Unfettered Brilliance: Breaking Bad Project!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Breaking Bad Project!

I can officially break the news! A project that Ensley F. Guffey and I have been working on for some time now is going to happen and we both couldn't be more excited! Breaking Bad, the AMC show that has been an Emmy darling since it began airing a few years ago, is a show that both of us enjoy watching (well, "enjoy" is probably not quite the right word) and we have both been blown away by the show's quality and willingness to explore some very dark material. I won't spoil here - much - but Breaking Bad can be summed up this way: A good man finds himself in desperate straits and is pushed to the edge by his circumstances. He then discovers that he likes the edge, even without the desperate straits. It's too simple a summary, but it's a start.

We had been kicking around the idea of co-authoring a project, but hadn't settled on a particular idea until we realized the Breaking Bad was an uncharted country. It's wildly successful critically and its viewership is both loyal and building. The show is also, undeniably, a fine example of Quality TV. So we talked and we wrote and we called and we tweaked (not that way - did I mention the show has meth-making as a central plot point?) and I am proud to report that we are now under contract with ECW Press to deliver the manuscript of Wanna Cook? The Unofficial Guide to Breaking Bad. The fourth season wrapped up a few months ago (short seasons, not the full 22-episode order that's business-as-usual for network TV) and it contained a finale that truly hit the "reset" button. Air dates for Season 5 (which showrunner Vince Gilligan has indicated will be the final season) aren't set quite yet, but the idea is that we'll submit the manuscript for Seasons 1 - 4 in June and Season 5 late next fall after that season has aired. Publication will probably happen early next year. We're going WAY beyond a simple episode recap - you can find those easily without our help. We'll include information on material as diverse as:

What does it mean to "break bad"?
Just how does the DEA operate?
What exactly is meth and why is it so dangerous to make?
Legal ethics
Recipes (but not for meth!)

Writing a book is a lengthy project and I anticipate many twists and turns along the way. You can follow our progress here and over on Ensley's blog, as well as on Twitter - use #wannacook.

See you in the RV!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Look, I'm flattered if you read something here and like it enough to want to want to rip it off. Or even if you dislike it enough to want to rip it apart. In either case, the content of this blog is mine - I'm responsible for it and you are not to use it without first obtaining permission from me.

Copyright. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.

It really is - see Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

Unfettered Brilliance by K. Dale Koontz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Points of Interest

Lurker's Guide - Excellent fan-run resource guide for Babylon 5

Breaking Bad - The official AMC site for news and recaps about the best show on television

Mockingbird's Nest - What I do outside of my day job

Ensley Guffey's Blog - Musings and links worth noticing

Nik At Night's Blog - Most things TV, including the 2011 Rewatch

TV Tropes - What you've seen, over and over and why it matters

Slayage - Whedon given the scholarly treatment

Whedonesque - Clearinghouse of all things Whedon

BuffyWorld - Shooting scripts, screenshots, and more

Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.

Notable Whedon Work