David Cian Comments on Losing Rights to Prequel Novel
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:15 pmDavid Cian, who previously wrote two of the three novels based on the Dreamwave Comics stories, has commented on losing the rights to writing the prequel novel based on the upcoming Transformers Movie, as reported earlier on http://www.seibertron.com/news. The following statements were made by the writer on Don Murphy's board.
"Greetings All,
I wanted to post a quick note in regards to the Transformers Prequel Novel GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY. It may have been noted elsewhere on this board, but I wanted to address a couple of things that have come up.
1) For a variety of reasons, while both the publisher (Del Rey) and Hasbro liked the overall story I created, they were not satisfied with my writing. I will not go into detail here, nor will I bash anyone involved. I will say, however, that the extreme time constraints and a number of information and communications issues within the project contributed greatly to the problems. I was forced to turn in pure draft pages - which is to say, pages I had written and never revised or looked at again - nor was I given the opportunity to do any revisions. This is a situation that occurs from time to time in media tie-in work, but is not a situation any author I know of enjoys.
2) If you look up the book on Amazon, etc., you will see that Alan Dean Foster (who also wrote the film novelization) is given cover credit for GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY.
3) Essentially, Alan was asked to rewrite my novel, so it's likely that inside the book on the title page, you'll see something to the effect of "Based on a story by David Cian". Alan is a popular and talented writer, and no doubt did a good job on the revision.
4) For those of you who were hoping for another David Cian TF novel, I must apologize and DO hope you enjoy the book regardless. I have always approached my work within the Transformers universe with the same idea: that the fans must like the story. While I have NOT read the revised novel, my understanding is that the basic story I created is there.
I appreciate your attention, and as always, have appreciated your many kind words and support.
Sincerely,
David Cian"
"Greetings All,
I wanted to post a quick note in regards to the Transformers Prequel Novel GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY. It may have been noted elsewhere on this board, but I wanted to address a couple of things that have come up.
1) For a variety of reasons, while both the publisher (Del Rey) and Hasbro liked the overall story I created, they were not satisfied with my writing. I will not go into detail here, nor will I bash anyone involved. I will say, however, that the extreme time constraints and a number of information and communications issues within the project contributed greatly to the problems. I was forced to turn in pure draft pages - which is to say, pages I had written and never revised or looked at again - nor was I given the opportunity to do any revisions. This is a situation that occurs from time to time in media tie-in work, but is not a situation any author I know of enjoys.
2) If you look up the book on Amazon, etc., you will see that Alan Dean Foster (who also wrote the film novelization) is given cover credit for GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY.
3) Essentially, Alan was asked to rewrite my novel, so it's likely that inside the book on the title page, you'll see something to the effect of "Based on a story by David Cian". Alan is a popular and talented writer, and no doubt did a good job on the revision.
4) For those of you who were hoping for another David Cian TF novel, I must apologize and DO hope you enjoy the book regardless. I have always approached my work within the Transformers universe with the same idea: that the fans must like the story. While I have NOT read the revised novel, my understanding is that the basic story I created is there.
I appreciate your attention, and as always, have appreciated your many kind words and support.
Sincerely,
David Cian"
