Not taking it to the Max

Late last century, I saw Mickey Spillane discuss his career with Max Allan Collins. Collins himself was asked about the process of writing a film/TV tie-in novel: he said the point of such writing was to give the reader an experience which was equivalent to - but different from - seeing the original.

I was reminded of this today, when the BBC ran a commentary by Mark Gatiss on the process of writing the Doctor Who TV tie-in novel Nightshade (1992) . Unlike the focused Collins, Gatiss sets out a whole range of personal experiences he brought to bear on his debut (tie-in) novel. Different techniques for working up a scorned genre into something special.

Buy Nightshade here (UK):