gerritsen, Diana Gould, Lee
Goldberg, James Brown, Alexandra Sokoloff, Ron Roberge, T. Jefferson Parker,
Alan Jacobson, Max Allan Collins, Peter James, Naomi Hirahara, and Joshua Corin
– plus an interview with Jonathan Kellerman.