JMS: Old and new

 Posted on 11/24/2000 by jmsatb5@aol.com to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated


>I can't help but notice that you're still the authority on everything that
>happens to B5 even this long after production. One couldn't really blame you
>if you'd told everybody to just go bug WB or Sci-Fi over the letterbox
>thing-you've done your part long ago. It was great of you to step in the way
>you did to communicate on the fan's behalf.

The thing I've had to learn the hard way is that nobody else will ever care as
much about something you've worked on as you do. To everybody else, it's the
Product, the bits of meat that come through the sausage maker and out, there to
make money. If it ain't 100%, well, as long as it's okay, that's what matters.
But we worked too hard on this show to ever let it be less than that.

>I hope that constantly having to go back to straighten out snafus with the
>'old' stories won't infringe too much on the new work you're doing.
>

It's a time sink, to be sure, but not massively so.

>So how are things going with Jeremiah, Spider Man, City of Dreams, Psycomics
>and anything else I'm forgetting or not aware of?

Very, very busy right now. I kind of let things go by the boards a bit while I
was working on the main two projects, the Jeremiah 2-hour pilot for Showtime,
and the Rising Stars feature for MGM. The former is now in, and we hope to
have some kind of response by mid-December. I'm about 2/3rds done with the
Rising Stars screenplay, and hope to have that in by the same time,
mid-December.

One of the things that kinda fell by the wayside was The City of Dreams, and
now that Jeremiah is in, taking away half of my biggest worries for the moment,
I'm working to catch up. I've now turned in episodes 8 and 9, and hope to have
the remaining 4 in by the end of the year.

I just last week turned in Midnight Nation 5, "Past Present, Present Tense,"
and my intent is to turn in the next issue of Rising Stars, #13, probably next
week.

Moments before coming here, I turned in next week's psycomic column, this one
on writing and characterization.

My first issue of Spider-Man will go in to Marvel around mid-December. It will
come out around May/June of next year.

There's more stuff beyond that, but I can't talk about it yet. Probably in the
next week or so. A couple of them should be of particular interest to B5 fans.

> Oh, and have you decided
>when the keyboard will go to the winner (hoping for it myself)?

Last I heard, the plans are to award the keyboard (the one on which I wrote
nearly all of B5, Crusade and other stuff) during the coming World Horror Con
in Seattle. They also (happily) knocked down the price a bit for the book,
since it was a bit high for a trade paperback (albeit a spiffy one). More
details at www.darktales.com


jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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