On Other Blogs

It seems like everybody is apologizing lately for not keeping up their blogs.  Author Duane Swierczynski, for instance, blames the book he’s working on and Tess Gerritsen blames the beautiful Maine weather. Me, I’m just brain dead. I finished my 8th DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel last week and it feels lke my brain has been wrung out and left dry of any ideas, even for a blog post. So, in lieu of coming up with anything clever for my blog today, I’ll steal some cleverness from others.

My brother Tod found a novel way of dealing with some hate mail, Ken Levine has some good advice for industry outsiders with pilot ideas, and it’s nice to see one of my favorite authors, Daniel Woodrell, is finally getting some attention (my friend Denise Hamilton also gave his latest book a rave in Sunday’s LA Times Book Review).

Robert B. Parker has launched his own Amazon blog. His most recent post is full of interesting TV & movie news:

In October will come Hundred Dollar Baby
(Spenser), in the Spring will appear a Young Adult novel called The
Edenville Owls (my first try at this), and in the fall of 07 will come
Jesse Stone again (High Profile). We start shooting the next Jesse
Stone movie, Seachase (Tom Selleck as Jesse),  this October, and it
will be on CBS sometime during the 06/07 season. When I know, I’ll tell
you. Incidentally I think Tom has absolutely nailed the role. Ed Harris
is developing my western novel, Appaloosa for a feature film. He plans
to star (as Virgil Cole) and to direct. So far he has Viggo Mortenson
attached (Everett Hitch) and Diane Lane (Allie). I’m very pleased with
the casting choices, and have a lot of confidence that Harris will get
the movie made (as you may know, most movies don’t get made). He should
be wonderful in the role. I’ve seen the script and it seems flawless.
Stay tuned.

Ken Levine writes today about the worst script he and his partner ever wrote.

In 1993 my writing partner, David Isaacs and I did a short run series
for CBS called BIG WAVE DAVE’S starring Adam Arkin and David Morse. It
ran that summer, got 19 shares, kept 100% of MURPHY BROWN’S audience
and was cancelled. At the time CBS had starring vehicles in the wings
for Peter Scolari, Bronson Pinchot, and the always hilarious Faye
Dunaway so they didn’t need us.

We were given a production order
of six with three back-up scripts. We assigned the first two back-ups
to our staff and planned on writing the third ourselves. When the show
was cancelled we put in to CBS to get paid for the additional scripts.
They said fine, but we had to turn in the completed scripts. Gulp!

Bill Rabkin and I had almost the exact same experience on SEAQUEST. We’d already turned in the outline for for episode 14 when we got cancelled. But in order to get paid for the teleplay, we had to write it. We did it in one day, while we were packing up our office. I still live in fear that some sf fan will stumble on a bootleg draft at a scifi convention, post it on the net, and people will think we actually write that bad. I’m in Germany now, or I’d post an excerpt. I’ll try to remember to do it when I return.

Today the always hilarious Ken Levine takes a look at Celebrity websites and blogs. Among his observations:

Melanie Griffiths’s website is just plain creepy. It chronicles her
romance and rehab, accompanied by music that Norma Desmond would find
too over-the-top. She also writes letters to her inner self. Many not
delivered because no one’s home.

Latest entry in Gwen Stefani’s journal: “We’re back. Sorry it has been
so long. We’ll start updating the site more often.” It’s dated May 2.