Welcome to my new website. A couple of months ago, I visited my author friend Steve Berry and his wonderful wife Elizabeth in their St. Augustine, Florida, home. (Steve’s new book The Columbus Affair will be available very soon.) We got to talking about websites. Steve showed me his recent one. We compared it to the previous version of my website, which was ten years old. It didn’t take long for me to realize, with Steve’s kind urging, that it was time for me to have an update, and I hope you agree that the result is splendid.
The idea is to provide the feel of a magazine and to show you as many facets of my interests and my career as possible. In the process, I went through old photograph albums and was thrilled to find images I didn’t remember, such as the one with me rappelling off a Wyoming cliff while I was doing research for one of my novels, Testament, with the National Outdoor Leadership School.
A lot of new things have been added: pages for Rambo, writing advice, interviews I’ve given, and so on. For each of these, I include all kinds of information and links to where you can find additional information. For example, I wouldn’t have become a writer if not for Stirling Silliphant’s scripts for the classic TV series, Route 66. In this new website, I now have the room to include information about the series and my debt to Stirling, with whom I eventually worked when he was the executive producer of the NBC miniseries adapted from my novel, The Brotherhood of the Rose.
My new website makes me think about how much technology and publishing have changed in recent years. E-books have become a major part of reading, to the extent that there are about 100 million e-reading devices (iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Kobos, etc.) in the United States alone. In a few years, more than fifty percent of book sales will be in an e-book format.
From time to time, I’ll offer my thoughts about these changes. For starters, let me say that e-books provide a big benefit when it comes to an author’s backlist. This is my fortieth year as a published author (my debut novel First Blood, which introduced the character of Rambo, appeared in 1972). Publishers tend to be interested in what’s new and often are reluctant to reprint older titles, which means that over the years, various of my books have gone in and out of print. But with e-books, my out-of-print novels are now permanently available for e-readers.
Similarly, over 40 years I wrote many short stories and essays. The anthologies and magazines in which they appeared are often difficult to find, but with e-books, they are readily available. With that in mind, I created The David Morrell Short Fiction E-Collection and The David Morrell Non-Fiction E-Collection. I’m especially pleased to make the essays available: in-depth revelations about popular icons such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, analyzing the significance of their careers. You’ll learn as much from these long essays as you would from reading several books about these fascinating, troubled figures.
Hello David,
Your new site is amazing! I look forward to reading your blog posts!
Best,
Laura
Very beautiful ………the designer did a super job. You appear to have lived several lives at once. You have accomplished so very much and keep on giving. I treasure my collection and will read all the new “books” that are printed. Billie
Vibrant and friendly new site. Well done.
Thank you, Rachel. The designer and I spent a couple of months working on the new site. Some days we were on the phone for 6 hours.
Great new site and very interesting blog. I signed up.
Best of luck,
Pam
Very professional, tempting and well thought-out; not unlike the man! Congratulations on taking the plunge. I am sure you will enjoy it immensely.
It’s clean, it’s crisp and it crackles just like David’s books. Easy to read and follow and well researched.
Love the new website sir. I’m also looking forward to thr blogs.
Hey, David. This is great. I love the picture and the blog is fun. Happiness!
Hello David, I have looked for the fourth edition of Rambo and found it only as a comic and not by you. Can someone do that legally? Was a fourth movie made? If so, is it on DVD? Hope you are having success with this new form. I am sorta lost but will catch up. It is beautiful and very stylish. Have a great day. Ciao, Billie
Billie, there was a fourth movie, simply called RAMBO. I didn’t write a novelization because the publishing market for novelizations disappeared with the rise of DVDs. I didn’t know about a comic book. I’ll look into it. They don’t have the right to do that.
Where is the fourth movie? I have never seen it anywhere…..is Sly in it? Would love to get a copy. Have a great weekend and learn all the tricks of the CIA…..just incase you need them! Billie
The fourth Rambo film is called simply RAMBO. It was released in early 2008 and is widely available on DVD.
I like a well-done website. I like this website!
Great website. I am a comic writer/reader and have no recollection of seeing a Rambo comic. I’d have noticed that. Doesnt mean someone didnt do it but I’ve never seen it. I’d have liked a crack at it! There was an Expendables one around the time the film came out.
David, I’m a big fan. The Successful Novelist is like a Bible to me! Just read Agents of Treachery. What a great Compilation! It’s great to have this place to keep up with you and your work. Thank you!
Thanks, John. You’re right. There haven’t been any Rambo comic books, at least not official ones. I have approval of the comic books, and I always decline because in the early days, the concepts that were brought to me turned the character truly into a cartoon.
I hope you enjoyed your visit to St Augustine. Having grown up in Jacksonville, which is just forty-five minutes north of there, and now living in Green Cove Springs, which is forty-five minutes west of there, I have been there numerous times over the years and I just made one of my occasional trips over to there. One thing that St Augustine does not lack is a selection of wonderful places to eat and I hope that Steve Berry was able to share a few of those with you, perhaps even O’Steens, famously known for its fried shrimp.
Enough of that. It is my hope that you have another novel in the works and that I will get to enjoy reading it before too long.
JWH
John, I very much enjoyed my visit to St. Augustine. After the conference, I got to spend time with my author friend Steve Berry, who lives there. It had been a long time since I was in Florida.
i was recently introduced to your books by my brother-in-law, i must say the writing style is great and so too is your decriptive skill as to the surroundings. so far i have read first blood, the fraternity of the stone and the brotherhood of the rose. by far the best is the brotherhood of the rose, the book was captivating. but there were a few typos in it, i don’t know if there were any in the first 2 i read, but i guess since i was really wrapped up in the brotherhood of the rose, that i noticed the typos. now i don’t blame you, no-no i don’t. but does someone proof-read your book when the printer is done with it, that seems to be a good idea. because a writer as great as you are should not be down played due to typos. other than that keep up the wonderful work, and i look forward to reading the rest of your series.
Rolly, thanks for the good words about my books. I’m sorry I took a while to respond. I don’t visit the messages on my website as often as I should. Mostly I rely on messages sent to me directly through my website or on Facebook. THE FRATERNITY OFTHE STONE has my favorite opening–the mysterious man in the monastery, atoning for his sins. The characters of that book and THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE meet each other in a third book THE LEAGUE OF NIGHT AND FOG. About typos, in the first edition, the publisher and I take elaborate efforts to correct typos. But as later editions are released, I’m not given the opportunity to review the text, and after 28 years (in the case of THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE), typos creep in. When I prepared the e-book of BROTHERHOOD, I was amazed by how many I found in one of the paperback editions. All I can tell you is the we try our best. My next novel MURDER AS A FINE ART comes out in May. Set in 1854 London, the novel explores a series of real-life mass murders that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper for terrorizing London and all of England. The research took 2 years. Happy holidays. David
Dear Mr. Morrell, I would love to hear more of your thoughts about “Rambo: The Force of Freedom,” which was the series of animated cartoons and toys based on your John Rambo character. I love Rambo, and I love cartoons, but — even as a child — I saw the incongruity of turning your gritty, conflicted, Vietnam-vet character into a G-rated cartoon and toy. In fact, most kids I grew up with who liked the cartoons still considered them to be an oddity. That’s because, ironically, nearly all kids who grew up during the 1980s saw the unedited Rambo movies on VHS and cable TV, despite the movies’ R rating, and we kids recognized that the Rambo of the cartoons wasn’t quite the same guy as the movie Rambo (much less the Rambo of your original book). We still liked the cartoon, as a parallel-universe supplement to the movies, but the cartoon was highly sanitized, more than Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H was sanitized when it jumped from movie theaters to network primetime. Of course, if I were you, I still would have welcomed the royalty checks regardless, but did you feel conflicted? If so, how specifically? Or were you just glad to offer your work to a new, broader audience — perhaps including children or grandkids of your own? Did you like the fact that this kinder, gentler Rambo helped teach morals to kids? Also, what personal involvement did you have with developing and/or approving the cartoons and toys? For instance, were you a formal adviser or did you actually furnish any plots or characters? Please provide lots of details, because this is probably one of the most under-discussed aspects of your (overall good) legacy. Thanks in advance for your insights.
Jim, I’m sorry I took a while to respond to your message. In this new version of my website, I keep forgetting that messages can be left there. To answer your question, I had no control over the Rambo cartoon series on TV. My contract for the film rights dates back to 1972 when FIRST BLOOD was published (10 years before the film). No one imagined that there’d be a TV series. But in the fine print,the production company had the right to do it. The series is weird at best, with Rambo talking to animals in the forest (as I recall) when he wasn’t fighting tyrants. I contributed no story ideas and had nothing to do with it. I received very little money for it. The best part was Jerry Goldsmith’s music. I do have control over the comic book rights, which is why there has no legal comic book has been released. There are some foreign pirated ones that I can’t control. Again my apologies for the late response. Please look for my new novel MURDER AS A FINE ART, which comes out on May 7. David