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Starz has given the greenlight for a TV adaptation based on Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods.

Here’s more from Variety.com: “Starz said series production would be contingent on casting of the lead role, Shadow Moon, in the saga about a war between traditional gods from mythology and contemporary, materialistic deities. Shadow Moon is an ex-con and bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday, an older god in the guise of a conman.”

According to the press release, Gaiman has been brought on as an executive producer; the author has publicly declared that he feels “relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands.” He will be joined by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green who will serve as both executive producers and showrunners. Deadline.com reports that “Fuller recently was quoted as saying that two scripts have been completed along with illustrations demonstrating his and Green’s vision for the show.” (via ComicBookResources.com)

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Fans of the Sandman scribe rejoice: Starz announced today that they have officially green lit an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s New York Times bestselling novel American Gods. Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Heroes) is officially attached, as is Michael Green (Heroes). Both will serve as writers and showrunners. Gaiman will serve as executive producer. FreemantleMedia North America, who has been developing the series for some time, is also attached to produce. Starz has noted that the start of production on the television series, which Gaiman has been talking about for the past few years, hinges on the casting of Shadow Moon. Shadow, a sympathetic ex-con with a penchant for coin tricks, is the central character in Gaiman’s strange tale of old Gods brought to America in the hearts of those who immigrated and their battle with the Gods of modern America like Media and the Internet.

Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said, “STARZ is committed to bring American Gods to its legions of fans. With our partners at FremantleMedia and with Bryan, Michael and Neil guiding the project, we hope to create a series that honors the book and does right by the fans, who have been casting it in their minds for years.  The search for Shadow begins today!”

Gaiman said: “I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of American Gods to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands. Now we finally move to the exciting business that fans have been doing for the last dozen years: casting our Shadow, our Wednesday, our Laura…”

“Almost 15 years ago, Neil Gaiman filled a toy box with gods and magic and we are thrilled to finally crack it open and play,” said Fuller and Green, “we’re grateful to have STARZ above us and FremantleMedia at our backs as we appease the gods, American or otherwise.”

Starz has encouraged fans of the novel to tweet @AmericanGodsSTZ and @STARZ_Channel using the hashtag #CastingShadow to share who they think should play the role of Shadow.

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Children’s books creators Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers will reunite to collaborate on a sequel to The Day The Crayons Quit.

Publisher Michael Green negotiated the deal with Steven Malk of Writers House and Paul Moreton of Bell, Lomax, Moreton Agency. Philomel Books, an imprint at Penguin Young Readers Group, will publish the new picture book in August 2015.

Green had this statement in the press release: “It’s gratifying to see the Crayons finally getting their due, yet many revealing tales remain untold. I have a feeling every child, crayon, and crayon activist will be inspired by this latest tale of artistic heroism.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Starz and Fremantle Media are teaming up to create a television series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

According to the A.V. Club, Heroes screenwriter Bryan Fuller will pen the pilot script and Smallville producer Michael Green will take on the showrunner position. Both men along with Gaiman himself will serve as executive producers.

Gaiman had this statement in the press release: “When you create something like American Gods, which attracts fans and obsessives and people who tattoo quotes from it on themselves or each other, and who all, tattooed or not, just care about it deeply, it’s really important to pick your team carefully: you don’t want to let the fans down, or the people who care and have been casting it online since the dawn of recorded history. What I love most about the team who I trust to take it out to the world, is that they are the same kind of fanatics that American Gods has attracted since the start. I haven’t actually checked Bryan Fuller or Michael Green for quote tattoos, but I would not be surprised if they have them.”

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Filmmaker Jonathan W. Stokes has landed a six-figure deal with Penguin Young Readers Group’s Philomel imprint.

This middle-grade trilogy project marks Stokes’ debut as a novelist. Philomel president Michael Green will edit the manuscripts.

According to Deadline, the story “has a globe-trotting Goonies vibe and follows a sixth-grader and his pals as he tries to save his archaeologist parents after they’ve been kidnapped by fortune hunters.”

 

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Beloved children’s author Eric Carle has a new book called Friends coming this Fall. Penguin Young Readers Group’s Philomel imprint will publish the picture book about “the love that binds people and the obstacles they will overcome in order to be together.”

Penguin Young Readers Group president Don Weisberg and Philomel publisher Michael Green negotiated the deal. Philomel plans to print 300,000 copies for the first U.S. printing. Carle explained the book in the release:

Friends dates back to 1952, when I was a 22 year greenhorn who arrived in New York City from Germany, speaking poor English and carrying a cardboard suitcase and a portfolio of my graphic designs. It was my good luck to meet Leo Lionni, then the Art Director of Fortune magazine, who became my mentor. Upon his recommendation I got my first job in the new world as a graphic designer with The New York Times. After that a loose and infrequent friendship with Leo developed that lasted until his death in 1999. Friends started out as a tribute to Leo Lionni, but the story somehow swerved into the story of another friendship, that of two small children. All friendships are somehow connected.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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This is how it happens:  I write an adult book that Laura Geringer discovers and reads; she gets in touch.  For a year Laura and I talk about how ill-equipped I feel I am to write books for young adults.  A conversation in a Philadelphia restaurant changes everything; I am persuaded to try.  I write what will become several books for Laura, and in the midst of story development, copy editing, cover design, and publicity, I meet Jill Santopolo—utterly adorable, fashion savvy, super smart, wildly well-organized, and Laura's second in command at Laura Geringer Books/HarperTeen, where I will write four books, one of them (The Heart is Not a Size) being Jill's very own.  Then one day Jill calls to say that she is headed to Philomel to join a children's book empire carved out by a man named Michael Green.  I'd really like Michael, Jill says.  She hopes I'll eventually meet him.

(She is right.  And I do.  Facts made true in reverse order.)

A few years later, I see Jill again, this time at an ALA event, where she slips me a copy of Between Shades of Gray and whispers two words in my ear:  Tamra Tuller.  Jill and Tamra are, by now, colleagues at Philomel, and Tamra edits the kind of books I like to write.  Jill, looking trademark gorgeous, encourages me to read Ruta Sepetys' international bestseller of a debut novel as proof.  I do.  Again, I am persuaded.  Not long afterwards, I have the great privilege of joining the Philomel family when Tamra reads a book I've been working on for ten years and believes that it has merit. Jill has opened her new home to me, and I am grateful.

What happens next is that Tamra moves to Chronicle and I, with a book dedicated to her because I do love her that much, move to Chronicle, too.  What happens next is Jill and I remain friends (Jill and I and Michael and Jessica, too (not to mention Laura)).  Which is all a very long way of saying how happy I was to receive two of Jill's newest creations just a few weeks ago.  Last night and early this morning I read the first of them.  It's called Invisibility, it's due out in May, and it is co-authored by Jill's fabulously successful Philomel author, Andrea Cremer (The Nightshade Series) and the big-hearted author/editor/sensation/Lover's Dictionary Guru David Levithan.

I hear David Levithan—his soulfulness, his tenderness, his yearning, his love—when I read this book. I hear Andrea Cremer—her careful and credible world building, her necessary specificity, her other-worldly imagination.  It's a potent combination in a story about a Manhattan boy whom no one in the world can see.  No one, that is, except for the girl who has moved in down the hall—a girl who has escaped Minnesota with a brother she deeply loves and a mother who cares for them both, but must work long hours to keep her transplanted family afloat.  Cremer and Levithan's Manhattan is tactile, navigable, stewing with smells and scenes.  Their fantasy world—spellcraft, curses, witches, magic—is equally cinematic and engaging.  The love between the invisible boy and the seeing (and, as it turns out, magically gifted) girl feels enduring, and then there's that other kind of love—between Elizabeth and her brother—that gives this story even greater depth and meaning.  The parents aren't nearly bad either (not at all).

What it is to be invisible.  What it is to see and be seen.  What it is to know there is evil in the world and that any strike against it will scar and (indeed) age those who take a stand.  Invisibility is a fantasy story, but it is more than that, too.  It's a growing-up story in which courage, truth-telling, sacrifice, and vulnerability figure large, and in which love of every kind makes a difference. 

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I wanted to find a pair of cowgirl boots for my friend Caroline Leavitt, to thank her for making room for me on her roost today, but the best I could do was this sign, photographed in Nashville four years ago, which sat (you'll have to believe me) right near a cowboy/cowgirl boot store.  Why I didn't think to photograph the boots themselves is beyond me.  What is not beyond me, at this moment, is gratitude.  For Caroline's friendship.  For her own talent.  For conversations we have had in public and in private as we both journey through this writing life.  I don't even know how Caroline got an early copy of Small Damages, but she had one.  She's in the midst of writing a brand new book, and she made time to read it.  Then she asked me excellent questions, the kind of questions one who knows another well can ask.  I answered them all here.

Among the things we discussed is how much I love Philomel, and how I made my way to this great place to begin with.  I extract a small fraction of our conversation below, but hope you will visit Leavittville for more.

Philomel is exquisite.  At Philomel I have a home.  There I have never felt like a fringe writer, a secondary writer, a marginal, will-she-please-fit-a-category, we’ll-get-to-you-when-we-get-to-you writer.  Michael Green, Philomel’s president, is a most generous person, and correspondent.  Tamra—beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, embracing—approached the editing of this book, the design of its cover, and the preparation of it for the world with the greatest care, and in the process we became great friends.  Jessica Shoffel, a wildly wonderful and innovative publicist, wrote me a note I’ll never forget after she read the book and her devotion to getting the word out has been unflagging, sensational.  The sales team got in touch a long time ago and has stayed in touch.  And on and on.  

But no, I never knew I would shine.  I don’t think of myself as a diamond or a star.  I never think in those terms.  I just keep writing my heart out.  And when you are collaborating with a house like Philomel, when you are given room, when your questions are answered, when you are given a chance, there are possibilities.

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The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday.  He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor.  He had a full head of thick, black hair.  He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight.  The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.

There's no accounting for a mother's love.  There's no math that will contain it.  The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.

That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law.  We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls.  We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows.  We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars.  We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville.  We watched the nuns flutter by.  We saw children playing on rooftops.  And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table.  He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments.  He said, "Believe in yourself."

I don't think there would be a Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.  Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today.  That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.

An unforgettable moment in time.

To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.

Cake is now being served for all.

The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great) Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive Serena Agusto-Cox.

From Pam:

It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read novel that makes you want t

6 Comments on two birthdays: a son's, a book's, last added: 7/22/2012

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Serena said, on 7/19/2012 3:49:00 AM

Congrats to all of you and happy birthday to your son.

bermudaonion said, on 7/19/2012 5:01:00 AM

Happy birthday to your son! I thought Vance had a head full of dark hair but your son has him beat. Congratulations on your book!!

The1stdaughter said, on 7/19/2012 8:50:00 AM

Such a wonderful post for a wonderful day. Congratulations and Happy Birthday to both you and your son. So so happy for you. And can I just say ditto to everything Pam said? Perfect. Such a great day!

Liviania said, on 7/19/2012 9:56:00 AM

Congratulations! I think that's the most hair I've ever seen on a newborn - wow.

Kimberley Griffiths Little said, on 7/20/2012 10:03:00 AM

Congratulations, Beth, and Happy Birthday to your gift of a son and the gift of your beautiful book.

KFP said, on 7/22/2012 9:14:00 AM

This picture of your son takes my breath away. He is just too beautiful.

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The dignity of Ruta Sepetys is telegraphed from afar. It's in the books she writes—the international sensation Between Shades of Gray and now (coming in February 2013) Out of the Easy.  It's plain as day in her interviews, her commentary, her web site, her broadcast segments.  And if you ever have the chance to meet her (and I'm lucky; I briefly have), it's all right there in her face.  Ruta isn't a writer simply and only because she wants to be a writer.  She's a writer because she has something to say.

She's a writer, too, who knows the value of deep research—the liberating and liberalizing ways that rooting around in both personal and world history, in the files of the Soviet secret police and the murky streets of the historic French Quarter, in old maps and and the catalogs of Smith College, in the workings of all kinds of watches will, when pondered long enough, when tacked and quilted, generate story.  Research, particularly historic research, can be hard to master and harder to contain.  Ruta makes it look easy.  What she knows never trumps the many things that she imagines.

I spent today lying in a steamy east-coast house, circa 2012, reading Ruta's delectable new circa 1950s New Orleans novel.  Often I forgot just where I actually was as I slid into the dream, drifted in and out of the old bookstore (and the chatter, always smart, about books), had a good old walkabout in the brothel (equal parts gaudy and opulent), and fell in with Easy's seventeen-year-old heroine, Josie.  Josie has found her way despite her mother's poor profession, witless selfishness, and fancy for bad men.  She's a spitfire, an I'll-do-it-myself-er, a girl walking around with a pile of lies but without a dent in her actual morality.  She's the favorite of the wily, big-hearted madam known as Willie.  She's loved by two boys—Patrick, her co-worker at the bookstore, and Jesse, a beautiful boy with a mysterious past—not to mention a whole lot of poor souls who make her tattered life rich.  Josie's mother's on the lam and Josie's in trouble, and there will be murder, mayhem, lies, sacrifice, and choices before this story is through.  There'll be a whole lot of color and New Orleans twang, a rip-roaring cast, and, always, Ruta's intelligent sense of humor, not to mention instructions from Dickens.

Easy, which is a Tamra Tuller book, which is to say a Philomel book, which is to say the product of a remarkable book family headed by Michael Green, sounds spectacularly like then (the details are so right, their webbing-in so clever), but it resonates for now.  It's going to generate a whole lot of book love when it debuts next winter.  

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If I am too exhausted to state with any inch of eloquence how grateful I am for today—for being included in a well-run, truly substantive, inviting conference, for sitting on a panel among greats, for meeting, at long last, the delightful Jenny Brown, for spying on Roger Sutton's socks, for a chance to hurry through a loved city's streets, for an excuse to visit the extraordinarily wonderful Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo, for the opportunity to meet the funny and fun and winning Lauren Marino—if I am too exhausted, might I at least share these two images of a conference I won't forget?

Thank you, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives for making this day what it was.  For making me a part of it.

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The Small Damages jacket reveal and a big thank you to all of you ... all offered up in less than two minutes.

Check out the Mood T-shirt.

smoking!

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On our way to "Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?).  Oh, this was a great thing to do.  Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt.  Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby.  All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?):  I stood among the vapors of Mondo and Austin. 

"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother.  I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir.  I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.

Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned.  It's gorgeous!  It's debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me.  And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches."  Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.

On the bus home from NYC, our son called.  He's an extremely happy kid.  No, not a kid.  He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week.  "What did the professor say?" I asked.  Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.

"Well," he said.  "He actually called it awesome."

"Awesome," I repeated.  "Wow. Was there more?"  I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut. 

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I talk a lot about how much I love Philomel, Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jill Santopolo, and Jessica Shoffel, not to mention the amazing sales and marketing team—but hey, it's not without good reason.  Among the many gifts of working with this house is the sense that I have joined an active, loving, functional family.  These are people who care.  These are people who read your books when they arrive and who send you notes throughout the process—notes that you cling to in the midst of hair-tossing winds.

Among the many gifts that Tamra has given is introductions to two of her own writers—both of whom were heroines of mine long before I ever thought I'd meet them.  One is Ruta Sepetys, whose Between Shades of Gray is a towering international success; Ruta and Tamra were just in Lithuania, for example, meeting with the prime minister about that very book.  The other is Kathryn Erskine, who isn't just the National Book Award winner for Mockingbird, but a woman of such abiding curiosity and abundant imagination that when you ask, What are you working on these days, Kathy?, you get a series of gorgeous history lessons and a few foreign phrases thrown in to boot.

Both Ruta and Kathryn kindly read Small Damages and contributed their words to the back cover.  A few months later, Ruta wrote to say it would be fun to find a way to do an event together (imagine!) and Kathryn asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview for Book Hook, an email newsletter written for parents, homeschoolers, teachers, librarians, and grandparents.  The answer to Kathy's question was pretty easy (yes), and today I share the link to our conversation.  This was the first interview I'd done for Small Damages, and it was an honor to have had the conversation with Kathy.

I share a snippet below. You can find the whole by going to this link and then downloading the February/March 2012 edition. Between now and then, I share the photo up above from one of my many trips to Seville.  That gorgeous kid is the boy I love.  In a few months' time, he'll be a college grad.  I dedicated Small Damages to him, because it was this young man who, at so many junctures in his life, would sit and let me read aloud from a book that challenged me greatly; he was the one who listened.  Write about the living, not the dead, he said one day after I had read a funeral scene.  With his words, my story turned.  So did my future.

Kathy: You really captured the mood of sultry, sun-drenched Spain. Can you tell us about your Spanish travels?

My husband, who was born and raised in El Salvador, has a far-flung family. His youngest brother lived in the south of Spain for years, and so we visited a number of times. Seville became a city that I could walk alone, discover on my own, a city I loved and love still. We would also drive out to the countryside. During one excursion, I met one of the best known breeders of the fighting bulls of Spain. I set SMALL DAMAGES in a cortijo very much like the one we visited. Miguel is in some ways patterned after that heroic breeder.