Jonathan Whitelaw on the Bestseller Experiment

I’m always interested in writers who pivot from one genre to another. I read all across all sorts of genres, so why should writers be expected to write the same stuff for the rest of the their careers? (Answer: to make the marketing department’s life easier, but that’s a conversation for another day) So it was a delight to speak to Jonathan Whitelaw, whose first book was Iain Banks-style contemporary fiction, followed by a couple of satirical thrillers, and now he’s returned with a series of cosy murder mysteries with a unique crime fighting duo — a son-in-law and mother-in-law — in The Bingo Hall Detectives and The Village Hall Vendetta. Jonathan was really good fun. Enjoy!

Oh, and if outtakes are your thing, then hang around to the very end of the recording…

Download the screenplay for UNWELCOME

I’ve had a few people ask if they can read the screenplay for Unwelcome. Well, I had a word with the producers and you can download it for free by clicking here or on the image below…

This is essentially the shooting script for the film, though I have tidied it up a little, meaning I’ve updated the title (it was called The Little People originally) and I’ve got rid of things like revision stars which can make a script look like a mess. You might notice a few differences from the script and the finished film and that’s to be expected, but if you have any questions just drop me a line here.

Happy reading!

Jessie Keane on the Bestseller Experiment (and I confess my most humiliating moments)…

I think Jessie Keane is the first guest on the podcast with Romany heritage and she’s definitely the first to tell us that her success as a writer was foretold by her Gran! That sense of destiny is what a lot of us writers lack. We’re all too eager to tell stories of chosen ones who are fated to save the world or achieve greatness, but we don’t apply it to ourselves. Jessie had plenty of opportunity to give up and walk away (ten romance novels, all rejected!), but with that prophecy ringing in her ears she kept going and each of her thrillers have been Sunday Times bestsellers and she’s sold six and half million copies. So be the hero of your own life and fulfil your destiny!

At the other end of the scale, me and Mr D reveal our most humiliating moments. These were just the ones I could recall in the moment. I could fill a whole show with the others if I applied myself. Instead, I’m going to pull a sword from a stone and be a chosen one for the day…

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlords, pay cuts and solidarity with the WGA strike…

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, just as we were prepping to shoot Robot Overlords.

By a weird bit of serendipity, today’s blog post coincides with the beginning of the strike by the Writers’ Guild of America. Why the coincidence? Well, here’s my diary entry from ten years ago…

Thursday 2nd May, 2013

Met with Jon (Wright, director) to run through the location changes. Bit of bad news — one of our backers didn’t have the million quid they claimed to have, so we’re down another million. Thankfully, the other backers are keeping their nerve and we’re staying on schedule, but the pressure’s really on Piers (Tempest, producer) said.

So let’s skip forward a few days to…

Bank Holiday Monday 6th May, 2013

We’ve been asked to take another cut in pay. Down to £30k for me. Not happy. Won’t take a decision until I’ve discussed it further with Jon.

The idea was that we would have a conversation with our agents regarding the cut in pay before agreeing to it. Now let’s skip forward to…

Tuesday 7th May, 2013

It seems an executive decision was made on Friday night and both Jon and I had our writers’ fees cut. Not happy.

Really not happy (and I’m no longer with that agency). A few of you out there might be thinking, ‘Thirty grand! What are you complaining about? That’s loadsamoney!’ Well, I’d worked on this script for over two years, and thirty thousand pounds does not represent the amount of work that I put into the film. And the same thing happened to me again on Unwelcome. At the very last minute, I was asked to take £50k pay cut because of budget issues. You’re always told that others are taking a pay cut, too, but call me a cynical old goat, but I doubt that Sir Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson took a cut in pay. Why is it the writers who are always first for the chop? Because we’re an easy target. We’re often desperate and alone. If this had been a production by a WGA signatory, it’s highly unlikely that the pay cut could have occurred. That’s why I stand in solidarity with the WGA in their strike. They’re fighting for a better future for all writers and this time they’re up against the streamers: Silicon Valley tech companies who really hate unions.

Here’s a little follow up…

Wednesday 8th May, 2013

I got a call from Piers tonight, apologising for and explaining the nature of the fee cuts. Basically, we lost £1.35 million… If the cuts didn’t happen, then we’d lose the film. I appreciated his call.

Piers didn’t have to make that call, so I do genuinely appreciate his gesture (and I later learned that he basically made the film for free, surrendering his whole fee!), but more has to be done in the UK to protect writers from such last-minute shenanigans. Not long after this I joined a writers’ group called the Vipers, and some weeks we would have a guest speaker from the industry. One week we had a producer who, when asked about paying writers to develop scripts before they go into production, simply shrugged and said he couldn’t afford it. I suggested that if he couldn’t afford to produce films, then maybe he shouldn’t be in the business of film production. That went down well…

I’m currently working on a romcom script with a Finnish film company and they’ve paid us good fees to develop the script at every stage. It’s been absolute bliss and proves it can be done, so why do we not do more of this in the UK? The truth is, this is the reality of filmmaking in the UK. We don’t have the scale of economy that Hollywood has (or even Finland, apparently) so we’ll just have to accept it and bumble on… Which is par for the course in this country! Grr, humbug, and other grumbles. I’ll stop now before I start blaming everything on the Tories, which is what my rants usually default to (and with good cause)… Don’t worry. Your normal, cheerful service will resume in the next post.

Witches of Woodville now on Kindle in the USA & Canada

Just a quick note to announce that The Crow Folk, Babes in the Wood and The Ghost of Ivy Barn are now available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited in the USA and Canada. Simply click on your country’s flag below to be whisked straight to some witchy digital goodness…

Photo by Sharefaith on Pexels.com
Photo by Daniel Joseph Petty on Pexels.com

Katy Brent on getting away with murder…

Katy Brent’s debut novel How to Kill Men and Get Away With It is a very funny book that tackles some very serious issues. She tells me how it evolved from an almost flippant idea into a dark satire. We also discuss provocative titles, tone, escaping into writing and moving from journalism to fiction where she finally felt that her writing could make a difference…

UNWELCOME spoiler special on the Bestseller Experiment

In case you missed it, here’s last night’s UNWELCOME spoiler special where I reveal just what I was thinking with that ending, and we also hear from actor and second unit director Rick Warden, cinematographer Hamish Doyne-Ditmas, and VFX supervisor Paddy Eason who shared some terrific behind the scenes footage. Enjoy, but be warned… there is repeated spurting of blood… repeated! Spurting!

Amita Parikh on the Bestseller Experiment

There’s a danger that writers can get stuck in our little worlds. I mean, most of use are stuck on our bums for most of the day. Getting off your backside is not only good for your health, both mental and physical, but you never know what might be around the corner. I really enjoyed chatting with Amita Parikh on the podcast, and loved the idea that had she not been lost in London and asked for directions, then her amazing debut novel The Circus Train might never have existed. She’s good fun, not least when she talks about how she coped with rejection…

Behind the Scenes Pics of UNWELCOME’s Redcaps

I was tagged last night in a post from The Prosthetics Studio, the geniuses who created the masks and other prosthetics for UNWELCOME and I discovered a treasure trove of behind the scenes images, many of which I’d not seen before. The studio is run by Shaune Harrison and Paula Anne Booker-Harrison, and the dedication to their craft is unquestionable. I’ve popped a few images below as a little tease, and you can find more on their Instagram and Facebook pages. And if make up and prosthetics is your thing, they even do courses here.

JS Monroe on the Bestseller Experiment

For me, the most intriguing part of this week’s Bestseller Experiment interview with JS (Jon) Monroe is when he talks about the development of his novel Dead Spy Running into a movie written by Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) and directed by McG… But if you’re thinking, ‘Hang on, I’ve not seen that movie,’ then you’re not alone. After spending five years and ten million dollars on developing the film, Warner Bros decided they weren’t going to make it. Such is the insanity of Hollywood, this is not an uncommon story. Jon takes it all with good humour and is generous with advice for writers when it comes to the rest of his extraordinary career.

By the way, check out the difference in running time between this regular episode and the extended episode that we record for our Patrons and Academates. There’s an extra 42 minutes of me and Mr D discussing unique book launches, composite characters, self belief and rejection, ending consultants, the benefits of a Marmite novel, and why you should want to have your books burned and banned and much more! You can get all this and hundreds of hours of extra material when you support the podcast as a Chart Topper Supporter on Patreon here, or join the Bestseller Academy.