Lee Goldberg

The Mail I Get – Advice Edition, the Sequel

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For some reason, people come to me for advice. As if I know anything, which I don’t. But occasionally, I’ll fake it.

I’ve been an avid reader all my life, and have recently been looking at changing my passion into a living by hoping to go into publishing/editing. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. College is an obvious beginning, but could you possibly point me in the direction of which majors would be the most useful in this journey? I’d appreciate any and all insight and advice you could provide. Thank you for your time in reading this.

Most editors I know have degrees in literature or communications. An MFA in Creative Writing would be helpful…and would also give you the credentials to teach as well. The bottom line is that you need to have a thorough understanding of fiction… of the craft of writing and the structure of novels…so that you can work with authors. Alternatively, a business degree and/or an MBA would be helpful, too, so you can navigate the corporate/political/business world of a publishing company.

Here’s a request for advice that I got from a 12-year-old girl…

I know that this is totally ridiculous but I want to write a show, and I am twelve years old. I know it’s impossible. It’s just I have had the idea for a show for years now and I tried writing it as a book but I would love to see it on TV instead. I would also like to write my show if anyone ever even thought about  even making it a reality because I don’t want people to twist my years of work into something that’s…not mine. However, like I said I’m twelve years old and this is probably a waste of time but, how would I know, I’m twelve. There are some people out there who have done great things at a younger age. So please just tell me if you think that this dream is complete crap or if I might have a chance.

You are clearly very articulate and sharp for a 12 year-old. But I’ve got to be honest with you, there is virtually no chance of writing a TV series at your age. First off, networks don’t buy ideas. They buy the execution of ideas. There’s nothing revolutionary about, say, BLUE BLOODS. It’s a show about cops in NYC. What CBS bought was the proven talent of the writer/producers involved in BLUE BLOODS, and their ability to deliver a show, on time and on budget and at a certain creative level, every week. Keep in mind, television is a business, like making cars or building houses, and just one season of a TV series is a nearly $100 million enterprise that employs hundreds of people. It’s a major investment, and one unlikely to be entrusted to a child…or dependent upon a child’s creative output (I mean no offense when I call you a child…it’s just a fact of life). Writing a series isn’t just telling stories…it’s writing stories that can be told within a certain shooting schedule, budget, etc. There’s much more to it than may be apparent to you. Also, writing a TV series is a full-time job…one you are in no position to take on at your age. My advice would be to stick your idea in your pocket…to keep writing…and keep an eye on how the busines is run. Because by the time you are an adult, the business will have radically changed…I’m certain of that. And if you’ve sharpened your skills, and kept up on how the business has evolved, you’ll be poised to take advantage of it when you become an adult.

I know that isn’t what you want to hear. But I also I know that advice can work because it worked for me. I know exactly how you feel. I felt I was ready to run a show when I was nine years old. But I also knew it couldn’t happen for me yet. So instead, I started educating myself. I read everything on the business I could get my hands on. I interviewed the top TV producers by phone for articles in my local newspaper (because I did the interviews by phone, and could imitate my father’s deep, TV anchorman voice, they didn’t know I was a teenager). I also started writing a book on unsold TV pilots — every idea rejected by the networks since the dawn of TV. And I never stopped writing fiction. I must have written a dozen unpublished novels.

That work paid off. I put myself through college writing about TV as a freelance writer for major magazines…and, in the process, I learned more about the business than I could ever have picked up in a classroom. My first novel was published when I was still a UCLA student and sold to the movies before I graduated (the movie never got made). And that book on unsold TV pilots that I started writing when I was nine years old was published a few years after I graduated…and was a big bestseller. There is no doubt in my mind that all that work I did as a teenager made me a sucess as an adult.

So what I am telling you is not to give up on your dream…but to recognize you aren’t ready to achieve it yet. Instead, start building towards it.

The Mail I Get – Lame Solicitations Edition

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61AtgxJFs0L._UX522_I get swamped with email solicitations asking me to buy services or review products. Some of the solicitations are so awful, it’s amazing to me that they do any business at all. Here’s one I got today from a book-binding company:

Dear Manager, Sorry to bother you. Located in Hanghzhou,China ,Rootis printing is a printing hoouse who specilalized in different kinds of books such as catalog,hardcase,spiral binding,pop-up,board books and packaing products We always keep strict principle of high quanlity,upon the basis of quanlity,we provide the best price for the clients. May I get the chance to introduce our pricing and our products? It will be great hornor to hear from your suggests about our company and our printed products I am sure we can become valuable partners and bring good work to each other. Please let me know your any comments on this matter.  Best regards, Frank

Well, it’s clear from your email, Frank, that you  “keep strict principle of high quanlity.” Your email, and your obvious pride in attention to detail, says it all. The same goes for this other company that reached out to me today for a review:

Hello, Dear Amazon product reviewer

We are the seller selling on Amazon.com

Would you mind to have a test with our product ASIN :B00LL462CE

Our selling link on Amazon is : http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LL462CE

We would be great appreciated if you can write a fair product review
for us after you got and using the product.

Kindly please contact me at this email with your shipping address(except PO BOX address) if you are interested in our product.

We will send the product for you as soon as get your confirmation.

Thank you very much for your interesting

 

unnamed-3So glad you contacted to me with your compelling sales pitch. I can always use a new “Outop Women Harness Body Chain Bikini Chain Crossover Belly Waist Chain.” But I have a question: Is it a chain?

If you missed our first review round for the cat tunnels, here is your chance!
Our company has cat tunnels and designed for cats. Your opinion matters to us and the other customers, so we would appreciate if you can take a few moments to review our product. Please reply with your address, we will send the product over to you via mail.

I did miss your first round. I think it’s great that you’re designing cat tunnels for cats instead of cat tunnels for squirrels or other animals that are not cats. I also think its great that you want to mail me a cat tunnel via mail rather than donkey, or bicycle messenger, since I think that might be difficult.  I don’t have a cat, but I think everyone should have a cat tunnel in case a cat shows up.

Working up a Storme: WL Ripley on Creating Series Characters

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Storme Warning_FrontCoverMy friend W.L. Ripley is the author of two critically-acclaimed series of crime novels — four books featuring ex-professional football player Wyatt Storme and four books about ex-Secret Service agent Cole Springer. His latest novel is Storme Warning, a stunning new mystery/thriller that’s earned him well-deserved comparisons to Robert B. Parker…and from the likes of Ace Atkins, who is now writing Spenser. Here Rip talks about creating Storme…and series characters in general.  

Wyatt Storme evolved from a love of mystery characters like Travis McGee, Spenser, and the protagonists of Elmore Leonard’s many novels. But in shaping Storme as a series lead, I wanted a neo-classic mystery/thriller hero who would seem familiar and yet would be uniquely his own person and uniquely my own creation.

Storme is neither a detective nor a police officer, which places him in Travis McGee territory, but he will use deduction and reasoning to isolate and learn about the villain.  This is a nod to the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes, without whom the modern mystery would not be what it has become.

Storme & Chick vs Spenser & Hawk

Wyatt Storme and his friend Chick Easton, a deadly and deeply troubled ex-CIA agent, are often compared to the Robert B. Parker’s team of Spenser and Hawk. But I believe Storme is more closely related to John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee because he is a man apart; a man taking his retirement in pieces. Yet unlike McGee, Storme is often reluctant to insinuate himself into other people’s troubles and does not seek a financial reward.  The character of Chick Easton is closer Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin, only more deadly.  Easton’s character often prods Storme into action and, like Goodwin, he keeps the dialogue lively and caustic.  The Wyatt Storme novels blend three sub-categories of the mystery/thriller genre:  tough-guy, western, and reluctant detective.

If you look at Robert B. Parker’s Spenser (brilliantly continued by author, Ace Atkins), the most recognized tough guy in the modern literary world, you’ll find that he possesses some traits associated with Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe but is distinctively his own man.  Spenser quotes poetry and literature like a University professor yet he is as comfortable throwing a left hook to dispatch anyone foolish enough to bull up on him.  He still carries the classic .38 police special but is at ease handling the modern semi-automatic weapons.  Spenser is the first Renaissance man in the tough-guy mystery genre and has opened up possibilities for all of us who write.

Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens Reflects his Pantheon of Characters

Elmore Leonard never saddled himself with just one hero yet many of his protagonists shared attributes that were singular to his pantheon of characters.  They usually were unflappable regardless of the situation.  They rarely spoke excitedly or in anger.  The best example of this, and Leonard’s most memorable and likewise most singular character, is Raylan Givens.

W.L. Ripley
W.L. Ripley

Givens was the son of Kentucky coal-miners and a U.S. Marshal who was an expert with a hand gun.  He taught marksmanship to other U.S. Marshal’s and was deadly cool when dispatching a bad guy quite often giving the outlaw a chance to re-consider.  “I’m a dead shot.  I hit exactly what I aim at.  If I pull I shoot to kill.”

Note the nod to the old Western heroes of cinema and the western genre.  Givens is a Marshal like Matt Dillon or Wyatt Earp.  Givens participates in shoot-outs like many Clint Eastwood characters (There are marked similarities between Givens and Clint Eastwood in the novels.  Height, body-build, cold statement that his enemy is about to die).  At once, we are familiar with Raylan Givens and at the same time he is a unique character in his own right.

Storme is, like the above, a neo-classic hero. Both of my main series characters, Wyatt Storme and Cole Springer, are denizens of the new American West.  They are throwbacks, as comfortable in the great outdoors as they are with their backs against the wall, guns blazing.  Like old Western Cowboys, they ride into town and save the day.   Storme is Wyatt Earp to Easton’s Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy to Easton’s Sundance Kid.

Dave Robicheaux and Stephanie Plum Are Among The Best

One of the best contemporary series characters is James Lee Burke’s, Dave Robicheaux, a disgraced N’Awlin’s cop whose desperate struggles with alcoholism and personal tragedy place Dave (now a Sheriff’s deputy in New Iberia Parish) in his own niche.  Burke is unsurpassed at making the setting a part of his stories and the tortured soul of Dave Robicheaux is on display at all times.  Robicheaux, like Spenser, is an intelligent man.  Yet, unlike Spenser, Robicheaux is often confused and even lacks confidence in his assessment of his moral stance.  Still, when his blood is up, Robicheaux is among the most violent of mystery heroes.

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum is smart, tough, and given to romantic adventurism that heretofore was a part of the male hero make-up.  Evanovich plows new literary ground by making Plum a bond enforcement agent (Chick Easton performs this duty at times in the Storme lexicon). Plum is of Italian/Hungarian descent and vacillates between the romantic overtures of two different men.  She is honest about her foibles, which create problems in her job, but it is this very self-deprecation that endears her to her readers and makes Stephanie Plum one of the most successful characters in the mystery genre.

There are many, many more examples.  Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone (a classic detective in the Phillip Marlowe/Jim Rockford tradition), James Patterson’s Alex Cross (criminal profiler), Ace Atkins other best-selling character, Quinn Colson (Ex-special forces Ranger), and Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta (Medical Examiner) are among the best.

All of these authors write sharply drawn, well-researched characters that give us a peek behind the curtains of very unique aspects of these justice-dealing heroes and their occupations. They have also been successful mining the classic nature of the mystery/thriller genre and giving their character remarkable traits, not quirks.  Too often beginning writers think they need to make their characters quirky. Quirky characters are the province of situation comedies, not mystery/thrillers.

Characters We Love, Books We Want to Read

One of the hardest aspects of a series character is keeping them fresh through many books.  All of the writers that I’ve talked about do so brilliantly and aspiring writers should study their work to learn how they pull it off.

Developing a lasting series character is the hardest thing you’ll ever love doing.  I enjoy looking into Wyatt Storme’s past, how he evolved into the person he has become and witnessing the sights, sounds, and his interaction with the universe he inhabits.

I write novels that I would like to read.  My hope is that they are also novels that you will want to read, too. I want the reader to keep turning pages and be continually entertained with laughter, hope, suspense, sudden danger and the consequences of life….and that you will find all of that in Storme Warning.

The Mail I Get – I Don’t Remember Edition

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Some recent mail I received asking me questions I can’t answer because I don’t remember:

I’ve long admired your work on Diagnosis Murder, especially the fifth season. I emailed you about ten years ago asking if you had a floor plan of the beach house from Diagnosis Murder. You said you had one but misplaced it. I’ve taken it upon myself to draw a floor plan myself using footage from the show as well as from satellite images and the movies Lovelines and Malibu Bikini shop to help with the lower level. I’ve also found many photos at three different websites trying to rent or sell the house, but most of those are photos from a significantly renovated version of the house. I’ve tried to keep my floor plan of the house as close to the way it was on the show as possible, though I’ve filled in missing parts with photos of the current version of the house where I could. For the parts left completely unseen, like a few of the bathrooms, I’ve tried to come up with how they might be laid out. If I send you the floor plan I created would you be able to give me feedback?

It’s been over a decade since I shot Diagnosis Murder. I don’t remember anymore exactly how the house was laid out. Sorry!

Hello Lee , I just finished reading Mr. Monk goes to the firehouse. I wonder, where’s the ax (?) that being used to kill Sparky? Seems nobody search for the bloody ax to get finger prints or something.
Hope to hear from you bcause I couldn’t sleep thinking about this.

Sorry, but it has been so many years since I wrote the book, I don’t remember what, if anything, came of the ax or if it even mattered. It’s certainly not worth losing sleep over!

I have not yet read all the Monk books nor seen all the episodes, so I apologize if my question has already been addressed, but I wondered what you thought of something that occurred to me recently, and that is concerning Adrian Monk and the Wedding Ring.Reading how he reacted to Julie’s cast, and his insistence that she have two to be balanced, I suddenly wondered how he coped with wearing a ring on the third finger left hand, and not a matching one the right. I assume that Adrian takes the ring off when he’s completing his obsessive bathroom cleaning routines etc. but I’m sure he still wears it at other times – his love for Trudy is too strong for him to abandon it. He is wearing one on the cover of Mr Monk is Miserable.
So – how does he cope? Does he, in fact, wear an identical ring on the right hand? I’ve not noticed one. Knowing the character as you do, what do you think? If you have an answer I’d love to hear it. If you find it fascinating as I do and decide to write it into your next Monk book, please credit me in the acknowledgements for giving you the idea!

I dealt with the ring issue in one of the books… MR. MONK IS A MESS or MR. MONK GETS EVEN, I believe. But I may be mistaken about which one. The 15 tend to blur together for me.

The Mail I Get – Monk Edition

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MrMonkOnTheCouchI still get lots of questions and comments each day about my Monk books… here’s a sampling:

Dear Lee, It was with mixed feelings that I read Mr. Monk’s last adventure.  Happiness at reading more enjoyable Monk escapades, and sadness that there will be no more of them. I did appreciate that one of the lipo-suction patients was Frank Cannon.  ha ha   What a ride.  Barb

Thank you, Barb. The other lipo patient was McCabe, the character William Conrad played on JAKE AND THE FATMAN…but so far, nobody has caught that reference.

It’s a rare to find an author who understands that a unique quirky character is really one of the most important parts of a good book. Love your character and I think the books are really wonderful. So often they are just plot oriented by vanilla unmemorable characters. So congratulations of writing truly fantastic books. Allan

Thank you, Allan. But I can’t take credit for creating that brilliant character. The credit belongs to Andy Breckman. He just let me borrow Monk for the books.

Hello Lee, You end your chapters in a manner that makes it difficult to not keep reading. Please stop doing that. You will thank me later. It might tempt some people into stopping in the middle of a chapter, and that violates the natural order of the universe.

Now that the above is out of the way, let me pass along my delight for both the Monk series and the Fox and O’Hare series – mysteries and absolutely hilarious! After thirteen years of retirement at age 70 it is getting harder to head for the treadmill daily, books the only way to get through it. My wife and I had read all the Janet Evanovich books (also all the Agatha Christie’s and a whole lot in between), so glad to have found The Heist, The Chase, and will read The Job (a Christmas book to each other) after Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. We have also seen all of the Monk TV episodes, and reading the books and remembering the appearance of the characters is extra fun. Thanks for these two series, and will explore your other books! Leonard

Thank you for your very kind words about my MONK and FOX & O’HARE books… though they are meant to be serious drama. It troubles me that you find them funny.

I just want to let you know that I really enjoy the books you contributed to the Monk series. As someone who has been diagnosed with OCD (whether rightly or wrongly), I have to say that you seem to have done a good job portraying what really goes on in the brain of an OC person (here I should add the caveat that I haven’t actually gotten far in any of your books – they’re too thought provoking to finish in a timely fashion). If in the past I would firmly deny that I had OCD (“My unusual behavior is not symptomatic of any illogical thought processes, thank you very much. It is a combination of *ultra*-logical thinking, and natural responses to my excess anxiety”), now I am not so sure. I find it very easy to identify with your version of Mr. Monk. [..]Without changing the way I view myself and my rationality, I now find it easier to accept the label of OCD.[..]In the future, I intend to use your books as “textbooks” to help other people better understand the true nature of OCD. Sammy

Now that is frightening. You do know I make it all up, right? I have no special understanding of OCD… I just have a rich fantasy life.

The Recipe Behind Gerald Duff’s MEMPHIS RIBS

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Memphis RibsMy friend author Gerald Duff shares the story behind the writing of his tasty new novel Memphis Ribs, which Entertainment Weekly calls ‘A tangy tale of murder, gang warfare, crack cocaine, and barbecue.’ I’m sucker for a great thriller and for barbecue, so this was a home run for me! 

When I wrote my novel Memphis Ribs, I did it for the same reason that all writers take up a task that lasts so long and uses up so much electricity. I was mesmerized by the topic, in this case my trying to understand the essence of the Bluff City where I had come to live for a spell. And it was a spell, because that’s what Memphis casts upon those who come to live with her.

Memphis is an embodiment of the central paradox of the South. It is both tight and loose, and so are Southerners. Memphis has more churches of every denomination, conducting more worship services, attended by more of the faithful, than any comparably sized city in the nation.

Memphis also has more low dives and honky tonks, more high and low bars, more prostitutes and drug houses, more robberies and gang shootings, more muggings and murders, just generally more of the fast life, than any other metropolitan area in the country. If Nashville, Tennessee’s richest city, is about the greed for money and the drive to make it, Memphis is about giving in, abandoning all hope, and having a good time.

Memphis has suffered from calamities over time, including a yellow fever contagion which decimated the city in the nineteenth century and the assassination of Dr.King in the twentieth century which dealt the finishing blow to Memphis’s status as a contender in the big world of growth and commerce. For the commercial hopers and city planners, these disasters were apocalyptic, but for the writer they created a climate and culture conducive to dream, disillusionment, regret, and loss.

The advantages for a novelist are clear and compelling. All is vanity, endeavor is doomed, and success is fleeting, evanescent, and gone. That’s the country where a novelist feels most at home.

How all this influenced me as a chronicler of a fictional pair of police detectives – one black, one white – trying to solve some crimes in the Bluff City is clear enough. Memphis and its contradictions and energies and despair and humor emboldened me to try to capture in fiction some of its toughness, violence, obsession with barbecue and beautiful women, its racism and restiveness, and its hard-edged hilarity. I tried to do so by casting as a Memphis homicide cop a man in North Mississippi I had come to know. He was an independent cotton farmer, a Vietnam veteran who wasn’t outwardly bothered by his year in that war as a combat infantryman, and a man completely at ease with himself. He drank copious amounts of bourbon without seeming to become drunk, he loved his wife, and he had many friends, black and white, who admired and gave him great room and latitude. His fictional partner in the novel knows him to the core.

All I’m trying to do in Memphis Ribs is to show how Danny M. would act if called upon to sort out some crimes in the Bluff City. In my attempt, I hope I’ve captured some of the gut and soul of that city on the big river that flows through the heart of America.

A Brash Idea Becomes a Publishing Company

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Lee Goldberg & Joel Goldman making a brash fashion statement
Lee Goldberg & Joel Goldman making a brash fashion statement

All mystery writers have them—the cherished, often underappreciated, out-of-print books that we loved and that shaped us as writers. They are the books that made an impression on me in my teenage and college years and still feel new and vital to me today. They are the books that I talk about to friends, thrust into the hands of aspiring writers, and that I wish I’d written. They are the yellowed, forgotten paperbacks I keep buying out of pure devotion whenever I see them in used bookstores . . . even though I have more copies than I’ll ever need.

I’ve been at this long enough that many of my own books have fallen out of print, too. But I brought them back in new, self-published Kindle and paperback editions and, to my surprise and delight, they sold extremely well. It occurred to me that if I could do it for my books, why couldn’t I do the same thing for all those forgotten books that I love?

So, a little over a year ago, I started negotiating with the estate of an obscure author whose books I greatly admire but that never achieved the wide readership and acclaim that they deserved. I was in the midst of those talks when, at a Bouchercon in Albany, I told Joel Goldman, a good friend, mystery writer, lawyer, and a successful self-publisher of his own backlist, what I had in mind.

Joel got this funny look on his face and said, “That’s a business model. I really think we’re on to something.”

We?

It turned out that, like me, he’d been getting hit up constantly at the conference by author-friends who were desperate for his advice on how they could replicate his self-publishing success with their own out-of-print books . . . many of which had won wide acclaim and even the biggest awards in our genre. He’d been trying to think of a way he could help them out.

Now he thought he had the solution. What if we combined the two ideas? What if we republished the books that we’d loved for years as well as truly exceptional books that only recently fell out of print?

It sounded great to me. And at that moment, without any prior intent, we became publishers of what we considered to be the best crime novels in existence. It was a brash act . . . and that’s how, as naturally as we became publishers, we found our company name.

Brash Books.

One of the first calls I made was to Tom Kakonis, whose books were a big influence on me, to ask if we could republish his out-of-print titles. His thrillers, including Michigan Roll and Criss Cross, achieved that perfect, delicate balance between drama and dark, almost outrageous humor, without going too far in either direction. It’s a skill that Elmore Leonard and Tom mastered, and that I’d hoped to some day be able to pull off myself. (I’m still trying.) I read Tom’s books the first time for pure pleasure but then again . . . and again . . . to see if I could discover how the magic was done.

In the mid 90s, I sold my first hardcover novel under my own name, My Gun Has Bullets, to St. Martin’s Press and went to a Bouchercon with a bunch of bound galleys in my bag. I spotted Tom there and nervously approached him for a blurb . . . and to my astonishment, he not only agreed to read my galley, but a few weeks later, he gave me a great review.  Getting that blurb was almost as exciting for me as being published in the first place.

I’d never forgotten that experience. Or him. So naturally he was at the top of my call-list when we started this venture. And this time, he thrilled me again by saying yes to letting us republish his books. He also mentioned that he had a novel that he wrote some years ago, but had stuck in a drawer because he’d been so badly burned by the publishing business. I asked if I could read it . . . and he sent it to me. I was blown away by it and so was Joel. We couldn’t believe that a book this good, that was every bit as great as his most acclaimed work, had gone unpublished. It was a gift for us to be able to publish it. And that’s how, unintentionally, we decided to publish brand new books, too.

4666650_FrontCoverTom’s unpublished novel, Treasure Coast, became our lead title when we launched in September 2014 with thirty books . . . from authors as diverse as Barbara Neely, Dick Lochte, Gar Anthony Haywood, Dallas Murphy, Maxine O’Callaghan, Bill Crider, and Jack Lynch, to name just a few. Now we’re on track to publish eight to ten novels each quarter, one or two of which will be brand new, never-before-published books.

It’s a business that’s very much a labor of love for us both. We get a bigger thrill now out of seeing new copies of our authors’ books than we do our own. The widow of one of our authors got teary-eyed over Brash’s editions of his out-of-print books because we were treating them the way he’d always wanted. We got tears in our eyes, too. We started Brash Books for moments like that and for Tom’s dedication in Treasure Coast:

“For Lee Goldberg, who may have rescued me.”

For me, that was coming full circle. I may have rescued him, but the example he set with his books helped launch my career . . . and now a publishing company, too.

Our goal with Brash Books is to introduce readers, and perhaps future writers, to great books that shouldn’t be forgotten and to incredible new crime novels that we hope will be cherished in the future.

And yet, to our frustration, our list still doesn’t include any books by that obscure, deceased author who brought Joel and I together in this brash publishing adventure. We’re still negotiating with that author’s estate. But we’re not giving up. I love those books too much to let go. I just bought two more of them at a flea market today. . . .

The Mail I Get – Question & Answer Edition

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I get lots of questions about my books…and occasionally I even have a few answers.

I have read every Monk book that my library owns. They are wonderful! Will you be writing any more ?

Judy

Nope, I’ve been done with Monk for a while now. My last Monk book was Mr. Monk Gets Even. I’ve moved on to other projects and am co-writing a new series with Janet Evanovich. Speaking of which…

I’m love the Kate O’Hare and Nicolas Fox books you write along with Janet Evanovich. I seriously read all the books within days as I’m totally hooked by them. This is a surprise as I am one who will only read books if I am forced too.I would like to know of there is another book to the serioes that is being made or will be released soon etc. Thanks again.
Joanna

I’m so glad that you are enjoying the series. We are in the midst of writing book #4…it should be out this summer or in the fall.THE JOB by Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich

I have just finished King City, wow! Your characters in the Kate O’Hare and Nick Fox books with Janet Evanovitch were some of the best I had come across. Tom Wade is even better. Your blurb following the ending says you were hard at work on more Tom Wade books, but that was 2011. I was so disappointed to find none listed. And I guess I’m writing to encourage you to go back to that story and keep going. I liked the book so much in fact that I thought, well maybe I’ll have to write a sequel just to have more to read! A silly idea of course, but it will convince you how much I felt involved with your characters. I will now try The Man with the Iron-On Badge, and then maybe another series. Thank you, Elizabeth

Thank you for your kind words about KING CITY and the Fox & O’Hare series. I intended to jump on the KING CITY sequel right after I finished the book…but the Evanovich project came along and I haven’t had a chance to get back to it. My hope is to write it this year. BTW, “Man with the Iron On Badge” was re-released as WATCH ME DIE a few years ago in both ebook and trade paperback editions.

Dear Mr Goldberg,
Hello, how are you? Don’t want to take up much of your time…I’m a huge fan of the wonderful books you have written for the Monk series! I have a few of them and I was wondering if  you would sign the ones I have and send me the ones I don’t have yet with your autograph. Thanks for keeping Mr Monk and company going!
               -Meg : )

I genuinely appreciate your kind words about my Monk books, and your desire to have my autograph but no, Meg, I won’t sign the books you already have and send you all of the books in the series that you don’t have yet. I don’t give away my books. That’s not how I make my living. I also don’t sell books (not that you asked to buy any) because I am not a bookstore, either.

Lee: I wrote a full length script on semi vampire of genre fiction and fantasy recently and I want to sell it. Are you interested?

Why would I be interested? I’m a screenwriter. I don’t buy scripts, I write them. Besides, what the hell is a “semi vampire of genre fiction and fantasy?”

Hello Lee, I love your work and have read most of your books — Where can I see a list of new books coming out? I like to pre order so I don’t miss the  new ones. Thanks for the many hours of great reading — I can just loose myself in your books. Julie

Thank you so much, Julie! The best place to keep up with my releases is right here on my website. Or join my mailing list, using the form on the right. My latest novel, THE JOB, also co-written with Janet Evanovich, came out in November.

The Story Behind THE WALK

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Here’s a new video interview with me about my thriller THE WALK, which twice hit #1 on the Amazon bestseller list and, if you don’t count my co-authored books with Janet Evanovich, is the bestselling novel of my career. It didn’t start out that way. It was a bomb when it was originally published in hardcover by Five Star, a small press, in the early 2000s. But I re-released it in a new ebook and paperback edition when the Kindle came along and it was an immediate hit. The novel has been published in a German and, starting TODAY, in a new French edition, too!

Mark Smith on Writing “The Death of The Detective”

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My friend Mark Smith’s The Death of the Detective is widely considered to be one of the best detective novels ever written…and was a National Book Award finalist. It was a honor for me to be able to republish it this last month through my company, Brash Books.  I’ve asked Mark  to share the story of how his remarkable book was written. 

Death of the Detective Front CoverI think it was Heywood Hale Broun who said, “When a professional man is doing the best work of his life, he will be reading only detective novels,” or words similar. I hope, even at my age, I have my best work ahead of me, but when I was writing The Death of the Detective, in my leisure hours I was exhausting the classic English who-dun-its written between the Wars, favoring Dorothy Sayers and Freeman Wills Croft, while also re-reading Raymond Chandler and re-discovering Nero Wolfe. In this regard I shared the addiction with the likes of William Butler Yeats, William Faulkner and FDR, among others.

My first two novels, the companion novels, Toyland and House Across the White (original title, The Middleman), were psychological thrillers and a modern retelling of a fairy tale. Before taking on the ghost story, my fourth novel, The Moon Lamp, I settled on my favorite genre, the detective story. Originally sketched out as something of a short story in which the detective in his quest of a killer discovers only his victims, with each murder leading both men to the next, the book became seriously ambitious when I added the moral and ironic complication of the detective himself being somehow responsible for the deaths by reason of his continued pursuit of the killer. This seemed to me a wonderful metaphor for the America of my time and place. And the detective as my representative American—or hero, if you wish. So much better for an urban environment than a cowboy.

The novel became enlarged when I added an interwoven subplot of young people and a minor plot of gangsters and made the killer’s victims believable round characters who were either sympathetic or interesting, so that, in a departure from the genre and the movies, the reader would be emotionally effected when their deaths occurred. After all, the tradition in Chicago writing, from Dreiser to Bellow, is compassion. Adding to the novel’s length was my recreation of each particular setting where the corpses were found strewn across the landscape of what is now called ‘Chicagoland”, thereby involving as many varied localities as I could in the crimes.

Many readers would say Chicago was the main character in the book, a response that surprised and disappointed me. Only years later did I come to find there was some justification for this observation. In my day, Chicago, for guys like me, was pretty much an open city, and I felt free to venture where I pleased. After high school, I worked as a mucker (sandhog) digging the subway extension beneath the post office, was a tariff clerk for the CBQ Railroad, the timekeeper on the foundation work for the Inland Steel Building and a merchant seaman on the Great Lakes before graduating from Northwestern University and living on the Gold Coast– across from the Ambassador East, no less.

Some readers, including allegedly mafioso and their children, have claimed the gangster plot is the best piece of the book, and that the gangsters are entirely believable, recognizable characters, perhaps something of a first in American fiction. The question asked then, is how did I come by my insights and knowledge? Henry James said writers should “receive straight impressions from life”, a piece of advice I find irrefutable for a naturalistic writer. Lo and behold, at the age of sixteen I worked as a busboy one summer at a nightclub-restaurant on the outskirts of Chicago owned by a former Capone mobster that was frequented by his fellows in the trade, alone (sometimes to play cards in a closed-off dining room), or with their families. These people not only became human to me, they became ordinary, and for a writer, now accessible to the play of his imagination. For example, I witnessed the tipsy top mobster in Chicago at closing time fail miserably in his attempt to pick up a not-so-exciting waitress, while my boss, a rather comic character who reminded me of Lou Costello ( a new restaurant in the area that threatened to be competition for his restaurant was bombed that summer every time it tried to open) would show up at the restaurant furious after losing a bundle at the track and order the help to drain all the nearly empty catsup bottles into new bottles. Without these contacts I suppose I would have had to take my gangsters from the cliches of movies and television (pre-Sopranos) and yes, probably from crime novels, also.

Mark Smith
Mark Smith

I have a couple of regrets about the novel. I notice a reviewer claimed I had predicted the practice of criminal profiling. If so, I’m not sure where that occurs in the novel. However I did make two predictions that came true that I cut from the book when I reduced its original text by some twenty percent which included not only blubber but the author’s commentary, prophecies and missteps into outright fantasy. One was the prediction that we would suffer from some new and deadly sexually transmitted disease which I changed to suggest old-fashioned syphilis. It seemed to me that given our new libertine sexual proclivities with limitless partners that such was likely to occur. Hence, soon thereafter, Aids. The other was my direct assertion that the mindless violence on film and television not only deadened us to the pain of violence, but encouraged violence, making it a centerpiece of our culture, a notion that was dismissed as hogwash at the time, but seemed an obvious cause and effect to me. Today this observation is pretty much accepted. So much for my career as Nostradamus.

A final admission. Although the Viet Nam war is never mentioned in this novel, and occurred after the time this novel takes place, it occurred during the time I was writing it with the nightly death count on the news. I like to tell myself my rage against that misadventure, along with my nostalgic love-hate relationship with the lost Chicago of my childhood and youth, were the energy sources behind the novel’s composition. It could even be said, with some hyperbole, that I wrote this book alone in my study in place of publically marching with the thousands demonstrating in the street.

One of my great pleasures of publishing this book, along with receiving a nomination for the National Book Award and seeing the novel on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, were the invitations to join the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers Association.

The Death of the Detective is available from Brash Books, Toyland and The House Across the White, from Foreverland Press.