I don’t remember it very well.

I do remember Bob.

Bob Mecoy.  I’d met Bob through my friend Lou Stathis.  Lou was a freelance editor, writer and good guy.  I was staying in New York for a few months to babysit an apartment, with the idea I’d get to know the publishing community.

Bob worked at Arco Publishing.

His wife, Robin, worked at Starlog Magazine, and was editor of FUTURE.

Cool!  They used to have salons.  They’d just gotten back together after a split.  Both journalism studenst from the University of Oklahoma, somehow they seemed the coolest Okies I’d ever met.   In any case, years passed from the mid seventies when I met them, and by then Bob had a job at Dell Publishing.

He called me.

“Even done a novelization?”

“No.”

“I think you are right for this screenplay.  I mean to novelize it.”

Bob wasn’t crazy about my writing, but he recognized something in it that he could use.  Dell had just picked up the rights for this movie. Mind you these were the days when novelizations could sell very well indeed.  William Kotzwinkle’s novelization of E.T. was on the top of the bestseller’s list for uncounted weeks.

“Thanks, Bob.”  I said.  ”I’ll do it.”

You see, one of the things I’d always wanted to be was a film director.  And I’d found out — whew! — a film director was a hard thing to be.

So why not be a film director — in front of your typewriter

Oh yes folks.  And I do meant typewriter!

Here’s the poster that was also a cover for the hardcover for my book

second book in the Dragonstar trilogy.

Would love a review!

CHECK BACK AT THIS POST, AS I WILL BE ADDING TO IT.

THE NEXT BIG THING seems to be some kind of web chain mail project to reach out to folks about writing projects.  I was contacted by Phill Berrie about this and I’m thrilled to try it out.

Phill’s own version is at:

 http://phillberrie.livejournal.com/95285.html

1) What is the working title of your next book?

DRAGONS OF NIGHTWORLD

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

It will be the third in a series. FIrst book was NIGHTWORLD. Second book was VAMPIRES OF NIGHTWORLD.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Science Fantasy

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Anthony Hopkins

Mark Heap

Dame Maggie Smith

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

All the questions posed by the first two books will be answered.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Both.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It’s not written yet.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

THE HOBBIT

UNIVERSE by Robert A. Heinlein

Steampunk science fantasy

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Hammer horror movies

Ray Harryhausen

Jean Paul Satre

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

This book will be much different than if I had written it in the 80′s for Del Rey Books, although I am using an outline I wrote back then. I’ve thought about this final book a lot and I’ve come up with some amazing new ideas.   

Again, check out Phill’s NEXT BIG THING at:

 http://phillberrie.livejournal.com/95285.html

Ray Davies sang a great song about London, “Waterloo Sunset” at the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

But NBC didn’t show it!

They also canned a Kate Bush tribute.

If you are as outraged as I am, you can email

nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com

I did.

I will vent on this more later.

AVAILABLE NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

by George R. R. Martin

reviewed by Chris Lampton

From his review blog 52books52.wordpress.com

In a recent interview that I either read or saw with George R.R. Martin, he said that he likes to add new viewpoint characters in each book of the Song of Ice and Fire series, allowing the story to spread out further and further into the world of his alternative middle ages, bringing new kingdoms, countries and continents into the world-encompassing war that began near the end of A Game of Thrones.

Great idea, George. Pity it doesn’t work.

If anything has weakened the last couple of books in the series, it’s that none of the new characters, the ones introduced since the first book, has been as interesting as the members of the Stark, Lannister and Targaryen families, and it’s still the initial set of eight viewpoint characters (at least those among them who have survived) and their immediate relatives that the reader cares most about. The increasing bloat of secondary characters nearly swamped the fourth book of the series, A Feast for Crows, and if the series recovers its footing in the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, it’s because Martin wisely concentrates the narrative on the three strongest viewpoint characters remaining from that initial eight: Tyrion Lannister, Daenaerys Targaryen and Jon Snow (though one of the most fascinating chapters in this book is about the most underused of the original set of characters: Bran Stark).

REST OF ESSAY

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
 A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

Bantam Books

reviewed by Chris Lampton

From his WordPress Blog 52Books50

Let’s see, according to my Nook, I have over the last three months read 3,477 pages of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (including the first book, A Game of Thrones, which I wrote about earlier). It is with great sincerity, then, that I say the following: Whew!

I’m not sure if that’s a whew! of admiration or a whew! of exhaustion, but it’s a whew! of something, that’s for sure. Martin is a terrific writer, one of my favorites, but he does like to go on and on and on and on and on and on and…next month he’ll be publishing another 1,000 pages or so for me to read, with still another two books left before the series is done. Assuming he doesn’t drop dead from carpal tunnel syndrome before he types the final words of the final book, that means I’ll probably eventually read somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 pages of Martin’s writing on this series alone.

A lot of you now know A Game of Thrones through the HBO series and a few of you have even read the book, but if you haven’t gotten beyond the first volume you may be wondering if the rest of the series is as good as the beginning. Well, no, it isn’t quite. But it comes awfully close. Martin’s writing can be trying at times. He likes to spend hundreds of pages setting up a situation, doling out exposition, even letting his myriad characters (and when you start counting the minor characters there’s a hell of a big myriad here) spend entire chapters in talky political wrangling or discussing the latest gossip about people who often have nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but once Martin has his plot wound up, he lets it explode and the result is thrilling in a way that popular fiction rarely is.

REST OF ESSAY

Here’s the story trailer!