TWRP goes to the Movies

Every author dreams of getting the call.  Not just the call offering a contract for their book but THE call, the one from Hollywood.

For TWRP author, Karilyn Bentley that dream became a reality this past spring.  Okay Karilyn didn’t get the call, I did,  but then I got to make the call to her.

This wasn’t the first time that Hollywood has called me.  I’ve talked to producers over the years, have gotten excited a few times only to be let down when nothing comes of the conversation.   Even a few projects that have gone into contracts, frankly, died on the table.  Nothing. 

But this was a bit different.  This production company wasn’t looking to take a book that we had published and make it into a movie, they wanted to have a book written specifically for them to make into a movie.  They had a specific author in mind and wanted to discuss their project with me.    

Karilyn Bentley has a series of books about Demons.  The producer emailed me and asked me about these books and the author.  A phone meeting was set. 

I spoke with the producer, Charlie, in early February.  I was pretty tough on him wanting all the details, telling him how I knew this would never go anywhere and how did I know if we worked together on this project it would ever get to the movies? Having called authors in the past with exciting news about a production company interested in their book only to have nothing ever happen, I’m a lot more cautious these days.

 

Charlie assured me that there were 9 other books in process of being written and he wanted Karilyn to write him a proposal for the 10^th.  It was a series called The Deadly Ten.  Would she be willing?  It had to be written very fast, needed to be ready to release in mid summer so they could begin filming in September. 

The Deadly Ten project is a 10 book series that would go to Amazon Prime movies.  He wanted to film the makings of each of these movies and live stream them on his site as they were being produced.  He felt that people were curious about how movies were made and he thought this was a unique spin on this series.

A quick phone call with Karilyn confirmed her interest and we set up a joint phone call with Charlie.  Charlie gave her an outline of what he wanted in this book and she was to fill in the rest.  She wrote a full synopsis, we presented it to Charlie and he loved it.  Contracts were started.  Then stalled. 

Did I say I’m stubborn?  I’m not an easy person to get a contract past.  I was going to fight for our author and her rights to this book even if he had been the one to commission it. I dug in my heels, I negotiated, he tried charm, and being the tough guy.  I held firm. Finally, I had an agreement I felt good about going to Karilyn with and she agreed to the terms as well.   

After a quick conversation with Lill Farrell, Karilyn,’s editor and asking if she could get the editing done in a short turnaround, and a conversation with RJ Morris who decided to handle the cover herself, the contract was signed and we were on our way to the movies!

Karilyn was amazing and created the book of Charlie’s vision in record time.  RJ created a cover that blew him away and everything snowballed from there.  A few more conversations with our producer and then bam, the links were live, and Charlie’s vision of a 10 book/movie production was underway.

We will have live streams on our website the entire time filming for this series takes place.  We will have some special events around the actual filming of The ShadowHeart Curse which they say will now be sometime in October.  All the movies are set for a release date sometime mid February 2020.  We will be celebrating for sure and walking a virtual red carpet. 

Rhonda Penders

President, Editor-in-Chief