That Time Dracula, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Kojak Became Monster Hunters

You remember my series of posts called Tales of Development Hell, don’t you? They’re the real-life stories of publishing projects in which I’d been involved that died tragic deaths somewhere during the development process. Sometimes they were murdered before a plot was fully formed; sometimes they were slain as they drew their first breaths in the form of early chapters. And then there were the rare occasions when I delivered the final draft, only to have the project canceled.

This is one of those situations.

Back in 2005, I had just come off writing a pair of books for Games Workshop’s Black Flame imprint: The Twilight Zone: Chosen/The Placebo Effect, a double novelization of episodes from the latest reboot of Rod Serling’s classic TV series, this time hosted by Forrest Whittaker (don’t bother watching the show if you come across it, it was terrible); and Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand, an original novel spun off from the popular FD horror film franchise. (I’d originally been hired to write a novel sequel to Se7en, the 1995 Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman/Kevin Spacey thriller about the hunt for a serial killer, but…well, that’s a story for another time.)

Unfortunately, the work dried up soon after Dead Man’s Hand was published—right around the time my editor, Jay Slater, decided to leave the company to pursue his own projects. With Jay on his way out, my association with Games Workshop came to a swift end as editorial rejected every pitch I submitted for their other licensed publishing franchises: Friday the 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Jason X, Judge Dredd, and [Judge] Anderson: Psi Division. Plus two more ideas for Final Destination novels. (Such is the life of a freelance writer.) After his departure, however, Jay wasted no time in contacting me, to ask if I’d be interested in contributing to a book he was shopping around to publishers: a collection of horror movie reviews. Separate from Games Workshop, Jay had had success editing and packaging a horror-themed nonfiction book,  Eaten Alive!: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies. This was to be his latest project. He’d compiled a list of the movies he wanted covered, and contacted other writers; all I had to do was choose a movie—as long as it wasn’t one of the “big” ones, like The Exorcist, or Jaws, or Psycho, or Reanimator. Those had already been snatched up.

Okay, so the best scary films had been claimed, but there were a hell of a lot of obscure ones on the list. My gaze fell on the title Horror Express. Didn’t that have Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it? Hadn’t Fangoria done a retro review of it in the early days of the magazine? Probably. Or maybe it was Famous Monsters of Filmland… Well, wherever I’d seen it mentioned before, some quick Google-fu revealed that, yes, those Hammer horror legends were the stars, as was Telly Savalas, the bald-headed actor known to 1970s television audiences around the world as Kojak, the badass New York City detective who sucked on lollipops and whose catchphrase was “Who loves ya, baby?” All right, so Horror Express was an obscure B-movie, but with those three actors involved, how bad could it be? I told Jay that was my choice, rented a copy of the movie (this was back in the Blockbuster days, kids), and started watching while I took notes.

Unfortunately (a key word that always crops up in these Tales of Development Hell), after I’d delivered my write-up the project eventually fell through when Jay found a publishing company interested in taking it on—but only on the stipulation that the company would own all rights to the work…in perpetuity. About half the writers (about fifty reviewers) and I balked at the idea that we’d be giving away our material and have to get permission from the publisher if we ever wanted to reprint our essays. Sign over print rights as part of a collection? Sure. That’s almost standard. But sign them away forever? No way.

So into the drawer went the review, never to be seen again…until next Monday, that is!

To Be Continued!