Soon after that I announced that I had formed a new company, Magic IO, that would focus on creating interactive books. Although I worked on designs for Sherlock Holmes I felt I needed a partner who understood how to do a start-up better than I did. Fast forward a couple months and I've formed a new company, FlyingWord, that I co-founded with someone who had start-up experience. We produced five books three of which we managed to publish. The most important was Treasure Island, The Experience which I announced in November of last year.
By February of this year I had left FlyingWord - a company I'm still invested heavily in - for a number of reasons. My co-founder has carried on and is still making a go of it. I have since gone to work for Ambient Consulting as their VP of Mobility which is a wonderful job with wonderful people. Through it all, however, my passion has never changed: I want to create great app/book adaptations of novels for young adults and adults. My preferred genera is High Fiction, which is a fancy term for Fantasy and Science Fiction.
So now I'm announcing Noble Beast my latest publishing endeavor which will focus on exactly the genera and type of app/books I've always wanted to work on. No compromise. Although I've spoken to a number of people about partnerships and co-founding in the end its hard to imagine anyone sharing exactly the same dream that I have - some come close but they have their own dreams which don't align perfectly with my own. I find that I'm incapable of compromise on my dream. Every compromise is painful. So what is my dream?
I want to create fantastic app/book adaptations of the best High Fiction novels in history.
When I say the best, I'm not kidding. Last year I worked with Pam Mariutto on a interactive app book design for Lord of the Rings. Yup. You read it right. Lord of the Rings. Did I have a deal with HarperCollins UK or with the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate? No. My plan was to create a great demo and present it to the rights holder and convince them that if they were going to do an app/book adaptation of Lord of the Rings than I was the one to work with. I would like to say that I won the rights and published a beautiful app/book that sold millions of copies, but as you've probably already guessed, that has not happened yet. I contacted the Tolkien Estate's literary agent and was told in no-uncertain terms that Christopher Tolkien had no interest in doing anything digital with Lord of the Rings. Not only was this disappointing but it was also kind of weird considering you can already get eBook versions of the Lord of the Rings not to mention the movies and even an on-line RPG. Not to be deterred I reached out to HarperCollins UK but they told me that although they have been approached by others to do an app/book version of Lord of the Rings (who else approached them I wonder?) they were "going a different direction" with the books. I have no idea what that means and more information wasn't forthcoming so I put Lord of the Rings on the back burner. Eventually they will have to do an app/book - its inevitable in my mind. Hopefully, I'll get another shot at it.
Looking around for a project of equal merit to Lord of the Rings lead me to one of my favorite novels, Dune. I reached out to the Frank Herbert Estate and have made some very tentative exchanges but as they are busy with movie deals - Paramount Pictures' rights just expired earlier this year - I've been asked to be patient and wait because they "WILL" get back to me. While they are busy working on a movie deal I've been busy designing a storyboard for Dune. I've been re-reading the novels, studying the text, and working with an artist who is a big fan of the series. I sent in a rough draft of the storyboard to the Frank Herbert Estate yesterday and I'm hoping to hear back from them this coming week.
Right about now - or probably three paragraphs ago - there will be more than a few of you asking yourself, "Why is he telling the whole world what his plans are and the progress he's made?" After all no one in their right mind would divulge the mission, right? Well, given the hubris of my ambitions no one thinks I'm in my right mind anyway. After all what kind of knit-wit goes after Lord of the Rings and Dune as app/books? Me that's who. Why not me?!
I'm tired of everyone telling me that I'm setting my sights too high; that I should focus on goals that are more attainable. I would rather fail miserably than give up on my dreams. If someone else gets to do app/book versions of Lord of the Rings and Dune, than so be it, but I'm not going to give up trying until either I get to do it or someone else wins the rights. At this time no one's doing it so in my mind its an open race.
Besides having ambitions that make my family and friends squirm, I'm going to do something else that will make people question my sanity. I'm going to be totally open about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Only when I'm told explicitly not to talk about something will I refrain. I'll ask people first if they mind that I mention what they have said or done and I won't print anything they don't want me too, but I won't remain silent about my intentions and my direction either. I'm going to run this whole thing in exactly the opposite way everyone thinks it should be done. It's always been my nature to be contrarian so why stop now? Why should I try to act in a way that goes against my true nature?
So from this point forward I'll be reporting on my efforts and progress in landing rights to the biggest High Fiction titles in the world. Works of fiction that I admire and want to make adaptions for. I'll even share my designs, my ideas, my successes, and my disappointments. I'll spill my guts because if I remain silent than chances are my dream will die a silent death. If I'm open about what I'm doing than I feel I have a fair chance of being noticed and that's the first step to winning these deals. If the folks that own the rights to Lord of the Rings and Dune don't know you exist than how are you ever going to win their trust and the right to create adaptations of their works? As Neal Young put it, "it's better to burn out than to fade away." So stay tuned because its going to be interesting no matter what happens.
By the way, I should mentioned that I'm also planning on approaching J.K. Rowlings about doing app/book adaptations of the Harry Potter series. See, I told you I was ambitious/crazy!
