Preface
The TV industry isn’t a very user-friendly business. Oh, they’re very friendly and personable, and I’ve met with countless warm welcomes at pitch sessions and working lunches, but it’s almost impossible to figure out. I’ve published over 125 novels with more than fifty bestsellers… but I haven’t been able to figure out TV yet.
Steven L. Sears has. We’ve crossed paths at countless pop-culture and media conventions where we were both guest speakers (me to talk about my Star Wars novels, Steven to talk about his work on Xena: Warrior Princess). We’ve been friends for twenty years—quite close friends, actually.
Because we got along so well, we naturally decided to try working on something together, and I came out to LA to stay with him while we developed a few pitches to take to the networks. But I realized that I knew little about the industry itself, all those secret handshakes and decoder rings. (It turned out that just watching TV did not give all the qualifications to write for TV.) It was going to take a career to learn all the things that I needed to know… and fortunately, Steve had spent his career working on countless television shows as a writer, producer, show runner, and series creator. You know the shows: The A-Team, Riptide, Hardcastle and McCormick, Swamp Thing, Superboy, Walker-Texas Ranger, Xena: Warrior Princess, Sheena, and so many others.
He already knew the stuff. And he had been putting together his advice, a large database of experience and knowledge, culled from his helping others online and in classes. He let me read his notes, and I found that he was able to present all that important information in an easily accessible manner. How cool was that? Like having a mentor on a stack of printouts.
I urged him to polish up all that material into a book and, despite his reluctance to become a book writer (having seen how glamorous my life as a writer is), I succeeded, and I’m very pleased with the result. And The Non-User Friendly Guide for Aspiring TV Writers just happens to fit perfectly into the “Million Dollar Writing Series” that my own WordFire Press is publishing. (I’m sure Steven makes a point somewhere in this book about “knowing the right people.”)
In The Non-User Friendly Guide he shares his experience in a simple and conversational manner. It’s like having lunch with Steven and asking him questions about the business. Without having to watch him eat.
Kevin J. Anderson
September, 2014
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