I just finished the copyedit on a book I wrote some years ago that was originally scheduled to come out in 2019. Publication was delayed due to legal issues because it was about a character who already exists in both book and film.

Initially everyone was OK with it, including the holders of the rights, but then lawyers stepped in and the whole project was shut down.

Now, this year in fact, from out of nowhere, permission was given for related works to be produced (this is not unique to me of course) with certain provisions.

So now I’ve just finished editing a book which is re-scheduled for a Feb 2024 release. Why so long if it’s ready to go?

Because Feb 2024 will be the 50^th anniversary of Peter Benchley’s seminal novel. JAWS.

My novel is also one word.

“QUINT”

I can’t talk much about it as it’s not officially announced but you can probably guess what it might be about. Or at least what some of it might be about (it’s a character story above all).

If you know JAWS, the movie, (and if you don’t I’d like to say welcome to our planet) there’s one scene that captures the imagination and silences a cinema above all others. It’s only four minutes and it’s regarded as one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history. The Indianapolis monologue from Robert Shaw, from Quint himself.

I’ve been a JAWS nut since I was a child but I’d never thought I’d write a book based around my favourite character from my most loved film.

I took that monologue (and the minutes before) and developed a novel telling a story from the 40’s to 60’s about a character we know very little about apart from that one thing:

Quint survived the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis.

Oddly enough, with that monologue, Quint made it impossible for any other fictional character, in film or book, to also be a survivor of the tragedy. Everyone would always say, ‘Yeah, they just stole that from JAWS.’

So I did what you could only do. Write a novel about Quint to tell the story (and other things of course).

I could write about this experience and my love for JAWS for a long time but I won’t now.

Just wanted to say that far and above all my books this is the one I’m most passionate about. Because it means so much to me to be allowed to write it.