Books

Good Stuff

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I read Walter Kirn’s novel UP IN THE AIR not too long ago and he had some lines of description that I wish I wrote… lines that made me want start writing something, anything, just to be writing. Here are a few:  

Two months ago she teased me into bed, then put on a showy, marathon performance that struck me as rehearsed, even researched […] Now and then I’d catch her in the middle of a particularly far-fetched pose and see that it wasn’t appetite that drove her but some idea, some odd erotic theory.

[…] in a suburb that might have been squeezed from a tube.

Old tailors love me. They tell me I remind them of men from forty years ago.

[…]becoming one of those women who need make-up not to highlight their features but to create them.

My call is passed from computer to computer and then to a person who only sounds like one.

She looks like a girl in her twenties who’s been aged by an amateur movie makeup artist using spirit gum for wrinkles and sprinkled baby powder to gray her hair.

His face is soap opera handsome. Full lips. Sleek forehead. A scar on his chin to remind you he’s male.

I manage to be brotherly to her merely by sitting nearby and shedding heat.

He’s reading Dean Koontz with a squinting intensity that Koontz just doesn’t call for and must be fake.

Mr. Monk and and the Epinion

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MM_in_Trouble.revised  Mark Baker at epinion has given MR. MONK IN TROUBLE a thumbs-up. He says, in part:

I often found myself laughing out loud or at least chuckling and smiling as I went through the book. But it isn't all laughs. Mr. Goldberg always does a great job with these characters, and he allows us several moments that are very touching and even enlightening about them. They continue to be real people very recognizable to fans of the TV show.

[…]I have enjoyed these books so much, I don't completely feel like I've lost Monk yet.

Thanks, Mark!

Kindle Virtual Stocking Stuffers

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51ZgYDCwYlL._SS500_  You've bought a Kindle as a Christmas present for that special someone. Now all you need are some good, cheap books to take it for a "test read." Look no further, my friend. My 2004 novel  THE WALK is now available in a $1.99 Kindle edition. Here's the dust jacket copy:

It's one minute after the Big One.  Marty Slack, a TV network executive, crawls out from under his Mercedes, parked outside what once was a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, the location for a new TV show. Downtown LA is in ruins. The sky is thick with black smoke. His cell phone is dead. The freeways are rubble. The airport is demolished. Buildings lay across streets like fallen trees. It will be days before help can arrive.

Marty has been expecting this day all his life. He's prepared. In his car are a pair of sturdy walking shoes and a backpack of food, water, and supplies. He knows there is only one thing he can do … that he must do: get home to his wife Beth, go back to their gated community on the far edge of the San Fernando Valley.

All he has to do is walk. But he will quickly learn that it's not that easy. His dangerous, unpredictable journey home will take him through the different worlds of what was once Los Angeles. Wildfires rage out of control. Flood waters burst through collapsed dams. Natural gas explosions consume neighborhoods. Sinkholes swallow entire buildings. After-shocks rip apart the ground. Looters rampage through the streets.

There's no power. No running water. No order.

Marty Slack thinks he's prepared. He's wrong. Nothing can prepare him for this ordeal, a quest for his family and for his soul, a journey that will test the limits of his endurance and his humanity, a trek from the man he was to the man he can be … if he can survive The Walk. 

"Harrowing and funny…"
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 

"Lee Goldberg's hard-to-classify but not-be-missed The Walk, set in the aftermath of a major Los Angeles earthquake, pokes fun at the TV industry in the midst of disaster…"—Jon Breen, The Year In Mystery and Crime Fiction, 2004  

There are also a bunch of my previously out-of-print novels available now on the Kindle, including MY GUN HAS BULLETS, BEYOND THE BEYOND,  and my very first book .357 VIGILANTE, all priced at $1.99.

The Girl Who Played with Cliches

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I hated THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. I thought it was a boring, cliche-ridden, bloated mess. The Lisbeth Salander character was, by far, the best thing about it…unfortunately,  the story centered primarily on Michael Blomkvist, a thinly disguised, idealized version of the author himself and the magazine he founded. It's an awful book.

Girl-who-played-with-fire  The only reason I read the sequel, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, is because so many people told me it was a much better book than TATTOO…and that it would make me understand the phenomenon. To some degree, they are right. The first third of the book is centered on Salander and her adventures abroad and back in Sweden…which actually are a lot of fun to read, if you can get past all the cliches (more on that in a minute). Salander is a great character that's stuck, unfortunately,  in two lousy novels.

The instant Michael Blomkvist returns, and even before he takes the spotlight, the book becomes overwhelmed with dull exposition (which is repeated endlessly, telling you the same facts over and over and over again), ridiculous coincidences, and pointless scenes that neither move the story forward nor reveal character. The characters become so thin that calling them "cardboard" would be giving them more substance and depth than they actually have. As if this wasn't punishment enough for the reader, the cliche-count radically increases as the book slogs on until it seems like there's one in every paragraph. Here are just a few of them:

"Nutty as a fruitcake"

"Go jump in a lake."

"he's pulling my leg."

"too many irons in the fire."

"out like a light."

"keep it under our hats."

"like a hot potato."

"you're clutching at straws."

"afraid he'd spill the beans."

"the penny dropped." 

"she's a loose cannon."

"cool as a cucumber."

"fight tooth and nail."

"kept her nose clean."

"fly in the ointment"

And so it goes, on and on, one dusty old cliche after another. By far the most used cliche in the book is "Hung out to dry/hang out to dry." It was used a dozen times before I gave up counting. I doubt these are Swedish cliches, so I blame the translator for being a lazy hack…and his editor for not doing his job.

This is a truly terrible book on just about every level. That said, it's marginally better than TATTOO by virtue of the first third.

The Ladies Room

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Smallcover  My super-talented and creative sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, authors of the wildly acclaimed, bestselling VISUAL CHRONICLES and JOURNAL REVOLUTION, have just published a new art book, which is sure to please their droves of devoted fans, who seem to idolize "the seesters" (sadly, the brothers, Tod and myself, have no such following). 

The book is called Meeting In The Ladies Room: Reflections Of Women In A Room Of Their Own and its a collaboration of photos and essays by a wide variety of creative women, including Rosie O'Donnell, Jann Arden, Amanda Palmer, Jen Foser and SHeDAISY. Here's the scoop:

What do you see when you look in the mirror?
What do you think about when you are alone?
What's the best ladies room you've ever been in?
Whether you are an idolized celebrity or a struggling single mother, the ladies room is where you create your make believe, and where you face your reality. Join 68 brave women from around the world for an empowering look in the mirror and a meeting in the ladies room.

My sisters' fearless, humorous, no-rules approach to life and art has been featured on THE VIEW, in  magazines and newspapers nationwide, in other people's art books, and at every single one of our family gatherings. They don't go anywhere without their cameras around their necks…not even to go take a pee, as this gorgeous and remarkable book proves. Sisters2  

The publisher is offering a special $10 discount off the cover price until December 31st. To get the savings, enter the code below at check-out.

Orders from the US (using US $):   GREATGIFT
Orders from UK (using UK £):   GREATGIFT2
Orders from EU (using EU €):   GREATGIFT3
Orders from AU (using AUD $):   GREATGIFT4

Be sure to check out the book preview!

Preying on Dreams

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Author Laura Lippman, who will be MWA president next year, commented on her blog about the reaction among self-published authors to MWA's decision. She wrote:

As the incoming MWA president, I have no voting rights, no role in policy-making. I am the happiest little figurehead you ever did see. But I served two terms on the board and I know how much work board members put into the organization. I also feel genuinely sad that so many self-published writers feel slighted by MWA's policies.No, it's not about merit. It's about professionalism. And while being paid for one's work isn't the only way to be professional, it's an awfully good way to start.

[…]I can't persuade people that MWA's policies are not the equivalent of censorship, that MWA isn't trying to prevent anyone from publishing, much less trying to block their right to self-expression. I'm not sure I can even persuade folks inclined to think differently that self-publishing is not synonymous with vanity publishing. No matter what I say, there are going to be some self-published writers — differently published? — who insist that I belong to MWA because I'm scared of a true free market, in which I would have to compete with all writers, not just those chosen by the — take your pick of adjectives — insular, out-of-touch, arrogant mainstream publishing industry.

This much I can say: MWA didn't change the game. Harlequin did. All the organization did was apply its existing policies to Harlequin's changing business model. And if you can't see how Harlequin's pay-to-publish program is designed to prey on writers and their dreams — well, then I'm not really sure that you're cynical enough to write crime fiction.

Mr. Monk and the Strong Start

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MM_in_Trouble.revised The hardcover of MR. MONK IN TROUBLE and the paperback of MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP were both off to very strong starts in sales last week. TROUBLE hit #9 on the Barnes & Noble mystery hardcover list and #35 on the Borders hardcover bestseller list. Meanwhile, DIRTY COP hit #38 on Borders mass market mystery bestseller list,  #3 on the B&N mystery mass market list, and  #31 on B&N's overall mass market bestseller list. Thank you so much, Monk fans!

Yes, Standards Exist

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Author Sandra Ruttan has blogged at length on numerous sites about her problems with the MWA taking an ethical stand against Harlequin's business practices. She writes, in part:

However, in all of this, do you notice what isn’t discussed? What is and is not eligible is determined by guidelines involving advances and ethical treatment of authors.
Nobody’s talking about the caliber of writing, the quality of the books.

She's absolutely right. Because no professional writing or performing organizations bases their membership on subjective judgments on the quality of a person’s work. The MWA, SFWA, RWA, Horror Writers Association, Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild, Authors Guild, etc. all use a set of objective criteria to determine who qualifies for membership and which companies qualify as approved (or, in the case of WGA, SAG, DGA, as signatories). The only time they use quality of the work as criteria is in bestowing their awards…all of which are for work produced, published or performed by individuals and organizations that met their criteria.  

Her beef, and one echoed by many self-published authors (which she is not, btw),  seems to be that professional organizations have professional standards and not everyone can meet them. That’s true. It’s also true of professional organizations in every other field. She went on to say, in the comments to her initial posts:

It’s the authors who had no part whatsoever in this business decision, who a week ago were “legitimately” published who are now no longer with an approved publisher, when not one single thing about the writing, contracting, editing and production of their book has changed that I’m thinking about.

Those authors are unaffected. They remain active members and their books are eligible for Edgar consideration. Only those novels contracted with Harlequin after Dec. 2 are affected by the decision. 

If Sandra is truly concerned about the welfare of authors, I would hope that she would be as troubled as MWA, RWA, SFWA, and HWA are by the unethical conflict of interest inherent in the integration of Harlequin’s traditional publishing program and their pay-to-publish venture.

Sandra casually dismisses ethical concerns as irrelevant and something that the MWA, SFWA, RWA and HWA shouldn't be bothering with. I think she's wrong.

It’s my belief that the strong stand taken by these organizations will be a wake-up call to other publishers considering pay-to-publish ventures to avoid unethical conflicts-of-interest and to keep their traditional and pay-to-publish operations separate (as Random House did with Xlibris). If publishers maintain this separation, it will be far less likely that writers will be taken advantage of…and will go into pay-to-publish agreements with a more accurate view of what they are getting for their money. In the end, isn’t that good for everybody?

Sandra goes on to say that she feels that the quality of the books should be the one and only standard across the board.

And when it comes to awards, damn straight the number one concern should be quality of the books, not who published them.

Let’s take that thought one step further. Not every movie that's produced is eligible for an Oscar. There are very strict rules regarding which films qualify for consideration and which don’t (for instance, direct-to-DVD movies do not qualify, even if they are better than anything in the theatres). Should all movies, regardless of who makes them, where they are screened, or any other consideration, be eligible for an Oscar?

The same is true of Emmy awards. There are very strict rules about eligibility there, too. Should everything shown on a television screen, regardless of whether it was on a major broadcast network or not, be eligible for an Emmy?

The WGA awards are only open to scripts written under WGA contract. Does she believe those awards should be open to anybody who has written a produced script for anybody?

I'm sure you can see what I am getting at. The MWA is not alone. Professional organizations have professional standards…for membership, for approved auspices, and for their awards. That’s the way it is.

As if Harlequin Wasn’t In Enough Trouble

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Pardon  Harlequin seems to be tripping over itself lately with one public relations blunder after another. First, they start up a vanity press program and use the editors of their traditional publishing imprints to recommend it to all their rejected authors. As if that wasn't bad enough, they've just re-released a series of vintage pulp paperbacks from their archives…but edited out anything they thought might be too sexist, racist, or politically incorrect for a contemporary audience.  The editor of the project, Marsha Zinberg, says:

Remember, our intention was to publish the stories in their original form. But once we immersed ourselves in the text, our eyes grew wide. Our jaws dropped. Social behavior—such as hitting a woman—that would be considered totally unacceptable now was quite common sixty years ago. Scenes of near rape would not sit well with a contemporary audience, we were quite convinced. We therefore decided to make small adjustments to the text, only in cases where we felt scenes or phrases would be offensive to a 2009 readership.

Naturally, this idiotic censorship hasn't gone over well, especially considering how sexually explicit, violent and sexist Harlequin titles can be nowadays. Vintage paperback collector Steve Lewis, a well-known historian of old pulps, was justifiably outraged. He wrote:

This business of sheltering our eyes from things you think might offend us now is absolute nonsense. Who do you think we are, a bunch of weak-kneed sissies? Even if it makes us uneasy every once in a while to look at our past, history IS history, and it’s ridiculous to try to cover it up.
Please do us a favor, and keep publishing your X-rated romance novels, and leave the mystery and noir genres well enough alone. You say you’re delighted to have been able to reprint these books. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves, trampling on the work of others, especially when (as far as I can tell) it’s been done without their permission.

Another collector of vintage paperbacks wrote:

Are these slap-happy bitches kidding? So I suppose it might be fine to edit out, or even re-shoot, scenes of guys smackin’ dames and dolls in The Big Sleep or a Robert Mitchum classic? How about The Big Valley, that S/M TV western?
Does this also include spanking? Do no Harlequin romances contain rough sex where women like to be slapped during a hard bang, or have rape fantasies in the dark hearrt of the urban sprawl?

Yet another collector wrote:

Had Harlequin finally decided not to reprint material it deemed offensive, I wouldn't have minded – more adventurous publishers might have taken the relay and it was just fine.
But this is not what Harlequin chose to do, instead they decided to butcher books from another era to make them palatable to modern readers deemed too stupid or too sensitive to tackle "hot stuff" from the past.

Why bother reprinting vintage paperbacks if you are going to butcher them first? Isn't the charm, popular appeal, and historical significance of the books that they do reflect that grammar, writing styles, and social attitudes of a different time? Did they really think that censoring the books would be a selling point? Oh, wait, I get it.. they were hoping to tap that vast, under-served audience that has been waiting for somebody to publish censored, vintage paperbacks.

Between the vanity press venture and this censored book line, I have to wonder… is Harlequin truly oblivious about why people object to censorship and unethical conflicts-of-interest? Or are they fully aware of the the issues… and just don't care?

“Mr. Monk In Trouble” in Bookstores Today

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MM in Trouble.revised  My ninth original "Monk" novel, MR. MONK IN TROUBLE, is arriving in hardcover in bookstores everywhere today. This book was especially fun for me to write. It gave me a chance to dabble in westerns, something I've always enjoyed reading but, until now, had never tried writing before. The story in MR. MONK IN TROUBLE bounces between the 1850s and present-day, between Monk's ancestor Artemis Monk (an assayer in a California Gold Rush town) and the Adrian Monk that we know and love.

I did a lot more research than I usually do for a Monk book. I took a week-long road trip through some California gold rush towns, took a bunch of pictures, then read a lot of books on the Gold Rush and frontier life in general, and mining techniques in specific. Once I got down to the actual writing, I imposed on the kindness of novelist Richard Wheeler, who has written some of the best westerns ever, to read some early drafts of the western sections to make sure that I wasn't embarrassing myself. I am tremendously flattered that he enjoyed the final result. He left this comment on my blog the other day:

I read Mr. Monk in Trouble virtually nonstop and enjoyed every page. Lee Goldberg knows that the richest humor veers close to pathos, and that is one reason the novel succeeds so well. Who but Monk would hand out wet wipes to Trick-or-Treaters? Natalie is greatly put-upon by her boss, but responds with stoicism, humor–and love. Some of the fun here is that the book takes us into the past, where Monk's ancestor Artemis is an assayer in a mining district and deals with goldrush scalawags and swindlers with the usual Monkian genius. This is much more than entertainment

I am so glad that he liked it and I hope that you will, too. And if you missed MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP when it came out last summer, now you can grab the paperback. Here's what some of the reviewers had to say…Monk and the Dirty Cop  

"After seven previous tie-in novels, it's safe (if not fairy obvious) to say that nobody knows the world of obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk better than novelist Lee Goldberg. But that doesn't mean he's become lazy or complacent. As MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP shows Goldberg is willing to take chances with the firmly established characters, and is still able to provide plenty of laughs and well-crafted entertainment." Alan Cranis, Bookgasm

"Sharp character comedy combined with ingenious and fairly-clued puzzle-spinning. […]Don't miss Lt. Disher's hilariously non-sensical variation on Sherlock Holmes' 'eliminate the impossible' dictum."
—Jon Breen, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

I've enjoyed all the Monk novels. Monk is my all-time favorite comic detective and Lee Goldberg has honored him by writing some of the finest tie-novels ever conceived. These have a richness of incident and backstory and place that give them real depth. And for me MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP is the best one yet."
—Ed Gorman