Motrtal Instruments
Spending too much time at the movies, popcorn shrapnel keeps falling out of my jacket. Must be from that free for night fighting that happens after the lights go down and the kernels start flying. But for the first time I saw some promotional stuff for the Mortal Instruments, the latest YA book to make the jump to film, expect it to be promoted as your next fix now that Twilight’s over and Hunger Games hits halfway. I’ve followed this series for a while for one particular reason, the first time I ever tried submitting to a publishing house the publishing manager called me back within a few weeks and said she wanted to publish my novel. This is ridiculously positive and good luck for a first novel first submission, from one of the big houses (not sure if I should say which so let’s not) even though it didn’t actually happen, it kept me going for years after when the rejection letters started to trickle in. Anyway, the point was in chatting with the manager she mentioned she’d just finished reading the Mortal Instruments, which may have helped as they were both urban fantasy, and that she thought mine was better. Hey, her words, not mine.
You can make your mind own mind up about the series, you’re all intelligent people and I’m making a very deliberate effort not to comment on things like that until I’ve been on the receiving end of a few reviews. Besides, I have friends who review for a living. Ask them, I’ll post links. What’s interesting for me here is the time it takes between something becoming a best-seller and then jumping mediums and the relationship between them, how they feed off each other. Movies often lead to second runs of books and so on. And then there’s the fun of seeing how the book has been adapted to the screen, have I mentioned this before? Some things work in one medium and not in the other. Characters get combined, minor plots dropped or subtly referenced. Alright, I admit it, I want a chance at that, having watch so many adaptations or historical retellings and thinking ‘I would’ve done cut that, changed this, combined those two, left that twist in (this all translates as putting my money where my mouth is).
Yes, I’m trying to combine my stellar careers in film and print. I just took a very convoluted blog post to get there.