#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
Lee Goldberg Scottish crime novelist Quintin Jardine says he owes his career to a bad
TV novelization that he read…
I didn’t like anything about the book: the characters didn’t work on the page
as they had on screen; the plot seemed ropey; and the ending, when I got there,
struck me as contrived.When I was done, I chucked it across the terrace, remarking aloud, "I could
do better myself." To this my wife replied, "Time you did, then." Coming from
her, that was an instruction.
Ever wonder how that "Big Mouth Billy Bass: The Singing Fish" works? Now the mystery is solved. Here’s an interesting fact. It’s also how David Hasselhoff works.
The fat WGA election packet arrived in the mail yesterday. I haven’t opened it yet. I’m dreading going through all the election material and reading all the statements. I haven’t made up my mind yet how to vote. This one isn’t easy. My friend Mark Evanier does a great job summing up the election over on his terrific blog.
If you’re not a WGA member, you’re missing out on the fun of seeing a
batch of articulate, dedicated people who essentially agree on almost
all the key issues waging a bloody battle against one another. Every
one of them is in favor of strengthening the guild, increasing
minimums, protecting and rebuilding the health insurance and pension
funds, extending WGA jurisdiction to non-covered areas like animation
and reality programming, etc. Still, in the guild, we never like to let
the fact that we’re all on the same side keep us from having a nice,
divisive fight……To the extent there is a difference of issues between the teams, it’s
that the "New WGA" crew wants to drastically increase the amount of
money the WGA spends on organizing efforts, getting non-guild TV shows
and movies under the guild umbrella, along with new technologies. The
"Common Sense" candidates endorse the goal but not the strategy,
arguing that the "New WGA" guys are looking at a very expensive
organizing model that might work for non-creative unions but won’t work
for writers.
Like Mark, I’m unlikely to vote for one of the slates but will pick individual candidates I agree with (he calls it the "Chinese Food" approach).
Here’s a scam that only the most gullible aspiring author would fall for…
The print-on-demand vanity press Author House has launched a program with bookselling group Joseph-Beth Booksellers on "publishing packages"
that include "guaranteed bookshelf placement" of five copies in a single
Josepth-Beth store and an in-store book signing event (which is rather inconvenient if you live on the West Coast, since the Joseph-Beth stores are in the East).
For the priviledge of having a mere five books in just one store, and providing/buying the copies that will be sold at the booksigning, suckers have to spend an additional $200 on top of the $699 Author House usually charges to publish a book.
Wow. What a great opportunity… to throw away your money.
Whoever signs up for this "publishing package" is a dim-wit who deserves to be taken for every last penny he has.
I just this minute finished the first draft of MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII. It’s about 70,000 words. I’m printing out the manuscript now so that tomorrow I can begin my pencil-edit and rewriting. Coincidentally, today the galley proofs of MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE arrived on my doorstep for me to review. It seems fitting, somehow, that the timing worked out that way.
I don’t know what it is about Chicago, but the Windy City sure is kind to us Goldbergs. First, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times gave my book DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE great reviews. Now TimeOut Chicago is raving about my brother Tod Goldberg’s short story collection SIMPLIFY:
[Tod] Goldberg’s work is an eclectic collection of realist and surrealist storytelling, from a brother’s difficult return from the first Gulf War to a kid who turns invisible after witnessing his father’s infidelity. The overheated suburbs of southern California and the crazed, sun-scorched roads through the outlying deserts are the perfect settings for Goldberg’s characters. In a story that exemplifies his skill for blending the unreal with the everyday, a dyslexic kid creates his own language as a way to deal with life’s stresses. As he witnesses a brutal act of violence against a fellow student and his careerist father becomes more and more aloof after a move to L.A., the kid fills binders and binders with his personal alphabet, a secret distress code. It’s a startling and shuddersome story, with the kind of atmospheric tension we’ve come to expect from the new wave of Japanese horror movies.
There’s some good screenwriting advice over at The Blank Page:
Okay, this is more of a pet peeve of mine, but I see it in scripts all the time. It comes from writers who think they have made a clever pun or (even worse) double entendre, and then, not trusting that the reader is getting the joke, they have to explain it in the next line of action-description. For example, you might see this:
WALTER
Hey, Jim, can you pass me the corn?JIM
Of course I’ll lend you my ears.Jim laughs at his little Shakespeare joke.
This reminded me of an experience we had years ago when Roger Corman hired us to write and produce a TV series version of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Roger sold the pitch to the then-fledgling USA Network. When we wrote the pilot script, the inept USA exec asked us to underline the jokes and italicize any clever social commentary. This really pissed Roger off (us, too, but he was the lion in the room). Roger told her that if we had to explain what the jokes were then it would kill the jokes. But the executive argued that she really wanted to be sure she caught the jokes and might miss them if they weren’t clearly marked. After this horrible experience, Roger ran screaming from TV for the next decade…
Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat,
but Goldberg (the Diagnosis Murder series) succeeds with this engaging PI novel,
the first of a new series. Harvey Mapes, an overeducated security guard for a
Southern California gated community, is pulled out of his rut when a wealthy
resident hires him to tail his wife. Genre readers won’t be surprised that this
simple assignment turns more complicated, but those who like their mean streets
settings to be coupled with a twisty solution will enjoy the surprise ending.
While Mapes’s rampant sexual appetite may not be for everyone’s taste, readers
who devoured Block’s brilliant Chip Harrison mystery picaresques (which doubled
as affectionate pastiches of Nero Wolfe) will find Mapes a worthy (if slightly
more mature) successor to Harrison and clamor for more. Agent, Gina Maccoby.
(Oct.)
Dropping in at one of the big chain bookstores to sign stock is often a humbling and humiliating experience, even for bestselling authors like Tess Gerritsen.
"Whether you’re just starting out, or you’re already a NYT bestselling
writer, any delusions of grandeur you may harbor will quickly be
squashed by a few sobering bookstore visits…"
Her wonderful blog post today about her experiences signing stock in Honolulu is funny, horrifying and all-too-familiar.
Author Joe Konrath, the champion of stock signing, has inspired me to drop in on bookstores wherever I go and sign the stock of DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels. This weekend, I was up in Seattle. The tally: Eight stores visited, 53 books signed.