More on Tie-ins

As Lee Goldberg mentions below, there's a good post over on his blog today about writing TV tie-in novels. He also comments:

"Your post naturally makes me curious about your own TV tie in work. And how much latitude were you given on the WALKER novels as far as delving into the backgrounds of the characters?"

As best I remember, nothing was ever said about that, but the plots I came up with didn't really require any background. If the series had continued beyond three books, it's quite possible the question would have come up, though. Gordon Dawson's main concern seemed to be that I use the same sort of plots they used on the TV show and not accidentally duplicate anything they already had in the works (which actually happened once). I'm sure if I had written something that contradicted the way the characters were established, though, I would have heard about it.

My biggest problem was remembering to get the name of the blasted bar right, something I never quite managed. And I should have, considering that I've been to the actual bar where they filmed those scenes. (It has a different name in reality, of course.)