I am so happy to report that a former client of mine at Media
Connect, Warren Adler, will have his most famous book, The War of the Roses, once depicted in a major movie with Michael Douglas and
Kathleen Turner, turned into a Broadway
show in 2015. It will be produced by Tony
Award-winning producers Jay Gutterman, Cindy Gutterman, Cathy Chernoff, Cal
Moellenberg, and Wendy Faderman. The
story has already been a success overseas, selling out theatres in over a dozen
countries.
Several years ago I had the pleasure of
representing Warren Adler for his then new book, The Serpent’s Bite. Here are
portions of an interview I did with him back then, with the man dubbed “the master
of dysfunction.”
- Warren, you have been a part of the literary scene for nearly
half a century. At the age of 84,
you are one of the elder statesmen for the publishing industry. Where do you see the book industry heading?
As I have been predicting ever since I first digitalized all my work more
than a dozen years ago, and as I said when I introduced the SONY reader in
2007, as the first stand-alone reader at the Las Vegas Electronics Show,
the publishing business will morph massively to cyberspace and
considerably shrink the number of stores selling printed books, all of
which has come true. What I did not foresee was the number of
self-published books that would hit the marketplace and offer hard
competition for traditionally published books. What is coming long-term,
in my view, is a massive number of fiction books available on the Net,
where it will be a challenge for any writer of fiction to be discoverable.
Even major stars in fiction will find that they will have to work doubly
hard to keep their brand in the eye of the reading public. Many will
eventually lose their luster. The traditional publishers will not spend
the marketing and advertising money to create new branded authors,
although they are hoping, by publishing their first novels, to test the
waters for their future brands.
There will be many flash-in-the-pan authors who will not warrant
future investment in their careers. Indeed, authors of non-genre fiction
like myself will be better off investing in their own branding, especially
in today’s marketplace of fading print stores. Being discoverable as an
author will not cut it without finding ways to penetrate the reading
marketplace. This will grow more and more expensive as competition
accelerates. There will be many frustrated novelists with hopes and dreams
of fame and fortune.
- How would you describe your body of work?
This is a tricky question. I write about love, erotic love, father and
children love, grandparents and grandchildren love, love between siblings,
and the vast gulf between aspirations and fulfillment and how it
frustrates people who dream but cannot come to terms with the failure of
their dreams. In The Serpent’s Bite,
the female character becomes a monster out of frustration over her failed
obsession to become a movie star, a direct slap at the celebrity culture.
I have always been interested in power and coping with its loss. A number
of my books do not end happily e.g. The
War of the Roses, The Serpent’s Bite. In Hollywood I have been dubbed
a “relationship writer,” whatever that means. Actually, many of my books
end with a coming-to-terms with life’s adversity, and reaching a kind of
philosophic calm, accepting life with all its problems, unfairness and
cruelty. My focus is the human
condition in all its joys and failures. Many of my books, including my
mystery series, are written from a female point of view. I am in awe of
the strength of women in general and many of my books show these strengths
as well as their weaknesses. In The
Serpent’s Bite I believe I have created a monstrous female character
who gets her just reward at the end.
- You never had a New York Times best-seller and yet you are
probably one of the most successful writers because of your success in
selling film and television rights for your books. How do you explain that?
I have always sincerely believed that my novels are like depth bombs: they
take longer to explode when launched.
Hence I have always felt that that my legacy will be more important
than my contemporary career, which has done pretty well in itself. Also at
my age I am enjoying the process of exposing my work to new generations.
It may seem to some as an adventure in egomania but I truly believe that
after a half-century of intense creation of parallel worlds that I should
at least send my rockets of experience as high as they can go. There is no
downside for me. I have already experienced most of the disappointments
and rejection that are the affliction of the creative writer. I have seen
the writing stars of yesteryear disappear from the scene. I have seen all
those who rejected me flame out, retire or go into the real estate
business. I am beyond insult at this stage in my life. I write only what I
must and am still going strong. Oh yes, about why my books sell to the
movies: I haven’t got a clue.
- Tens of thousands of books are published weekly in America. What does one need to do to stick out
and get discovered? They need to do exactly what I am doing:
Banging the drum as loud as I can. It
is hard for today’s author to get heard and discovered amid enormous
competition, less shelf space, short promotional span, and an avalanche of
competition on the internet. I am
setting the standard for such an approach but the outlay of money will do
nothing unless there is a substantial backlist that might benefit the
author. In my case the overspending on The
Serpent’s Bite is designed to attract readers to my 32-book backlist.
Nevertheless I trust to luck that the book will find its audience. In my
opinion, it will be the harbinger example of what’s to come in
establishing the non-genre writer’s career.
But
discoverability is merely the opening gun. If word of mouth does not kick in
all the promotion in the world will make no difference. Also, when you talk of
50,000 books, you are generalizing. Non-genre fiction is between a quarter and
a third of all books on the Net. I write non-genre fiction, which further
reduces the fiction numbers. Genre writers have the advantage especially if
they are “factory” books, meaning books turned out by Patterson, Cussler and
numerous romance novelists. These writers don’t write their own books anymore.
They supervise their branded names and make enormous sums of money. Romance
fiction is churned out by thousands of writers and follow strict formulas based
on the needs and preferences of their readers. Sorry, that is not my goal or my
interest. For me, the joy is in the work, which is everything. If a reader gets
into my mindset and becomes a faithful reader what more can I ask? When all is
said and done the novel is a one-on-one communication system. I have been lucky
as hell making it a career. But then, one must consider that I did suffer
through endless rejections of my work until I was 45 years old, when I was
finally able to interest publishers. I immediately quit my business interests
to concentrate on my writing career exclusively with single-minded devotion.
- What advice would you offer a struggling writer?
I can only give advice to a “real” writer who puts his work above all
other forms of activity. For him or her, the issue is not necessarily
making a living but it is in the artistry, satisfaction and joy of the
process. I do not agree with Samuel Johnson about only writing for money.
A real writer writes because of his artistic need above all.
- Warren, you’ve been married for over 60 years to the same
woman. How did you come to write a
book like The War of the Roses,
which is not only about divorce, but the nastiest breakup of all time?
It is the work of the imagination. Writing novels is creating a parallel
world out of one’s observations, experience, insight and imagination. It
is very difficult for people who do not write fiction to understand. Most
people are literal minded and have no understanding of how the subconscious
works. Some believe that these characters are created by literally basing them
on real people going through these experiences. Not really. They are
amalgamations of the writer’s conscious and subconscious world. Sets and
props to indicate locales, just like the movies, and provide the
backgrounds, but the characters are created out of whole cloth within the
writer’s imagination and are as real to the writer as the people he meets
in his daily life.
- You already have over two million words in print. How much of writing comes naturally to
you vs. it being a labor? Do you edit much or do you stick with
your first draft? The secret of writing is rewriting. I rewrite
constantly, over and over again until I am reasonably satisfied. I usually
can’t tell if I got it right until I’ve written one hundred pages or so.
It is at that point that I either abandon the book or slog on.
- Your books don’t seem to have happy endings. Is that contradictory to what most
people expect or want? Maybe so, but some of the greatest books
ever written have not had happy endings. Life, itself, does not have a
happy ending. I can cite hundreds of books with no happy endings that have
stood the test of time e.g. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, etc. Actually a number of my books end
happily, Random Hearts for
example, Twilight Child, for
another.
- If
nothing else, does The Serpent’s
Bite, War of the Roses, and your other books have the reader
feeling better about their lives as a result of seeing these reckless,
violent, and angry characters play out lives of destruction and division?
Yes, people see them as cautionary tales. I cannot tell you how many
people have come up to me to say that The
War of the Roses changed their lives by informing people it is better
to compromise about material things in a divorce than let it get out of
hand.
BLASTS FROM THE PAST
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2014
