Anonymous-9's Blog - Posts Tagged "blasted-heath"
Blasted Heath Listopia
Hey, it's quiet over there and some great books await your vote (I must admit, mine's there too.) If you like the crime fic of Blasted Heath, click on over and have your say.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/27...
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/27...
SCOTLAND STORMS HOLLYWOOD
I'm starting to feel like the town crier. Big, big news for Blasted Heath author Douglas Lindsay as his quirky, black-comic thriller THE LONG MIDNIGHT OF BARNEY THOMSON gets set to shoot starring Emma Thompson (no relation) and directed by Robert Carlyle.
Pint-sized digital publisher Blasted Heath (Scotland) has only a dozen authors on its roster (I'm one) and to think Hollywood has plucked a novel from their shelf has me hyperventilating with excitement.
Douglas has just agreed to an email interview and I've fired off my first question. I'll publish Doug's answers right here soon. Stay tuned.
Pint-sized digital publisher Blasted Heath (Scotland) has only a dozen authors on its roster (I'm one) and to think Hollywood has plucked a novel from their shelf has me hyperventilating with excitement.
Douglas has just agreed to an email interview and I've fired off my first question. I'll publish Doug's answers right here soon. Stay tuned.
DOUGLAS LINDSAY INTERVIEW
Author of THE LONG MIDNIGHT OF BARNEY THOMSON
Film Logline from IMDB (Pro): Barney Thomson, awkward, diffident, Glasgow barber, lives a life of desperate mediocrity and his uninteresting life is about to go from 0 to 60 in five seconds, as he enters the grotesque and comically absurd world of the serial killer.
Starring Emma Thompson, directed by Robert Carlyle. Currently in pre-production. A Canada/UK co-production.
Based on the novel by Douglas Lindsay, THE LONG MIDNIGHT OF BARNEY THOMSON, Blasted Heath publishers.
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: I wrote [The] Long Midnight [of Barney Thomson] back in '95, got it picked three years later by a publisher called Piatkus - then an independent, now part of Little Brown / Hachette. It was published fifteen years ago this month. Three months prior to that the film rights were bought by Martin Rosen (Watership Down). Despite trying for a couple of years, he didn't manage to get the movie made (which was sad, as I'd written the script, but hey-hoh.) He thought big, and at one point he, or at least his partner, was aiming for a cast of Robin Williams, Billy Connolly and Sean Connery. Weird that it didn't come off...
Meanwhile I wrote another couple of Barney novels published by Piatkus, then they dropped me. Lost my publishing agent at the same time. My saviour at the time was my German publisher, who had paid quite a lot for Barney 1, and therefore was more committed to the series. I wrote three more principally for German translation. Unable to find another UK publisher, I started reprinting the series myself. This started late 2003. I ploughed a lone furrow for eight years or so. Seven Barney novels, and the stand alone thriller Lost In Juarez. Meanwhile, a Scottish film company tried to make Barney but didn't get it off the ground.
Richard Cowan first asked about film rights about ten years ago, but at the time we (me and my screen agent) gave it to the Scottish company. He asked again, while the others still had the rights. Then in, I think, maybe 2008 he came back, and he got the rights. So it's taken him about 6 years, God, might even be 7, to get to where they are now since he got the option.
Then about three years ago I was trawling through the internet trying to find quotes from people about Barney, as I once more put together a portfolio to place in front of a bunch of editors who would ignore me. I found one from Mr Guthrie saying that he'd been influenced by me, which was something of a surprise. Not, I must admit, that I'd ever heard of him... Then some time after that I discovered he was also an agent, so I wrote to him and he took me on. This was a few months before the Heath was created; he asked me if I'd come along, and so ended the very brief period of being my agent and became my publisher. He helped turn The Unburied Dead into something readable, from the piece of shit that it'd been since I'd written it in '98.
Richard Cowan first mentioned a connection with Robert Carlyle [director] two and a half years ago. Slowly, slowly, slowly, with both the Heath and the movie, we get to where we are now...
ANONYMOUS-9: I'm in love with Blasted Heath myself. I think Al and Kyle are the best--responsive, supportive, in tune. I feel so at home among people I trust. After Blasted Heath signed me and I read your crazy stuff I reeeeallly knew I was home. Or maybe home at the asylum.
But I digress.
Here's the burning question: How/when does the novelist who originally created the story get paid in a movie deal? I know that options can be paid or unpaid (until dealtime) and screenwriters are usually the first to get paid when a movie goes into production, but what about the novelist, the story creator?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: The basics of the deal, they pay an option each year; so that's six times now, or may be seven, I don't recall, where Richard Cowan [producer] has paid me. I then get a percentage of the budget due on the first day of principal photography, and a small percentage of producer's profits. Since producers don't really ever make much profit, not expecting much from that. The main payment is the percentage of the budget which is, as they say in the tabloids, "a six-figure sum."
[Note: Industry standard is to pay about 3% of the overall film budget up-front to the author. The check is written and sent as soon as the money is in place as an operating budget for production, at the latest in the first few weeks of filming.]
ANONYMOUS-9: Are you going to be involved with the story production at all? Does your contract mention on-set [the live shooting set with actors] privileges?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: I'm not involved in story production at all. Richard [Cowan] is very good at keeping me up to date with developments, but I have no input. That's fine, as I've known from the start that was how it was to be. They have their own ideas with the film, their own processes, so I'm absolutely not sitting here being desperately protective of my book. How the film looks is entirely up to them, I'm just happy it's getting made.
It's written in the contract that I can visit the set on six occasions. I doubt I'll go that many, as I doubt I'd want to be on a film set that often even if I was in it. So I'll go once and see the lay of the land. My daughter is a drama student, so I'd happily trade most of those six visits for being able to take her along. Would love for her to meet Emma Thompson.
ANONYMOUS-9: At what point in the long Barney Thomson saga did you get another agent after you lost the first one? Were agents instrumental in getting the film people to notice you or did Barney come to their attention through another avenue?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Piatkus originally picked me up out of the slush pile. Then a London agency got in touch and I joined them. The agent that took me on just so happened to retire round about the same time as Piatkus let me go, and the agency didn't retain me. Meanwhile, Piatkus had a screen agency to whom they sent any books of theirs they thought might be cinematic. Since I was commissioned to write a draft of Long Midnight by the first guy who bought the film rights, that Agency - now called KnightHall - took me on. I'm still with them. They don't, however, act for novels.
All the film stuff has gone through KnightHall, and if anyone has ever contacted me about film rights directly, I put them straight onto the agency.
So, having a screen agent but no publishing agent all this time, I gave screenwriting a go for a while, but I really don't like the collaborative nature of film. I got one original screenplay optioned - entitled The Monkfish Cowboy - a romcom [romantic comedy] set in Glasgow/London, but after a couple of years development it fell by the wayside. I came to hate the constant re-writing, and the script editor needing to put his mark on every word. (Which I'd also hated writing that original draft of Barney Thomson.) Obviously there are writers who enjoy the process, or perhaps are just good enough at it to be able to put up with it, but it wasn't for me. I preferred to persevere with novels than screen.
Eventually I signed up with Al [Guthrie, Blasted Heath], and here we are.
ANONYMOUS-9: Is Long Midnight Publishing your own imprint?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Long Midnight Publishing was the name I gave the imprint when I started publishing the Barney books. I know that some people won't realise that I've published them myself, but I've never especially tried to hide it. After a couple of years I managed to sign up with a distributor, which is great because it means someone else is storing the books and sending them out, so I don't have a loft full and have to keep going to the Post Office. It went all right for a few years in the middle, but since digital started up, and then signing with Blasted Heath, I've just kind of let it go. Never really enjoyed it, and never had the resources or the publisher's personality type to make a success of it.
ANONYMOUS-9: Anything else you'd like to mention? Upcoming books?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Currently working on a follow-up to Plague of Crows with DS Hutton. Entitled The Blood That Stains Your Hands, probably not quite as gruesome as its predecessor, and based around the merger of churches in Hutton's home town. Which is also my home town, and where the churches recently had to merge, but no one was murdered. My version of events is a little more dramatic.
Next novel out with Blasted Heath is entitled BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR KITE! Not a crime novel, more of a Kafka-esque mind-fuck. [More on the new book, it's inspiration and a synopsis of the plot in a few days in a separate post.]
ANONYMOUS-9: Will success change Douglas Lindsay?
DL: I'm looking to be one of those writers whose name people recognise, but about whom they actually know very little. I realise, however, that one has to take whatever opportunities come along, particularly at this stage. So, you know, if I'm asked to sing at the Super Bowl half-time show next year, I'll probably say yes.
ANONYMOUS-9: Thank you, Douglas, for giving so generously of your time and attention. END INTERVIEW
Film Logline from IMDB (Pro): Barney Thomson, awkward, diffident, Glasgow barber, lives a life of desperate mediocrity and his uninteresting life is about to go from 0 to 60 in five seconds, as he enters the grotesque and comically absurd world of the serial killer.
Starring Emma Thompson, directed by Robert Carlyle. Currently in pre-production. A Canada/UK co-production.
Based on the novel by Douglas Lindsay, THE LONG MIDNIGHT OF BARNEY THOMSON, Blasted Heath publishers.
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: I wrote [The] Long Midnight [of Barney Thomson] back in '95, got it picked three years later by a publisher called Piatkus - then an independent, now part of Little Brown / Hachette. It was published fifteen years ago this month. Three months prior to that the film rights were bought by Martin Rosen (Watership Down). Despite trying for a couple of years, he didn't manage to get the movie made (which was sad, as I'd written the script, but hey-hoh.) He thought big, and at one point he, or at least his partner, was aiming for a cast of Robin Williams, Billy Connolly and Sean Connery. Weird that it didn't come off...
Meanwhile I wrote another couple of Barney novels published by Piatkus, then they dropped me. Lost my publishing agent at the same time. My saviour at the time was my German publisher, who had paid quite a lot for Barney 1, and therefore was more committed to the series. I wrote three more principally for German translation. Unable to find another UK publisher, I started reprinting the series myself. This started late 2003. I ploughed a lone furrow for eight years or so. Seven Barney novels, and the stand alone thriller Lost In Juarez. Meanwhile, a Scottish film company tried to make Barney but didn't get it off the ground.
Richard Cowan first asked about film rights about ten years ago, but at the time we (me and my screen agent) gave it to the Scottish company. He asked again, while the others still had the rights. Then in, I think, maybe 2008 he came back, and he got the rights. So it's taken him about 6 years, God, might even be 7, to get to where they are now since he got the option.
Then about three years ago I was trawling through the internet trying to find quotes from people about Barney, as I once more put together a portfolio to place in front of a bunch of editors who would ignore me. I found one from Mr Guthrie saying that he'd been influenced by me, which was something of a surprise. Not, I must admit, that I'd ever heard of him... Then some time after that I discovered he was also an agent, so I wrote to him and he took me on. This was a few months before the Heath was created; he asked me if I'd come along, and so ended the very brief period of being my agent and became my publisher. He helped turn The Unburied Dead into something readable, from the piece of shit that it'd been since I'd written it in '98.
Richard Cowan first mentioned a connection with Robert Carlyle [director] two and a half years ago. Slowly, slowly, slowly, with both the Heath and the movie, we get to where we are now...
ANONYMOUS-9: I'm in love with Blasted Heath myself. I think Al and Kyle are the best--responsive, supportive, in tune. I feel so at home among people I trust. After Blasted Heath signed me and I read your crazy stuff I reeeeallly knew I was home. Or maybe home at the asylum.
But I digress.
Here's the burning question: How/when does the novelist who originally created the story get paid in a movie deal? I know that options can be paid or unpaid (until dealtime) and screenwriters are usually the first to get paid when a movie goes into production, but what about the novelist, the story creator?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: The basics of the deal, they pay an option each year; so that's six times now, or may be seven, I don't recall, where Richard Cowan [producer] has paid me. I then get a percentage of the budget due on the first day of principal photography, and a small percentage of producer's profits. Since producers don't really ever make much profit, not expecting much from that. The main payment is the percentage of the budget which is, as they say in the tabloids, "a six-figure sum."
[Note: Industry standard is to pay about 3% of the overall film budget up-front to the author. The check is written and sent as soon as the money is in place as an operating budget for production, at the latest in the first few weeks of filming.]
ANONYMOUS-9: Are you going to be involved with the story production at all? Does your contract mention on-set [the live shooting set with actors] privileges?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: I'm not involved in story production at all. Richard [Cowan] is very good at keeping me up to date with developments, but I have no input. That's fine, as I've known from the start that was how it was to be. They have their own ideas with the film, their own processes, so I'm absolutely not sitting here being desperately protective of my book. How the film looks is entirely up to them, I'm just happy it's getting made.
It's written in the contract that I can visit the set on six occasions. I doubt I'll go that many, as I doubt I'd want to be on a film set that often even if I was in it. So I'll go once and see the lay of the land. My daughter is a drama student, so I'd happily trade most of those six visits for being able to take her along. Would love for her to meet Emma Thompson.
ANONYMOUS-9: At what point in the long Barney Thomson saga did you get another agent after you lost the first one? Were agents instrumental in getting the film people to notice you or did Barney come to their attention through another avenue?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Piatkus originally picked me up out of the slush pile. Then a London agency got in touch and I joined them. The agent that took me on just so happened to retire round about the same time as Piatkus let me go, and the agency didn't retain me. Meanwhile, Piatkus had a screen agency to whom they sent any books of theirs they thought might be cinematic. Since I was commissioned to write a draft of Long Midnight by the first guy who bought the film rights, that Agency - now called KnightHall - took me on. I'm still with them. They don't, however, act for novels.
All the film stuff has gone through KnightHall, and if anyone has ever contacted me about film rights directly, I put them straight onto the agency.
So, having a screen agent but no publishing agent all this time, I gave screenwriting a go for a while, but I really don't like the collaborative nature of film. I got one original screenplay optioned - entitled The Monkfish Cowboy - a romcom [romantic comedy] set in Glasgow/London, but after a couple of years development it fell by the wayside. I came to hate the constant re-writing, and the script editor needing to put his mark on every word. (Which I'd also hated writing that original draft of Barney Thomson.) Obviously there are writers who enjoy the process, or perhaps are just good enough at it to be able to put up with it, but it wasn't for me. I preferred to persevere with novels than screen.
Eventually I signed up with Al [Guthrie, Blasted Heath], and here we are.
ANONYMOUS-9: Is Long Midnight Publishing your own imprint?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Long Midnight Publishing was the name I gave the imprint when I started publishing the Barney books. I know that some people won't realise that I've published them myself, but I've never especially tried to hide it. After a couple of years I managed to sign up with a distributor, which is great because it means someone else is storing the books and sending them out, so I don't have a loft full and have to keep going to the Post Office. It went all right for a few years in the middle, but since digital started up, and then signing with Blasted Heath, I've just kind of let it go. Never really enjoyed it, and never had the resources or the publisher's personality type to make a success of it.
ANONYMOUS-9: Anything else you'd like to mention? Upcoming books?
DOUGLAS LINDSAY: Currently working on a follow-up to Plague of Crows with DS Hutton. Entitled The Blood That Stains Your Hands, probably not quite as gruesome as its predecessor, and based around the merger of churches in Hutton's home town. Which is also my home town, and where the churches recently had to merge, but no one was murdered. My version of events is a little more dramatic.
Next novel out with Blasted Heath is entitled BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR KITE! Not a crime novel, more of a Kafka-esque mind-fuck. [More on the new book, it's inspiration and a synopsis of the plot in a few days in a separate post.]
ANONYMOUS-9: Will success change Douglas Lindsay?
DL: I'm looking to be one of those writers whose name people recognise, but about whom they actually know very little. I realise, however, that one has to take whatever opportunities come along, particularly at this stage. So, you know, if I'm asked to sing at the Super Bowl half-time show next year, I'll probably say yes.
ANONYMOUS-9: Thank you, Douglas, for giving so generously of your time and attention. END INTERVIEW
