Wilmington writer's work bound for HBO Max; StarNews book club announces latest guest
Wilmington author Nina de Gramont's 2015 novel "The Distance from Me to You" is slated to be adapted as a feature for HBO Max.
Deadline, the Hollywood news website, reports that New Line won the rights for the young adult novel, which de Gramont wrote under the pen name "Marina Gessner." (Her husband, author David Gessner, is the outgoing chair of the creative writing department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where de Gramont is an associate professor of fiction.)
Deadline reported the novel rights "sold for the mid-six figures."
Actress Sabrina Carpenter, of "Girl Meets World" and the Disney Channel version of "Adventures in Babysitting," has been attached to the project, according to multiple sources. Veteran screenwriter-producer Tiffany Paulsen (2007 movie version of "Nancy Drew") will adapt the material.
"The Distance from Me to You" follows two adolescents who meet while each is hiking the Appalachian Trail solo. They get lost, and the story becomes a survival thriller.
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De Gramont is the author of such novels as "The Last September" and "Gossip of the Starlings," as well as such young adult titles as "The Boy I Love," "Meet Me at the River" and "Every Little Thing in the World." She's no stranger to pen names, having written "Rogue Touch," a novelization about the Marvel superhero Storm, as "Christine Woodward."
In February, St. Martin's Press will release de Gramont's latest novel, "The Christie Affair," based on the mysterious disappearance of mystery writer Agatha Christie for 11 days in December 1925. De Gramont retells the story from the point of view of the woman with whom Christie's husband was having an affair.
'Miss Julia' coming to Prologue book club
For more than 20 years, best-selling author Ann B. Ross chronicled the adventures of Miss Julia Springer, a widow and arbiter of all that's fitting and proper in the small town of Abbotsville, N.C.
A workhorse, Ross turned out one novel a year for more than two decades. Her publisher, Viking, has announced that "Miss Julia Happily Ever After" will be the last in the series.
Now, Ross will talk about Miss Julia and her world for Prologue, the monthly book club series sponsored by the StarNews and public radio station WHQR. The online webinar begins 7 p.m. Monday, June 14. Readers can sign up at WHQR.org, by clicking "Prologue" under the Culture tab.
In a phone interview, Ross said her health finally caught up with her. Also, Penguin/Random House, which owns Viking, had decided to turn the imprint into all non-fiction, "So it just seemed like a good time," Ross said.
But that doesn't mean we've seen the last of Miss Julia.
"I'm sort of loafing along, waiting for imagination to strike," Ross said. And she doesn't rule out another Miss Julia tale.
A doctor's wife, Ross went back to school after her children were grown, graduating from the University of North Carolina Asheville in 1984 and earning a doctorate in Old English studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991.
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Ross went on to teach English at UNCA, and there, inspiration really struck.
"I had this mental image of an older woman with a little boy," Ross recalled. "Pretty soon, I could hear her talking. I couldn't tell who the child was, though."
As it develops the boy was "Little Lloyd," the son of Miss Julia's late husband, the town banker, and his much younger secretary, Hazel Marie Puckett. Miss Julia discovered them after her husband's death and wound up helping raise the boy and getting Hazel Marie on her feet -- the basic plot of 1999's "Miss Julia Speaks her Mind."
Twenty-one novels followed in the series, which made regular appearances on The New York Times best seller list.
Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.