Lee Goldberg

Live Author Chat/Interactive Webcast with Me

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I'll be hosting a Live Author Chat/Webcast on Sunday, Oct 4 at 6pm PST…talking about my latest MONK book, MR. MONK IN TROUBLE & the Oct. 6 DVD release of my movie FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS. The cast of FAST TRACK is also scheduled to participate. But best of all, ANYONE ANYWHERE can join in by going to: 

http://live.expandedbooks.com/lee-goldberg 

Or you can talk to me, and everyone else who is watching, VIA WEBCAM…all you have to do is send an email first, with your Skype username, to: 

info@expandedbooks.com

Expanded Books will connect you via Skype so you can participate in the show….and be seen by people all over the world. 

Live Author Chat is a new service from Expanded Books that uses cutting-edge video streaming and television technology to broadcast author chats in real time, via the web. Each chat is a fully produced and customized live webshow where up to four people can communicate with each other simultaneously via video webcam while many more participate via chat and tens of thousands

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 worldwide can watch. The conversation happens in real time, while the Expanded Books team directs the show from their studio in Los Angeles. You can expect a lively conversation between me at home, fans on webcams, and chat participants, while the directorial team switches between the four multiple webcams, book covers, clips from MONK & FAST TRACK, and much more. I hope you'll watch…or, better yet, take part in the fun!

UPDATE 9/26/09: We are doing a live test run of the broadcast this Sunday, Sept. 27 at 4 pm PST. Here's the link:

http://live.expandedbooks.com/channels/3/with_player. 

You are welcome to log in …or send your Skype username to info@expandedbooks.com to participate by webcam.

Tom Selleck is Happily Stoned

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I'm a big fan of Tom Selleck's JESSE STONE movies. I like them even more than the Robert B. Parker books that they are based on. The movies do very, very well for CBS, but that doesn't stop the network from inexplicably sitting on them for as long as a year before airing them. The sixth movie NO REMORSE, has been on the shelf since January, the seventh is currently shooting in Halifax, and Selleck tells Variety that he'd like to do an eighth…and see CBS broadcast two a year to add some regularity to what amounts to network television's last successful, TV movie franchise.

"We don't do cliffhangers. The movies stand on their own. But with regular viewing the audience gets the bonus of a continuing backstory," Selleck said. "People want to know what's going to happen with this guy. He's basically a decent guy with a lot of flaws. He's his own worst enemy…but he's a guy you want to root for.

He's got other TV and film prospects, but there's something special about Jesse Stone for Selleck — perhaps because he feels like complicated cop is carrying the flag for the longform biz on network TV.

"There's a market for us," Selleck said. "We're proving that the network TV audience does want to see movies — they just want to see good movies."

Harvey Mapes Isn’t Forgotten

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I was stunned today to stumble on Ed Gorman's unexpected tribute to my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE. He says, in part:

Iron-On is a book that will keep you laughing and smiling all the way through. If you have any affection for the private eye novel, this book should be required reading because in addition to gently spoofing the form it is a story so rich in character and story twists it's truly masterful.[…]But more than the comedy, the beautifully designed plot and the snapshots of La La Land–more than any other element in the book, it's Harvey's voice you'll remember. There's a workaday universality to it that gives the novel its wit and insight and truth.

Thank you, Ed. I'm truly flattered. It is my favorite book of all the ones that I've written. I hope that it's published in trade paperback someday…and does well enough to justify a sequel.

Housekeeping

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Sorry I have been more or less absent here. I've been working on my second draft of GRACE UNDER FIRE,  a German/Chinese co-production that's tentatively scheduled to be shot in English in early 2010  in Berlin and Shanghai. I got that draft out in the wee hours of the morning today and will probably notes on the polish at the end of the week. 

I've also been working on a couple of TV series pitches with some well-known actors and writing MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT, my 10th Monk novel, which is due to my publisher very soon.  I'm having a great time with it. 

Outside of my writing life, I've had work to do as membership committee chair for Mystery Writers of America and president of my home owners association. So I couldn't justify spending three hours watching the Emmys last night. It's on my Tivo, but I doubt I'll ever get to it, even to scroll through. I've got two new MONK episodes and the premiere of BORED TO DEATH to catch up on. But today, with the script done (for now), I'm going to concentrate on the Monk book and see if I can make some significant progress this week before other projects demand attention… 

Mr. Monk and the Piss Poor Review

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Steven Torres, who reviews short stories at the Nasty, Brutish and Short blog, has given my story "The Case of the Piss Poor Gold" a rave. He says, in part:

This story, however, is not about ADRIAN Monk. It's about a distant relative, Artemis Monk who solves crimes (in his spare time) in a California gold rush town that's still in its unclean infancy.[…] this story is more than just a good puzzle (or two, Monk also quickly wraps up a murder – his powers are prodigous). It is also a good portrait of a mining town and its inhabitants, paying particular attention to the dirt. More importantly for me, the story had me laugh out loud a couple of times, and that is a terribly difficult thing to do on paper. Most funny lines die once written down, but not in Goldberg's hands. That's magic. Well worth the price of the latest Ellery Queen.

Thanks, Steve! 

Stephen King’s Rough Draft

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Stephen King's upcoming novel UNDER THE DOME is a reworking of a manuscript called THE CANNIBALS that he wrote and abandoned in 1989 which, itself, was a rethink of a novel he abandoned in the late 1970s. King is sharing the first sixty, original, typed pages...with his handwritten changes…of that 1989 manuscript on his website and it's a fascinating peek into how he works.

(Thanks to Duane Swierczynski for the link)

My Job is to Write

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Writer-producer Diane Ademu-John pointed me to this excellent blog post by author John Scalzi on dealing with strangers who want screenwriters and novelists to read their  work, listen to their pitches, etc. He says, in part:

Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers who spend their time bitching about how published/established writers are mean because they won’t read your work/introduce you to their agent/give your manuscript to their editor/get you a job on their television show/whatever other thing it is you want them to do for you:
A few things you should know.

1. The job of a writer is to write. So, I’m looking at one of my book contracts. It says that I need to write a certain type of book (science fiction) of a certain length (100,000 words) by a certain time (er… Hmmm). In return, I get paid a certain amount of money. So that’s the gig.

Here’s what’s not in the contract:

1. That I critique the novels of other people; 

2. That I offer any advice to people on how to get published; 

3. That I arrange introductions to my agent, editor or publisher; 

4. That I do any damn thing, in fact, other than write the book I’ve agreed to write.

The job of a writer is to write.

To which you may say, “Yes, but –” To which I say, you’ve gone one word too far in that sentence.

The rest of the piece is just as brilliant. He's basically saying the same things that Josh Olsen did, only without the anger and profanity that turned off a lot of people.

Farscaping with Carleton

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Eastlake-03 There's a great interview with my buddy Carleton Eastlake over at The Write Blog, talking about his experiences writing & producing shows like BURNING ZONE, SEAQUEST, FARSCAPE, and OUTER LIMITS. He says, in part:

I think good science fiction and fantasy, because they break some or many of the rules of the real world, require that the rules of the imagined world be interesting and consistently applied. So much more attention needs to be paid to the mythology.
At the same time, there’s more room, if done in a credible way, to keep things fresh by evolving those rules, making new discoveries…here come The Borg with all sorts of new moral and psychological issues – and very different spacecraft!

On the other hand, it’s a little harder to keep the dramatic, psychological side of a science-fiction show compelling. It’s easier to ignore those concerns or be distracted from them. But if the show is consistent about its rules, then the character side of the show can absolutely work. Crichton and Aeryn on Farscape were very much in love and very much troubled by the moral conflict between running away and having a life, or staying and fighting to save their societies.

It’s also important in a science fiction show that the plot issue of the day be motivated by the implications of the world the show is set in. Attempts to do actual medical or criminal or legal procedural shows in a science fiction setting are very, very hard to pull off – the science fiction side undermines the credibility of the procedural issue, and the procedural issue rarely delivers on the magic and wonder of the setting.

Grimhaven

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I finally read Charles Willeford's unpublished novel GRIMHAVEN…and its fascinating. It bears a lot of similarity to some of his earlier books and is every bit as compelling, disturbing, and darkly funny. In some ways, its among his best books. But what is most striking about it is what it represents.

The book centers around Hoke Moseley, the unforgettable detective in Willeford's classic, break-through novel MIAMI BLUES. But that novel, and success, came late in Willeford's life. When he was asked to write a sequel to capitalize on his newfound fame, he did the unexpected. 

He wrote a book in which Hoke leaves the force, moves into a drab apartment, and works in his father's hardware store. Hoke attempts to live a life of extreme austerity, cutting his wardrobe down to just two jumpsuits (and no underwear) and eating a hard-boiled egg each day for lunch, among other things. Into this carefully constructed, cold life, come his two teenage daughters, abandoned by his ex-wife, who has run off to L.A. to live with a baseball player. They complicate his life and stretch his thin budget. So Hoke solves this problem by strangling his daughters and leaving their bodies on ice in his shower (which he continues to use to wash up each day). He eventually dumps the bodies in his father's empty home and drives to Los Angeles to murder his ex-wife. The only reason he wants to kill her is so he can be imprisoned in California, where he'd face death in the gas chamber for her murder as opposed to the electric chair in Florida for killing his daughters. Either way, Hoke figures he can enjoy ten good, solitary years in prison, enjoying the austere "simple life" he'd wanted,  before his inevitable execution.  

I enjoyed the book immensely on several levels. But its real literary value is what it tells us about Willeford the writer. It's like a 2oo page statement on Willeford's fear of success…and his resentment at the demands and challenges writing commercial fiction would place on him. Or so I assume, I didn't know the man and I'm not a shrink. But what other way is there to read it? 

Taken on its own, GRIMHAVEN is a masterful piece of work and pure, unadulterated Willeford. As a MIAMI BLUES sequel, it's a calculated fuck you to the character, the publisher,  the readers and his career. It would be like following up the pilot of MONK by having Adrian rape and murder Sharona, then dispose of her body with acid in his bathtub.

Naturally, Willeford's agent took one look at the GRIMHAVEN manuscript and said there was no way in hell he could send it to the publisher…it would be career suicide and would squander a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Willeford wisely took his agent's advice and shelved the book…but not entirely. He ended up cannibalizing its best parts, and making them even better, in the three fantastic Hoke Moseley books that followed. 

GRIMHAVEN is only legally available to be read at the Willeford Archive at the Broward County Library. I was fortunate to be sent the manuscript a few years ago from Willeford's widow (as a result of refusing to read a bootleg copy that was offered to me). I don't know why I waited so long to finally read it…but it was worth the wait. It's a fascinating piece of work…and a revealing glimpse into Charles Willeford creative life. 

New Tricks Becoming Old Tricks

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Broadcast magazine reports that the UK mystery series NEW TRICKS, about a bunch of retired cops solving crimes, has been picked up for two more seasons, guaranteeing the show at least an eight season run. That said, their idea of a "season" is eight 60-minute episodes. So, after eight years, they will have made as many episodes as a typical American network series does in three.