While working in a medium that often casts stories in black and white, screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas finds himself gravitating to the gray.

Haas, a Baylor University graduate, is best known for his script collaborations with fellow grad Michael Brandt on movies such as 3:10 To Yuma, Wanted and 2 Fast 2 Furious.

He’s winning a name as a writer of action novels as well with his series The Silver Bear and its follow-up Columbus, published this year and the subject of a Baylor Bookstore signing this Friday.

Derek Haas book signing

When, where: 2 p.m. Friday at Baylor Bookstore, Baylor University campus.

Derek Haas

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Both novels follow a modern assassin named Columbus, an emotionless killer whose consummate professionalism takes him to assignments in Europe and America, but who is beginning to feel a human cost of his work.

“When I finished The Silver Bear, I found I liked the character and the shade of gray of the world he lives in,” the writer said in a recent phone interview, conducted while driving from Dallas to his in-laws’ home in San Angelo.

His publisher Pegasus Books liked it, too, and asked for a second novel shortly after Haas turned in the first. For his second book on Columbus, Haas decided to explore the human dimension of his character’s work. “I found myself thinking, if he’s going to do this, he can’t have relationships,” he said.

Add to the storyline about a woman who enters Columbus’ life a plot twist in which the world-class assassin finds himself hunted by his peers after a botched killing, and there’s Columbus in a nutshell.

The French, Italian and Belgium locations encountered in Columbus are ones that Haas, 39, has visited, both on vacations and on a junket sponsored by the French government.

Haas, Brandt and eight other screenwriters visited various French locales off the tourist track as the French government, mindful of how movies can drive tourism, sought to expose writers to other aspects of French geography and culture. “They actually respect screenwriters in France,” he quipped.

While Columbus is his latest work at hand, Haas and Brandt continue to stay busy with film scripts. Filming on an A-Team adaptation is under way for a 2010 release and there’s a Wanted 2 sequel in the works for 2011. The two are adapting Robert Ludlum’s The Matarese Circle, starring Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, after briefly losing that writing project to director David Cronenberg. They’re also developing the 1980s comic book series Alien Legion for Bruckheimer Films and Disney.

The latter project offers a screenwriter’s dream: a backing studio that isn’t shackling its writers to a budget (yet). “Disney’s never thinking about, ‘How can I save money?,’ ” Haas laughed.

Haas also is expanding his writing into a new realm: online short stories on his Web site www.popcornfiction.com.

He got the idea through listening to classic radio dramas aired on the satellite radio network Sirius/XM. Those short works in crime fiction and science fiction, many grounded in an original short story, led him to realize the market for published short stories was a shrinking one.

He created PopcornFiction.com as a writer’s venue — and found himself flooded with so many submissions that he had to limit them to known filmwriters.

It’s meant to encourage pop fiction, not polished literary offerings, he added.

“We publish stories that are 2,000 to 8,000 words long — but not anything that’d appear in The New Yorker,” he joked.

He’s already found success: High profile producer Jerry Bruckheimer has picked up Haas’ short story “Shake” and is considering it for movie treatment.

Haas and his family return this week to visit friends and join the recognition of his father-in-law Ronnie Goodwin at halftime of Saturday’s Baylor-Oklahoma State University game, he said.

The last time Haas returned to Baylor to sign books, he was surprised by a line of students stretching outside the bookstore. “I’m so excited about coming back,” he said.

And for new fans of his Columbus character, there’s good news in black-and-white: Haas already has a contract to write a third book in the series.

choover@wacotrib.com

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