Posted on 06/16/2011 12:40:27 PM PDT by Travis McGee
Honestly I’ve had less than ten requests for audio books total over the years. I just can’t see the demand side of the equation compared to the time and other investment.
That would be the worst, to sell out the novels by selling out to PC Hollywood, and they change them to fed agent heroes hunting down crazed hillbilly right-wing gun nuts.
I’d cut my wrists first.
I hope you can, I bought part of a set of the
collected works may years ago at a book sale,
don’t have them all but some great sea yarns.
In The Crater, two New England Merchantmen are
stranded on an uncharted volcanic isle. Their
ship is land locked by reefs so they set in to
survive, they release the few pigs and fowl they
have and the island begins to grow and bloom,
eventually they build a smaller craft and manage
to sail back to New England where they recruit
family and friends to move back and live on the
island, well the next thing you know they have
newspaper men, lawyers and assorted folk going
with them, trouble ensues to the point where
the origonal families are driven off the island.
Eventually they return but the island isn’t there
it has subsided back under the sea.
There is a great scene where the two men are discussing
the national debt of some 270,000 dollars and how it
is leading the nation to ruin.
Hope you can find it, also Miles Wallingford is a young
ship captain hoping to make a profit by running cargos
to France through the British blockade, he is stopped
by a British man of war, some of his crew are impressed
and a prize crew is put aboard to take his ship to
England, he manages to regain control, sets the prize
crew off in a boat, but then his ship is sunk and
he is adrift on the wreckage, picked up by the French
he is thrown in prison where he meets up with some of
his crew, they steal a ship and escape only to come in
contact with the British ship which stopped them in the
first place. Eventually he returns to America, gets the
girl and every thing is all right. There is much commentary
on how the American vision of freedom feels about Britain
and maritime commerce.
Written at a time when sail was the jet travel of the age
a glossary of nautical terms is a big help. Still the plot
and the turns are timeless.
hope you can find it.
t.
They sound like real gems, or more like gemstone mines for a writer!
Oh it’s funny too when they return to the island
they make one of the seamen governor but then later
the lawyer and the newspaper gang up on him and turn
the rest of the inhabitants against him and get
him banished. What we face today is reflected in
these stories of a hundred years ago.
I’ve often thought that there is one good movie hollywood
could make but never will, where a typical American family
becomes swept up in a terrorist action and has to come
together and use individual initiative and American ideals
to survive and overcome the terrorists. Never happen.
I am close enough to the industry through my work in media production to know that a million compromises come with any momentum to turn a book into a film. Technical, artistic, philosophical, political compromises, any one of which can turn something great into something bland.
I just finished CC. Read it all yesterday and today. If it were possible to make the movie for the screen that I made in my head as I read the book, it would be a blockbuster.
I am ready to start CC2 tomorrow. Get busy!
The Rebel Yell? Oh yeah, i’m hooked. $$$ coming.
I’ve read the Enemies series at least 3 times. One of them, the yellow one, is falling apart.
I finished the Kindle version of Castigo Cay a day or two ago. It was the first book I read on my Kindle, which I got for Christmas. But by now I’ve read the second one (Battle After Armageddon-Ralph Peters) and am now into the one my daughter got me for Christmas.. A Mighty Fortress by Weber.
CC is a great read. Not nearly as controversial as “Enemies” I would think, but also more likely to have actually happened.
I’d love to see it as a film, but I’ll probably have to be satisfied with the film in my mind.
5.56mm
My favorite comment is when folks say they’ve read my books multiple times.
Congrats! I hope it does well!
Don’t sell yourself short. Have you tried shopping a screenplay? Vince Flynn’s American Assassin is slowly working its way through the Hollywood production process. No reason yours can’t take the same path :-)
I added a link on my Facebook page. Thanks for your service and for keeping the adventure in your life!
I understand.
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