Most of the time, television series or movies are based on novels. With Gabby Wells, it was the other way around.
In 2008, we started a film company called Sonlight Pictures. As we formulated our business plan, we wanted to create a movie trilogy for the young adult audience about a teen sleuth struggling with the high demands of her faith. Thus, Gabby Wells was created.
We wrote the first script of the trilogy and outlined the remaining two stories. Shortly thereafter we started film production on some short projects, including a web series called Nikki & Babs: Dos and Doubts. After successfully acquiring distribution for the series we focused on our next project.
Our experiences with the web series turned our focus to a half-hour television drama. When we considered all of the ideas on the table, we were drawn back to Gabby Wells. We loved her and her characters and thought it would be fun to explore their relationships and stories before the storyline of the movie trilogy started.
So, we drafted a couple of seasons of the television series. As we worked toward putting the pieces together for such a production, which is a massive undertaking, it occurred to us that Gabby Wells stories would make good novels. Those stories could exist both in conjunction with and separate from the series and trilogy story lines.
Therein lies the creation of the Gabby Wells novel series. I had written screenplays for decades, but never a novel. After a lot of trial and error and a ton of rewrites, I was able to finish the first two books.
We hope, God willing, that the first novel titled Water & Blood wil be published by the end of the year.
The second novel, Shadows & Lies, is written, but still numerous rewrites away from being ready for publication.
And the third book, as of yet untitled, was outlined today and I am exceptionally excited about the plot and character arcs.
How many books will complete Gabby Wells’ faith journey? I’m not sure. Somewhere between four and six.
When I look back on the journey that lead me here, writing these novels, I can’t help but laugh. God sure has a funny sense of humor. Only he would think that turning a movie trilogy into a television show that would inspire a series of novels is the right way to go.
I may have gotten here by doing things backwards, but I couldn’t be more excited about both where the journey has taken me and where it appears to be leading. If going backwards is the right direction, then I can’t imagine what’s coming next.