I have one question, why, of all the people in the world did they choose Winegardner to write the book.
That question still baffles me to this day. I own most of puzo's books, and those of his published by Ballantine have a little article at the end talking about the editors search for somebody to write GFR.

They said they needed somebody at roughly the same stage Puzo was in when he wrote the original Godfather, in '69. Okay, so, yes, Mark here's in his mid 40's, and has 2 other books to his credit. Why did they do it like this?
If they honestly chose the author based on this information, they've got to be the biggest idiots ever. Honestly, they even got hundreds of outlines from other writers, were they honestly THAT bad, that you need to choose this guy. Give me a break, is obvious that the publishers didnt seem to care about what Winegardner was even doing with the series.
Mark Winegardner was so obviously the worst choice for continuing a classic series.

Good question! I sure as hell can't figure it out.

What a waste of money that was.

Actually it was because he won the contest. If memory serves me correctly, the Puzo estate sponsored a "Write the next Godfather Book" contest. I'm not sure of the exact name of the contest but it was an open call to any and all writers to submit their entry for the continuing story of the Corleone family. I may be wrong but I seem to remember something about a contest of some sort...

Edit - Found it!
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,784837,00.html

What a joke, they chose the sequal to the godfather of all novels w/ some f***ing contest. Wonderful, I wish some ppl like EnzoBaker would of wrote an outline. Anybody on this board could write a gf sequal 100x better than Winegardner.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,784837,00.html

Thanks for the link, Mark.

i am surpised that nobody on these forums submitted a outline...one thing for sure i bet everybody wrote an angry letter to winegardner.

Not that I'm qualified, but I never heard of such a contest when it was announced. Anyway, I can't believe it's been over 5 years since I talked to Winegardner -- and sadly, almost that long since I've read his work. Which I didn't hate; I just don't get a lot of reading time since I own one of those new-fangled fancy things they call DVD players

Like Bam, I am a little surprised that nobody from this board had sent some kind of a manuscript to enter that contest. There seems to be a lot of creative members that have noted some very entertaining ideas on the forum.

I read Returns a year ago and I'm almost done with Revenge and what I find most prominent and distinct in Winegardner's writing is his over-sexualization of everything.

I'm not a prude, far from it but I found his amount of sexual references and actual sex scenes over the top and it didn't serve the plot in any way in most cases.

I have a hot take. I don't think Puzo's version of The Godfather was great, either. Francis Ford Coppola had to clean out about 3/4 of the book in order write a good movie adaptation. I've tried re-reading the Godfather, several times, out of loyalty to the cause. Just to see if I missed something, if for no other reason. And I can't get through a second reading. There are entire chapters about Johnny Fontane and irrelevant showbiz stuff, which to me only reveals Puzo's bitter little hard-on for Sinatra. Francis Coppola and a bevy of brilliant 1970's actors made The Godfather what it is.

I don't disagree with that. The novel is great at it's core but many pieces of it are superfluous and downright pulpy. Lucy Mancini's story after Sonny is killed detracts a lot from the experience.

Yeah, I saw the great movie too many times to be impressed with the book that it's only loosely based upon. Even Coppola himself says that more than half of the book was omitted. I could see people having read the book before ever seeing the movie thinking the book is better. I've tried, time and time again with the book. I really thought it was me, that maybe it was just the short attention span, having grown up a product of tv and movie watching. But I've read good novels, and I've read bad ones. The Godfather is underwhelming. The movie is brilliant. I just can't come to any other conclusion.