I'm excited and proud to announce that the motion picture rights to my novel The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula have been optioned by Puckster Productions and Neely O'Hara. (I know that "Neely O'Hara" is a character in the original VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, but it's a name on my contract, too.) Mark Kruger -- whose past credits include CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH (1995), CALLING ALL MONSTERS (1999), the 2004 Hallmark miniseries of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN (with Alec Newman, Julie Delpy and William Hurt), and the recent NBC miniseries REVELATIONS -- will be writing the screenplay, and I wish him well.
Signed copies of The Book of Renfield are available from the book's website http://www.bookofrenfield.com, where you can also find a reading sample and other information. Keep watching the site in the weeks ahead, as I intend to be adding some interesting new features.
Meanwhile, the screen rights to Throat Sprockets remain unsold, though my agents and I have received several inquiries about it over the years -- and I hope to receive more, now that it's been included as one of the selections in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's new anthology Horror: Another 100 Best Books. ("Before there was The Ring," writes Tananarive Due, "there was Throat Sprockets" -- nice.) One of the difficulties about adapting the book to film is that it's such an "internalized" story, some people in the business have a hard time seeing how it could be "externalized." Of course, as the writer, I can see very easily how this can be done and I can take liberties with my text other writers might not want or think to do. So, in what little spare time I have, I've started taking a long overdue crack at a Throat Sprockets script myself.
The film rights to my work are represented by Judy Coppage of The Coppage Company in North Hollywood. Telephone: (818) 980-8806.
