Lee and Craig Johnson at the Spur Awards

Okay, this is weird. I meant to simply upload this photo to my website… and that headline was supposed to be the caption… but somehow it accidentally became a blog post instead. Well, now that it’s here, I guess I better hurry up and say something about it.

I just returned late last night from Billings Montana, where I attended the Spur Awards, which are the Oscars of western writing. I’ve always been a huge western fan and I’ve been looking for an excuse to attend the Western Writers of America conference for years. I finally got one:  DOUBLE WIDE by Leo Banks won two Spurs — for Best First Novel and Best Contemporary Western — and it was published by Brash Books, the company I co-founded with Joel Goldman four years ago. So I jumped on a plane to be there for Leo and to bask in all the praise he’d be getting.

I was delighted to discover that my old friend producer Rob Word was there, too. Rob and I teamed up some years back to turn Bill Crider’s OUTRAGE AT BLANCO into a TV mini-series. The project fell through, but we had great fun casting and scouting locations in California and Calgary (we haven’t given up hope on filming it someday). He’s a true western lover and historian and is the host of A Word on Westerns. We headed out to Little Big Horn for the day, which we really enjoyed, and hung out at the conference with western literary legends like Craig Johnson, Loren D. Estleman, Preston Lewis, and Johnny Boggs, among others. Rob even convinced me to buy a cowboy hat for the Spur Awards banquet. And it’s a good thing I did, because it turned out that Brash got matching Spur Awards to go along with the two that Leo won. 

Here are some more photos from the event…

Lee with Loren D. Estleman and Preston Lewis

 

Lee, actor A. Martinez, and Leo Banks with their Spur Awards.

 

 

Lee Goldberg is Out-and-About in New York, Tennessee and Kentucky

Lee on the set of his “fake office” in NYC

I’ve been out-and-about a lot the last few weeks and I’m just getting a chance now to catch you up on all the latest news.

Two weeks ago, I was traveling in Memphis to research a new book, and visited Owensboro Kentucky, for a TRUE FICTION booksigning and a screening of the two short films, BUMSICLE and REMAINDERED, that I shot there. At the same time, I delivered the script for a new Hallmark Mystery Movie that I co-wrote with the amazing Robin Bernheim, whose many credits include REMINGTON STEELE, QUANTUM LEAP, and WHEN CALLS THE HEART.  

Speaking of Hallmark Mysteries, my friend Phoef Sutton just scored raves, and big ratings, for his latest Hallmark movie, DARROW & DARROW: IN THE KEY OF MURDER. You can read an interview with him about it at Kings River Life magazines.

I was only hone for a few days before I had to jet off to New York, where I was shot some new TRUE FICTION promos for Amazon Publishing. While I was there, I got a chance to see Amazon Publishing honcho Jeff Belle (who has been a big supporter of me and my books for years), and Amazon-bestselling authors Robert Dugoni and Mark Sullivan, who has co-authored five books with James Patterson.

Speaking of Patterson, it’s great to see my friend, Edgar-winning author, and Appellate Court Judge David Ellis get a shout-out/acknowledgment as the ghostwriter channeling Bill Clinton &  Patterson in Janet Maslin’s review of THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING

The props dept create framed photos and other props for the fake office.

I learned this morning that Scott Brick, narrator of the five Fox & O’Hare books I co-wrote with Janet Evanovich, and HOUSE OF SECRETS (coauthored by my brother Tod Goldberg and Brad Meltzer), has been as the new voice of Lee Child‘s Jack Reacher! (The legendary Dick Hill is retiring). I’m very happy for Scott and hope he’ll still squeeze in time to narrate more of my books 🙂

And, in case you missed it last week, author/editor Steph Cha had the brilliant idea of assigning my brother Tod  to interview me for Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB)….the result is probably the most personal, and indepth interview I’ve ever done. I hope you like it. 

Mark Sullivan, Lee Goldberg and Jeff Belle