Lee Goldberg

Mid-Season Replacements

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I got this email today:

I was hoping you could answer a few really quick questions about mid-season
replacements for me…

How do the networks regard these shows? Are they
second string that didn’t make the first cut? Or pinch hitters that the network
has been waiting to air? If the latter, why do they hold onto them until
mid-season? What is the strategy behind this?

The fact is, most shows fail. The networks go into the fall season
knowing that it’s very likely that virtually all their new series will not
survive. They need replacements to immediately fill the slots vacated by
low-performing shows that they are forced to cancel. That doesn’t mean
mid-season shows are lesser, second string programming… but, in some cases,
they are riskier/specialized/quirky fare that need special promotional and
scheduling attention that isn’t possible while launching & advertising an
entire fall schedule.  Remember, many hit shows began as midseason programs…
SEINFELD and GREY’S ANATOMY, for example.

Beware of Russian Mail Order Brides

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I got this email today:

Lee,       11-2-05
I have a ‘must’ write book for you of my life.I am going through  CONSTANT TERRORISM with the following:
Burglary of my home, office, apartment, storage units.
ID theft of my personal identity, business- hostile take over.
I think I know the people doing this.
I have had to move approximately 10 times this year due to stalking, theft
and invasion of home while I was locked in a bathroom for 2-3 hours.
My office has been like a revolving door for these thieves where they have
made my medical business their own office.  They have taken over the patient
accounts, ID"s, prepared records for billing, forged Dr’s signatures by using a
stamp, bank embezzlement, entered into contracts with vendors using my
signature, opened up a bank account using my forged signature without
authorization, credit card fraud,  inventory theft and personal item
theft, stolen my web business,  followed me and now attempting to enter my
friend’s home( where I have been sleeping at night for the last couple of
weeks).  My former employees would not drink or eat anything left in my office
due to possible poisoning.  They have also constantly been in and out of my car
looking for things.  Last night they left in a cup holder  a 357 magnum bullet
for me to find.
I am very serious about all of this.  The police have done nothing.  I am
in fear of my life.
Hopefully, if you are interested you can write a book to show how
vulnerable we are.  Maybe this will help someone else.
I am not trying to be dramatic but I hope I will be around for a while. 
Let me know if you wish to talk.
Every form of communication is compromised including my living space.
E mail from someone else’s computer is my only secure way of communication
at this point.

Within minutes of receiving that message, I got this follow-up:

Lee,

I need money and that is why I need this book
written besides trying to help someone else.
I am very sincere.  This is urgent.  If you
can’t or find you are not interested, please give me another name to
contact.

If you have ever lived in Virginia Beach since you
were in the Navy, you know the incompetent police we have here.  They are living
in the 19th century rather than the 21st.  They have not realized that high tech
crime in here to stay. 

I am a test victim for the theives that I am having to
deal with now.  I am not sure why I was picked other than a 100 percent female
owned web medical business and a Durable Medical Equipment  Medical business
with no family here. Also,  I was a millionaire last year and now trying to
figure out how to pay my bills now.

The people that have targeted me are professionals.  I believe the woman of the team was trained.  She was a Russian mail order bride.

Why do people like this write to me? And what make her think I was in the Navy? If you would like to write a book on this woman’s life, let me know and I will be glad to pass along her email address.

Teach Your 14-Year-Old How To Write Gay Fanfic Porn

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Skrike discovered a lengthy primer at Fanthropology on teaching 14-year-olds how to write better explicit gay fanfic.  Here’s some of their advice:

So how do you make a fourteen year old write better fan fiction? More important,
according to a fourteen year old acquaintance, how do you make your fourteen
year olds write better m/m slash?

Sex and intimacy, important components of slash and good slash. Another
component is fan fiction, m/m slash culture. The last component, and possibly
the most important one, is putting all of that stuff together.

Teaching
all this is not a simple thing. Remember, this age group isn’t always the most
receptive to valuing feedback in certain forms, isn’t necessarily writing to
learn about writing to become better writers. They write for fun, like feedback,
can and do use it to become better writers.

But hot damned, how do you teach a person to write in character? How do you
teach your teenage m/m slash fan to write in character in the context of a story
involving two guys going at it? There are two options that come immediately to
mind.

Sex and intimacy. Ouch and wow. My fourteen year old Good Charlotte slash
writing buddy’s answer to teaching her teen friends on how to write better
slash? Pop them all in front of a television, watch a little gay porn and they
should be set. My reaction to that as a twenty-five year old not interested in
gay porn was horror. There is this double edged sword here. Younger writers can
teach their own, to a certain degree, about the sexually explicit material and
how to write it using those examples. Adults teaching a fourteen year old how to
write erotic or pornographic sex scenes featuring two guys, citing pornography
and adult material, this might be a bit of an ethical nightmare and legal
liability.

The next thing to do is create general rec
lists of stories featuring m/m sex scenes. To cover your butt legally,
make sure the story ratings and contents are spelled out and don’t
explicitly label your rec list as “Read these teenage writers! Read
them and behold the writing of good m/m slashy sex scenes that will
make you wet! Yeah!” Try for something a bit more subdued and less
obvious. You get good examples out there and no one needs to be the
wiser that you have ulterior motives of teaching the teeny fangirls how
to become better m/m slash writers.

If it wasn’t for the good people at Fanthropology, imagine all the poor kids who wouldn’t have a clue how to write convincing fanfic sex scenes for Kirk and Spock, Harry and Ron,  and Willy Wonka and friends. Thank you, Fanthropology, for this important public service. I’m sure pedophiles everywhere appreciate it.

Maybe now professor Robin Reid will write an article for kids on how to write "Real Person Slash Fanfic." Wouldn’t that be nice?

SeaQuest…finally, and other DVD News

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Seaquestdsv_s1_outerboxTVShowsonDVD reports that the DVD boxed set of the first season of SEAQUEST is going to be loaded with deleted scenes…and will be out in December. Can season three, aka  SEAQUEST 2032, be far behind?

In other DVD news, on the heels of STRONG MEDICINE’s cancellation comes word that the first season boxed set is coming to stores on January 10. Perhaps this means that MISSING, aka 1-800-MISSING, will come to DVD some day soon. If people will spend $50 for STRONG MEDICINE, hell, they’ll buy anything.

And more details are emerging about the upcoming GUNSMOKE boxed sets, which are going to be packed with extras.

The Dangers of using Boilerplate Text In Your Writing

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My friend author Twist Phelan pointed me to a NY Times article about comic Chris Elliott who, in researching his new comic novel  SHROUD OF THE THWACKER  on the web, inadvertently mistook an online spoof for genuine history and now has to share his royalties with the man he inadvertently stole from.

To his satirical 19th-century mix of gas-powered wooden cellphones and imagined New York landmarks like the original Ray’s Pizzeria, Mr. Elliott adds a minor but
intriguing character named Boilerplate, a robot said to be developed by the inventor Archibald Campion in the late 1800’s. According to a deliciously detailed Internet site that tracks the robot’s history (bigredhair.com), Boilerplate was designed to replace humans in combat; it took part in Roosevelt’s campaign at San Juan Hill, joined the hunt for Pancho Villa, and fought in and, ultimately, disappeared during World War I.

But in fact, Boilerplate never was. It is the creation of Paul Guinan, an illustratorBp and graphic novelist in Portland, Ore., who with his wife, Anina Bennett, is the author of "Heartbreakers Meet Boilerplate," published in July by IDW Publishing.

In the acknowledgments section of his book, Mr. Elliott says that Boilerplate came to
his attention thanks to research performed by his brother, Bob Elliott Jr. "You
can’t make up something like ‘Boilerplate,’ " Mr. Elliott writes. "Well you can,
but it’s a lot easier when your brother just shows you a picture of
it."

Soon, Mr. Elliott heard from friends of Mr. Guinan, who said that he was considering legal
action for the "fairly blatant and quite unauthorized" lifting of a copyrighted
character.

Elliott and Guinan reached an amicable financial settlement without having to bring in lawyers. This should be a cautionary tale for anybody who does their research on the Internet. Not everything that shows up in a Google search is fact.

Okay, We Get The Point, You’re Brilliant

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I got this email over the weekend:

I have a GREAT idea for a movie. Yup that’s just about it. Brilliant idea, concept for a movie, the characters and interaction the hook, great suspenseful WOW outcome.Now what? How can I proceed to make some money with this idea. I’m not in the business, not a writer (should be able to tell that by
now). My brain works in a very strange way with brilliant ideas and concepts. Very detailed plots and sub plots that I know as a patron I would like to see on the screen, but I don’t know how to write….can you help?Or should I buy some Prozac and sleep my idea off?

I told him to take the pills or write the script. What would you tell this modest man who is  brimming over with "brilliant ideas and concepts"?

Harry Potter and the Curse of the Remainder Mark

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Although Scholastic sold nearly 11 million copies of HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE in the U.S., The Independant reports that the publisher printed too many copies…and is facing returns of  about 2.5 million unsold books.

The company ordered 10.8 million copies of Half-Blood Prince, the largest
print run in the history of publishing. "We wanted enough books out there so
every single fan could get a book when they wanted it," explained Scholastic’s
Kyle Good. "This was the number we came up with in collaboration with the
retailers."

Buoyed by the news that Half-Blood Prince had sold 6.9 million copies in the
first 24 hours, 1.9 million more than on the first day of the previous Potter
tome, Scholastic promptly ordered a further 2.7 million copies, bringing the
total to 13.5 million.

"This is a cause for celebration, not just for Scholastic but for book lovers
everywhere," chirped Lisa Holton, the president of Scholastic Children’s Books,
at the time.

Now, Scholastic’s chairman, Richard Robinson, whose father Robbie founded the
firm in 1920, admits bookshops have been left with 2.5 million unsold
copies.

Mr Robinson told book-trade analysts he had no plans for accepting large numbers
of returned books. He expects that the release in the US of the film Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire on 18 November will generate renewed interest in
the series and mop up the overrun.

Along Came a Ghostwriter

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Galleycat pointed me to this New York Times article about James Patterson’s money. In middle of the article is an interesting tid-bit about Patterson’s frequent use of ghostwriters and collaborators.

Although Mr. Patterson has been as good as any other top author at
marketing his own identity, he said his strength was in storytelling.
"I spin yarns," he said. "I love it. I have a folder with several
hundred ideas for stories. They just come and I’ll say: ‘There is a
story here.’ "

During a visit to Chapel Hill, N.C., for
example, he saw posters asking for help in finding missing women. That
led to the plot for "Kiss the Girls," a 1995 thriller about two
murderers who compete to kill girls. The book is in the Alex Cross
series, which is centered on the exploits of a black detective.

Mr.
Patterson said he often worked with co-authors because he believed that
he was more proficient at creating the story line than at executing it.

"I found that it is rare that you get a craftsman and an idea
person in the same body," Mr. Patterson said. "With me, I struggle like
crazy. I can do the craft at an acceptable level, but the ideas are
what I like." He said the co-authors received a flat fee and, most
often, credit on the book cover.

In novel writing, as in advertising, Mr. Patterson wants the final
say. Once there is a first draft of a book that has a co-author, "I may
ask the collaborator for a polish," he said.

"Then I do the remaining rewrites," he added – sometimes as many as seven.