Books

“Brilliant Writing…This is why the English Language Was Invented!”

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Chicago Sun-Times reviewer David J. Montgomery is single-handedly revolutionizing the publishing industry. No longer will authors have to scrounge through his reviews looking for a blurbable phrase. Today, David has launched his Blurb Machine.

My reviews get blurbed fairly often, but that seems like such a
roundabout way of doing it. Why not, I asked myself, just give the
blurb directly and cut out the middle man?

Why not, indeed! The first recipient of a Blurb Machine Blurb is Lee Child:

"The Hard Way is the best book
yet from one of today’s top thriller writers. Put a pot of coffee on
before you start reading it, ’cause this one’s going to keep you up all
night." -Crime Fiction Dossier

Mr. Monk and the New Deal

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I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a deal to write three more original MONK novels, which will assure new books about the obsessive-compulsive detective through July 2008.  And my third MONK episode "Mr. Monk Can’t See a Thing," co-written with William Rabkin and very loosely based on my novel "Mr. Monk Goes to The Firehouse," started shooting this week for airing this summer.

Signing Angst

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My sister Linda Woods is having her first booksigning event tomorrow for VISUAL CHRONICLES (which she wrote with my sister Karen Dinino) and it’s giving her nightmares:

In the first nightmare, I
gave birth to a baby that projectile vomited Styrofoam. I am not sure
what that has to do with the book, but it was damn scary. The second
nightmare was slightly more realistic. I was trying to decide which of
my 12 black jackets to wear and glanced at the clock and saw that it
was 8:30 and that I was an hour and half late to my own book signing.

Welcome to being a professional author, sis!

Bust Boosted

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Bust
It’s no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I love what the folks at Hard Case Crime are doing with their brilliantly retro covers and  reprints of classic pulp paperbacks by authors like David Dodge, Donald Hamilton, Ed McBain, Day Keene, Wade Miller, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake and my friends Max Allan Collins and Richard S. Prather. But if that was all they were doing, the imprint could easily become just a passing fad. Instead, not only are they reprinting lost classics, they’re also publishing new books by authors heavily influenced by early noir like Domenic Stansberry, Allan Guthrie, and Richard Aleas (aka Hard Case editor Charles Ardai). Even without the huge boost Hard Case got from publishing Stephen King’s COLORADO KID, they’ve generated plenty of positive buzz, a truck load of Edgar nominations, and well-deserved critical acclaim for their line of original titles. That acclaim continues with a starred review from Publishers Weekly for BUST, written by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, two of the hottest crime writers in the biz:

This first-time collaboration between two rising
crime fiction writers is a full-tilt, rocking homage to noir novels of
the 1950s, taking full advantage of the neo-pulp Hard Case Crime
imprint. Wealthy, successful New York City business owner
Max Fisher finds himself in a delightfully familiar scenario: he wants
to get rid of his nagging wife so he can shack up with his sexy
secretary, Angela Petrakos. When Angela introduces Max to Dillon, a
former IRA hit man, Max thinks he’s found his man; what Max doesn’t
know is that Dillon is already Angela’s man-and the two plan to
double-cross Max as soon as it becomes profitable. Dillon, however,
proves to be less a professional than a psychotic: he’d just as soon
kill "for the price of a pint" as he would for Max’s wealth. Rolling in
on the action is wheelchair-bound Bobby Rosa, an ex-con with a taste
for lewd photography, guns and blackmail. As it tends to do, the
murderous plot goes awry, sending Bruen and Starr’s delicious,
despicable characters scrambling for their money and their lives. A
seamless blend of Bruen’s dead-on Irish underworld and Starr’s hellish
vision of the Big Apple, Hard Case’s latest release is smart, trashy
fun, fulfilling ably the series’ irresistible promise.

Sounds just like my kind of thing. My own review of BUST will be coming soon.  I’ve got the arc sitting here on my desk, but I have been so busy, I haven’t had time to read anything for pleasure in weeks. I’m looking forward to it though… it will be my reward for finishing my next MONK novel.

Mr. Monk Goes to Traffic School

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My latest Natalie Blog is now up on the USA Network’s MONK site.

There are some things in life that I’m pretty sure that everybody hates
to do, regardless of their sex, race, religion or nationality — like
flossing your teeth, cleaning your bathroom and attending traffic
school. You could pick anybody off the street and they’d agree that
those tasks suck.

Everybody, that is, except Adrian Monk, the famous detective and my employer.

He flosses his teeth hourly. He cleans his bathroom several
times a day. And even though he doesn’t drive, he still recently
insisted on going with me to traffic school…

Monk and More Monk

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Monkency2
My friends Terry Erdman & Paula Block have written MONK: THE OFFICIAL EPISODE GUIDE, which comes out on June 27th, the same day as my book, MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII. Their book is packed with interviews and inside info on the making of the first four seasons of MONK…and features an introduction by Andy Breckman and an afterward by Tony Shalhoub.

I’ve known Terry for over 20 years , going back to when he was a unit publicist on movie sets and I was a freelancer covering the entertainment industry for Starlog, Newsweek, American Film, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate (to name a few). And his lovely wife Paula happens to be the licensing exec for Paramount’s publishing division…so she’s the studio person in charge of my DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels. Small world, huh?

Anyway, we’re going to be doing a bunch of signings together in July and August for our MONK books. Watch this space for more info.

Monk vs. Monk

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A reader of my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE posted a comment on a discussion board that the Monk in the book differs to some degree from the Monk on television. She’s right.


I don’t think there is any way the "book" MONK and the "TV" MONK can
ever be exactly the same. We are seeing them through two very different
mediums (TV vs books) and points-of-view (the camera’s vs Natalie’s).

A
typical MONK episode doesn’t have enough story to fill book…so I have
to come up with much, much more for Monk to think, say and do for a
novel. And, of course, in the books we don’t have Tony Shalhoub’s
magnificent performance to convey the humor, the vulnerability,
sadness, etc. So much of MONK’s humor, drama and character is expressed
visually and I have to make up for that narratively in other ways.

The
differences between the "book" MONK and the "TV" MONK became very clear
to me recently, when I was writing the third book and my third MONK
episode at the same time. They are both MONK…but different. And
that’s okay. By the way, MONK creator/exec producer Andy Breckman is
fine with that, too. He’s been incredibly supportive and has encouraged
me to create my own version of Monk for the books. After I wrotethe first book, he paid me a wonderful compliment. He said  that he felt like a songwriter and that someone else had covered his song. It was still his song, but at the same time it was different, and he enjoyed the differences.

I also got a complaint from a reader who was upset that there are continuity gaffs between the recent episodes of the show and my first book. That’s inevitable, given the long lead time of the books vs. the speed of TV series production. So, the books and
the TV show don’t exist in the exact same universe…more like parallel
universes.

For
example, someone sent me a nasty email because I didn’t acknowledge
Stottlemeyer’s marital problems in the first book. Well, when I wrote
both MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE and MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII,
Stottlemeyer’s wife hadn’t left him yet. I managed to mention it in the
third book, but I am sure things will come up in Season Five that will
clash with stuff in the third Monk book, which I am turning in next
month for publication in January 2007.

Speaking of which, I better get back to writing!

The Thrilling Thrillers

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Itwlink
The International Thriller Writers  Association has announced the first nominees for their annual Thriller Award… and they are:


BEST NOVEL
PANIC by Jeff Abbott (Dutton)
CONSENT TO KILL by Vince Flynn (Atria)
VELOCITY by Dean Koontz (Bantam)
THE PATRIOTS CLUB by Christopher Reich (Delacorte Press)
CITIZEN VINCE by Jess Walter (Regan Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
IMPROBABLE by Adam Fawer (William Morrow)
THE COLOR OF LAW by Mark Gimenez (Doubleday)
COLD GRANITE by Stuart MacBride (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
PAIN KILLER by Will Staeger (William Morrow)
BENEATH A PANAMANIAN MOON by David Terrenoire (Thomas Dunne
Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
SLEEPER CELL by Jeffrey Anderson (Berkley)
PRIDE RUNS DEEP by R. Cameron Cooke (Jove)
UPSIDE DOWN by John Ramsay Miller (Dell)
THE DYING HOUR by Rick Mofina (Pinnacle Books)
EXIT STRATEGY by Michael Wiecek (Jove)

BEST SCREENPLAY
MATCH POINT, screenplay by Woody Allen
SYRIANA, based on the book by Robert Baer, written by Stephen
Gaghan
CACHE screenplay by Michael Haneke
OLDBOY screenplay by Jo-yun Hwang, Chun-hyeong Lim, Joon-hyung Lim, and
Chan-wook Park; story by Garon Tsuchiya
MUNICH,screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth; based on the book by
George Jonas

The awards will be given at Thrillfest in Phoenix in June.

Drive to the Big Screen

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Variety reports that Universal Studios has bought the James Sallis novel DRIVE as a feature film vehicle for Hugh Jackman. This is a coup not only for Sallis, but for Poisoned Pen, the small Phoenix-based press which published the widely-acclaimed novella. Sallis is also the author of the Lew Griffin PI tales set in New Orleans.

In other mystery/thriller book news in the trades today, Paramount Pictures has hired X-MEN scribe David Hayter  to adapt Bob Reiss’ soon-to-be-published novel BLACK MONDAY for the screen.