Current Affairs

Obi-Wan Love Sandwich

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Are your erotic fantasies filled with visions of  "an Obi
Wan/Amidala/Qui-Gon intergalactic love sandwich?" If so, then Fleshbot has found the STAR WARS slash for you at the Obi-Wan Torture Oasis.

"There is something so wonderfully demoralizing about sodomy;  takes all the fight out of a man, to be conquered from within." (from Zen & nancy’s "Little Earthquakes")

It’s more than a kink, it’s a biological imperative. We Ladies of Slash must hurt young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Hurt him bad. Hence this site, and you know the rest. We’re not too inclined these days to wonder just *why* we enjoy Obi-Wan (or Mulder or Bashir or Blair or a host of other icons) displayed in such a visceral state. At least, we wonder no more so than men who question why they enjoy lesbian porn flicks. Just relax and enjoy the rollercoaster.

 

The CBS Schedule

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CBS has announced their fall schedule. The highlights: The network is jumping on the LOST and MEDIUM-inspired speculative fiction bandwagon with two shows — THE GHOST WHISPERER (Jennifer Love Hewitt talks to dead people and solves crimes) and THRESHOLD (aliens invade from STAR TREK producer Brannon Braga and BLADE screenwriter David Goyer).  Cancelled:  JOAN OF ARCADIA, JUDGING AMY and Jason Alexander 43rd awful sitcom since  SEINFELD.

The schedule, as printed by USA Today, is on the jump.

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The WB Schedule

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The WB announced their schedule today. The highlights: Don Johnson returns to primetime as a lawyer in JUST LEGAL and director David Nutter continues his amazing winning streak — his pilot SUPERNATURAL made it on the sked. Out of 11 pilots he’s shot, 11 have sold. Midseason shows include BEDFORD DIARIES, a series about sex educators at a NY college, comes from HOMICIDE & ST. ELSEWHERE writer/producer Tom Fontana.

You can find the complete schedule, as reported by TVTracker, on the jump.

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Royalty Reality

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For all of you dreaming of becoming the next John Grisham or Alice Sebold with your first novel, here’s a jolt of reality:  UK author Amanda Mann posts the details of her latest royalty statement and it’s sobering. And the performance of her first two books is far more typical than you might think.  (Thanks to Lynn Viehl for the heads-up)

The ABC Schedule

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TVTracker reports that ABC has announced their fall schedule. BLIND JUSTICE and EYES are among the notable, though not surprising, cancellations. Hitmaker JJ Abrams two pilots, THE CATCH and PROS AND CONS failed to make the sked, despite the success of LOST and ALIAS. But the influence of LOST is certainly reflected on the new schedule. Like NBC’s new roster, there’s quite a few new "speculative" fiction shows on tap, including a reimagining of THE NIGHT STALKER (from X FILE’s alum Frank Spotnitz) and INVASION, a Shaun Cassidy-produced series about aliens who secretly arrive in the Everglades in the midst of a terrible storm and a Park Ranger’s efforts to unlock the mystery.  Other new series include COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, about the first female President, from writer-director Rod Lurie.

In addition to the new fall series,  Zap2it reports that ABC has picked up several series for midseason: Additional Series
Orders: CRUMBS, THE EVIDENCE, IN JUSTICE, LESS THAN PERFECT, THE MIRACLE
WORKERS, SONS & DAUGHTERS.

Both "The Evidence" and "In Justice" reflect ABC’s aspirations to land a
strictly procedural hit, the network’s equivalent of a "CSI" or "Law &
Order." In "The Evidence," an eclectic cast — featuring Orlando Jones, Martin
Landau and Nicky Katt — solves crimes by putting together an assortment of
evidence that the audience has already seen. "In Justice" follows a lawyer (Kyle
MacLachlan) and an investigator (Jason O’Mara) struggling to get innocent people
out of prison.

On the comedy side, Fred Savage ("The Wonder Years") is back in "Crumbs,"
about two estranged brothers forced to reunite to take care of their deranged
mother and run the family business. Things remain in the family on "Sons &
Daughters," a semi-improvised look at grown-up siblings, executive produced by
Lorne Michaels ("Saturday Night Live").

Following in the footsteps of this season’s alternative programming successes
like "Supernanny" and "Wife Swap" and the emergence of "Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition," ABC will also have "Miracle Workers," a reality show about doctors who
perform revolutionary procedures on regular people, ready for midseason.

The new schedule is on the jump.

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LitBlog Coop Controversy

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Publisher’s Marketplace reports that the Litblog Co-op (which includes our friends Sarah Weinman and Mark Sarvas) is generating controversy with their first "Read This" pick, Kate Atkinson’s novel CASE HISTORIES.

In initial"comments" posted by blog readers, at least a few express disappointment with what one co-op member acknowledges was the "biggest" of the five nominated books. Atkinson’s book, published here last fast fall, registered widely within
the mainstream reviewing circles to which the lit-bloggers want to offer an alternative. Our own Book Review Index has logged 18 full-length reviews from top newspapers–almost all quite enthusiastic.

As one poster remarks: "You say yourselves that the LBC’s purpose is to draw attention to ‘the best of contemporary fiction, authors and presses that are struggling to be noticed in a flooded marketplace.’
So how does this novel qualify? It seems like a middlebrow cop out." Another reader concurs with the sentiment: "Nothing against Kate Atkinson, but a Whitbread Award Book of the Year winner whose latest novel is being published by Little, Brown hardly seems to be a choice in keeping with the spirit of the LBC’s self-imposed mission."

My brother Tod Goldberg says it’s definitely the "in" book right now.

I’ve heard lots of good things about this book and may have already told more
important literary types at cocktail parties and readings that I’ve already read
it and simply adored it and was seriously considering sending the author a fan
letter, but the fact is I haven’t, though I intend to.

People on Tod’s blog are hotly debating the choice as well. The gist of the argument is, since the book is already generating a lot of attention, did it really need help from the Litblog Coop? Should the LitBlog Coop have gone further afield and picked a book that’s struggled for  attention? Author Lynn Viehl, for one, thinks so:

Now, I’m a little slow, and kinda confused, so maybe one of you nice
people will explain this to me. We’re supposed to be getting the skinny
on struggling writers, books and presses from the LBC, correct? Um, how is Kate Atkinson struggling, exactly?  Did she like blow all her Whitbread prize money?

Based on the backblog debates on the various blogs, it seems the LitBlog may have stumbled out of the gate with this choice, but the judges are defending their pick. Mark Sarvas says:

Remember, we never said "unknown" fiction … Worthy is the goal, and besides if
we’d have picked some obscure, experimental novel, we’d be pilloried for being
pedantic and elitist.  We only means you can’t please everyone and we’re not
even trying.  We’re confident that those who check out Case Histories
will be glad they did, and the ones who knew it already have future choices to
look to (including the other four summer nominations).

What do you think? Did The LitBlog undermine their own highly-publicized intentions with their first "Read This!" honoree?

Wasserman has Left the Building

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Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation talks about editor Steve Wasserman’s era at the LA Times Book Review…and where he went wrong.

The core problem with Steve Wasserman’s tenure as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review was writ large in his answer to a question I put to him at the recent Los Angeles Festival of Books. I used the occasion of the "Celebrating the Book Review" panel to inquire about LATBR’s propensity for tedious reviews. Wasserman
responded that tedium was in the eye of the beholder, and the piece
that he’d been proudest of running was a "6,000 word essay on the
Spanish Civil War untethered to any existing book."It
is unlikely that most readers of the Book Review – a rapidly
diminishing pool, if my anecdotal evidence is any guide – shared his
delight.

The rest of Mark’s ruminations are worth reading…especially for any candidates up for Wasserman’s job.

Is Richard Wheeler Killing The Western?

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…well, Richard Wheeler thinks so.

So, here I am, writing stories that wreck the genre. Can anyone doubt
it? Soon after I published my first novels at Doubleday, its western
line expired. Soon after I published my novels at Walker and Company,
its western line died. Soon after I published my westerns with M. Evans
and Company, its western line faded away. Soon after I published my
novels with Fawcett and then Ballantine, their western lines croaked.
Soon after I published my sole novel with Bantam, its western line
(except for L’Amour) faded into the sunset. Soon after I published the
last of my novels with NAL, its western line began to wind down. I
understand that soon after my last Pinnacle novel is published, its
western line will be planted in a grave. That leaves only Forge, and
its line is fading fast.

He says he’s done it by writing what the readers don’t want.

My publishers have responded by plastering a cowboy with blazing
sixguns on the covers of many of my novels to conceal the heresies
within the covers, but it did little good. My loose literary ways
trumped the orthodoxies of the western genre, and eventually laid the
genre in its grave, though there is still some residual western fiction
showing up.

His lengthy essay on Ed Gorman’s blog will make you want to go out and read all of his westerns.

SF Chronicle Loves Wasserman

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The San Francisco Chronicle gave Steve Wasserman, the out-going editor of the LA Times Book Review, a nice going-away present this morning: a front-page, Datebook section story ("Editor Who Put West Coast on Literary Map Hangs up his Spurs") along with a commentary by Chronicle Book Critic David Kipen.
Obviously, they are a lot more fond of Wasserman in SF than we are down here in LA.  The folks at LAObserved have an interesting theory:

It was a no-brainer that Kipen would comment on the end of the Wasserman era
(and a surprise that I’m mentioned), but why the newsfeature? I don’t know, but
perhaps Chronicle top editor Narda Zacchino played a role. She started the
Festival of Books while a senior Times editor, and may even have hired Wasserman
at the review, I don’t remember for certain. Wasserman’s first job at the Times
was as the assistant to her husband, Robert Scheer (then a staff writer, now a
non-staff columnist.)

The Chronicle credits Wasserman with “turning the Sunday section into must reading for book lovers north and south, east and west.” They must have received a different edition up there than we did down here. Though Mike Davis, author of the fabulous CITY OF QUARTZ (among others), agrees with them:

"Wasserman may not be my cup of tea, but, objectively, he turned a book
section that most people threw out into undoubtedly the best book review section of any paper in the country. I’m often infuriated by specific reviews, but it is the most exciting book review section in the country.

They only pay passing attention to his detractors, with quotes from my brother Tod and former LATBR editor Digby Diehl.

"Steve Wasserman tried to impress his literary taste on the city of Los Angeles," author and blogger Tod Goldberg said. "But I don’t think it meshed with what people in L.A. were actually reading. L.A. is a company town and that company is Hollywood. I don’t think the review needs to be focused only on Jackie Collins and popular literature, but it needs to find a voice that is both popular and challenging."

The L.A. Times Book Review was launched as a stand-alone section in 1975 under editor Digby Diehl, whose mentor was the paper’s longtime book critic, Robert Kirsch. Though he applauds the vigor of the book festival, Diehl is a critic of some aspects of the Review.

"I’m sure there are many authors who are very grateful to Steve for the kind of books he reviewed, for his emphasis on very serious subjects and his wonderful treatment of a lot of books that wouldn’t get much attention outside of academic reviews," Diehl says. "I just don’t think that’s a good use of space in a Sunday newspaper."

Diehl’s tenure coincided with the birth of chain bookstores, which boosted ad sales for the book review. ("I made well over a million dollars a year for the L.A. Times," he notes.) Today, newspaper advertising from publishers and bookstores has all but disappeared.

The plummeting ad dollars the LATBR generated should speak volumes about how well read the section really is. They may be reading it north and south, east and west, but they aren’t reading it in L.A.

To be fair, though, Wasserman deserves our city’s undying gratitude and respect for creating the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which has truly changed the face of the Southern California Lit Scene. His Book Review may not have been memorable, but the Book Festival is his real legacy…and I, for one, hope it endures for a very long time.