#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
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). 
David 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.
As of tomorrow night, author Ed Gorman’s musings, and those of his friends, have a new home… www.edgormanandfriends.com
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!
I often wonder as I write a book, particularly my DIAGNOSIS MURDER mysteries, when it’s appropriate to let my readers know when one of my characters has an erection. Now I know.
Okay, could someone please explain to me the rules for nipples?
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…
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.
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.
This post started as an email to the DorothyL list and, mid-way through, I realized I was really writing a blog entry. So I sent what I had to the list and came back here to finish it up.
The El Paso LCC was a terrific convention… well organized and lots of fun. Like the Doubletree in Monterey last year, The Camino Real was a pleasant, open, and bright venue with a floor-plan that encouraged people to hang out and chat. There were many large and small gatherings, day and night,
throughout the lobby, bar, and convention floor. The pleasant, warm atmosphere of the hotel, and the convention itself, was especially appreciated considering how unappealing the city itself was.
(El Paso is a hell hole)
All the authors I spoke to enjoyed the convention as much as I did. It was unlike any LCC I’ve been to before… perhaps because the authors appeared to outnumber the fans, aspiring writers, and booksellers. As a result, the LCC had the feel of a "professional" gathering…with authors having the opportunity to spend more time with one another than usual at these events. That’s not to say
fans were excluded… far from it. I think the fans there got to spend more time with individual authors than ever before. But I think author/attendee ratio gave the conference an entirely different vibe than past ones. It felt very collegial, very casual, without the sense that anybody was really there to
"sell" themselves and their work. It felt to me more like a very long party than
the promotional and networking opportunity, which is how too many authors treat these events.
I was struck, as I have been many times in the past, by how friendly, supportive, and open the mystery writing community is… particularly the authors, who could easily be snobbish, egotistical, and intimidating. Coming from TV, where there is so much ego, competitiveness, and back-stabbing among writers, the overwhelming kindness and congeniality of the authors is truly refreshing and, at the risk of sounding maudlin, heartwarming. Bestselling authors are as open and approachable as the first-time authors proudly clutching the ARCs of their soon-to-be-published paperbacks.
This convention, more than any other I’ve been too, gave me the chance to spend time with authors and fans alike. Even the panels I attended seemed to have a more casual, easy-going, light-hearted quality about them.
I credit the organizers for a lot of this… but also the authors, who came not to sell books, but to enjoy the company of their friends… and to make new ones.
I just got back to L.A. tonight… I’m sure you’ll be seeing a bunch of new posts after I unpack, read my mail, and catch up on the trades. In the mean time, here are some photos from the Left Coast Crime conference… with more photos to come. You can click on the pictures for a larger images. 
Up first are Joel Goldman, myself, and Victor Gischler at the big, mass signing on Friday night…just a few hours before Joel and Victor hit the dance floor. The next photo is me with Chicago Sun Times critic (and frequent commentor here) 
David Montgomery, who left with a suitcase full of ARCs. 
That’s the multi-talented Bill Crider with his arm around me… and hey, look, 
there’s me with author David Morrell, co-president of the International Thriller Writers, plotting world domination.
Finally, here’s a big group photo of the mob of us going to dinner on Wednesday night…I’m the guy you don’t see taking the picture. The folks are Nan Lyle, Mrs. Bob Levinson, Mr. Bob Levinson, Harley Jane Kozak, Joel Goldman, Twist Phelan, Dr. Doug Lyle and Dan Hale.
The Left Coast Crime convention wrapped up today and it was one of the best I’ve ever attended… despite how unappealing the host city was (how can anyone live in El Paso? They must spend all their waking hours imagining the day they can leave).
For me, the highlight of the convention was all the authors I met for the first time (or those I only knew slightly before) and had the opportunity to get to know over drinks in the bar, long dinners, or across a poker table… like Reed Coleman, David Morrell, Barry Eisler, Carl Brookins, Jim Born, David Ellis, Suzanne Frankel, Charlaine Harris, Joan Hess, Kirk Russell, John Billheimer, Jim Fusilli, Harry Hunsicker and J.A. Konrath (who moderated perhaps the most unusual, and entertaining, panel I’ve ever been on. You’ll just have to buy the tape to find out for yourself). In fact, I met so many people, and had such a wonderful time talking to them, it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Every night I had dinner with a different group of authors (usually at the pricey, but delicious, Cafe Central across the street from the hotel) and learned so much about the craft of writing, the state of the publishing industry, and the intricacies of promotion…we talked about other things, of course, but those conversations about what we do were invaluable to me.
I also got lured into the nightly poker game with Parnell Hall, Bill Fitzhugh, SJ Rozan, Gary Phillips and others… and although I’m certain I embarrassed myself with my inexperience (I haven’t played in 20 years), I had great fun and appreciated their patience with me. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning doing anything besides writing…
And I don’t think I will ever forget watching Victor Gischler’s smooth moves on the disco floor, where he taught El Pasoans the true meaning of boogie with Gary Phillips, Reed Coleman, Suzanne Frankel and Meg Chittenden, among others…
Perhaps when I’ve had some time to reflect on the weekend I’ll have something more to say than all this name-dropping and gushing…