http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/arts/television/mad-mens-matthew-weiner-new-novelist-in-town.html 2016-09-14 16:36:56 Guess Who’s the Newest Novelist in Town? Matthew Weiner of ‘Mad Men’ Mr. Weiner always carries a notebook with him to record ideas or overheard dialogue. One of them became the seed for a book. === Last fall, Mr. Weiner, the creator of the AMC drama “ He wasn’t sure what, if anything, would come of the idea. “You don’t know if an idea is going to be a TV show or a movie or a play or prose or a poem or a stupid note you write in your notebook and forget about,” he said. “It was a little story where I was like, I wonder what that is, maybe I’ll use it some time.” Over the next nine months or so, the little story grew into a novel, his first. “Heather, the Totality” was recently acquired by Little, Brown, which plans to publish the novel in the fall of 2017. Translation rights have sold in 10 countries. The narrative unfolds from the perspective of multiple characters who are obsessed with a teenage girl named Heather, and who aim to control or possess her, including her parents, who compete over her. The story takes place in contemporary Manhattan, as well as Florida and New Jersey. Judith Clain, the vice president and editor in chief of Little, Brown, said that it reminded her of Henry James, and had an “Edgar Allan Poe feel.” “It’s psychologically very chilling, very clever, and you feel while you’re reading it that something terrible is going to happen,” said Ms. Clain, who acquired North American rights to “Heather, the Totality,” at auction. While the setting and plot bear little resemblance to his television work, the novel shares some thematic threads with both “Mad Men” and “The Sopranos,” which Mr. Weiner also worked on, particularly in its exploration of moral ambiguity, Ms. Clain said. Mr. Weiner, who studied poetry at Wesleyan University, has often cited “He’s really literary and extremely well read, so he’s not a film person or TV writer who thought, ‘I’ll write a novel, how hard could it be?’” Ms. Clain said. Mr. Weiner, who has Now, with the sale of his debut novel, Mr. Weiner is joining a group of screenwriters who moonlight writing fiction. Graham Moore, whose screenplay for “The Imitation Game” won an Academy Award last year, recently published a best-selling novel with Random House. Mr. Moore is writing the film adaptation of Noah Hawley “What’s exciting for me is to bring the novelistic mind-set to the screen, and vice versa,” said Mr. Hawley, who recently finished the film adaptation of “Before the Fall” for Sony Pictures, and is now back to work on episodes of “Fargo.” Mr. Weiner, in his post-“Mad Men” period of creative exploration, doesn’t seem eager to jump back into screenwriting just yet. He’s working on a play and more fiction, he said. Still, he’s not ruling out a film adaptation of his novel down the road. “I think it would make a good movie,” he said. “But that’s not why I wrote it.”