Peter Benchley's first novel, Jaws, became one of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, an acknowledged classic recently judged by the American Film Institute as the second most scary movie after Psycho. The story of a great white shark that terrorises a smart resort similar to Long Island captured...
He was the son of Gertrude Darling and Robert Benchley (1889-1945), the noted American writer and one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. His elder son, Peter Benchley (1940-2006), was a writer best known for writing the novel Jaws and the screenplay of the...
“Jaws” meets global warming? An inconvenient tooth? Based on real science, and just in time for summer beach reading, “Sharkbait” throws two mismatched scientists together, risking their lives to learn how sharks can venture on shore for food. Climate change, toxins in the ocean, or some...
so I did a Google search for one of Shakespeare’s sonnets on the theme of missing a loved one (but not a grieving poem after someone who has passed away). This is what came up. (I should say, this is what
Perhaps the most counter-intuitive element of all: no matter how strong a query’s book description is, if it’s not presented in the manner Millicent has been trained to expect, it’s likely to trigger rejection. Even now, I sense a few jaws hitting the floor out there, do I not?
He’s been running a genuinely interesting and helpful series of posts there on the often frustrating and abstruse process of pulling together a nonfiction book proposal and sending it out to agents. In particular, I would strongly recommend his really good post on the process of figuring out ...
but one of the reasons I think Thomas Savage is a unsung genius is because it more or less explains the main character, at least at the start of the novel, in a single, violent and shocking scene. He treats people the way he wants to treat himself, and he would, at least in the ...
Today marks a momentous occasion as my new novelThe Rivertown Vethits the shelves. This tale is not just one of romance and animal conservation. It’s a moving narrative about overcoming the shadows of our pasts. Set against the picturesque backdrop of the Murray River in South Australia, ...
I am a big superhero fan and this book was everything I have been looking for in a superhero novel. Cameraman is awesome and I loved the setup of stats for each hero/villain as they came onto the page. Great characters, great story, and a killer cover! Can’t wait to read more in...
If it’s so easy, then, why doesn’t every novel, every movie, every TV show succeed in this? I believe the answer lies in one or both of two things. Either the author or screenwriter(s) is overly concerned with diving headlong into plot action, usually under the misapprehension that...