Current Affairs

Don’t Pay Them, They Pay You

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Prolific author Lynn Viehl (well, that’s one of her pen-names, anyway) remembers the temptation, back when she was an aspiring author (or is it authors in her case?),  to sign with one of those agents who tried to steer her into a book doctor scam.  the book doctor said her manuscript needed work… and it would cost $1300 to fix it up. She almost wrote the check…but thought better of it, despite his dire warnings that she was making a grave mistake. A few years later, the "agent" and the "book doctor" got nailed by the law for defrauding 3600 people with their phony literary agency and publishing house.  As she says, "aspiring writers, make it your mantra:  you don’t pay them, they pay you."

“Shannon Elizabeth Remembers She’s a Celebrity, Divorces Fat Man”

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That headline, from the blog TVgasm, made me laugh out loud…  the rest of the post is pretty funny, too.

All things come in three’s, including celebrity break-ups.

Last night American Pie masturbating chick filed for divorce from
LOST’s Hurley. (ok not really) This break-up was taken particularly
hard by fat, hairy unnattractive men everywhere who thought, "See, it
could happen to me." No, fat man…it can’t.

Shannon forwent the usual "irreconcilable differences" claim, rather
filing under the less oft used, "He stopped hypnotizing me" defense.

I’m The Guy Without a Beer

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Here’s a picture taken last week at Left Coast Crime… that’s author David Ellis, me, and author Jim O. Born (click on the picture for a larger image). Lcc05010David Montgomery was the photographer. Not pictured: the married waitress-who-is-actually-an-actress with the low-cut shirt who was flirting with me, Victor Gischler, my gardener Enrique,  and Stacy O’Quinn, the girl I had a crush on in third grade.

Those Who Can Do Teach

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Bill Rabkin and I will be teaching an online, four-week  screenwriting course entitled "Writing Dramatic Television"  (punchy title, huh?)  beginning on April 4th for the Writers University. Here’s the course listing:

In this four week course, two established executive producers/showrunners
will give you an inside look at the world of episodic television. You will
learn—and practice— the actual process involved in successfully writing a spec
episodic script that will open doors across Hollywood. You will learn how to
analyze a TV show and develop “franchise”-friendly story ideas. You will develop
and write a story under the direction of the instructors, who will be acting as
showrunners… and then, after incorporating their notes, you will be sent off to
write your outline. Finally, you will develop and refine your outline with the
instructors, leaving you at the end of the course ready to write your episodic
spec script…the first step in getting a job on a TV series.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up!

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.