Famous Authors You Didn’t Know Wrote Franchise Novels

There’s thing to beryllium said astir getting paid to constitute astir your favourite characters. Writers tin enactment for prosecute to constitute novels based connected different companies’ intelligence properties, specified arsenic Star Wars and Spider-Man. Many authors person taken these jobs — mode much authors than you astir apt think. To beryllium it, I’ve pulled unneurotic a database of celebrated authors you didn’t cognize wrote franchise novels below.

Franchise novels get a atrocious rap. Authors who “write IP,” successful manufacture parlance, don’t clasp the rights to their work, due to the fact that they were hired to constitute for a peculiar steadfast oregon media franchise. Responding to Twitter sermon that IP penning was “soulless,” Chuck Wendig writes that “it’s truly not each downside — due to the fact that the 1 upside is, you get to constitute successful a abstraction you love. You get to enactment your bosom into a storyworld that has influenced you successful immoderate mode — you’re giving backmost to it, you’re owning a small postage-stamp-sized portion of originative existent property successful a communicative that fed you. And that’s the reward, which is…Well, sorta the other of soulless.”

Just similar there’s thing incorrect with writing IP, there’s thing incorrect with reading it, either. Chances are beauteous precocious that 1 oregon much of your favourite authors has written a franchise novel. Here are conscionable a few:

10 Famous Authors You Didn’t Know Wrote Franchise Novels

C.J. Cherryh

Before the MCU took movie theaters by storm, and earlier the Snyder Cut grabbed the net by the throat, determination was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, ABC’s live-action bid starred Terri Hatcher and Dean Cain successful the rubric roles. Lois & Clark ran for 4 seasons betwixt 1993 and 1997 earlier being unceremoniously canceled connected the world’s worst cliffhanger. Although it didn’t springiness america a ton of tie-in media, the amusement did spawn a romance novel, Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel, written by Hugo Award victor and Downbelow Station writer C.J. Cherryh.

Brian Evenson

Brian Evenson is champion known for his archetypal novels and abbreviated communicative collections, including Last Days and A Collapse of Horses, but he’s besides written his just stock of franchise novels. Writing arsenic B.K. Evenson, he’s published: Aliens: No Exit, acceptable successful the beingness of Ridley Scott’s Aliens; The Lords of Salem, co-authored with Rob Zombie and based connected the movie of the aforesaid name; and 2 novels — Dead Space: Martyr and Dead Space: Catalyst — which instrumentality spot successful the beingness of developer Visceral’s Dead Space bid of video games.

N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo-sweeping Broken Earth trilogy enactment her squarely successful each SFF reader’s sights, but did you cognize she besides wrote for 2 abstracted IPs? Three months aft she closed retired Broken Earth with The Stone Sky, Jemisin published Mass Effect: Initiation, a Mass Effect: Andromeda tie-in novel, co-written with Mass Effect comics writer Mac Walters. Two years later, she published her Hugo Award–winning Green Lantern series, Far Sector, with illustrator Jamal Campbell.

Thank you for signing up! Keep an oculus connected your inbox.

By signing up you hold to our terms of use

Elizabeth Lim

Elizabeth Lim is the writer of 5 archetypal novels, including Spin the Dawn, Six Crimson Cranes, and the forthcoming Her Radiant Curse. She’s besides written 3 tie-in novels successful Disney’s Twisted Tales series. Reflection centers connected Mulan, who indispensable question to the Underworld to rescue the mortally wounded Shang. So This Is Love imagines a caller mentation of Disney’s Cinderella, successful which Prince Charming ne'er recovered the solid slipper’s owner. Finally, the forthcoming When You Wish Upon a Star follows the Blue Fairy from Disney’s Pinocchio arsenic she defies fairy customs to assistance the puppet.

Marie Lu

The Young Elites writer Marie Lu wrote the 2nd installment of DC Comics’s DC Icons series. Batman: Nightwalker is simply a YA graphic caller that follows a teenage Bruce Wayne done his archetypal existent crime-fighting acquisition — an excursion that earns him a assemblage work jag astatine Arkham Asylum.

Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds is the award-winning writer of Long Way Down and Look Both Ways, among different novels. Reynolds drew inspiration from Jordan Peele’s Get Out for his YA franchise novel, acceptable successful the Marvel Comics universe. Miles Morales: Spider-Man centers connected the eponymous teen, whose spidey-sense precocious began to tingle non-stop. Surely thing tin beryllium incorrect all the time…right?

Andre Norton

Beloved sci-fi and phantasy writer Andre Norton holds the favoritism of penning the precise archetypal Dungeons & Dragons book. First published successful 1978, Quag Keep follows Martin, a D&D subordinate who gets sucked into the fictional realm of Greyhawk. There, he’s known arsenic Milo, a renowned warrior. Martin and respective others from the “real” satellite person been pulled into Greyhawk and enactment nether the power of a geas spell, which forces them to implicit a task…or dice trying. In 2006, Norton co-authored a sequel, Return to Quag Keep, with Jean Rabe.

Catherynne M. Valente