Current Affairs

Best Laugh of the Day…

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…comes from my friend author Harley Jane Kozak at Lipstick Chronicles.

Those of you who recall my family’s holiday incident, “The Death of Santa,” earlier this month will not be surprised to learn of its domino effect. Last week my 8-year old daughter found an old note from the Tooth Fairy.

“Mommy,” she said, studying it, “this printing looks like yours.”

I said nothing. My daughter looked up at me.

“It’s you!” she yelled. “Again! Every fairy is you, every Claus is you – is God you?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not God.”

Is Flashpoint the Turning Point for Canadian TV?

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Since we're talking about Canadian TV here lately…
During the writer's strike, CBS and NBC looked the the Great White North for replacement programming. CBS snagged the Canadian series FLASHPOINT and NBC grabbed THE LISTENER. 

FLASHPOINT did modestly well and is coming back for more episodes next month, THE LISTENER hasn't aired yet. But Globe & Mail TV critic John Doyle seems to think FLASHPOINT already marks a significant turning point for Canadian TV: 

FLASHPOINT changed everything. It benefited from the paucity of new shows available in the United States, thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike, but as soon as it became a hit, it brought the Canadian TV industry alive with hope and ideas. It also got better, episode by episode. And it showcased great Canadian actors to Hollywood and the world.

I think it may be too soon for the Canadians to assume FLASHPOINT is a major game-changer for their industry (or a certified hit on American TV).

It's certainly not the first time a Canadian show has been tried on U.S. primetime. CBS has toyed with Canadian content many times over the years…first with their "Crimetime After Primetime" latenight  schedule of Canadian shows (NIGHT HEAT, ADDERLY, DIAMONDS, etc) in the 1980s. They occasionally tried out the shows in primetime without success. And in 1994, CBS carried DUE SOUTH in primetime for a couple of seasons but it failed to spark a wave of home-grown Canadian programs on American airwaves (to be fair, it wasn't a true Canadian series, though. FLASHPOINT is set in Toronto….DUE SOUTH was a twist on McCLOUD, bringing a Canadian Mountie to Chicago).

Five or six years ago, UPN aired the popular Canadian series POWERPLAY…and cancelled it after just one disasterously low-rated airing. And, more recently, Lifetime briefly aired the Canadian vampire series BLOOD TIES to little notice.

It will be interesting to see if FLASHPOINT can hold its own now in a much more competitive environment than it faced during its initial airing…and if lives up to all the hopes the Canadian TV industry seems to be pinning on it

Spying is Hard Work

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The Washington Post reports that the CIA is offering Afghan warlords Viagra in return for their help battling the Taliban.

"You didn't hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones," said one retired operative familiar with the drug's use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often had four wives — the maximum number allowed by the Koran — and aging village patriarchs were easily sold on the utility of a pill that could "put them back in an authoritative position," the official said.

TV, eh?

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Canadian TV writer Denis McGrath laments the current state of the TV biz up there:

The business model here — buy U.S. shows at dumped fire sale prices, and show 'em at the same time while you paste on your commercials — was always a far more fragile model than the one in the USA. But as the model that made their piggyback-industry possible crumbles, all the signs point toward the mandarins here taking in exactly the wrong lessons, and doubling down on a dying strategy.

As I have mentioned in past posts, Canada isn't particularly well-known for the quality of their home-grown, episodic dramas. But that doesn't mean they aren't producing a lot of them — the problem is, many are American shows that are merely shot in Canada for the tax breaks. Or, as blogger Will Dixon pointed out:

[…]as far as 'defining' us, service producing US programming is certainly high on the list of things we do as an industry…and the Stargates' definitely fall into that category (which is kind of an unfair rap against them because even though the vast majority of cast, crew, writers, showrunners are Canadian, it's primary investors and broadcasters have been American – MGM and US's Showtime and then SciFi channel). Thus, most people up here don't perceive them as distinctly 'Canadian' shows.

STARGATE, THE X FILES, THE COMMISH, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, PSYCH, and SMALLVILLE (and the first season of MONK) are just a few of the many American shows that have been out-sourced to Canada. Although the shows were shot entirely in Canada, and 95% of the cast and crew were Canadian, nobody considers them Canadian series…because they were created, developed, and financed in the United States, where they had their initial airings. 

The unfortunate truth is that without American out-sourcing of TV production to Canada, the TV industry up there would be hardly an industry at all…and that's not good for the future of Canadian TV.

Mysterical-E is Tied In

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Gerald So's column at Mysterical-E today is an appreciation of media tie-ins. He writes, in part:

A common misconception is that tie-ins are poorly or quickly
written, and while some have seemed that way to me, as my reading
tastes have matured, I've been able to choose better-written material.
What makes me personally pick up a tie-in novel or comic book these
days? The author has to have some experience writing for the original
medium and the new one, as Monk novelist Lee Goldberg has with USA
Network's Monk. Because Goldberg has written for the show, and because
he is a novelist in his own right, he's well suited to bring Monk to
the page.

[…]In
some ways, tie-in writing is more difficult than creating characters
and a story from scratch. Tie-in writers have to deliver the best of
both worlds: what the existing fan base enjoys about the original
concept and what the new fan base expects from the new concept. For
example, Tod Goldberg's first tie-in, Burn Notice: The Fix
delivered the wry spycraft from the TV show but also delivered an
intricate plot better suited to a novel than to TV's usual 44 minutes.

Thanks, Gerald!

I’m a Woman…and a Publisher?

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Bonnie Kaye's Jones Harvest Fraud Victims site and Jones Harvest Fraud Victims Blog must be doing some good because she's certainly rattled Brien Jones, the founder of the sleazy vanity press. 

Brien, you may recall, is a former top exec at the Bookman and Airleaf vanity presses, which defrauded scores of gullible, aspiring authors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars before they were shut down. Today he's posted a new rant on his Jones Harvest blog defending himself against Kaye and the legions of bloggers who are warning people to stay away from his latest vanity press scheme, which seems to prey primarily on the elderly:

I also understand cowardly women like Victoria Strauss, Julie Neidlinger and Lee Goldberg and their lies. After all they’re not saying anything bad — just repeating what they were told. And what do you know! They all have their own publishing companies too! 

As far as I know, I am neither a woman nor a publisher. But you can't really expect a guy with Brien's shady vanity press past to concern himself with facts. It's clear that the only fact he is interested in is whether or not his elderly clients have any credit left on their Visa cards that they can spend on his false promises of publishing success. 

I have blogged about Brien and his vanity press scams here for years…not based so much on what other people have said, but on the sleazy solicitations the moron has actually sent to me and the outrageous promises he's made on his websites.

Kaye's efforts brought down Airleaf and exposed their rampant fraud … with luck,  she will accomplish the same with Jones Harvest.  Keep up the good work, Bonnie!

UPDATE 12-31-08: Brien Jones has, apparently, sobered up and removed his rant from his blog. But you can still see it here on his BonnieKayLies blog. I've also saved it here  as service for students studying to be mental health professionals. 

 UPDATE 12-29-08: Flights of Fancy blogs nails Brien Jones for their amateurish covers and using his receptionist to write the rave reviews that are used as blurbs on his customers books.

UPDATE 12-28-08: Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware discusses Brien's latest rant. 

UPDATE 12-28-08:  Brien Jones has launched a new site, BonnieKayLies, where he cross-posts his rants from the Jones Harvest Blog. I was scrolling through his blather when I came across his remarkable take on Kaye's efforts to expose the fraud at Airleaf, which eventually led to the Indiana Attorney General shutting down the scam:

In my opinion Bonnie Kaye wanted her books published and sold for free. That’s what she did to Airleaf Publishing. Bonnie Kaye didn’t complain then. Why would she? Then when Airleaf didn’t pay HER enough Bonnie Kaye started a vicious campaign against them (thankfully long after I resigned my position there.)

When Bonnie Kaye was done with Airleaf what happened? The owner walked away scot-free, ‘thanks for all the swell money.’ The people that were there when it closed started their own companies. The only real result of Bonnie Kaye’s campaign was over 1000 authors lost the books they paid to have published.

Then along comes me and Jones Harvest Publishing. ‘Well’ Bonnie Kaye says, ‘let’s try it again.’

Uh-huh. In other words, Brien and his friends at Airleaf did nothing wrong. I guess Brien didn't read the Attorney General's report on the Airleaf  fraud. Maybe that's why he hasn't learned from his mistakes and seems intent on repeating them.

You’re So Vain

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There were several interesting and informative blog posts on the web this week about self-publishing. 

After publishers rejected his thriller, CNET columnist David Carnoy spent $5000 to self-publish it through Booksurge, against the advice of his agent. He notes that:

The average self-published book sells about 100-150 copies–or 2/3 to 3/4 of your friends and family combined (and don't count on all your Facebook aquaintances buying). I don't have a source for this statistic, but I've seen this stated on several blogs and as a Publishers Weekly article titled "Turning Bad Books into Big Bucks" noted, while traditional publishers aim to publish hundreds of thousands of copies of a few books, self-publishing companies make money by publishing 100 copies of hundreds of thousands of books.

But that reality check didn't stop Carnoy, who does such a good job listing all the substantial pitfalls of self-publishing that I wonder why he bothered to go that route and what he hopes to gain. 

Author J. Steven York points out that vanity presses stress the difficulty of selling your work to a real publisher as a good reason to pay to be published. York concedes that it's true that getting published is hard:

It takes time. The deck is stacked against you, and a lot of the publishing process exists primarily to keep the flood of dreck out, sometimes keeping good books and writers out in the process. If it bothers you, and it probably does, I've got two words for you. Boo. Hoo. Like many things worth doing, getting a book published is work. It requires patience, resilience, and determination. And despite all this (and this is what the vanity publishers don't tell you), it beats the alternative.

[…]If selling your book to a legitimate publisher is too too hard for you, then going to a vanity press won't solve your problem, it will multiply it.

York lists many of the same pitfalls as Carnoy does. In a later post, he takes issue with some of Carnoy's conclusions and challenges the columnist's rationale for self-publishing his novel. York makes a lot of excellent points. His two posts should be required reading for anyone contemplating self-publishing their books.

Writers Write

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Office
James Reasoner is one of the most prolific authors that I know…he's had hundreds of books published, mostly in the western genre. And yet very few people know who he is. Why? Because the majority of those books don't have his name on them (they were written under "house names" owned by the publisher or a literary estate).

For a lot of authors, the most important thing to them is seeing their name on the cover. But for James (pictured on the left hard at work), the most important thing is to make a living writing, something he loves to do and is very good at:

At one point in my career, I had published more than eighty books, only one of which (TEXAS WIND) had my name on it. People used to ask me how I could write a book knowing that my name wouldn’t be on it, and my stock answer was “I don’t care if my name is on the book as long as it’s on the check.”
Of course, that’s not exactly true now and wasn’t then. I’d love to be able to just write what I want, sell it, and have my name on it. But being able to keep writing, period, is more important to me.

It's a refreshing…and dare I say it, professional…attitude that you don't find much today. So many aspiring writers rush to self-publishing companies simply because they want the experience of seeing their name on a book cover, even if they have to spend thousands of dollars to do it. But James is different. He's a real writer and a true professional. I wish there were more like him:

There are dozens of books out there now with my name on them, and I’m thankful for Reasoner1
each and every one of them. I hope there’ll be more in the future. But as long as I can keep writing, one way or the other, I’ll be okay. That’s just me. I don’t really think that’s the only way to carve out a career – I’m sure every author has a different approach – but I feel like I’ve played the cards that were dealt to me and won more than I’ve lost.

I know how he feels. I think I may have told this story here before, but…a couple of years ago, it was down to Bill Rabkin & me against one other candidate for the co-exec producer job on a major hit series. The showrunner couldn't choose between the us and the other guy. So we met with the studio chief, who would be deciding who ultimately got the job. The interview was going great, and I was feeling real good about our chances, until the studio chief said:

"I only have on reservation about you two. Why don't you have sexier credits?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Why haven't you ever worked on Law and Order or CSI?"

"Because we never had the opportunity, either because we were working on something else when they had openings or they weren't interested in hiring us when we were available," I said. "In the course of our career, we didn't have the luxury of picking and choosing our jobs as much as we would have liked. We have families and had to make a living so we took what came along and what interested us. But if you like us, our writing, our producing philosophy, and the way we tell stories, what difference does it make whether we worked on CSI or Diagnosis Murder?"

We might also have mentioned that our friend Terry Winter was working on SISTER SISTER when he got hired on the SOPRANOS, where he won Emmys and WGA Awards. His previous credits include THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLIPPER and XENA. Not exactly the sexiest credits.

Well, it goes without saying that we didn't get the job. They hired someone with sexier credits. And fired him thirteen episodes later.

I like seeing my name in print and on the TV screen, but I consider myself first and foremost a working, professional writer. I write because I love it, but I also write to earn a living. Sometimes my creative or personal desires have to take a backseat to simply having a job. I don't think that Terry or I wrote for FLIPPER because we had a burning need to tells stories about a clever dolphin. We did it because writing is what we do and how we pay our bills.

UPDATE 12-20-2008: Bill Crider reviews James Reasoner's latest LONGARM novel (written under the house name "Tabor Evans.") And here's a Saddlebums review of one of Reasoner's 2007 LONGARM tales and an interview they did with him.

The Hairy Guy is Gone

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Retro2_17661a
Back in the 1970s, when I was about nine or ten years old, I remember stealing glimpses at my parents'  copy of THE JOY OF SEX, with it's drawings of hairy, bookish couple coupling, and thinking if that was what sex was like, I didn't see what all the excitement was about.  Now the New York Times reports that there's a new edition of the book. Gone are the illustrations of hairy man and his hippie babe, replaced by photos of an attractive young couple, and now the book explores issues like AIDS, Viagra, and Internet porn, but…:

In a society where, if anything, people talk and think far too much about sex already, what is the point of reading anything else about it? Is there really anything new to say? […] People have more sex with more partners and think nothing of talking about it the next day in Starbucks, on the bus, on their cellphones as they walk along the street. College students hook up instead of dating. Magazines aimed at teenage girls publish practical advice on where to put what, and what to do then, when performing oral sex. Sexual images loom down from billboards, leap out of television sets and beckon from computers. Old-style pornography has become modern erotica; the newer, hard-core versions can be easily found by anyone with a computer. 

Good point. So why the update? Well, it turns out that Dr. Alex Comfort, who wrote the original book, overlooked a few things:

“He mentions the clitoris, he honors the clitoris, he says it’s important,” said Susan Quilliam [who did the revision]. “That was a lot more than most people did in those days. But he only mentions it in passing a few times and has no specific section on it. Not because he was anti-clitoris but because he just didn’t know […]I’m sure he was a lovely man, but he said that most men, given a young and attractive partner, can always get it up — it’s only when a woman lets herself go that he has a problem. And you’re going, ‘No, no, no!’ But that is what it was like then.” 

It's a good thing for us men that fewer women are letting themselves go today!