Bookgasm made me a Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child fan. Now they've interviewed the Preston half of the team in a nice conversation about the writers' partnership, movie adaptations of their work (including The Relic), and what we should be reading.On the partnership: "Neither one of us has the final say. When we’ve found ourselves at loggerheads, which happened early on, when we were both absolutely unyielding in our beliefs, we said, 'There’s obviously a problem with both our approaches, so let’s throw them both out and find a third way.' And that third way has always worked better."
"When (Child) came up with the idea for Utopia, he originally brought it to the partnership and said, 'Wouldn’t it be great to do a thriller set in a theme park?' and I just had no interest in it. I don’t like theme parks. It was just a personal thing. So I said, 'That’s a really good idea for a novel, but it’s not for me.' I just didn’t want to spend a year of my life in this theme park."
On movies: "Unfortunately, Pendergast (a major character in many Preston/Child novels) is owned by Paramount Pictures. Even though he didn’t appear in The Relic, when they bought the novel, they bought the character rights. So the only one who can make a Pendergast movie is Paramount, which has had a chilling effect on any progress."
On reading material: "I used to like Michael Crichton, but his last few haven’t thrilled me as much. I think he takes a hot-button topic and a controversial stance just to get people riled up, and I think that’s manipulative. However, I will say that The Andromeda Strain is one of the great novels. I mean it. If he had never written anything else, he’d still be thought of as a great writer."
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