You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2008.
Stumble It!One of the most informative and straight shooting chats I had at Expo 3 was with actor/writer Shane Salerno (“Criminal Behavior” “UC Undercover” “Shaft” “Armageddon”) whom I caught up with between seminars and panels. I asked Salerno what he though about the general tenor of the conference and the aspiring screenwriters he was meeting.
“There are a lot of hungry writers who are trying to get in the door,” he said. “You can tell by listening to these people that they have stories, they have voices and I wish there was a legal outlet to provide these people with a way to get their material read but there are so many legal restrictions that are necessary but ultimately they really stimey these people.”
I asked him what he meant by that and he talked about the precautions studios have to take before they look at a script, in particular one that isn’t represented by an agent or lawyer. One of the consistent frustrations I heard from attendees was how hard it was to get legitimate representation if you were unknown in Hollywood and how you couldn’t get known in Hollywood without legitimate representation.
Salerno agreed with how formidable it is just to get to first base these days in the industry.
“It’s so hard to get in the door…I don’t know if I could do it today,” he said candidly.
“There are also a lot of people who are taking money to read these scripts which I have a real problem with fundamentally. You have a lot of people who are working as waiters and waitresses and struggling and you have to pay $500 (to get a script read or analyzed). I remember what $500 was because I grew up with a single mom and we were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.”
It’s another kind of double bind situation. You need feedback on your script but can’t afford to pay for a script consultation until you’ve made enough money writing so that you don’t need feedback on your work anymore. (It should be mentioned there are legitimate, reasonably priced script doctors out there but you have to be cognizant of what distinguishes them from the pirates and rip-off artists).
Salerno said he didn’t have the answer to this dilemma but he did say it is worth hanging in and struggling for the acceptance and success the people they admire have achieved..
“I just hope these people stay persistent because sometimes it’s six or eight scripts before they have that great script,” he said. “All the people they admire went through these things and had adversity. Oliver Stone wrote 10 scripts before he wrote “Platoon” which got him all of his first jobs which got him “Midnight Express” and then he waited10 years to get “Platoon” made.”
Salerno said it’s kind of like what Kevin Costner said in “Bull Durham”: What you need is fear and arrogance.
“It’s weird, you have to have an arrogance because when people tell you your work stinks and no one is ever to going to make this that’s a really hard thing to hear all the time,” noted Salerno. “So what I hope is that people stick with it and write unique stuff.
What we need are more “Lost In Translation” and “Narks” and these voices as opposed to these bigger budget pictures and, granted, that’s mostly what I’ve done but my favorite films are these smaller movies.”
That’s not easy to do when so much of the industry is focused on the bottom line and the next blockbuster. But as Salerno suggests, it is the individual voice that stands out from the rest of the herd when it comes to getting attention in Hollywood.
Another indispensable component of success in the industry, as so many of the speakers at the Expo said, is self-promotion, networking, schmoozing, whatever you want to call it. You have to be able to get out there and meet the right people and get your work in front of those who can do something for you.
“Unfortunately I think self-promotion is a big component,” Salerno agreed. “I think there are guys who are brilliant writers but are horrible in a room. You should not be judged by whether you can move ‘em or wow ‘em or move ‘em in a room but it is a component of it and rather than dismiss it people have to become better in a room because there are a lot of these idiots who don’t read and maybe you hook them on a pitch or meeting or something instead of having them read a whole script.”
Not being able to excel at networking, working the town, working the trade etc. does not preclude success as screenwriter, it just means you have to find another angle to get noticed.
“As far as networking goes, I was raised by a single mom, I didn’t go to college, I wrote documentaries and got right in when I was very young, didn’t know anyone so there are a lot of examples where people have succeeded without knowing all the right people or aggressively marketing. The best thing you can do is put yourself in an environment to succeed. If you can get on a television show as a PA or as an extra you’re going to learn something from that and maybe something will happen. If you’re in Oklahoma writing screenplays and sending them around and hoping things are going to change, that is not going to happen,” Salerno said.
This raised another question about whether or not it is necessary to come to Los Angeles when you are trying to get your big break. I would say the preponderance of speakers I heard at Expo 3 said it really helps if you do. Some of them said you won’t get to first base if you don’t. Others said the right breaks and the right connections could obviate the necessity of relocation to SoCal.
Salerno is of the former camp. “I do believe you have to be in Los Angeles when you start out,” he stated matter of factly. He also did all the do things to launch his own career when he first got in the game.
“I attended all these functions, the classes and the bookstores reading all the time. I have a 10,000-book library in my house from collecting books over the years. Young writers and beginning writers need to stay persistent and understand what the odds are against them succeeding.”
This isn’t just his opinion. Salerno had some hard, cold facts about the competitive nature of the industry to back up the claim that this business is not for the non-competitive or complacent stay-at-home mom or college graduate.
“Someone told me recently there are more people in film programs today than in any other major in the United States so the numbers or overwhelming,” noted Salerno.
As an example of how competitive and daunting the numbers are, Salerno related the following facts about what producers and studios go through when they are looking for a pilot for a new TV show. “They listen to 600 pitches, they buy 30 to 40 scripts and they make three to four pilots and they put two on the air. Those are real numbers I just gave you. Think about that. When you realize from that standpoint you have to have the confidence and find a way to break in and go around the system. You need an in. One of the best writers I ever worked with on this last TV series I hired was an AIDS counselor at Riker’s Island who does not have the warmest personality for everybody but we got beyond that. You have to find an avenue. First you have to get your script truly read. Also find someone who is incentivized to help you.”
By insentivized, he means someone who has a vested interest in finding good material. Not someone who is reading your work because they like you or want to encourage you. He means someone who looks for good material as part of his or her job.
“The senior vice president of Paramount is not incentivized to help you,” he said.. “He’s supervising five movies that are in production and juggling $400 million dollars and has a lot of pressure on him. He’s not interested in watching your screenwriting career. But the lowest level (executive) who reads 20 scripts in a weekend because it’s his or her job, they are incentivized because they move up the ladder by finding “American Beauty” or “Shawshank Redemption.” This approach of machine gunning and hoping you hit oil is not as smart as targeting someone who is in a position to help you. It’s really about sniper mode as opposed to machine gun mode. “
The upshot of all this, as Salerno emphasized, is that, although we are talking about film and art and creativity when we talk about screenwriting, we are also talking about money. As he said, if you are not cognizant of this you stand very little chance of getting your screenwriting career kick-started.
“If you go to enough of these conferences you start to understand this business,” Salerno said.” It’s called show business which is not just some cliché. It is a business and writing is a craft. That means it’s business and people ultimately want to make money but it’s a craft so that means it takes a number of years to do well. I find a lot of people don’t understand those two things. The advantage of seminars and things like this is to be around people who are doing it and maybe hearing one or two things where you go ‘That’s what’s wrong with my script’ and you make that adjustment or ‘That’s a great way to get to an agent.’ But again, it’s a numbers game and a lot of people give up too early. It’s humbling even when you’re successful. William Goldman has 20 unproduced screenplays and he says that’s some of his best work. It’s a weird business. They pay you a million dollars to write it but they wont’ make it.”
Millions of dollar?! So whose’ gonna’ complain?
The point is, you can be at the bottom of the heap or the top of the heap in this industry and still suffer rejection and disappointment. What Salerno was intimating was that, if you hang in long enough and do the do things, there’s a good chance you will eventually get paid for your efforts, maybe not for this screenplay and maybe not for the next one but for one of them if you remain persistent and refuse to accept anything less than success.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE
Cheers!
Brian M Logan
ThatActionGuy.com
EMAIL ME HERE
Cool interview with Dan Ronco, author of the Techno-Thriller, UNHOLY DOMAIN.
Enjoy!
***
Dan Ronco’s latest novel is a suspenseful techno-thriller filled with adventure, romance and greed. A former successful engineer and businessman, he used his knowledge and experience to craft Unholy Domain, a story that delves into controversial, provocative themes like the ethics of genetic engineering, the question of what limit to put on technology, and the reconciling of religion and science. The novel also focuses on the relationship between a father and a son. With issues of such magnitude, Unholy Domain promises to be a thrilling, entertaining read. Ronco was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time to answer my questions.
Thanks for being here today. Why don’t you begin by telling us a little about yourself?
Born into a tough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, I learned powerful lessons about family, friendship and violence. My escape was fiction, and I spent many hours reading in the local library. Nurturing a passion for technology, I went on to gain a BS in Chemical Engineering from NJIT. Not enough challenge. Always fascinated by new technologies, I was awarded a full fellowship at Columbia University and gained a MS in Nuclear Engineering. Although I designed submarine nuclear reactors for three years, I discovered I enjoyed software development more than reactor design, so I changed career direction and achieved a second MS; this one in Computer Science from RPI.
Fascinated by virtually all areas of software development, my expertise grew to include coding, design, project management, quality improvement and finally, general management. My niche was software consulting and my team assisted many large corporations and governmental organizations. Always looking for the latest challenge, I built and managed several consulting practices. I’m especially proud of two accomplishments – assisting AT&T greatly improve the quality of the first commercial UNIX release and helping Microsoft to create a world class consulting organization. Positions held during my consulting years included Senior Principal with an international accounting/consulting firm, President, Software Technology Management Inc. and General Manager with Microsoft.
When did you decide you wanted to become an author?
Eight years ago I decided to leave consulting and concentrate on a long held desire to write fiction. A successful engineer and businessman, I had the breadth of experience to understand and synthesize rapidly evolving strands of technology. It became clear that fundamental change would turn our society upside down within the next few decades. Humans will have to adapt rapidly to gain the advantages of these changing social and technological innovations. Indeed, we will have to adapt rapidly just to survive.
I scoped out a trilogy of novels to expose three oncoming challenges; computer viruses enhanced with artificial intelligence (set in 2012), the oncoming clash between religion and technology concerning what it means to be human (2022), and the beginnings of the integration of human and artificial intelligence into a network entity (2032). Each novel is written as a thriller – packed with adventure, sex, greed and romance – as well as realistic science and technology. The three leading characters – Dianne Morgan, a female mega-billionaire obsessed with power; Ray Brown, her onetime lover and a brilliant software architect; and David Brown, Ray’s genetically gifted son – are fascinating and all too human.
PEACEMAKER, my first novel, was released in August, 2004 with outstanding feedback by critics, authors, and most importantly, by customers. My next novel, UNHOLY DOMAIN, was released April 2, 2008 by Kunati Books, with an excellent response. The final novel of the trilogy, tentatively entitled TOMORROW’S CHILDREN, should be released next year.
Tell us a bit about your latest book, and what inspired you to write such a story.
UNHOLY DOMAIN delivers all the excitement of a great thriller while also delving into provocative themes: the bioethics of genetic engineering, the question of what limit (if any) should be placed on technology, the problem of reconciling faith in God and respect for his creation with the technological promises of artificial intelligence, and the age-old issue of family ties and the loyalty of a son to his father. How could anyone not be inspired by issues of such magnitude?
UNHOLY DOMAIN features David Brown, a brilliant but troubled young man raised in the dark shadow of his long-dead father, a software genius who unleashed a computer virus that murdered more than a million innocents. When David receives a decade-old email that indicates his father may have been framed, he plunges into a gut-wrenching race with the real killers to discover the truth about his father … and himself. As David tracks through his father’s startling history, he stumbles into a war between the Domain, a secret society of technologists, and the Army of God, a murderous cult with a sacred mission to curtail the spread of technology and roll civilization back to a simpler era. Hunted by killers from both organizations, David unravels his father’s secrets, comes to terms with his own life, and then falls in love with a woman from his father’s past.
Did your book require a lot of research?
My novels are set in the near future, so it’s my responsibility to bring the reader into a world that is realistic, compelling and consistent with existing trends in science and culture. My stories exist at the point advanced technologies threaten our institutions, beliefs and even our survival.
As a result, I read constantly in subjects such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, robotics and other advanced technologies. I have a passion for technology, so reading isn’t a chore, it’s a gift. I am equally fascinated by human values and culture, such as economics, politics and religion. Searching for stress points, I attempt to project current technologies and trends two or three decades into the future. UNHOLY DOMAIN, for example, explores the potential for conflict between religious fundamentalists and scientists on the leading edge of artificial intelligence.
What is your opinion about critique groups? What words of advice would you offer a novice writer who is joining one? Do you think the wrong critique group can ‘crush’ a fledgling writer?
I have been in a critique group for seven years, and it has been a positive experience. The five of us meet once a week and we each read our most recent compositions, usually about ten pages. Each reviewer provides feedback describing good and bad aspects of the writing. We offer advice with the intent of helping the author; nobody shows off. The author considers the feedback and decides what, if anything, should be modified.
Actually it’s more than just a critique group. Our coach and group leader begins each session with a twenty minute discussion of a writing topic. While the coach leads the discussion, we all participate. I’d have to say we are many things: a critique group, a workshop, and a gathering of friends.
The secret of our success is compatibility and talent. We keep the group small and invite an occasional new member only if she gets along well with the existing members. It is also important that her writing skills are at a reasonably good level. Bringing a novice into the group wouldn’t be fair to anyone.
How was your experience in looking for a publisher? What words of advice would you offer those novice authors who are in search of one?
One of the biggest mistakes I made with PEACEMAKER, my first novel, was to not check out the publisher thoroughly. When he called me, I was thrilled, and it seemed that everything was working out. Wrong. The publisher was a nice guy, he was very enthusiastic about my novel and we seemed to hit it off. However, he had a couple of problems: he had been in business less than a year and really didn’t know much about book marketing; and he was underfunded, so he couldn’t hire talented, experienced professionals. As a result, his business went underwater and all his authors were left scrambling. That’s why I had to become the publisher for PeaceMaker, which consumed a great deal of my time.
So the lesson is to not become dreamy-eyed when a publisher offers to pick up your book. Treat it like making an investment. Check out the size, experience, financial resources, number of employees, references from other authors, bookstores that carry his works, etc. Better to walk away than sign up with someone who doesn’t have a good track record. I checked out Kunati carefully, and they have been an excellent publisher for UNHOLY DOMAIN.
Do you have a website/blog where readers may learn more about you and your work?
Yes, please stop by http://www.danronco.com/ to say hello, read an excerpt of UNHOLY DOMAIN, read my blog or view the incredible trailer for the book. And there’s much more: the complete PEACEMAKER novel, cool videos, book reviews and articles by guest authors. If you enjoy science fiction or technology thrillers, this is a great place to visit.
Thanks for stopping by! It was a pleasure to have you here!
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE
Cheers!
Brian M Logan
ThatActionGuy.com
EMAIL ME HERE
Good Paula Guran interview with prolific horror writer, Brian Lumley.
Enjoy!
***
Brian Lumley: His Vampires Do a Lot More Than Just Suck
Brian Lumley doesn’t just write novels (and short stories and poetry) he writes series of novels, and series of series of novels. He’s a seemingly unstoppable force of nature — or perhaps, considering his subject matter, a supernatural force. The prolific British author (over forty books and still counting) is best known for his “Necroscope” series, a rich tapestry of vivid characters and complexity that begins by combining the unforgettable Harry Keogh, a man who can speak to the dead, with Cold War espionage and a race of vampires from another world.
Invaders (published by Hodder and Stoughton in the U. K. as E-Branch: Invaders), just out this spring from Tor, is the first of the “E-Branch” trilogy that will end the Necroscope-related titles at 13 books altogether. The first ten Necroscope books have sold 1,500,000 copies in the U. S. alone and they have been or are in the process of being published in nine other countries. (Lumley’s total sales for Tor overall have now passed the 2,000,000 mark.) Comic books and a role-playing game have been based on Necroscope themes as well.
Lumley waited for two decades to write about vampires. “When I read Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (God, how many years ago?) it put me off writing my own vampire novel for the first 20 years of my writing career. It was THAT good,” says the author.” But what’s in will out, so eventually I did write it…and as we’ve seen, the thing got to be like Topsy. But I was conscious that quite a few vampire tales were being written, and I wanted vampires that did a lot more than just suck. They had to have histories, they had to have an origin, there had to be a damn good reason why they hadn’t long since taken over the world, and so on. It became very involved, and the more story I told, the more there was to tell.” The complexity of the mythos he has created will, he admits, probably will be the death of it. “The big problem now is that while I used to do lots of historical, geographical, and political (if you will) research, now I have to research my own books! There are so very many threads running through them that if I’m not careful I might easily trip myself up. That’s why the series will probably end with this trilogy. It’s simply getting too complicated to continue.”
A fan of horror and fantasy fiction since his teens, Lumley was almost thirty when he began writing in 1967. He was serving as a Royal Military Policeman in Berlin. “I was on Night Duty on the desk and had nothing much to do in the wee small hours. I read August Derleth-edited Arkham House collections.” (Derleth and his small press, Arkham House, were noted for the posthumous popularization of H. P. Lovecraft.) “They saw me through many a night and shaped the style and contents of my first stories. I actually wrote some of those stories on duty, on that desk in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. And I typed them up from my scrawly longhand and sent them to Derleth who bought them.”
By then he was no longer a part of the fan scene, “I hadn’t been since I was a kid, 13 or 14 years earlier. I didn’t know a damn thing about professional publishers or publishing. And I definitely didn’t know that Derleth was the dean of macabre publishers, the man who had first published Van Vogt, Bradbury, Bloch, Leiber, Lovecraft (of course), and so many others that they’re literally a Who’s Who of our favorite genres. So these stories of mine were single-spaced things on oddly-sized sheets, unnumbered pages, stapled in one corner, rolled up and stuffed into cardboard tubes, and posted surface mail to Wisconsin … from Berlin! It’s just amazing that they ever got there — let alone that he read them! Can’t you just see him trying to unroll them, and having to nail them to his desk top in order to read them? But it appears I was lucky then, and I’ve stayed lucky ever since.”
Lumley returned to civilian life in 1981 and became a full-time writer. He produced –among many other titles — the science fictional “Psychomech” trilogy — Psychomech (1984), Psychosphere (1984), and Psychamok! (1985) — in which a hero with enhanced psychic abilities fights bad guys with similar powers; Demogorgon (UK 1987, US 1992) features the spawn of Satan himself using his supernatural powers to fight his dark side and against his unholy father; four books in the heroic fantasy “Dreamlands” series, and, of course, the Necroscope books which began in 1986.
Lumley’s early reputation was linked to his liberal use of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos in both short stories and his earliest novels — the “Titus Crow” series of the mid-to-late-1970s. Crow, an occult detective, tangles with Lovecraft’s monsters in a fantastic extradimensional void in the series. “Without Lovecraft there would never have been a Titus Crow. All Mythos stories are dependent upon HPL, of course. But another big influence was the much-maligned August Derleth, the boss of Arkham House. He viewed the Mythos from a different angle, and if he could do it so could I. Burroughs was probably an influence, likewise Abraham Merritt, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, that whole bunch. But you know, I’ve read and talked Lovecraft until I really can’t do it any more. Why can’t we just say of him that he was an original, one of the greats, and that he influenced so many of us that he probably is the most important cornerstone of the weird fiction tradition today…and leave it at that?”
The Titus Crow and Necroscope books are also a Cold War metaphor. “The Necroscope books were guided by what was going on in the world while they were being written. The new trilogy is set in the future a couple of years, so it’s pretty much guess-work. And it’s mainly ecological as opposed to political. I’ve been lucky in my predictions so far; the Channel Tunnel I mentioned in the second Crow book (Transistion, 1975) is now a reality. But I really can’t say if it’s protected by star-stones from Mnar or not. I suspect not…”
Future worlds? Fantastic other dimensions? Star-stones? Politics? Was Lumley intentionally crossing genre boundaries to synthesize, horror, science fiction, and fantasy? “No, my crossing genres wasn’t planned. It was just me trying to learn the business of writing, experimenting and finding out what I could do best and where it would take me. The first paperback book I did, The Burrowers Beneath, was a horror story “after Lovecraft”. Its sequel, Transition, was a fantasy. The next two sequels were science-fantasy, and the last book in the series, Elysia, was pure fantasy. I was trying ’em all, that’s all. But Necroscope? It has bits of lots of genres, but chiefly horror. Let’s face it, the best of the “horror” movies do much the same thing. Is Bodysnatchers (original and remakes) horror or science fiction? Is The Thing, or Alien or Predator? See what I mean? On the other hand short stories I’ve done — such as Fruiting Bodies and The Sun, The Sea and The Silent Scream — are pure horror. So if you ask me what I am … I’m a horror writer.” Fruiting Bodies won Lumley a British Fantasy Award in 1989 and he was given a Grand Master Award at the 1998 World Horror Convention.
A couple of decades in the military, is not exactly common training ground for most horror writers. Although the author will agree that his first career has enhanced his writing career, he also feels writing offered him an escape from from his military career. “The army took me places, showed me a lot of things, let me meet a great many diverse people — all grist for a writer’s mill. But in places as dreary as Berlin was in 1967, writing did provide something of an escape.”
The military also gave Lumley a taste for travel. He’s visited or lived in the United States, Cyprus, Berlin, Malta, and more than a dozen Greek islands. He and his American-born wife, Barbara Ann, now live in Devon, but they still enjoy travel and Lumley particularly enjoys visits to the Mediterranean where he can indulge a bit in moussaka, and imbibe a little retsina, ouzo, and metaxa.
What would he do if he weren’t writing? “There are lots of other things that I haven’t done, places I haven’t seen. So eventually I’ll have to find time for those things while there still is time. We’ve got one life and the older we get the more we come to realize how short it is. I just like telling stories. Writers are in the entertainment business, and it gives me lots of pleasure to entertain my readers. But I’m no longer driven to write. Now I have to drive myself.” Lumley’s books have inspired music as well as reading. “There’s a British heavy metal group called Necroscope; I’ve never met them. And in the States there are a handful of groups that have dedicated work to me. No mistaking the source of inspiration on tracks with titles like ‘What Will Be Has Been,’ or ‘From Northern Aeries to the Infinite Cycle of the Unborn Lord.’ Those are from a CD by a group called Epoch of Unlight. HEAVY!” One of his close friends in the U. K, is Keith Grant-Evans of The Downliners Sect. “Sect’s been around all of twenty-five years and more; recently did a new CD called Dangerous Ground with yours truly doing voice-overs on ‘Escape From Hong Kong’ and ‘Bookworm’.”
But music’s been an influence on Lumley as well. “Way back when I was 15 and 16, I had three main hobbies: Rock ‘n Roll, the jive (the dance), and SF. I’m talking 1953, ’54 here. I was a founder-member of NEZFEZ, the North-East Science Fiction group. We used to meet in a little town close to Newcastle at a pub called The Red Lion and talk books and like that — you know the scene. I was doing artwork and “poetry” for fanzines (UK and USA) with titles like CAMBER, PEON, SATELLITE, etc. That was the, er, “intellectual” side of me. But I was also buying that vinyl and teaching the jive at a local dance hall. No, really — at 16, yes! Hey, it was a great way to meet the girls!”
“So music has always been in me,” he continues. “I suppose since I was ten and my big brother brought back all those 12 inch records from Germany with him in ’48, after he’d finished his National Service. And was I ever into the big bands! Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, the Dorseys, etc! Today, I have this really excellent Ray Charles collection that I started to put together in 1960 in Germany, and been at it ever since. I’m usually listening to Ray while I write.”
And where will the future find Lumley? “The future is a devious thing. We’re all time-travellers, albeit pretty damn slow time-travellers. We only go forward at a speed of one day per day, one step for every step. And maybe that’s the right way to take the future: I’ll just let it sneak up on me. I mean, it’s been doing it for 61 years, so why try to change things now? More to the point: when the E-Branch trilogy is finished, I think I may return to short stories awhile, just to keep my hand in — or even to get my hand BACK in! I mean, it’s quite a long time since I did any short stories. And I think I’m looking forward to it…”
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE
ThatActionGuy.com Blog 
Recent Comments