Hi there everyone,

Happy New Year to you all! It’s going to be a big year for me, with the release of the mega-sized sequel to Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones in October. The book is huge, both in scale and scope—an epic adventure that is designed to be a kind of present-day Lord of the Rings.

Beyond that, I’m working on a secret TV project which I hope takes off. More on that later in the year…hopefully!

 

COMPUTER GAME RIP-OFF…?

Several fans have written to me about a computer game released recently called The Mark…and how similar it is to my 2003 book, Scarecrow. Written over the course of 2001 and 2002, Scarecrow was my most successful worldwide release up to that time and was published in over twenty countries.

Well, I’ve now had a look at the website for this game and read some of the comments from my fans and from people on the game’s own forum and, yep, I’m pretty stunned at the similarities. I haven’t played the game, but the apparent progression of the action—from a run-down Soviet Siberian base…to terrorist caves…to a dungeon in a castle on the French coast…to a car chase along a French ocean road near that castle…to a disguised missile-firing supertanker launching a nuclear missile on London—is rather startling. It is the exact same progression of events in my novel.

For the record, in May 2004, an Australian developer called Perception, with links to JoWood (the publisher of The Mark), did indeed enter into negotiations with my agents at the William Morris Agency for computer/video game rights to ‘the Scarecrow universe’ as they put it—that is, they wanted to make games of all the Schofield/Scarecrow novels (Ice Station, Area 7 and Scarecrow), and they put a particular emphasis on the book, Scarecrow. I still have all the correspondence. [Perception have since informed us that they severed ties with JoWood around August 2005 and are currently in dispute with them. It is not suggested that Perception had anything to do with this game.]

The negotiations broke down and no deal was done. (I understand the developer of this game is a Polish company called T7 who have asked if Scarecrow was published in Polish: it was. Scarecrow was released in Poland under the title Nieuchwytny cel.)

I’d like to thank all my fans who have brought this to my attention. Thank you for looking out for me!

Check out the JoWooD forum >here< to read up on it more.

 

AN ‘ICE STATION’ MOVIE SCRIPT, A TV SCRIPT AND ‘SCRUBS’

So, what have I been up to lately?

After I finished The Six Sacred Stones, I decided to dabble a bit in some screenwriting. It’s a nice change from novel-writing: a different format, and hence a different mindset. Scripts are also a lot shorter!

I’ve recently finished a screenplay adaptation of my book Ice Station—it’s a revision of a script written by two great young guys who worked in Sydney on Superman Returns; they asked me if they could have a crack at Ice Station and since the rights were back with me, I said sure.

I liked their script, but I asked if I could have a go reworking it. In the grand tradition of self-publishing Contest, I’ll be doing more work on this in 2007, trying to get Ice Station to the silver screen.

I also did some work on a TV pilot script—this is the secret project—which I’m really happy with. Again, if it starts to get some traction, I’ll let you know!

Oh, and if you’re not watching it already, watch Scrubs! I’m blasting through it on DVD and loving every minute. It’s simply brilliant writing, funny and dramatic at the same time. (And the DVDs have awesome extras!)

Anyway, take care, and best of luck to you all in 2007.