Why Isn’t Surveillance Streaming Yet?

I hear the major streaming services are all hungrily searching for new material, especially for genre series content. I’ve got a great recommendation. It’s an established series with four books out and a fifth in development, already boasting tens of thousands of sales despite its indie pedigree. The storyline is family-friendly with a strong female lead. And all rights are available from the original creator.

Here’s the pitch: A major social media giant invented an all-pervasive surveillance system based on digital voice-activated recorders, collecting and sharing vast amounts of private data to build a technological ecosystem of free or cheap services that adapt rapidly to consumer demand.

Oh, but there were bad guys who wanted to corrupt the use of all that private data. Not the major corporations, just bad actors. And enthusiastic but under-informed government representatives intent on monitoring and restricting and limiting these beloved customer services.

The good guys, for at least five seasons (and a movie) are the surveillance/service corporation and the elite government agents dedicated to protecting the service’s interests (even against the rest of the government). This all sounds so dark and dystopian, but I really sell the service as worth the price. It plays very optimistic, with an emotional tone somewhere around “Castle” (on a scale from “The Wire” to “Brooklyn 99”), and could easily structure into a story-of-the-week format for several 10- to 25-episode seasons. (I’m writing the novels as five 5-episode seasons, with designs for episode-, season-, and series arcs.)

Like I said before, it’s genre. It’s serial. It’s family-friendly with a strong female lead. And the people I should be pitching this to are Amazon and Netflix and Apple. This entire series is a love letter to their intrusion in our lives, and it would sell, baby! It’s a propaganda machine and cash cow all in one.

So, uh, if you know anyone in scouting or acquisitions or a books-to-film rep looking for an easy score or (especially this one) a maniacal genius at Amazon or Apple or Netflix who would want to jump at this opportunity… point them my way. I’ve got them the opportunity of a lifetime. Oh, and let them know I’d probably happily sign an awful streaming deal if I were convinced it would help me sell more books. Truly awful. Deal-of-a-lifetime bad. Just bring me one, and see if I’m lying. I’m the original creator. Unrepresented. All rights available.

And if you’re not in the sci-fi cop corporate-propaganda game, I’ve got a series of adventure dragons in the Tolkein style, and another series with cynical superhero wizards and elves in more of the Gaiman style. But that one’s tied up with 47North, so only ask if you’re Amazon.