David Sosnowski... update

So, remember a few days ago when I told you I wrote a dorky fan letter to one of my favorite authors, David Sosnowski?... Well, he wrote me back.

Not even 12 hours later.

A nice, long, personal letter.

Here ya go...

Greetings, Mr. Harshman!

All I have to say is “Wow!” and thank you for the great letter; it really blew me away and made my day (evening).  As I’m sure you know as a fellow writer, it’s a classically lonely profession, filled with self-doubt and with few chances for feedback, encouragement, and reinforcement, so knowing that I’ve had an impact on your writing (and dating – I love that!) life was great to hear (read).  I particularly liked the part about maturing past writing hackneyed Stephen King imitations.  In my own journey as a writer, there was a protracted period where my efforts were some mix of Twilight Zone and H.P. Lovecraft (minus the racism of the latter, which I was unaware of at the time I was reading his stuff).  You also have my sympathies for being a high school English teacher and adjunct professor.  I was never the former but spent several years as the latter from the mid- to late-1980s, teaching at up to three different universities in the Detroit area simultaneously.  With travel, classroom and office hours and, of course, grading, I had zero time to do much outside reading, let alone working on my own writing.  I also found that reading a bunch of student writing really dialed down my internal critic when it came to my own writing, which was pretty counterproductive.  After all, judging a story as “at least better than…” whatever assignment I was grading at the time was not exactly the express lane to publication, where I’ve found that most editors aren’t looking for a reason to publish something but rather looking for the first excuse to reject it.

Okay, now for those questions:

Q: What ever happened to the film of VAMPED? Obviously it never happened, but is the project still alive in some form? Has the option run out? If you can tell me, who was going to adapt, direct & star in it?

 

A: Mindy Marin, a longtime casting director (she discovered Charlize Theron), had started getting into production (she’s a producer on THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, THE FAMILY STONE, etc.) when she optioned the rights to VAMPED.  She renewed the option several times, during the course of which additional producers signed on (two from the movie WANTED), several drafts of a script were written (by a screenwriter named Dayan Ballweg), and I actually got calls from the set of WANTED, assuring me that VAMPED was definitely going to be made.  And then the 2008 recession happened, plans dried up, and the option lapsed.  Flash forward to late 2019, early 2020 and the age of streaming, and the rights were optioned again by Wiip Productions for a possible television series.  Then COVID happened.  It’s still under option and they have the right to renew but I haven’t heard much of anything since the world turned upside down.  Still, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Q: Has there been any interest in adapting any of your other works? 

 

A: Yep.  RAPTURE was optioned formally by two different sets of producers back in the mid- to late 1990’s and more recently, I granted a limited option to a screenwriter, Brian Nelson, who has been wanting to adapt it since it came out.  Brian was the screenwriter on the movie HARD CANDY and has worked on many other projects, including the miniseries 11/22/63, DA VINCI’S DEMONS, etc.  Last I heard from him, he wasn’t getting many bites, in large part because of all the uncertainty related to the pandemic.

 

 

Q: Have you ever tried your hand at screenwriting?

 

A: I keep on threatening to.  I’ve gotten the books, videos, software, and sample scripts and did some script doctoring for my nephew when he was in film school, but I’ve not written anything full length as yet.  Some amusing trivia: I actually started VAMPED as a screenplay but after about a day or two, I decided it really was a novel after all, so I went with my strength.

 

Q: If so, what genres?

 

A: Well, if I stuck with VAMPED as a screenplay, the genre would have been horror comedy.  I’m still thinking about doing a screenplay one of these days but haven’t settled on what the story would be, though I do know that I don’t want to do an adaptation.  Whatever it is, it would be written specifically for the screen.

 

Q:  Have you written any short fiction?

 

A:  Yep.  For years before trying my hand at a novel, I wrote and sent around short stories, mostly mainstream literary types but some fantasy and SF, too.  Some got published, some won prizes, many just weren’t fully baked and are collecting electric dust on various hard- and USB drives.  I keep telling myself that I’ll get back to and finish baking some of them, but then I end up starting another novel and…

 

Q: If so, any chance we might get a collection from you in the future?

 

A: I put together a collection of short stories for my MFA thesis and tried getting that published way back when but haven’t pursued it much since getting an agent.  The story on story collections is that they rarely sell and are usually only published as a sop to a promising writer that the publisher really wants a novel from. 

 

Q: Whats next for you (novel, screenplay, short story)?

 

A: The thing I’ve taken the most notes for is a novel, but I also have a short story that I was excited about for a few minutes, so that’s a possibility as well.

 

Okay, that’s about it for now.  Thanks for getting my latest picked up by the St. Louis County Library.  And thanks for writing!  Like I mentioned above, your email really made my day!

 

Sincerely,

Dave