That's pretty much what LLLT is all about!

Les
The English Language is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought though.

I'm of mixed opinion about this. It must be financially successful because publishers often do it and the "new" author siphons off a lot of the money yet the writer's estate still makes enough to make it worth it.

I'm not really opposed to doing it, or others doing it, I just don't see any reason for us to do it, clearly I've been able to keep Louis alive thus far.

But here's what happens: When your books are in the marketplace for too many years without a change the bookstores begin to complain. Maybe your sales slip, maybe they don't, but the stores put you under a microscope because they are worried that they MIGHT slip. Then you need something new or they stop reordering. Sometimes it can be as silly as new covers, sometimes it has to be something as dramatic as the Lost Treasures project ... or books by a different writer. The thing is, if you don't have something to give them they lose confidence, and then the publisher loses confidence, and then they start taking your books out of print, and then it's all over.

peter

Almost never. Louis is an exceptional exception!

peter

This is always an issue but here are several observations:

1) It's a business for us as well as Random House, so it's all about the money. We don't place profit as high on the list of priorities as some but every layer has to make some money or the entire edifice begins to collapse.

2) With a popular author you can give up some unhappy readers and still make money ... and still succeed in keeping all the original books in print. Fans lose track of the reality of the situation ALL the time. I get hate mail for finishing and publishing No Traveller Returns because to them it's not "real" Louis L'Amour (even though it's as perfect a copy of his style at that time as I can make it) what they really want is a Western written in the 1960s or '70s. The book CLEARLY isn't that, it has a picture of a ship on the cover! But they still buy it and then hate on it and me, not recognizing that there is a much bigger game being played here and, if I'm not going to create "new" L'Amour stories at this time, this is the way it has to be played or Dad will disappear. It's odd how people can't just like what they like, they have to be angry about what they don't!

3) If you are an author following up on a career like Parker or Louis's and you can't duplicate the original author's voice, and sometimes, especially with unfinished work, that seems to be impossible because the original author DIDN'T finish because their style couldn't handle the subject matter, it's often better to make a clean break stylistically.

This was nearly an issue with Haunted Mesa. LL was shut down on that story for years because his aspirations for it conflicted with the way he had trained himself to write. He finally found a work around but he had to abandon many of his goals to do so. When I was fooling around with the (unproduced) TV adaptation I was able to see the traps that he had set for himself and see ways of avoiding them that his style would not have accommodated. BUT ... I had 30 years to think about it and I had the fact that I was working in a different medium to force me away from "his style."

Douglas Preston is a good friend of mine. When he writes on his own his voice is very different from when he co-writes with Lincoln Child. Though I know what fans want, if that is impossible I see no reason not to accept this sort of "combined voice" when one writer works with another. I was able to avoid that to a great extent with No Traveller Returns but that may not always be the case.

NTR is a very close match to the combined sensibility of the bits of it that Dad left behind and the Yondering stories, of which it is one. HOWEVER, it could not really work without a more technical insight into the mechanical aspects of Tanker Ship design and the machinery aboard. Dad didn't like technical stuff, he avoided it whenever possible. I'm the opposite. If there is a tiny, hard to define, combined Beau & Louis voice in NTR it is the fact that the story requires some technical details and that wasn't in Louis's style when he was writing solo.

It’s interesting that you mention “Haunted Mesa”. I thought “Haunted Mesa” seemed lacking in some quality. Not sure what. Maybe nothing. May just be me. I thought maybe your dad just struggled with stories in a more modern setting. But, then I recall the short story “With These Hands” and the novel “Last of the Breed”. I thought both were really excellent.

There are just some cranky and narcissistic people out there. If something wasn't acceptable to them then the think it shouldn't exist at all.

The Van Lustbader/Bourne thing may have gained that success because the Bourne films are now known better than the novels, an alternate to the original is many people's primary association to the franchise. Van Lustbader wrote some James Bond novels earlier, just for the record. And I believe he was an accomplished novelist with his own following before that.

Dad's problems with HM are better outlined in the LLLT Postscript than I could do here. Suffice it to say that I think he had some discomfort writing about older characters in the modern world and in dealing with the sort of making up of history, rather than using it as a foundation, that is a part of Science Fiction. He liked reading SF, just like he liked reading a lot of contemporary fiction, but he had established a style that had a different approach to things. He was hoping to break down that barrier as his career matured ... he certainly had no problems with a different stylistic approach to the world in the Yondering Days of his career ... but I suspect that SF, plus the differences in the character's age and in dealing with the "modern" world still needed a bit more development stylistically. Last of the Breed avoided this because it didn't really deal with the modern American experience as we know it. The Siberian wilderness was much like the American West except for some bits of technology. I did a good deal of work on With These Hands, particularly the ending, so that might explain it.

The biggest and most interesting issue with HM was that there were actually TWO stories hiding within it. One is professional skeptic Mike Raglan has to confront the REALITY that something his world view can't initially accept has actually occurred. The other is an adventure to track down and rescue Eric Hokart.

Although it took me 30 years to figure it out, the two do not rest easily with one another. Dad stalled for quite awhile right at the transition of the two. I wish he'd checked his notes, he had some pretty good ideas for a smaller, quieter story ... about confronting the supernatural (not SF, which has more reliance on "science."). At the same time he likely would have gone back, changed some of Mike's backstory, and carried on with a more action oriented SF adventure. Career-wise, I think he wanted to write something more in the SF vein.

peter

I find HM fascinating. But it is weird on many levels!

peter