My first book is coming out at the end of January! (My second book will follow a few months later).
I co-wrote False Idols with two amazing writers: Lisa Klink, a Los Angeles-based veteran tv writer and former Jeopardy! champion, and Diana Renn, an author, primarily of young-adult novels, who lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
In mid-2016 we were recruited by Serial Box, a company in New York that develops and releases fiction serials over the course of 10-16 week seasons. The serials are created by writing teams who develop the stories in tv-industry-like-writers rooms, then work closely together over months to flesh out character and plot and then draft, revise and finalize the chapters (which are called “episodes”). (If you’re interested, check out this Wired.com article about Serial Box from September 2016.)
Lisa, Diana and I met in L.A. in autumn 2016 for a three-day writing room. We worked intensely on whiteboards, chalkboards and countless Post-Its to flesh out the outline of the book. We video-conferenced with Bob Wittman, a retired FBI agent and author who served as our consultant on the project and who is renowned as the Bureau’s “top investigator and coordinator in cases involving art theft and art fraud”.* Then, between January and October 2017, we worked with each other and the amazing team at Serial Box via email, Dropbox, Google Docs and video and conference calls to write each episode of this adrenaline-fueled international thriller.
It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. There’s nothing like going into the zone of intense creative output. Everything becomes focused on what needs to be done in order to move on to the next thing and the next until the whole thing is done. It feels like a bizarre pairing of mastery and slavery. The mastery comes from experience topped with being compensated for and entrusted with the work. The slavery comes from the marathon pace of it, the struggle to maintain a consistent tone and continuity, despite doubt and exhaustion. Often I thought I might not be able to keep up. What’s that line in Beckett’s Unnamable? “I can’t go on. / You must go on.”
I had also never collaborated on a writing project before. I’m extremely lucky that I got to work with Lisa and Diana as well as our project leads at Serial Box, Molly Barton and Lydia Shamah. They are all total pros, both at the improvisational back and forth of brainstorming and tossing out one crazy idea after another until something sticks and the getting it done — 10,000-word chapter after 10,000-word chapter — on grueling cycles of writing and revision. I learned an incredible amount from their styles, their approaches to plot and character, pacing and more. The icing on the cake is that everyone was awesome and fun to work with.
False Idols‘ 11 episodes will be published weekly as Kindle Editions starting January 31. The final installment will appear April 11. Then the book will be released sometime in April as a paperback published by L.A.-based Adaptive Studios. I hope you’ll check it out. You can preorder from Amazon and you can also get episodes via Serial Box on a subscription basis:
Acknowledgements
I want to take this opportunity to thank the Serial Box team in New York for their guidance and vision.
Sending a big high-five to the Adaptive Studios team in L.A., especially Matt Wise, who offered me the job and who is now, amazingly, my editor.
Big shout out to my agent Peter McGuigan, to Richie Kern who leads the film, television and digital arena and the whole incredible team at Foundry.
A bow and a humble kiss to my parents, for their love and support.
And many thanks and much love to my far-flung and fantastic family and friends in California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Toronto, Wisconsin and elsewhere (I know I may be missing some states and cities in there — suffice it to say I’m sending love in all directions).
Finally, I am deeply thankful to my wife Sree, my daughter Om and my son Sai for their love, support, encouragement and forbearance as I worked on this book and another book over the course of a truly weird and wild year. I love you dearly and consider myself lucky beyond belief that I got you as my family across all of time and space.
*From Wikipedia: Robert King Wittman.