While paramedic Joe Connelly was driving his ambulance through the streets of New York, he imagined writing a novel about... a paramedic driving his ambulance through the streets of New York. What Connelly never dreamed was that his first novel, "Bringing Out the Dead," which was published last February, would become a movie starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Martin Scorsese (the Paramount film's release date hasn't been announced).

"I showed up now and then on the set," says Connelly, 34, who served as a technical adviser, a role that entailed "making sure the dead looked dead and the living looked like they knew what they were doing." Connelly, who's now at work on a new novel about the television industry, tells EW Online that the leap from ambulance driver to hanging out on a movie set wasn't as radical as it might sound. "Being on a set," he jokes, "is like showing up at the same emergency 20 times."

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