Books

Two Jews in Kentucky

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MONK writer/producer/director David Breckman and I arrived in Owensboro, Kentucky today for the International Mystery Writers Festival. Everybody has treated us wonderfully but I've only been here a few hours and already have an anecdote to share (or, as David said afterward, "as it was happening, I knew I was living an anecdote that I would be telling for years."). After a screening of MONK clips on a giant, outdoor screen, a fan came up to us with his family and asked us to signed his set of MONK dvds.

"I just knew Monk was written by Jews," the fan said.

"Excuse me?" David said.

"Breckman, Goldberg, you're Jews," he said. "Monk is so Jewish.  Jews write the best stuff in Hollywood.  All the greatest entertainment comes  from Jews. Star Trek was created by a Jew.  We just love what you Jews do."

The man obviously meant well and to compliment our work, and he was nervous, so we didn't take offense. David signed the box:  David Breckman, a grateful Jew.

David is a super busy Jew these days.  In addition to his MONK works, he's also got pilots at USA and NBC. He'll also be writing, casting,  shooting and screening a ten minute  mystery between now and Sunday. It will be done entirely with local actors and aspiring film-makers, so it should be a lot of fun. Jews are so talented.

Me on Me

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The second part of Lori Ham's interview with me is now up on her No Name Cafe site. Here's an excerpt:

Café: What do you like best and which is harder — writing novels or TV? 

Lee: They are entirely different experiences. Television is very much a group effort and what you are writing is a blueprint that lots of other people are going to use as the basis for their creative work, whether it’s the actor, the director, the production designer. And when you write a script it’s not locked in stone. It’s going to change. It’s going to change because everybody has notes. It’s going to change because production concerns force rewrites. It’s going to change because of actors and directors. 

A book is entirely my own and unaffected by production concerns or actors. I’m the actors, the director, the production designer […] It’s not a blueprint. It is the finished product and it won’t change much once I am done with it. It’s not a group effort — I plot it myself and I write it by myself. It’s entirely in my head and I live it for months. Creatively speaking, there’s a big difference between writing prose and writing a script. In a book, you are seducing the reader. You are bringing them into your imagination and holding them there for as long as they’re reading the book. You construct everything. You construct the sets, the wardrobe, the world. You’re God. You can even read a character’s thoughts. 

.357 Vigilante Returns….

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Vigilante2I admit it…I’ve got the Kindle fever…and I’ve got it bad. I don’t mean reading books on the Kindle, I mean creating Kindle editions of my out-of-print books. The idea of making easy money from stuff that was buried in boxes in my garage is too good to resist (thank you, Joe Konrath!).

So the 1985 “men’s action action novel” .357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY by Ian Ludlow is now available as a $2.99 Kindle edition. Here’s the scoop on the book:

“As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort […] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!” West Coast Review of Books 

 Brett Macklin is justice — a one-man judge, jury and executioner, wiping out the L.A. street scum that the police can’t catch, that the law can’t hold — dealing sweet revenge from the barrel of his .357 Magnum.
Now Macklin’s target is Wesley Saputo, child porn kingpin and murderer who has slipped through the courts time after time, only to kidnap, rape and kill again…and again. Macklin’s mission: locate and brutally destroy Saputo before he finds another little girl blue…

This Kindle edition includes a special Afterword essay, “Hot Sex, Gory Violence: How One College Student Earns Course Credit and Pays His Tuition,” which was originally published in Newsweek magazine and that explains the origins of the “.357 Vigilante” series and the “Ian Ludlow” pseudonym.

I’ve found the manuscripts for the other two books in the series, as well as the unpublished fourth novel, and will upload them over the coming weeks.

UPDATE: Here are some blog reviews of MAKE THEM PAY…from Chadwick Saxelid, S. Michael Wilson,  and Marty McKee.

Busy Week

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I have been absent from the blog, working hard on my screenplay and my latest Monk novel, because I have a very busy week head of me. On Tuesday, I am leading a seminar on episodic TV writing & producing for representatives of China Central Television…which should be a very interesting experience…and then on Wednesday, I'm heading off to Owensboro, Kentucky with my buddy David Breckman, writer-producer-director of MONK,  to participate in the third annual International Mystery Writers Festival. I'll be moderating several panels, and doing Toastmaster duties, while David will write, producer and direct an original short film with a group of theatre students. Kentucky native Sue Grafton will also be on hand for panels and such. It should be a lot of fun.  

I'm looking forward to the flights to and from Kentucky because it will be my first opportunity to really try out my Kindle. I haven't had any time to read since I got it…

I’m Going Kindle Crazy

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51vjPQRqm5L._SS500_ I've just posted another old, out-of-print book of mine on the Amazon Kindle Store…my 1991 paperback Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw, which was the basis for the hour-long ABC special "The Best TV Shows That Never Were" and the hour-long CBS special "The Greatest Shows You Never Saw. It is now available in a special $2.49 Kindle edition. Here's the book jacket copy:

“The Best Bathroom Reading EVER," – San Francisco Chronicle

"A must-browse for media freaks.” —USA Today

“Irresistible and enthralling.” —Hartford Courant

“Full of fool’s gold and genuine TV treasures.” —The New York Post

This lively and entertaining book looks at the three hundred best and worst TV series ideas—known in the industry as "pilots"—that never made it to primetime. From the adventures of a Samurai D.A. to the antics of an invisible alien baby, Lee Goldberg details the greatest shows you never saw.

The paperback was originally published by Carol & Company and was an abridgment of my fat hardcover  "Unsold Television Pilots 1955-1989," which contained over 2000 pilots. Maybe some day I'll get around to making that big book into a Kindle edition, too.

The Wild, Wild Joseph West

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Collection X3

The folks over at the Western Fiction Review have a great Q&A interview up with author Joseph A. West, who wrote those terrific GUNSMOKE tie-ins a few years back. Lately, he's been writing the Ralph Compton books as a work-for-hire writer and his comments about that will give you some insight into what it's like to be a working writer these days:

"The Ralph Compton books are all work-for-hire, and I write them because I like to eat. I can’t write in Ralph’s style, nor do I try. I do the best I can, send the novel off to New York and keep my fingers crossed. Touch wood, they’ve never bounced one back to me for a rewrite, so I must be doing something right. At the moment times are hard for writers, and I appreciate any work I can get. In a way, a work-for-hire is a great compliment from the publisher. Three or four times a year, I get an email from my editor that says simply: “Joe, write me another Compton, due XXXX.” I never hear from him again until the next assignment. I guess he knows I always send him a professional product on time."

I have great admiration for guys like Joseph West…talented, hard-working professional writers who do the job because they love it and because it's what they do. And they do it damn well. Aspiring writers could learn a lot from him.

The Last Picture Show

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Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite authors, says that his next book, RHINO RANCH, may be his last.

"It's a finite gift, for sure," he says of novel writing. "I'm about at the end of it. I can write certain things. I don't think I can write fiction any more. I think I've used it up over 30 novels. That's a lot of novels. […]Most great novels are written by people between 40 and 60, or 35 and 60. Not too many great novels are written by people over 75. Hardly any. Maybe Tolstoy."

RHINO RANCH comes out August 11th and is yet another sequel to THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, as were TEXASVILLE, DUANE'S DEPRESSED, and WHEN THE LIGHT GOES. I'm a huge fan of McMurtry's work, but I've found his "contemporary" novels of the last few years, particularly his sequels to THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, to be morose, meandering, and boring tales that lack his usual punch. I'll buy it and read it anyway, of course. Over the last 20 years, by far his best books have been his westerns, most notably LONESOME DOVE and its sequels and prequels.

But this is not the first time McMurtry has threatened to quit…and then followed the announcement by writing a great novel. 

The Show Must Go On

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51tnYP0UMrL._SS500_Don’t be fooled by the title of Douglas Snauffer’s new book, The Show Must Go On: How The Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television Series…this is not a lurid or gossipy book but rather a serious, well-researched, detailed reference work about the business of television.

On the surface, the book is about what happens to a TV show when one of its stars dies, covering the impact of the calamity from every angle. But that death is just one part of the story. Douglas Snauffer, author of the exceptional Crime Television, gives us the full picture of the show, before and after the tragedy that may (or may not) have ultimately defined that series in TV history. Each chapter offers an in-depth look at the creation, development, production, and history of an individual series. It’s that detailed examination of each series — backed by interviews with all the key players in front of, and behind — the camera that gives this book it’s real value.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how TV series are created, written and produced…and why some succeed while others fail.

Book Reviews

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771-1 Elmore Leonard has often said that his writing was deeply influenced by the works of Richard Bissell.  Curious,  I searched for a copy of Bissell's work…and I am glad I did. And after reading HIGH WATER, a tale of a first mate on a Mississippi steam boat during an epic flood, it's easy to see the influence Bissell has had on Leonard's approach to character and dialog. Bissell has that same naturalistic, funny, amiable way with characters, whether they are "good guys" or "bad guys," that makes even the most minor players in the tale memorable and interesting. His plotting is loose and yet surprisingly powerful. And his eye for the telling details is sometimes astonishing in their simplicity and truth. I can see why Leonard, as a young writer, was impressed, and why he adopted some of the same techniques. HIGH WATER is well worth reading, not only for insight into Leonard's writing style, but on its own considerable merits. I loved it and look forward to devouring Bissell's other work.

41ys98QUH+L._SS500_ I went from that pleasurable surprise to a real disappointment. I really wanted to like Kate Christensen's TROUBLE, because I have heard great things about her work in the past. But from the first chapter, I knew I was in trouble, and not the kind she had intended. The characters are literary constructs rather than characters, totally unsympathetic and unrealistic in just about every way. From the moment her heroine, a shrink in a decaying marriage, describes herself by looking at her reflection (a tired cliche and a surprisingly lazy gimmick for a PEN/Faulkner award winner to employ), and decides to dump her husband as a result, things go downhill fast.

Her decision to leave her husband is the impetus for everything that happens in the book, so it's important that we, as readers, buy into it and are invested in her and her journey. But the decisive moment is so unreal, so oblique, and the guy she is talking to at the time is such a caricature, that the crucial moment of reader investment in the heroine doesn't happen. And never does. I wanted to like her, or at least to care, but I never did. It doesn't help that what follows her introduction are pages and pages of exposition meant to establish what is, at heart, a contrivance. I never believed the relationship between Josie and her world-famous, rock star friend, nor did I care about her journey of self-discovery through sex. Her adventures are laden with exposition, contrivance, and stilted conversations that feel so written, so self-conscious, that it's maddening rather than entertaining. My advice: skip this and try one of Christensen's earlier works.

My REVIVALS Revived…And Revived Again

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My 1993 book TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS is back… in trade paperback (as I mentioned last week) and now in a Kindle edition. I have no idea if Kindle users are interested in non-fiction, TV references books…but I figured I had nothing to lose by finding out. If it looks like they do, I may make my book UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS available for the Kindle, too, though that might actually take some time and effort on my part.