Was it a challenge writing the spin-off novels to The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker?
At first I was daunted by the idea of writing the novelisations of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker – of trying to combine Fleming with the much larger-than-life movies – but I reread several Fleming Bonds and soon found myself enjoying the experience. Writing the books gave me the chance to put in things that had not appeared in the movies – and improve (I hope) some of the things that had. Were the Bond scripts a highly collaborative process or did you come up with the majority of the ideas for them? There were lots and lots and lots of script conferences and it was vital to come up with lots and lots and lots of ideas. Sometimes a stunt proves impractical, sometimes a location becomes unusable, sometimes an idea is considered to be too like something that has already been done, sometimes a new piece of technology, or a media event, comes along that can be built into the movie. In all this there is, of course, an element of molding other peoples ideas and preferences into a story l
