6. Would you have liked to have written more Bond continuation novels after “The Man With The Red Tattoo”? If so, what would you like to have included in future Bond novels in terms of locations, plot and villains etc.?
My contract was over (“I had my six”!). I hadn’t begun to think of a next one. IFP wanted to take a hiatus and do other things, like celebrate Fleming’s 50th anniversary of CASINO ROYALE (2003) by re-issuing his books with new publishers/covers, and then experimenting with Young Bond and so forth for a few years before doing adult Bond novels again, six years after my last one.
7. How did you find writing the novels based on film scripts? Was it confining or liberating?
I dealt with different liaisons at EON for each successive novelization. The first one (TOMORROW NEVER DIES) I remember as being the most fun. They had to be done quickly (about six weeks!). They’re kind of a blur now. I had a whole year to do an original novel. The novelizations were somewhat easier in that the plot, characters, locations, and most of the dialogue were handed to me. I just had to turn it all into prose.
8. And following on from that, did you feel constrained whilst writing your own Bond novels?
Never. IFP was great to work with, and I had wonderful editors at Hodder & Stoughton (U.K. publisher) and Putnam (U.S. publisher). I was edited three ways, which is unusual in the publishing business. Sometimes it got complicated if one of these entities wanted this or that and the others didn’t, but we all worked out everything in the end. I never had an outline rejected. There were instances in which IFP would make a suggestion or whatever, but once the outline was approved, they let me loose and I ran with it.
8a. You hear stories of not being able to pick your own book titles for example. And was it your own choice to write the novels in a more ‘filmic way’ - I suppose using the more recognisable ‘film Bond’ than the ‘novel Bond’……?
The titles were picked by committee, and the committee consisted of me, IFP, the U.K. publisher’s editor and marketing department, and the U.S. publisher’s editor and marketing department! Picking the title was often the most complicated part of the entire process. One of my suggested titles made it to print (NEVER DREAM OF DYING), but all my other suggested titles became chapter titles. I don’t think my BOND was more “filmic,” but the books themselves were. My directive from the beginning was to write more cinematically. Since the movies had at that time just been rebooted with Pierce Brosnan in GOLDENEYE, IFP wanted M to be female, and they wanted more action (like the films). I desired to keep Fleming’s Bond with all his vices intact, and they said to go for it if I can make it work with the modern milieu. Bond is supposed to be a bit anachronistic—the whole “misogynist dinosaur” thing. The character of Bond in my books is “novel Bond”—he just exists in books that were more like the movies at that time than, say, the books written in the 1950s and early 60s.