Ultra Thriller Ghostwriter Confirmed- See first reply

Started by Bigfootman, May 17, 2022, 03:46:53 PM

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Bigfootman

Update: Bill McCay wrote both Time Bomb and The Alien Factor. Thanks Austin for the confirmation!

So I figured that if I was starting a Ghostwriter topic for the Supermysteries, I'd might as well start one for the Ultra Thrillers. Of course, we don't know exactly who ghostwrote them, but there are quite a few possiblities.
Also, thanks tomswift2002 for your review topics, as a lot of the theories here come from info from those.

Time Bomb

Chris Lampton:
He's the only confirmed ghostwriter for one of the three Operation Phoenix books, which Time Bomb refrences. He has made a list of the Hardy Boys books he wrote, and Time Bomb is not on there. It's odd that of all the Hardy Boys books he wrote, this is the one he'd would forget to put on the list.
However, looking at the books he wrote, he's written a bunch of nonfiction books, including books about dinosaurs and other historical topics. So him writing a Hardy Boys book involving time travel is not out of the question.

An unknown Ghostwriter for "Endangered Species",  "The Phoenix Equation", or both:
The other two  Operation Phoenix books aren't on Chris Lampton's list either, so it's possible they had sepearate ghostwriters. When Rick Oliver did an interview for the Bayport Times, he mentioned that while he wrote the first two Ring Of Evil books, he didn't write the third. So the Operation Phoenix books didn't nessarly have the same ghostwriter for all three books.
That means that there's one or two other unknown ghostwriters who could have written Time Bomb. Though if  "Endangered Species" and "The Phoenix Equation" were written by two separate people, I'd lean towards the "Endangered Species"  ghostwriter being the one who wrote "Time Bomb". Mainly for the reason that "Endangered Species" was the better book.

Bill McCay:
He not only wrote "Dead On Target" (and possibly "Evil Inc.") but he wrote the Tom Swift IV books "The Black Dragon" and "The Negative Zone". "The Black Dragon"  was, of course, the first appearence of the Black Dragon, who's the villain of "Time Bomb".  However, from what I can tell, he stopped being involved with Hardy Boys books sometime not long after "Collision Course".
 
Debra Doyle and James D Macdonald:
They wrote the Tom Swift IV books "Monster Machine" and "Aquatech Warriors". "Aquatech Warriors" was the only other appearence of the Black Dragon in the IV series, so I had to include them here. However, much like Chris Lampton, we have a list of all the books they wrote, and "Time Bomb' is not on there.  Also, they did not write any Hardy Boys books.

The Alien Factor

Steven Grant:
Much like Bill McCay, he wrote both Casefiles and Tom Swift IV books. One of the Casefiles he wrote was "The Crowning Terror", the first appearance of  U.S. Espionage Resources, which plays a role in "The Alien Factor".
 In the CBR article where he listed the books he wrote, he mentions that he may have written one other Casefile.  "(There may have been one other in there somewhere, but if so I don't have a copy, and all my files from those days are inaccessibly on CP/M disks.)"  There is a possibility he misremembered, and his other Hardy Boys book was actually an Ultra Thriller.

The Ghostwriter for "Hostages of Hate":
"Hostages of Hate" was the only  other Casefiles appearence of U.S. Espionage Resources. Considering the time gap between their  last Casefile appearence in "Hostages of Hate" and "The Alien Factor", I suspect that the Ghostwriter for "The Alien Factor" probably wrote one of their two other appearences.

Either book

Paul Mantell:
I doubt that he's is the ghostwriter for either Ultra-Thriller, but due to his amazon about the author section mentioning him writing both Tom Swift and Hardy Boys books, I have to include him here.
While I assume that it was likely talking about the UB era Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books, he was writing books around the time both Ultra Thrillers came out. While he is known for his sports fiction books, he also has written plenty of non-sports related books, including X-men storybooks and tie-in novels for the Soap Opera Dallas.


http://bigfootmanshardyboysandnancydrew.blogspot.ca

Most Recent Post:
"Tom Swift Inventors' Academy" Cancelled?

ajohns90

Hey there. This is Austin - I used to run the hardy-boys.com site and the Bayport Gazette, years ago.

Bill McCay confirmed that he wrote the HB-Tom Swift UltraThrillers when I was interviewing him. I don't have access to my old files at the moment (I'm at work), but it was probably around 2004, or so.

Bill asked me not to disclose this information at the time, as the situation around divulging authorship was still somewhat dicey and he was still on the S&S payroll. I think enough time has passed for this not to really matter anymore.

I'll see if I can dig up my old records later.

Cheers!

Austin

Bigfootman

Quote from: ajohns90 on June 01, 2022, 12:45:52 PMHey there. This is Austin - I used to run the hardy-boys.com site and the Bayport Gazette, years ago.

Bill McCay confirmed that he wrote the HB-Tom Swift UltraThrillers when I was interviewing him. I don't have access to my old files at the moment (I'm at work), but it was probably around 2004, or so.

Bill asked me not to disclose this information at the time, as the situation around divulging authorship was still somewhat dicey and he was still on the S&S payroll. I think enough time has passed for this not to really matter anymore.

I'll see if I can dig up my old records later.

Cheers!

Austin

Thanks for the info! Updating my post!

http://bigfootmanshardyboysandnancydrew.blogspot.ca

Most Recent Post:
"Tom Swift Inventors' Academy" Cancelled?

ajohns90

I haven't forgot about this thread, but unfortunately over the years it seems that I have lost the flash drive which held my old notes/files from my Hardy Boys website days.  However, today I did figure out how to backdoor hack into one version of the old Bayport Gazette using Archive.org. I knew this functionality might exist, but my struggle was I didn't really know the old URL to access the various pages etc.

For anyone interested, there's lots of poking around to do using the following link. Warning, it does seem like most of the later issues aren't working (not sure why) and in general there are a lot of broken images, missing text, broken links, etc. which is somewhat typical when using the Archive.org website. Also, give us a little grace if anyone actually reads through the website - I was a 13 year old boy running a fansite, so there are some interesting stylistic, tonal, and grammatical choices...  :)

Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20050205215609/http://www.hardy-boys.com/bg/issues.html


Also, I found the interview we ran with Bill McCay. At that time Bill was not comfortable with disclosing that he wrote the Tom Swift Ultrathrillers or even that he wrote any of the Hardy Boys stories at all. So, this interview strictly discusses his role as an editor of the series, in the early days when the tone was being set. Pretty interesting stuff even 20 years later...

This interview can be found directly at: http://web.archive.org/web/20060318043158/http://www.hardy-boys.com/bg/10/bg_10_5.html


[Interview start]
First, I think a little background is in order. In the early 1980s, I worked as senior editor for MegaBooks, a book packager. We held essentially the same position as independent producers in Hollywood, developing and producing projects which larger publishing companies distributed. After we'd created several successful juvenile and young adult series, we were approached by Simon & Schuster to serve as consultants and editors in developing a young adult Nancy Drew series with a more contemporary feel. Then we were asked to do the same with the Hardy Boys...
 

BG: Which Hardy Boys books did you serve as editor for?

BM: My most important job was development for the Hardy Boys Casefiles, launching the series and editing the first thirty titles. I also had some connection with the digest-sized novels continuing the original series and even had some input for the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys SuperMysteries. Essentially, my company was brought in to help in creating an updated Hardy Boys for the 1980s. Interestingly enough, I understand Simon & Schuster is going through the same process right now.
 

BG: What age group was considered when you edited?

BM: The original series was supposed to target the middle school market, ages 8-12. With the Casefiles, we were aiming for the young adult market, ages 12 and up. As a result, there was a bit more romance, and the action component was considerably more robust.


BG: Whose idea was it to kill Iola in "Dead on Target", the first Casefile - the editors' or author's? (Her death is a favorite topic of discussion among fans, so any information you can give us on this would be appreciated.)

BM: I guess I'm the guilty party in poor Iola's demise. Early on in our discussions, the publisher of S & S was foolish enough to ask me, "Bill, if you could do anything you wanted with the Hardy Boys, what would you do?"

I responded with a quick personal opinion. "I'd blow up the yellow sedan the Hardys have been driving since 1930, and when it goes up, I'd have Iola Morton in the back seat."

The publisher sat up very straight, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to have a stroke. Then he leaned forward and asked, "What happens then?"

"I guess we'll have to write the first book and see," I replied.

Now, I wasn't being as flippant as it sounds. The yellow sedan was a holdover from another age. In the days of the old Model T, Henry Ford once said, "You can have any color you want - as long as it's black." A red or yellow car instantly meant it was a sports model. And a sedan meant - wink-wink, nudge-nudge - there was a back seat. Those cultural assumptions are long gone, however. Fifty years later, the only yellow sedans people see are usually taxis. As for blowing up Iola, I've always held that mystery stories should deal with the most serious crime - murder. The fact that it was someone near and dear to the Hardys gave the crime more significance. Then there was the shock value of doing away with a character who'd been with the series from the beginning. It served notice that nobody was safe in this new series.

Why Iola? Unfortunately, she had the most old-fashioned and difficult name of the group. The name is actually Welsh, the female variant of Iolo. For most kids, it's an unfamiliar name, unless you live in the town of Iola, Wisconsin.

Finally, we thought that the loss of Joe's girlfriend would have a profound effect on the series. Dead on Target represents a much more serious, even traumatic departure from the earlier series compared to, say, what we did with Nancy Drew. Joe Hardy's feelings of responsibility and guilt, explored over a number of titles, have, I think, deepened his character a bit.


BG: Did you create your own set of guidelines for editing the series or was one provided -- and if so, by whom?

BM: We commissioned our own set of series guideless in consultation with Simon & Schuster. They had a number of concerns, most notably as I recall being drugs. We just couldn't do a drug-related story - even an anti-drug story. Another client concern was weapons. The Hardys couldn't pack guns, although they might pick up a firearm from the bad guys in the course of an adventure. Sometimes the powers that be even frowned on that, saying that Frank's martial-arts prowess should be enough. I'd often argue, "If the Big Bad Guy is at the far end of a room about to press the button that ends the world, you need something with a bit longer range than a karate chop." It remained an ongoing argument.

In matters of Bayport geography and series history, we always deferred to S & S, who had the Stratemeyer Archives, especially the invaluable card files that tried to record everything that happened in the series.


BG: How many times, on average, is a manuscript edited and rewritten?
Given that, at one point, the Hardy Boys editor was responsible for at least 18 manuscripts per year (12 Casefiles and 6 digest-sized), schedules were necessarily tight. The cycle for a title included a one-page plot précis, a 10-15 page outline, a first draft, and then a final, all on fairly short deadlines. The longest time-frame in there was the draft manuscript - we tried to budget 6 weeks for that. The draft and final were not only edited at MegaBooks but also vetted by an editor at S & S.

I was a heavy editor - we were still developing the series voice and making a lot of choices in the early part of the series. Also, as a working author myself, I wouldn't hesitate to undertake rewrites if we were really short on time.


BG: Were you, as editor, involved in selecting cover illustrations, or were you strictly dealing with manuscripts?

Cover development was very much the domain of the S & S Art Department, which rarely consulted with their own Editorial Department, much less with us. The result was often frantic phone calls asking us to insert a scene to justify the action in a just-submitted cover painting.

My all-time favorite came with Casefile #63, Cold Sweat, or what I call the anatomically impossible cover. It showed a bad guy trying to throttle poor Chet Morton with a barbell held out at arm's length. Nobody could hold heavy weights out liked that. What the picture should have shown was the bad guy screaming with a pair of bloody stumps as his wrists broke off and the barbell fell to the floor. We had used a friend of mine, a physical trainer, as a research source for the story. He actually came up with a line of action to make the cover pose plausible, and as finally written, it's actually a pretty good little scene. I'm not giving it away - you'll have to read it.


BG: What was your biggest challenge as an editor of the Hardy Boys Casefiles?

The hardest part of working on any series is that it's a series. Like it or not, you encounter tremendous pressure to settle into a nice, comfortable formula. My biggest challenge was trying to keep that from happening. For me, the biggest part of the job was coming up with ideas to push the envelope.

Sometimes I was successful, like with Hostages of Hate. Frank and Joe almost switch characters there, with a desperate Frank flying off the handle while Joe tried to exercise a moderating influence. That book also represented a departure from the usual point of view. Up till then, we'd only seen things through Frank or Joe's eyes. Some of the hostage scenes, however, are presented from Callie's point of view.

Another interesting book idea I recall dealt with Chief Collig's backstory (Eds. - Beyond the Law). Maybe my favorite story idea came when I was asked to consult on a SuperMystery. We were working with the Vidocq Society of Philadelphia, a real group of law-enforcement types and related professionals who investigate unsolved crimes. I asked, "Hey, have we ever done a case where Fenton and the boys put someone away, and Carson Drew and Nancy got them off at trial?" People looked at me as if I had grown an extra head, but that became the basis for A Question of Guilt.


BG: How much interaction goes on between you, the editor, and the author? How much of the contact with the authors was face-to-face, as compared to by mail/phone/other?

For me, the most important author/editor interaction takes place on paper, in the manuscript. When you're lucky, an author will take queries and suggested changes and run with them. That's pretty cool, being able to inspire something. More often, in the midst of grinding deadlines, an author will simply accept changes or argue an odd point here or there. That's business.

In all my editing career, I didn't see much of the authors who wrote for my various series. Many were spread out all over the country. If I saw them at all, it was at conferences or conventions, or during infrequent author visits to New York City, where MegaBooks had its offices. Generally, I'd work by mail, with the phone reserved for important questions or for the personal element - schmoozing or brainstorming story ideas.


BG: How much influence does the author have in the final product?

I have to admit that I edited with a heavy hand during my tenure at the Casefiles. Part of it, as I said before, came from trying to develop the series style. Then, too, my schedule was a lot more hectic. I was the company fireman, often getting pulled in to deal with problems on other series. Working on my own manuscripts, it was often easier and quicker to do a fix myself rather than negotiate a rewrite. I know my successors took a more free-and-easy approach. Well, the formulas were there if they had to use them, although we still brainstormed ideas to try and keep the series fresh.

Then, too, you have to remember that there were two tiers of editorial response - MegaBooks and S & S. That could lead to a lot of changes in a manuscript. From a business point of view, the best manuscripts were the ones that didn't need a lot of tinkering. They were predictable - what you saw in the outline was what you got. The business model didn't really allow for flashes of genius taking books in unexpected but exciting directions, though we had an occasional spark.

However we did it, we managed to add more than 100 titles to the Hardy Boys legend, some of them pretty good . . . and some were even fun to work on.