BOOKS & AUTHORS : Maxwells Keep Fast Beat in ‘Thunderheart’ Novelization

The 17 years Laguna Niguel author Evan Maxwell spent meeting deadlines as a newspaper reporter paid off for his and wife Ann’s latest writing assignment: the novelization of “Thunderheart,” TriStar’s new crime-thriller starring Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard.

Maxwell wrote the first draft of the novel based on John Fusco’s screenplay in 15 days.

“We had a total of 21 days to turn in the book,” he said. “A novelization is not commissioned until the movie has been completed and is in post production, so if it hadn’t been for newswriting I probably would have found it an impossible sort of thing.”

To keep from confusing the readers of their other books, the Maxwells wrote the novelization under the pseudonym Lowell Charters (a combination of Evan’s middle name and Ann’s maiden name).

In the movie, which received generally good reviews, Val Kilmer plays an FBI agent who is part Sioux Indian. He is sent to a reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota to investigate a murder and in the process discovers his own heritage.

Although Ann Maxwell has a successful solo career writing romance novels under the name Elizabeth Lowell, many of the couple’s books, including the Orange County-set Fiddler mystery series under the A. E. Maxwell byline, are joint projects.

For “Thunderheart” (Avon; $4.50), Ann wrote the second draft and was, Maxwell said, “writing right behind me at some points, doing the polish, straightening out the garbled syntax and sharpening up the characters, which are the things she does the best.”

Maxwell, who wrote about 4,000 words a day, said meeting the 21-day deadline “was not just an idle exercise. Even the publisher was cranking along. That’s something I never had before. In book-writing it’s sometimes agonizingly slow.”

The Maxwells sent the manuscript to their publisher via Federal Express at 3 p.m. on a Thursday and by 11:30 the next morning, Maxwell said, their editor at Avon in New York called, “having already accepted it.”

“The ability to write clean, straightforward prose is probably as much the key as anything else in these things,” said Maxwell. “It’s not a job I’d care to do on a regular basis, but there is kind of an exhilaration to it, like writing on deadline for the newspaper.”

Ann Maxwell agrees.

“The pressure was something else,” she said. “Talk about doing the best you can with what you have at the time. It’s a very intense.”

With a laugh, she added: “Evan loves deadline pressure. I’m a little more neutral. I am under so many deadline pressures anyway that throwing one more into the mix was not that noticeable.”

Foreign rights already have been sold in England, Germany, France and Spain. And without saying how much they were paid for the novelization, Evan Maxwell laughingly acknowledged that “it’s without question the best day-rate pay I’ve ever received.”

In turning a 109-page screenplay into a 260-page novel manuscript, Ann Maxwell said, “it pointed up to me the acute difference between the screenplay form and the novel form.”

Like her husband, she prefers writing novels.

“As a writer it’s far more satisfying,” she said. “We have to supply the character’s point of view: what goes on inside his mind. Whereas (in a movie), the actor, by expression, or position or smile or wink gives the audience those clues.”

The “Thunderheart” novelization is the first of four new books the Maxwells have coming out between now and July.

* “The Diamond Tiger” (HarperPaperbacks), a paperback original, is due out in May. It’s a romantic suspense novel whose primary characters are a man and woman who become involved with one another while seeking a fabled diamond mine in western Australia. Although it carries the Ann Maxwell byline, it is actually a collaboration between the two of them.

* “The King of Nothing” (Villard)--the seventh in their Fiddler series, is due out in July.

* “Only You” (Avon), a paperback original and the third in a series of successful historical romances under Ann’s pen name Elizabeth Lowell--is also due out in July.

Ann, who writes this series on her own, has turned out a new title every six months for the past 18 months.

The three previous titles have been the couple’s most successful books and, said Evan Maxwell, “Only You” will receive a first printing of more than 350,000 copies.

The first two books in the series--”Only His” and “Only Mine”--made it onto B Dalton Bookseller’s national top 20 best-selling romance list.

If all this publishing activity weren’t enough, three of Ann Maxwell’s romance novels under her Elizabeth Lowell pen name will be reissued in August, September and October: “Tell Me No Lies,” “Too Hot to Handle” and “Sweet Wind, Wild Wind.”