Books

Joel Goldsmith

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Joel_goldsmith_01I'm deeply saddened to learn that composer Joel Goldsmith died earlier this week after a long battle with cancer. I was fortunate to work closely with Joel on two series — Diagnosis Murder and Martial Law.  

Bill Rabkin and I were big fans of his work, so when we took over Diagnosis Murder in the late 90s, we brought him in to reorchestrate the theme and revamp the score so the series no longer sounded like it was produced in 1964.  He did such a great job for us that when we were later hired to take over Martial Law, we brought him in to create a new opening title theme to replace the original Mike Post theme (which our star Sammo Hung loathed) and score the first episode to set the musical sound for our show.  He alternated scoring duties after that with John Keane and Corey Lerios & John DeAndrea. 

He was easy-going,  extremely creative, and one of the friendliest people I've met in the business. I always looked forward to our spotting sessions and knew he'd give us  cues that not only delivered what we needed, but would add levels to the action, comedy or character beats that weren't in the scenes before.

I'm a big TV theme nut, and we spent lots of time talking about our favorites. Naturally, many of mine — like Police Story and Barnaby Jones – were done by his father, Jerry Goldsmith. It couldn't have been easy for Joel to to follow in his father's considerable musical shadow….and I don't think he ever got the acclaim that he deserved. 

Joel and I lost touch with one another in the years since and I regret that. 

Here's Joel's reorchestration of the Diagnosis Murder theme….and his theme for Martial Law.

Home Again

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IMG_1280I just returned from a week away, a few days in Bethesda to attend Malice Domestic, and then a quick side trip down to Florida on some business (which I hope to be able to tell you about soon, but top secret for now).

I had an absolutely wonderful time at Malice, where I met some great people and received the Poirot Award which, as you can see from the photo, I guess I am supposed to use to serve tea to Jan Burke, their Guest of Honor. I finally met online friends Debbi Mack and Bill Peschel face-to-face and got to catch up with folks like Penguin/Putnam editors Sandra Harding and Ellen Edwards, and authors like Charlaine Harris (pictured with me on the right), Elaine Viets, Hank Phillippe Ryan, Parnell Hall, Dana Cameron, Elizabeth Peters, Christina York, Sharan Newman, Simon Brett, Chris Grabenstein, and Rhys Bowen.

Rhys was supposed to interview me on stage but tripped and cracked her hip on the first night. Some people will do anything to get out of being on stage with me.  I am pleased to report that Rhys was in her usual good humor despite her injury and, although she had to return home right away, she is recuperating well. She also won an Agatha Award, which I hope too some of the sting out of her injury.  Hank Phillippe Ryan took over for Rhys as my interrogator and we had a grand time.  IMG_1281

One of the highlights of Malice for me was participating with Simon Brett, Jan Burke, and Dana Cameron on Verena Rose's panel about the unusual fan mail we'd received. Simon and Jan read some letters that had the audience, and the panel, roaring with laughter (both pieces of mail, by the way, involved sexual fantasies, a very uncozy subject for Malice!).

On another panel I was on, a reader stood up and said to Halle Ephron: "Your book put me to sleep but I woke up to finish it."

Now there's a great compliment 🙂

And only at Malice would I have overheard snippets like this from authors at other tables as I ate at the Daily Grill on the first night: 

"Shes a great cover artist for animals but she is terrible with food." 

"I can use my own name when I write books about cats or cakes, but not for witchcraft."

"I have three names," another author added. "But I'm thinking of using a fourth for my pottery series."

And I heard another author lamenting that her vintage clothing ghost mystery came out at the same time as another author's vintage clothing ghost mystery, thus undercutting her sales. I have to admit that one surprised me. I  would have thought you could safely write a vintage clothing ghost mystery without worrying about another one being out there…or being published the same month as yours!

I took a few hours off to be a tourist, visiting the usual DC landmarks and the Spy Museum, and bought a few books at Politics and Prose, including one signed by Bill Clinton which, to be honest, I got just for the signature.  

My trip to Florida was great, too. While I did work in Orlando on SeaQuest, I was mostly on set so I still feel like I've never actually spent any time in Florida. And even that was way back in 1995, so it was nice to have a chance to reacquaint myself with the the state. I was able to spend lots of time with an old friend and do a little sight-seeing, too. I loved the beaches and the weather…and was stunned by the opulence and size of the waterfront homes that I saw. There's some astonishing wealth down there.  

Now that I am back, I am hard at work on my last MONK book, the DEAD MAN series, and getting geared up for the promotion of KING CITY, which launches in a few weeks. 

 

Scudder Fans Rejoice!

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 My friend Mzi.myaxpeld.225x225-75Lawrence Block has taken three of his best Matthew Scudder books — A Long Line of Dead Men,  A Stab in the Dark, and A Walk Among the Tombstones – and brought them back as $4.99 ebooks and republished them in very slick, reasonably-priced trade paperback editions. The digital editions are available from Amazon, B&N and the iBookstore, but you can also get the paperbacks directly from Block's website …and he'll even sign'em for you, too!

The Dr. Kildare Scrapbook

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51oDYPLXVPL._SS500_If you're hoping to learn anything about the history, development, writing, or production of  Dr. Kildare in radio and television, or simply want an in depth, detailed episode guide, you are going to be sorely disappointed by the DR. KILDARE SCRAPBOOK.  This isn't a book. It's barely more than a brochure. At best, it's a lengthy article…and yet it still lacks any substance. This exceedingly thin (100 pages, including the index) paperback is nothing more than a bare bones episode guide…and even on that level, the summaries are so sparse and devoid of details that it's a major failure. It's also very badly written. For example, here's the first line of chapter one:

As part of its bringing some of its most famous movie series to radio, MGM put the team of Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore from the Dr. Kildare  movies back together for a radio series called The Story of Dr. Kildare.

It only gets worse, and less informative, from there. 

This "book" might have worked as an appendix to an actual book about Dr. Kildare on radio and television, but as a standalone reference work, it's terrible. I am a huge admirer of Bear Manor Media, the company that published this book…so I am not only surprised that that they took this poorly executed, superficial project on, but that they had the chutzpah to charge $14.95 for it in print and $9.99 for the digital edition. Don't waste your money on this one.

In Pursuit of Spenser

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In-pursuit-of-spenserToo many of my good friends contributed to In Pursuit of Spenser, a collection of essays about Robert B. Parker and his writing,  for me to be unbiased or, conversely,  too critical in my review. 

The line-up of authors that editor Otto Penzler assembled for the book includes Loren D. Estleman, Parnell Hall, Brendan DuBois, Gary Phillips, Lawrence Block, Dennis Lehane, Max Allan Collins, SJ Rozan, Jeremiah Healy, Ed Gorman, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Spenser's new author, Ace Atkins.

I'll just say that some of the essays are much stronger than others and don't quite jell as a whole.  There's a great, indepth book to be written about Parker and his work and this isn't quite it. For the most part, this book just skims the surface, but I get the sense that's exactly what Penzler was going for. Something as breezy and light as Parker's fiction. 

At times, the book reads more like an extended memorial, what friends and admirers might have stood up at the podium to say at Parker's service, had they been given the chance. And it's those essays in particular, the more personal ones from Lehane and Block, that are the most entertaining and revealing.  Block obviously admired Parker's craftmanship but also didn't pull any punches. You can read his chapter here.  

First Responders

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FirstResponders_cov-500x500I'm a big sucker for books about TV series, especially encyclopedic works on particular genres (like Wes Britton's The Encyclopedia of TV Spies, etc.) so I would have grabbed Richard Yokley's The First Responders of Television,  which covers series about firefighters, medics, and lifeguards, even if Bear Manor Media hadn't been sent me a review copy.  And before I tell you what I think of it, you should know that Yokley is a frequent commenter on this blog and that I played a small role in getting his book published.

First Responders is a massive and ambitious undertaking, covering every U.S. TV series, unsold pilot, reality show, dcumentary and TV movie about first responders (mostly firefighters, but also lifeguards, medics, forest rangers,highway patrolmen, etc), produced from the 1950s to early 2011. If that wasn't enough, the book also covers major and minor TV series about first responders produced all over the world and has appendices on such things as firehouses on television, rescue vehicles on TV, and on technical advisors.

Yokley is primarily interested in  how authentic the shows were, particularly the vehicles, equipment, and locations they used, and other details relating to how the rescues and fires were depicted. It's fascinating stuff, but for me, I would have appreciated knowing a lot more about the shows creatively,  how they were developed and written, and how they ultimately went right or wrong. So, for me, the book was a little unsatisfying…but even so, I loved it. It's truly a great TV book. The depth of Yokley's research, his personal knowledge of the rescue field, and his appreciation of first responders (fire fighters in particular) comes through on every page. This is a major work of television scholarship, something Bear Manor Media specializes in publishing, and is a must-have for any television reference library. 

Everything is Connected

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Carnival of Death Cover

I've got some good news: Amazon has ordered 12 more books in the DEAD MAN series…in digital, print and audio…on top of the 12 that they ordered back in September. That will keep the monthly series of original novellas going into 2013 (book #9, CARNIVAL OF DEATH, comes out in a few weeks).  

The renewal comes just as DEAD MAN VOLUME 1, a digital and print compilation of the first three DEAD MAN tales, and the audio edition are released.

And, even more amazing, the news came almost to the day that Bill Rabkin and I self-published FACE OF EVIL, the first DEAD MAN tale, one year ago this month. Last February, I had the silly fantasy that Amazon would see the potential of the series and become our publisher…little did I know how quickly that dream would come true.

But I owe that to a series of events that began in an "Introduction To  TV Writing" class I was teaching at UCLA back in 2007. One of my students was a guy named Mike Daniels. The goal of the class was for students to leave with a solid outline that they could use to write their first spec script in the "Introduction to Screenwriting" class. But it was clear to me that Mike was far too talented to be wasting his time writing an outline…he should go to script now. So asked I him to continue participating in class, but to start writing  the script and share his pages with me on the side. He did.

By the end of the term, he'd turned out a brilliant RESCUE ME spec…and, if memory serves, a spec pilot script as well. At the end of that last class, I told him he was as good, if not better, than most TV writers that I knew and to stop wasting his time taking classes…he was ready to conquer the TV biz.

And he did.  

Within a year, he was on staff of ONE TREE HILL. Today, he's married to one of the actresses from the show and a producer on SONS OF ANARCHY. 

Dead Man Ring of Knives

 

What does all of this have to do with THE DEAD MAN?

Not long after our class was over, Mike asked me if I'd read an unpublished novel that his brother James had written.  James was a lawyer, but on the side he also narrated books for Brilliance Audio. I agreed, with more than a little hesitation, to read the book. Much to my surprise, I really liked the book…it was clear he had enormous talent…but the story needed a lot of work. I suggested some revisions to the opening chapters, which James made, and then referred the book to my agent. She saw the potential too and took him on…and although she wasn't able to sell the book, I never forgot it or how talented he was. When the DEAD MAN came along, I asked him if he wanted to write one. He did…and the book turned out to be RING OF KNIVES, the second in our series.

When RING OF KNIVES came out, James told all of his friends at Brilliance Audio about the book…and when they read it, they thought that it, and the other books in the series,  would make great audiobooks.

Since Brilliance is owned  by Amazon, word about their interest in the series soon filtered up to the editors at Amazon Encore and Thomas & Mercer…who called me about the print rights. 

And you know how the rest of the story goes…

But the capper is that James, and his brother Luke, are narrating the audiobooks (James narrates his books, Luke narrates all of the others). Is that just  too perfect?

Anyway, this all goes to show how everything is connected…and that you have no idea how something you do today could pay off in unexpected, unimagined ways years from now.

 

Our FAVORITE KILLS

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Favorite Kills

We're back.

We hope you're sitting down, and that you've finally caught your breath from Top Suspense, our first bestselling anthology. You're about to take another screaming thrill ride with twelve master storytellers. Each Top Suspense Group author is an award winning, highly acclaimed pro whose compelling and unforgettable tales have been published all over the world—and, in some cases, have even become blockbuster movies and TV shows.

For Favorite Kills we've collected our very best short stories. All major prize-winning tales and personal favorites, each one a knock-out punch of suspense.

So hold on tight my friend, or better yet, tie yourself down. You're in for another breathtaking wild ride of seething sex and unexpected twists, dark humor, and certain death. And when it's all over, and you're sitting there spent and satisfied, soaked in a flop sweat of terror and exhilaration, we're gonna be right there to bring you even more.

The authors in Top Suspense are… Harry Shannon, Bill Crider, Vicki Hendricks, Naomi Hirahara, Stephen Gallagher, Max Allan Collins, Paul Levine, Libby Hellmann, Dave Zeltserman, Lee Goldberg, Joel Goldman, and Ed Gorman

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