Update on ‘The Gilmore Girls Companion’
Hey gang. Aaron here to give you a quick rundown on where we are with The Gilmore Girls Companion.
As of right now, I have 22,939 words written, and still another 10 interviews to transcribe. (Write book or transcribe interviews, write book or transcribe interviews — pretty much the battle that goes on in the ol’ brain every day, in between day job work, of course.) I’m guessing this puts me about 1/3rd of the way through the book.
Yesterday I met with art director, Pamela Norman, to flesh out a rough design for the book, which actually helped me figure out how to include certain material I’d been struggling with before.
What we’re going to end up with is a book that you can open to any page and dive right in. Anyone out there who’s happened to clap eyes on our latest book, The New Horror Handbook, will have some idea of how we intend to have additional information in the margins of the Companion, in addition to the main text. Since people’s lives are so hectic these days, we wanted to make it so you could just open the book for a minute and learn something about the show pretty quickly. (It helps immensely that my own attention span is slightly shorter than Lorelai’s…)
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Shannon Triggs and Fred DeRuvo for their generous offers of photos from their own tours of the Stars Hollow exteriors at Warner Brothers, and to thank the great folks who regularly show up at The Gilmore Girls Companion Facebook page for their continued support and peculiar brand of Gilmore insanity. You all rock!
Now, somebody better get back to work if this book is to come out before GG turns 10 (the show, not Chris’ tot).
See you in The Hollow -A
‘Windward Circle’: What Might Have Been
Working on the book last night, the subject of the Gilmore Girls spin-off, Windward Circle, came up. I hunted for it briefly online and found what seems to be a clip from the proposed pilot. (Actually, most people from the show agree that the real pilot was the episode of Gilmore where Jess travels to Venice to talk to his dad.)
Even from these few seconds of footage, you can see right away why this series wasn’t going to fly. Aside from some vague similarities to The OC (at least the setup), Windward Circle seemed in grave danger of drifting into the pretty-face navel gazing that typifies the teen dramas of the last 10 years. Still, it was very interesting to find anything on this series.
The Curse of Max Medina
It's Max, Max Medina! (With sincere apologies to Scott Cohen.)
OK, not my best showing so far, but I have an oddly Gilmore Girls-related excuse. (No cracks about excuses, Zoran.)
About a month ago, we found an abandoned black kitten in a park during a rainy day, and suckers that we were, we brought him home. Pushed to come up with a name for him, I called him Max Medina. (Actually, I first wanted to call him CatKirk, but that was politely voted down.)
And since then, the little fellow has become something of a terror, especially when compared with our own Max Medina. This morning, the little bundle of joy decided to wake us up at 3 in the morning. Whatever energies I could come up with for the day were quickly expended on the day job, leaving precious little in reserve for the book. Somehow, I just can’t see Scott Cohen behaving the same way, can you?
Words today: 142
Total word count: 15,544
Book Progress Today
An enjoyable bit of work on The Gilmore Girls Companion before hitting the day job stuff, this time on a section about Gilmore’s fans around the world.
As I tweeted earlier, if you’ve been posting on the book’s Facebook page, particularly the “Where in the world do you watch Gilmore Girls” discussion thread, please let me know if you’d rather not be in the book. Thanks again for all your insights on this!
Words today: 1,429
Total word count: 15,402
Book Progress Today
A delightful stroll down memory lane this morning; specifically recounting how the universally beloved Ed Herrmann came to be cast on Gilmore Girls.
Words today: 924
Total word count: 13,973
