NFreads.com Interview
# You’ve just published your ninth novel, CITY OF STONES, the fourth book in the critically acclaimed Detective Matt Jones Thriller Series. Tell us about yourself and your books?
The truth is that writing thriller novels came to me almost by accident. I was a film major in college. After I graduated, I began writing spec screenplays, working in film, television, and advertising, and hoping for something to break. I’d studied screenwriting with Walter Tevis, author of THE HUSTLER, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE COLOR OF MONEY, and THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT. While producing a tribute to the Challenger space shuttle explosion with Mark Moskowitz for The Today Show, I was in New York negotiating the rights to the song SPACE ODDITY with David Bowie’s manager. Apparently, David Bowie felt that THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH was the best film he’d ever acted in. When he heard that I had studied with Walter Tevis, he wanted to read my latest screenplay.
# Let me guess. David Bowie read your screenplay and loved it.
It was amazing. He wanted to be in it. One of the two leading roles. I was immediately signed as a writer/director by the William Morris Agency, and moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles.
# What was the name of the screenplay?
BETWEEN TWO BORDERS. It was never made, even after Sandra Bullock read the screenplay and wanted to be in it as well. I ended up ghostwriting the final draft of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER, and moved on.
# But how did you make the turn to writing novels?
I had met John Truby, author of THE ANATOMY OF STORY, by now and was focused on pushing my screenplays over the top. After writing another spec script, the Creative Artists Agency took me on, and things went nuclear. Everybody in the movie business wanted a shot at making this film. It was a political thriller called ACCESS TO POWER. That’s right. My first novel, based on this screenplay that had high hopes, and was green-lighted with a director attached. Unfortunately, like so many others, the project fizzled out over producers arguing amongst themselves about money. One wanted a low budget production, another, including the director, wanted to go big. In the end, no one won the day. I remember meeting Michael Connelly after a production meeting. He was signing books at a wonderful store that used to be on the Venice Beach boardwalk. We had a chance to talk, and I told him what was going in. He gave me a look and said, why don’t you just write the novel. And that’s exactly what I did. I started the following day. Within a week after completing the first draft, I had a book agent. Three days later, ACCESS TO POWER was sold, and when it was published, debuted as a national bestseller.
# Which do you like more? Writing screenplays or writing novels?
No doubt about it. Writing novels is so much more fun, and for a lot of reasons anyone who writes or reads fiction can understand. First, a novel is a finished work. A complete universe. Until you hand it over to an editor, it’s all yours. But even more thrilling, at least for me, when you write a novel you have the unique pleasure and joy of expressing what a character is thinking. No other artform gives the artist such a wide-screen view of the interplay between character and story. Only novels have that kind of dimension.
(to be continued…)
LINK to nfreads.com and the Complete Interview
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ROBERT ELLIS WRITERS BLOG
