It’s the Story, Stupid

TOP SUSPENSE BLOG HEADER 3Seems to me that authors are losing track of what really matters… not the formatting, covers, tweeting, pinning and promotion…it's the story, stupid. I blog about it today at Top Suspense. Here's an excerpt:

I’ve listened to new writers at conferences or while lurking on writers’ boards and the newbie writers seem obsessed with everything except what matters most: the writing.

I believe it’s that misguided obsession that s leading to the ethical scandals we’ve been seeing lately… like John Locke who hired people to buy his books and write fake reviews (to artificially boost his rankings and acclaim) to establish himself… and Stephen Leather and RJ Ellory who both used “sock-puppets” on Amazon and social media to generate false buzz and fake reviews to boost their popularity and attack their "rivals."

What authors need to remind themselves is that all of that formatting, pricing, tweeting, social networking, etc. is meaningless if you don’t know how to tell a good story, create compelling characters, develop a strong voice, set a scene, establish a sense of place, or manage point-of-view.

I rarely hear writers anymore talking about the pluses and minuses of out-lining, the importance of an active protagonist, the different kinds of conflict, or the elements of structure. The craft of writing has taken a backseat to the business of publishing.

We Have a Winner!

We are pleased to announce that BARRY NAPIER has won the "You Can Write a DEAD MAN Novel" Contest, snagging a publishing contract for his DEAD MAN tale DREAMLAND, a $500 advance, and a $500 gift card.

Barry has published more than 40 short stories and poems in print and online. He is the author of the Everything Theory series, The Hollows, The Masks of Our Fathers, and Broken Nightlights, a short story collection. He has also had work published thought various small presses, including his novel The Bleeding Room, and two poetry collections. He has served as guest poetry editor of Inkspill Magazine and has recently completed compiling and editing the poetry anthology I Know What I Saw: poems of the unexplained.

You'll be seeing his book in the DEAD MAN series in early 2013. But you can get a sneak peek right now. His winning chapter is below.

Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest.

DREAMLAND
            She’d been in bed for so long that
it seemed unnatural to be standing again. 
Her old aching knees seemed fifty years younger and the lungs that had
hindered her lifestyle for the last five years seemed reinvigorated, breathing
in the crisp air of the afternoon.  When
she breathed the clean air in it made her body feel plump, a far cry from the
frail state she had last seen herself in.
            She was standing in the middle of an
ancient dirt road, the ditches to each side so worn and faded that she could
imagine the finger of God etching them shortly after Eden.  The dirt track wound away to both sides,
bending to the right ahead of her where it eventually merged into the distant
forest.  In the other direction, the path
sketched itself through an impossibly green field where it then narrowed to a
pencil point on the horizon of greens and blues.
            A butterfly passed by her, circled
back around her head and perched on her shoulder.  It seemed to be directing her eyes slightly
to the left where a long forgotten white house stood untouched by human hands
for countless years.  A once-white porch
sat crumbling and gray.  A porch swing hung
from a single chain with its fallen twin curled up in a rusted loop on the
porch boards.
            She knew this all; she had been here
before and she knew that something was missing. 
She looked beyond the house and saw a fence, the majority of it cracked
and fallen.  She waited for a human
shadow to fall across its weak posts but there was nothing.  The sun blazed down fat and bright but there
was nothing behind the fence to cast a shadow, not a man, not an animal, not so
much as a tree.
            She frowned and waited.  She knew that she wouldn’t be here long; she
could already feel the weight of reality tugging at her, pulling her towards a
world where her knees still flared with pain, where her now delicate fingers
were callused and weathered.
            She looked back to the wooden fence,
its rails splintered and cracked, waiting for that figure to appear.  But the blue country sky on the other side of
the fence and the golden fields that rolled out beyond them were all there was
to see.
And
as beautiful as this all seemed, she was still slightly disappointed; the man
that should be standing there by the fence post was not coming.
            In this to-good-to-be-true place,
she felt a tear forming in the corner of her eye.  It was the sweetest relief imaginable, the
most normal thing her body had done in weeks. 
And with that sign of human frailty, that other place stopped tugging at
her and simply claimed her.
            She let out a gasp and tried
desperately to feel the warmth of the tear on her cheek before she was taken.
            She opened her weary eyes to a white
ceiling, dreary walls and poor light. 
She felt something on her shoulder, wondering if she had somehow brought
the butterfly back from that country road. 
But when she lolled her head to the side, she saw what perched there and
it was not a butterfly.
A
plastic tube brushed against her shoulder where a small patch of her dry skin
was exposed by the yellow hospital gown that she wore.  The tube traveled upwards, into her nose and
then, in the opposite direction, over the side of the bed and into some machine
that hummed patiently.
            “Momma, you’re awake…”
            She looked over and saw
Chester.  His graying hair was frazzled
and the poor boy looked as if he hadn’t slept in ages.  Calling him a boy seemed foolish; the amount of life lived and the knowledge
acquired from it was evident in his eyes. 
But she had held him inside of her for nine months, had breastfed him,
had clothed him and sent him to college, had nurtured him through his first
broken heart, his first experience with death…fifty-five years old or not,
Chester would always be her little boy.
            “Yeah,” she said in a shaky hoarse
voice.  “Haven’t gone anywhere yet.”  
            She looked into his eyes, made tiny
behind the lenses of his glasses, and was reminded of the man she had not seen
by the fence.
            “You were smiling in your sleep,”
Chester said.  He grinned at her when he
said it, not voicing the fact that it pleased him to know that whatever dream
she had been having could very well be her last, and that he was glad it had
made her happy.
            The machine that she was plugged
into made a persistent beep-beep sound, like a metronome for the life she had
left to live.  But she did not hear
it.  These days, it was hard to hear
anything past the rattle in her chest when she breathed.
            There was a fleeting moment when she
knew that she needed to tell Chester something, but she couldn’t remember
what.  She knew that he would like to
know about the house she had seen, the failing fence and the winding country
road.  But that wasn’t it…there was
something more.
            Her eyes were growing heavy and she
felt the ghost traces of pain begin to tickle her at the knees.  She felt her eyelids fluttering and was
vaguely aware that her boy was reaching out, grasping her hand lovingly.
            “Chester,” she said, so softly that
she didn’t know if he had heard her. 
“The man at the fence…so handsome…please stay away from the man at the
fence…”
            But before her son could respond,
she was gone again.
            She wore a sundress and smelled of
jasmine.  The smell was pushed out ahead
of her by the country breeze at her back, making it so that she walked into her
own scent as she made her way over the gentle rise of an impossibly green
hill.  There was a man walking with her,
his eyes glued to her.  He usually wore a
hat but, in those times when chivalry wasn’t quite dead just yet, he held it in
his hands.  His dark brown hair stood up
in several directions as a result.
            “Do you not love me?” he asked.  “Is that it?”
            “Of course it’s not,” she said.  “Nothing is ever so simple that it can be
blamed on love.  Do all men think women
are that stupid?”
            He grinned and looked down to his
feet.  “No, I suppose not,” he said.
            She looked to him quickly, out of
the corner of her eye, and repressed a smile. 
There was the slightest trace of grass stains along the elbows of his
shirt sleeve from where they had been rolling in the grass, kissing. Yet when
his hands had found the waistband of her skirt, she had pushed him playfully
away, stood up and began walking.  It was
not the first time she had done this.
            “Are you waiting on marriage, then?”
he asked.  “If that’s the case, I think
you know I would marry you.”
            She smiled at him and stopped for a
moment.  “Not all women are that stupid, either,” she said and then
started walking again.
            She glanced down the hill and saw
the dirt track that would lead her home. 
The sunset cast out shades of subtle gold that seemed to be sewn into
the ditches along the track.  God, it was
such a beautiful day.  Had she had a few
more glasses of wine with her lunch earlier, perhaps she would have given him
what he had been seeking from her for nearly a year.  The thought made her tremble inside and she
felt an anxiousness in that place that her mother told her was supposed to only
be for the man she married.
            As they neared the dirt road, her
male companion tensed up a bit because he knew this is where they parted
ways.  “Do you want me to walk you home?”
he asked.
            “I’m a big girl,” she said.  “I think I’ll be okay.”
            He nodded, leaned in and kissed her
on the mouth.  He tasted like salt and
she knew that the taste of wine was still lingering on her own lips.  When their tongues touched, she felt that
creeping need once again.  She broke the
kiss and smiled at him.
            “Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
            She nodded and gave him another
kiss, this one on the cheek, and turned away from him.
            A few steps down the road, she
paused.  Up ahead she could see the
framing of a fence, like a giant crooked spine springing from the ground.  She felt the slightest bit of uncertainty and
the fear caused her to turn back towards her boyfriend.
            He was headed down the road, his
shoulder hunched like a defeated man and his hat once again on his head.  She smiled briefly at him, considered going
to him and then thought better of it. 
She watched him go until he was nothing more than a silhouette and then
she started walking again.
In
a blur of motion that only exists in dreams, she found herself standing by the
fence. The man she has been expecting is standing there as if he had been there
all along.  He wore torn blue overalls
and a straw hat on his head, but she somehow knows that this is not what he
wears most of the time.
“How
do?” she said.  
            The man grinned and adjusted the
straw hat.  He looked as if he might be a
bit uncomfortable, but he never took his eyes off of her.  He didn’t speak to her, only looked her up
and down.
            She stared right back, cocking her
head to the side and studying him as best as she could.  She felt her heart pulling in two directions,
one wanting to retreat back down the dirt trail, the other wanting to stay here
with this man, to venture into that old abandoned white farmhouse with him and
learn his secrets.
            Without a word, the man removed his
hat in a sign of chivalry.  The gesture
made no sense to her, but she instantly felt an irrational fear spreading
through her. 
            And then the smell of it hit her.
            Something dead…the smell of a gutted
animal left the rot in the woods in the summer. 
The smell was overpowering and she thought that it might be coming from
the man at the fence—a man that was very familiar to her. 
            “Why are you here?” she asked
him.  “I know this is just a dream. I know
I am old and dying in the real world. Why are you, of all people, here?”
            When he opened his mouth to speak,
she saw his teeth.  They were misshapen,
slightly yellowed.  Sharp.
            “The same as before,” he said, his
voice like a spring breeze.  “To let you know
it is almost time.”
“I
don’t understand.”
“We’re
coming,” he said to her with a smile.
            Then a scream rose up in her throat
(her dreaming throat and her real one) and she opened her eyes to the hospital
room.
            She saw Chester again, confused and
crying.  She saw the bright lights
overhead and a muted television on the wall. 
And for just a fleeting moment, she saw his shape there in the room with
her.  Seeing this, she screamed
again.  She kept screaming until two
nurses came into the room and gave her an injection which calmed her almost
immediately.
            As she rest her head back onto the
pillow, she looked to Chester and shook her head in defeat.
“Don’t
let him in,” she told her son.  “Keep him
out…he’s coming…”
           

Unethical Scumbags

Remember the good old days when ethical behavior mattered? Now we have guys like Todd Rutherford, who take pride in unethical and dishonest conduct…in his case, being paid thousands of dollars to write fake, positive Amazon reviews for authors… and scores of talentless authors so desperate for acclaim they will pay to delude themselves and swindle readers. The New York Times wrote about Rutherford’s lucrative scam today. Here’s an excerpt:

Suddenly it hit him. Instead of trying to cajole others to review a client’s work, why not cut out the middleman and write the review himself? Then it would say exactly what the client wanted — that it was a terrific book. A shattering novel. A classic memoir. Will change your life. Lyrical and gripping, Stunning and compelling. Or words to that effect.

In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site,GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.

There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.

A polite fellow with a rakish goatee and an entrepreneurial bent, Mr. Rutherford has been on the edges of publishing for most of his career. Before working for the self-publishing house, he owned a distributor of inspirational books. Before that, he was sales manager for a religious publishing house. Nothing ever quite worked out as well as he hoped. With the reviews business, though, “it was like I hit the mother lode.”

I think Amazon and Barnes & Noble should remove all the reader reviews for any author who has paid Rutherford, or any scumbags like him, for purchased praise.

In the article, author Roland Hughes, who is eager to become a “recognized author,” admits to paying for the positive reviews of his novel INFINITE EXPOSURE. So I left him this review on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for free:

I have not read this book which, according to an interview with Hughes in today’s New York Times, means I have a lot in common with the reviewers here… at least the ones who’ve praised the book. Hughes admits to buying positive reviews in his quest to become “a recognized author.” Here’s some advice. Actually write a good book. You do not gain readers, or recognition, by swindling readers into buying your books with fake praise. It’s unethical and shows a startling lack of respect for your reader…not to mention yourself. You can have this review for free.

But the big shocker is that “bestselling” author John Locke admits to buying as many as 300 fake reviews to bolster the popularity of his 99 cent detective novels.

Mr. Locke is unwilling to say that paying for reviews made a big difference. “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful,” he said. “But it’s a lot easier to buy them than cultivating an audience.”

Apparently, it worked for him. He’s sold a million books on Amazon and scored a publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. It should be interesting to see if he suffers any blowback for his highly unethical conduct. At the minimum, Amazon should delete all of his favorable reviews, since so many of them are now suspect.

Mr. Monk is Appreciated

MR. MONK IS A MESS came out eight weeks ago and has been getting some great reviews. Here's a sampling. Debra Hamel at Book-Blog says, in part:

The book picks up where Mr. Monk on Patrol left off, with Monk and his assistant Natalie Teeger temporarily employed as police offers in Summit, New Jersey. They eventually return to San Francisco with big plans in mind, but Natalie's homecoming is less than idyllic: suffice it to say that her house is soon cordoned off with police tape, and things don't look good for her and Monk. While they're trying to get the FBI off their backs, Natalie and Monk are also tasked with helping Monk's agoraphobic brother Ambrose, a storyline that leads to a very moving, very satisfying conclusion. There is less humor in this book than in previous installments, but plenty of heart. The novel ends with  our crime-fighting duo on the verge of huge changes in their lives. I'm eager to see how Goldberg will wrap things up, but also very sad to see his involvement with the series coming to an end.

And Lorie Ham at Kings River Life says, among other thngs:

This plot has a little bit of everything including mobsters, the FBI, love, marriage and changing friendships. It’s been fun to see how Natalie and Monk have both grown and changed throughout this series on TV and the books. In this one not only do we have Monk’s quirky brilliance, but Natalie continues to grow as a detective. Is it possible Monk could now survive without Natalie? Or maybe more important, can Natalie survive without Monk?

As always Lee does a great job of bringing these familiar characters to life and providing the reader with a fun mystery filled with twists and turns. I have to admit I didn’t see the ending coming and I can’t wait for the next and final Monk book coming in January.

And Bill Crider remarks that:

I've mentioned time and again how much I've enjoyed these books, and this one's no exception. It's very funny, and it marks another step in the changes that have been occurring as the series progresses[…]The ending is entirely satisfactory, as you'd expect from Goldberg, and it looks as if the next novel will be taking a somewhat new direction. Don't wait for that one, though. Get this one. You'll thank me later. It has laughs, heart, mysteries, and deft plotting, all the things that have made reading the series such a pleasure.


Mark Baker at epinions says this may be the best "Monk" book yet:

While I do still miss watching Monk's antics on TV, the novels based on the series have been a nice way to revisit these great characters. But as the novels have continued post TV series finale, the characters have grown even stronger. The journey they've been on continues in Mr. Monk is a Mess, which I think is my favorite to date. […]But the real star here is the characters. In the books since the series ended, author Lee Goldberg has been letting them grow in some interesting new ways that still feel very true to the characters established in the series. That continues here for all of them, and it is a great thing to watch. Since they are the main characters, Natalie and Monk get the most development, but the supporting characters from the TV series still get their moments. It will please any fan of the show, especially someone who's been reading the books all along.
The show certainly had many comedic moments, and I found plenty more to laugh about here. In fact, it amazes me that after so many TV episodes and novels (this is the fourteenth novel), Monk continues to surprise and amuse me, but he does.
Those who have avoided the novels have done so at their own detriment. They are so much fun and continue the series in a great way. Mr. Monk is a Mess could be enjoyed on its own, but to really get it, you need to read the rest of the book series first.

I appreciate all the great review Debra, Lorie, Bill and Mark, as well as all the five-star reviews from readers on Amazon.  

A Big Disappointment

The_Troubled_Man_Kurt_Wallander-68980It's not unusual for an author to grow to resent the fictional character that has come to define him. Or for an author to want to end a long-running series so he can move on to new challenges.

Writing that final book can reveal a lot about how the author feels about his character. That book can be a triumph (like Agatha Chrisitie's CURTAIN) or a crushing disappointment, like Henning Mankell's THE TROUBLED MAN, his final Wallander, which I just finshed (albeit as a book on tape).

In this plodding book, Wallander investigates the disappearance of his daughter's presumptive in-laws and worries about his own, possible descent into Alzheimers.

I won't go into too much detail about the meandering, slow–moving story, except to say Mankell was astonishingly lazy in his plotting. He seems to have made up the plot as he went along, with no clear idea of where he was going or what the solution to the mystery would be…or how all the clues he was making up on the fly would all fit together. There's a stunningly inane, unbelievable, and contrived coincidence a third of the way through the book that requires such a massive suspension of disbelief that it ruins the novel. What's even more perplexing is that, plotwise, stooping to such a ridiculous coincidence ultimately ends up being totally unnecessary. It could have been cut without changing the course of the book at all.

There are other plotting problems, ones you'd expect from a novice rather than an accomplished pro like Mankell. Whenever Wallander has a gap in his knowledge, rather than come up with a clever and interesting way for the detective to find out what he needs to know, Mankell creates instant expository characters to conveniently give Wallander the specific answers he needs and then leave the stage, never to be seen again in the novel.

As a mystery, this book is a big, and often frustrating, disappointment that comes to a very unsatisfying, clumsy conclusion that leaves many clues unexplained and most of the questions unanswered. But the novel does work as a melancholy look into the life of Kurt Wallander, a lonely and sad policeman who feels his age and fears that he is losing his grasp on his memory.

That said, Wallander's ultimate, dismal fate is dashed off in a short, terse paragraph, one that's bound to infuriate fans who have come to love the detective over the years…and that, I believe, reveals Mankell's disdain for the character that has made him an international bestselling author. 

The Dead Man Music Video #1

Here’s the first of three original music videos based on Matt Branham’s theme song for THE DEAD MAN… the new series of original novels created by yours truly & William Rabkin…and published monthly by Amazon/47North. Once all three of the videos are up, which should be in the next few days, I’ll let you know how you can vote on which one you think should be our “official” video posted on our Amazon series page.

Busy Bee Lee

2012-06-05 14.23.40smallerSorry I have been so absent around here lately… the last few weeks have been intensely busy for me. Here's a quick run-down…with pictures. 

I turned in my 15th, and final, Monk book — MR. MONK GETS EVEN  — to Penguin/Putnam on June 1st, then jetted off to Book Expo America in New York, where I got to hang out with my friends at Amazon Publishing and Brilliance Audio, talk shop with scores of authors (including fellow "Amazon" authors Blake Crouch, Vincent Zandri, Johnny Shaw, Robert Pobi, Deborah Reed, David Hewson, Robert Kroese, etc), and meet Audie-award nominees Patrick Lawlor (the voice behind my book KING CITY) and Luke Daniels (the voice behind the audio version of THE DEAD MAN, THE WALK). (That's me on the convention floor with Mike Holmes, a HGTV celeb that my wife adores)

From New York, I headed to Kentucky, to direct a DEAD MAN music video that I wrote for Amazon to go along with the terrific theme song written & performed by Matt Branham. 

And now I'll digress… on the flight, I was stuck in an aisle seat right next to the toilet…so close, I could have peed into it from my chair.If that wasn't bad enough, a morbidly fat woman sat down next to me and couldn't fit into her seat…so she had to lift up her armrest to spill her blubber onto me. I found myself sitting at an angle, tilted towards the bathroom, which a guy promptly rushed into after take-off to have a gastrointestinal explosion of historic proportions. The fat woman quickly fell asleep…and proceeded to loudly fart her way ac160 Dead Man, Tell City, Indiana, Alex Booty, Misty Sisco, Silvio Busch, Aaron Taylorross the midwest. It was hell.  I didn't know whether to put my earplugs in my nose or my ears. When we finally landed, she asked me how the flight was. I told her we lost two engines but she managed to keep us in the air. She had no idea what I was talking about, but at least I amused myself.

Okay, back to the video. We shot in and around Tell City, Indiana, and at the Hawesville, Kentucky stage of Firelight Entertainment Group, the extremely talented and industrious folks I worked with on my short film Bumsicle. Our DEAD MAN cast included Silvio Wolf Busch and Misty Sisco and we had a blast. (That's Misty and Silvio in the center, between the two monsters. You can see a lot more pictures on the Firelight site and their Facebook page)

The day after wrapping the music video I had to jump into my duties as honorary co-chair of the International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro, where I played host to the legendary Firesign Theatre and authors (and now fellow Kentucky Colonels) Max Allan Collins, Barbara Collins, Robert Randisi, Christine Matthews and Libby Hellmann and moderated a panel on writing James Bond novels with Raymond Benson and Jeffrey Deaver.

IMG_1724The highlight of the Festival was a night-time, out-door screening of my Owensboro-set short films Remaindered and Bumsicle, which drew over 500 people to Riverpark Center on the banks of the Ohio River. It was fantastic…and I am so glad that the cast and crew of those films, including actors Todd Reynolds, Rick Montgomery, and Eric Altheide, were able to be there to see the enthusiastic audience response. (That's Todd on screen)

As if that wasn't a big enough thrill for me, at the annual Angie Awards ceremony that capped the Festival, my friends at Riverpark Center surprised  me with a portrait by Aaron Kizer, the incredibly talented "speed artist."  It was a wonderful gift and a great honor.

Kiser Portrait  of leeCroppedAnd all of that was just the first three weeks of June.

July has been much slower… at least in terms of travels…since I've mostly been sitting at my desk, working on my book with Janet Evanovich, who flew into L.A. last week to be a guest on The Talk, which gave us a chance to get together for a wonderful dinner.

I'm also in the midst of editing THE DEAD MAN video with Firelight's Rachael Nunn (the footage looks great!) and reading entries in the "You Can Write a DEAD MAN Novel" contest, which ends on August 1st.

In other words, don't be surprised if I don't have a lot of time to contribute to the blog…

The Midnight Special

PhoefSuttonEmmy-award winning writer Phoef Sutton's THE DEAD MAN #12: THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, his wickedly funny and scary addition to the series, is out today… and it's the perfect way to end our "first season" of short novels. It's also Phoef's first published novel since his acclaimed ALWAYS SIX O'CLOCK back in 1999…and a real departure from his previous work. 

So we asked him about the book…and his writing career.

You're a two-time, Emmy award winner for your work writing & producing CHEERS, and you've written for such shows as BOSTON LEGAL, NEWHART and TERRIERS. You're one of the few TV writers who has been able to move between comedy and drama. Why is that so uncommon and how have you been able to pull it off with such apparent ease?

It’s just that I approach them all in the same way.  As stories about characters involved in compelling situations.  When you think of it like that, the specific genre or style doesn’t become paramount.  The character’s journey is what matters. 

How did your first novel come about? What did you think about the experience? 

Writing is my work and my hobby,  I wrote my first novel in my spare time, just to see if I could do it.

Not only are you a TV writer and novelist, but you've also written several feature films, like THE FAN and MRS. WINTERBOURNE. What kind of writing are you most comfortable doing? Or is it just enough to be writing?

 I like all of it.  Doing different things helps keep me interested; that’s one of the reasons I keep branching out.  But of the three, screenwriting is the least friendly to the writer.  In TV, the writer can be the boss, at least if he’s the showrunner, up to a point.  In the novels, of course, the writer is the boss of everybody.  Because he makes everybody up!

 What attracted you to THE DEAD MAN series?

 I’ve always wanted to write horror.  I’m huge fan of that genre.  Richard Matheson was one of my boyhood idols.  For whatever reason, I’ve never gone in that direction professionally, so when Lee Goldberg mentioned this series to me, I jumped at the chance.  Of course, Lee was himself another attraction – we’ve been trying to work together for years and this is first time we’ve had the chance.

 What did you get out of writing THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL that you don't get from writing sitcoms, dramas, and movies?  0619 Lee Goldberg TDMS_MIDNIGHT SPECIAL_3

 There is one obvious thing you get out of writing novels that sets them apart from other forms of writing – no network or studio notes.  You’re writing this mostly the way you want to write it.  The other thing I love about fiction is the way it’s so easy to get inside your characters heads.  You want to let the reader know what he’s thinking?  You just write it.  No need to resort to voice-over or character foils or narrative tricks.  I revel in that!

 What sets your book apart from the others in the series?

 Some say it’s the humor.  I can’t help but find comedy – in even the most dire circumstances.  Not that the book’s laugh riot, but there is humor between the lines.  Let’s say the narrator of the book has a wry sense of macabre humor.  I also liked the narrative trick they used in the first book of flashing forward in time and I tried to use that as well.  I think the narrative voice of this book is closest in the series to the original.

 What were some of the challenges you faced writing the book?

 Action scenes.  I’ve never really done them before.  And writing them is a real bear. Try writing “he threw a punch” in seventeen different ways.   But I’m learning! 

 What's next for you?

 I’m finishing a new novel – a bit of hard-boiled action called CRUSH.  And I’m producing a comedy for TVLand, THE SOUL MAN.  That should keep me busy through the summer.