Coming Soon: A New, Revised Edition of GRAND & HUMBLE

Back in 2005, I wrote this YA psychological thriller called Grand & Humble. It sold well, a lot of people liked the twist ending, and it even won a couple of awards.

Flash forward to last year when I decided to adapt the book into a screenplay. After that, I was going to try and pitch it as a film project.

Incidentally, there is a very strong bias in Hollywood against authors adapting their own novels. Most producers think (correctly) that most authors don’t have enough “distance” from their own work, or that novelists don’t understand how completely different the mediums of books and film are. So most producers (much) prefer to hire professional screenwriters, so the producer can more closely control the adaptation themselves.

As for me, well, I think I’m the exception: a novelist who’s also a pretty decent screenwriter.

My way of thinking is that by adapting my own work, the project can be pitched two ways: as a book, by my book agent and her screen reps, and also as a completed screenplay separate from the book, by me or a film agent. If a producer likes the screenplay even before knowing that it was originally a book, that tells me I did my job right, by making a project that is truly independent of the source material. Plus, it guarantees that I’ll be kept as a screenwriter on the project, at least for a while. (Screenwriting is where the real money is, but also what I really enjoy, even more than writing novels.)

Anyway, I’ve sold multiple projects to Hollywood both ways, so I think I have a pretty good system.

The problem? Whenever I adapt a published novel as a screenplay, I soon start to see all its structural flaws. And this is a guy who (I think!) is a pretty careful plotter of novels.

By the time I’m done with the screenplay, I often think, “Oh, MAN, I wish I could rewrite that book! It would be so much better now!”

That’s a real problem if the book is already published.

Lately, however, I had an opportunity to rewrite Grand & Humble, top to bottom.

Is it a “perfect” book now? Nah, there’s no such thing as “perfection.” But I do think it’s quite a bit better than what was published in 2005, and also a lot closer to my original vision.

I can’t wait for people to read it!

Look for the new edition of

Grand & Humble in April 2016!

 

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