On Other Blogs

Blubbering About Blurbs

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I got back from El Paso to find three emails from authors asking me if I would blurb their books. I’m always astonished that anyone want a blurb from me.  I mean c’mon, who is going to buy a book because Lee Goldberg says he likes it?  Who the hell is Lee Goldberg?

(Uh-oh, there I go talking about myself in the third person. Who do I think I am? A professional athlete?)

I’ve only blurbed a few over the years… Aimee & David Thurlo’s Ella Clah novels, Doug Lyle’s "Forensics for Dummies,"  Lono Waiwaiole’s "Wiley’s Shuffle," Paul Bishop’s "Tequila Mockingbird," Richard Yokley’s "TV Firefighters,"  Lewis Perdue’s upcoming novel, and a couple of others, and was flattered to be asked… though it puts me in an awkward position. What if I don’t like the books?   I have the same philosophy about blurbing that my friend, the much-better-looking-in-a t-shirt-than-me, author Gregg Hurwitz does:

No matter how much talent you have, to make it in publishing, you
always need the right help from the right people at the right time.
Call it luck, call it fate, call it whatever you please, but though
hard work and talent are a necessity (usually), few novelists I’ve met
have gotten by on these alone. I caught some breaks early in my career,
and I’m always grateful to those who read my work early and took a
gamble, putting in their time and making use of their contacts for me. Though writing is fiercely independent, I do see a responsibility to
give back to the community, to pass along the good karma that I’ve been
fortunate enough to receive. I don’t give back to the writing community
by telling author who need improvement that their books are fantastic,
and I don’t give back to the reading community by endorsing crap.

I’ve been able to politely decline the requests for blurbs over the last year because of my accident, the huge amount of writing I had to do, and the scary deadlines I had to meet.
This is the first time in months that my workload has eased up enough
for me to have the opportunity to read any manuscripts besides my own.

Over the years I have imposed on a lot of my friends (and authors I don’t know but whom I admire) for blurbs and many have been kind enough to come through for me. The least I can do is return
the favor… if not to the same authors, than to others. As it happens, these three authors are folks I’ve never asked for a blurb for my own work.

I only have a couple of caveats when it comes to blurbing:  I won’t blurb anything from the likes of PublishAmerica or other vanity presses and I won’t blurb anything I didn’t truly enjoy reading.  None of the three books I’m being asked to blurb are self-published and the authors say they won’t be hurt if, for whatever reason, I decide not to blurb their books. So I said yes, I’d read their manuscripts. Whether I actually decide to blurb them or not is a different story…

UPDATE (3-1-05) By way of  Diary of a Hype Hag comes this link to Adam Langer’s amusing article on the craft of  blurbing…

Seeing the Strings

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I’ve been catching up on my sister-in-law Wendy’s fascinating ruminations on writing. She raised a point in one of her thoughtful postings that’s stuck with me all day. In this age of rampant blogging, where personal contact with your favorite author is only a mouse-click away, are we destroying the illusion behind our fiction? Are our readers getting to know us too well?

Wendy describes what it was like becoming a regular reader of an author’s blog… and then reading the author’s subsequent novels:

Through her blog, I found her to be charming, witty, and insightful. I returned again the next day. And the next. I lurked until eventually, I left a comment. She responded, she laughed out loud, she said we were kindred sprits.

Why hadn’t I done this before? It was nothing of what I feared. Her site became a daily stop for me. I found the voice of her blog to be separate and distinct from her author voice. I loved reading both.

Things, as they are apt to do, started to change.

In a recent release her heroine broke character with a rant that sounded a lot like the author’s ever increasing web rants. I thought I saw a flash of nylon fishing line. In her following release, the subtext I had previously loved was missing from her dialog. Well, I knew she rushed, too much to write with a deadline on screaming approach. Now, I’m certain—I saw the puppeteer’s hand.

I often wonder as I write this blog, and as I enjoy the blogs of other writers,  if there’s a danger that the people reading our books, or watching our TV shows, will find it increasingly difficult to suspend their disbelief, to become lost in the fictional worlds we create…. that our personalities will overwhelm our work and our audience  will, instead, only be hearing and seeing the writer behind the words. 

You tell me.

The Whole Family is Blogging

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My lovely and talented sister-in-law Wendy Duren is blogging about what she’s doing, what she’s reading, and what she’s writing.  While she mostly talks about novels, she mentions that she found inspiration the other night in a  scene in an episode of LOST.

It
accomplished everything dialog should: it revealed character, revealed
the characters’ emotional states, communicated information, moved the
story along, and, my favorite, was chucked full of subtext. And, it did all that very quickly. It was to the point, without side trips, without the mental meanderings that often trip up dialog in romances. I love stumbling across things like this. I feel inspired and motivated to write. My creative well has been filled at a time when I didn’t notice the level was low. All that and eye candy too. Wow.

It’s not often you find novelists conceding that TV writing is writing… and that spoken dialogue can inspire you the same way the written word can.

The Artful Writer

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Thanks to John August, I discovered Craig Mazin’s The Artful Writer, one of the most interesting and fearless blogs around about the business of screenwriting…or, more accurately, the issues being discussed among the various factions of the Writers Guild of America. While I don’t always agree with the views expressed on the site, I am enjoying the lively debates… and learning some things along the way.

In recent days, they’ve tackled the influence of rarely-employed members on Guild policy,  the pros and cons of listing all contributing writers in movie credits, and the conflict between WGAw and WGAe.

If you’re a member of the WGA, or curious about the issues facing professional screenwriters, I urge you to check out the site.

A Writer’s Life

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This weekend was a good example of what life is like for a professional writer:

  • I wrote an article about writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE WAKING NIGHTMARE for MJ Rose’s excellent Backstory blog.
  • I traveled to San Francisco to speak at a writers conference.
  • I  proofed the copyedited manuscript for my fifth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which has to arrive in NY no later than Feb. 23.
  • I proofed the galleys for my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which have to arrive on my editor’s desk no later than Feb. 23.
  • I revised the manuscript for my sixth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which is due March 1, but that I need to finish by Feb 22, so I can stick it in the FedEx packet with the copyedited manuscript for DM #5… because I am leaving on Wednesday to attend & speak at Left Coast Crime in El Paso.
  • I drove back to L.A. from S.F…and thought about the plot for my seventh DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel.  I made  some notes when I stopped for lunch.
  • I posted some articles on my blog.
  • I wrote some notes for a network pitch meeting that’s set for Tuesday.

And this was a light weekend… I didn’t have to write a script or write a chapter in a book.

The Power of “Yes”

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Craig Mazin at The Artful Writer offers this piece of advice to working screenwriters:

If you’re a professional screenwriter and you’re asked to make a change that you think is awful, say “Yes.”

Always say yes.

Destroy the main character? “Yes!” Change that brilliant ending that
brings everything full circle with a twist-and-a-half? “Sure!” If the
producer or director has an idea that’s just god-awful, death-dealing,
movie-wrecking, story-killing, your answer to the request should be a
charming and pleasant “Okay!” Say it with pride. Alacrity, even.

Why?  Because saying yes costs you nothing, and gains you much.

When I say “yes,” I’m not agreeing to be slavish.  I’m simply agreeing to try.
If I determine that their suggestion is not to be done, I can explain
why. When you remove that initial “no,” you remove 99% of the hostility
and disfunction from the writer-employer relationship while ceding 0%
of your authority and power. And it’s funny. Ever since I began saying
“yes” a few years back, two interesting things have come to pass.

I haven’t had to write anything I didn’t believe in…

…and no one’s fired me.

I don’t agree with this advice… and I’ve never been fired.  What I don’t do is say "No." What I might say is "That’s an interesting thought, but here’s what will happen to the story if I do it," or "I don’t think that’s a good idea, and here’s why," or "Let me think about it."  But I never say yes to a note I have no intention of doing. But that’s if I’m writing a TV movie or a feature or a pilot. 

On the other hand, if I am writing a freelance episode of a TV series, I might respond to a bad note by saying  "if I do that, here’s how it will impact the story," but I won’t press the point if the executive producer disagrees. I will always say "Yes." I will always do the note, gladly and with no argument, no matter what. Why? Because your job on a TV series is to do what the showrunner wants. It’s his  show, his  characters, not yours. You are a carpenter. You have come to do a job in his house.  Your job is to do what the customer wants to the very best of your ability.

Ankle Biting Pundits

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My new "Diagnosis Murder" novel, THE WAKING NIGHMARE got a rave review from Patrick Hynes at Ankle-Biting Pundits.com, a conservative political website.

If you like mysteries, buy this book. It’s perfect for the beach. It’s perfect
for a rainy day. Perfect if you’re snowbound. And if you’re like me, you’ll
quickly get addicted.

I guess I shouldn’t tell him I voted for John Kerry…