Welcome to ABAM: A Book A Month
It’s October, the clocks changed yesterday, and this project doesn’t officially launch for another ten weeks. So, this post might be a little lonely up here for a while whilst I prepare for the first ABAM release of “@” on January 4th.
Perhaps I should give you a little bit of background on who I am, what the hell this is, and why it is *such* a bad idea.
Hello and welcome to me: my name is Lee Isserow, and I work in ‘entertainment’. I used to be a writer, then became an editor, then a DP, a director, a producer, an animator, and then various combinations of all of the above. My job, as you can gather, has never been a single-sentence profession. However, despite getting to work across the world on all manner of shows, in all manner of roles, I never stopped writing.
We’re now something like a decade and a half on from when I first stepped on to a film set, and in that time over a hundred screenplays, hundreds of treatments, and thousands of hours of content have been scrawled in notepads, Final Draft, Open Office, Google Docs, and despite having had pilots produced and movies made, most of them sit on a shelf (literal or figurative) and gather dust.
So a decision was reached in a long protracted dialogue with myself that I’ll save for another time, in which we (that is to say, I) set out upon this project:
A new book (affectionately called ‘BAM’s) every month.
Each around 20-45k words.
A long novella or a short novel that would recycle and reinvigorate the best of my dusty old concepts, outlines, treatments, teleplays and screenplays that nobody has produced.
Finally, these stories that span genres and tone, mood and vibe would have a chance to grace the public sphere, where they’ll probably just swim in the ether. At least there’s more chance of someone enjoying them in print than there is being locked up in my brain, where only I can enjoy them.
The ‘terrible idea’ part of the plan is that it literally involves me self-publishing a new novel/la every month. From writing 20-45k words to designing the covers (with occasional assistance from much more talented designers), shooting and editing the video trailers, putting the soundtracks together, publishing and marketing the hell out of the things, and did I mention writing 20-45k words a month?
BAMs aren’t your average novel/la. They won’t dwindle away like the first chapter(s) of The Hobbit, talking about doorknobs and the habits of Hobbits. They’re all based on movies and TV shows that largely haven’t had a chance to exist, so they steam ahead and get straight to the good character and plot stuff, rather than whiling the hours away on ephemera that would invariably be cut in a film adaptation.
Of course, whether they’re any good you’ll be able to judge for yourself soon enough. Over the forthcoming weeks I’ll be sticking up all manner of goodies on the site. Expect a synopsis, cover and a sample chapter from the first book, plus a video trailer and soundtrack that set the tone, plus there’ll probably be the odd bit of short / flash fiction that might get your eyes a’tingling for my wordsmithery.
So do please return to this humble website, which will undoubtedly fill with more and better content as time rolls on.
See you next time.