Current Affairs

A Partnership that’s Plum Over

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The Smart Bitches are reporting what I already knew — the collaboration between my friends Janet Evanovich and Steve Cannell didn’t work out. The way I heard it from Steve, their writing styles just didn’t mesh but things ended amicably between them. I’m not surprised they have remained friends despite whatever creative tussles they may have had — they are two of the nicest,  and most talented, people I know.

Another Reasoner Update

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The Weatherford Democrat wrote about the Reasoners in their coverage of the wild fires that raged   "from Johnson to Tarrant County lines" in Texas:

James and Livia Reasoner lost their home on Colby Lane near Flat Rock Tuesday.

James
said he was sitting at his computer when he smelled smoke. He looked
outside and found a line of fire reaching across his property, racing
to his home.

“I grabbed a hose and got the dog,” he said.

Another dog escaped the blaze, but a family goat, three cats and a bird were lost.

“We lost everything,” Livia said. “All of our clothes — everything.”

The Reasoners are both writers and lost a book collection and ones they wrote along with family heirlooms and photos.

Wednesday, they were called back to what used to be their home, only to find it caught fire again.

An alleged illegal burn was to blame.

“I can’t believe after yesterday someone would be burning today,” Livia said.

The
couple repeatedly thanked Silver Creek firefighters for their help in
putting out the flames and saving a relative’s home next door.

Firefighters simply said it was their job.

“We’re all alive,” she said gratefully. “At least we had insurance.”

James let out a long sigh. “We’ll just start over.”

Dell Hell

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Dellxpsm1330
I used to be a loyal Dell owner and an enthusiastic cheerleader for their products. They used to make great machines and they backed them up with top-notch customer support.

Those days are gone.

About two months ago, I bought a XPS M1330 laptop because its light, its fast, it was well-reviewed  and it’s a Dell, which I associated with quality. I took it out of the box and before the day was over, the stickers on the back — which say "XPS" — had peeled off. I called Dell and asked for new stickers. But rather than sending me stickers, they sent a service man to my house who had to replace the entire back panel of my machine. Two days later, the stickers fell off again. I should have seen that as a warning sign.

A week or two later, and a day before going to Europe, I turned on my machine and couldn’t access the operating system. I spent three hours on the phone with their support people…but they couldn’t solve the problem nor could they tell me the cause. They only had one solution: reformat the hard-drive and re-load all my software. It took me an entire day to do it and it was a nightmare. 

On the airplane to Germany, the computer crashed (a blue screen "physical memory dump") and rebooted. And every day after that, at some point, the computer would crash and reboot again. I called Dell, spent more hours on the phone, and they couldn’t find a solution. Their best guess was that it was a problem with my Norton 360 software. I called Norton and they said it was clearly a hardware problem.

So,  I lived with it, backing up constantly. This weekend, within hours of arriving in New York on another business trip, my XPS crashed again.  Only this time, I couldn’t access the operating system. I called Dell and after another two hours on the phone, the baffled and frustrated support guy sought advice from a senior supervisor who told him  that this was a common problem
with XPS M1330 motherboards made on the same date as mine. SO WHY THE HELL DON’T
**ALL** THE SUPPORT PEOPLE KNOW THIS!?  WHY IS IT SOME BIG FRIGGIN’ SECRET? They could have saved me and
their employees hours and hours on the phone just by sharing this information with all their support people.

Those were lost hours that I didn’t spend with my family or working on my books. It was time flushed down the toilet for no reason except Dell’s ineptitude and disorganization.

I was furious. It was at that moment that they lost me, a loyal customer for ten years, someone who has bought four desktops and six laptops from them (for myself and my family).

I demanded that they replace my computer. They said they couldn’t do that, but that they would send a tech to my house to replace the motherboard and hard-drive on the one that I have …and the back panel with the missing stickers.

The tech came over today and spent a few hours installing my new motherboard and hard-drive…but they gave him the wrong back panel, so he has to come back tomorrow. So that’s two days I have to sit around the house waiting for the tech and being here while he works. More lost time. More lost productivity. All because Dell doesn’t know how to make computers or support their products any more.

I won’t be spending another moment in Dell Hell.

Scrapbooking Scandal

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I got a kick out of this front page, LA Times article  about a "scandal" in the scrapbooking world. Scrapbooker Kristina Contes was inducted into Creating Keepsake magazine’s Scrapbooking Hall of Fame based on an entry she did that included photographs of herself. Contes asked Creating Keepsakes to be sure to credit the photographer who took the pictures, which they did. When Contes’ winning entry was published, with Contes and the photographer credited, scrapbookers went into a tizzy because the contest rules stated that entrants had to produce everything they used themselves — and by using an outside photographer, Contes broke the rules. Apparently, neither Creating Keepsakes nor Contes realized the mistake until it was too late. But in the aftermath, Contes has been  ostracized by Talafan scrapbookers, accused of being immoral and the scrapbooking equivalent of Marion Jones.

I know nothing about this scandal except what I read in the article. But it strikes me as utterly ridiculous. Contes didn’t try to hide anything. The "scandal" erupted because she honorably sought credit for the photographer, not because she was trying to pass off someone else’s work as her own. Not only that, but Creative Keepsakes was aware of it and also didn’t see a problem. So, basically, Contes made an innocent mistake and is being crucified by insane scrapbookers  for being honorable and doing the right thing.

What is really astonishing is that this non-scandalous scandal makes the front page of the LA Times while the Cassie Edwards situation, a real case of blatant plagiarism and dishonesty, is buried in a tiny bit in the Calender section.

UPDATE 1-13-2008: My sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, authors of JOURNAL REVOLUTION and VISUAL CHRONICLES, blogged about this idiotic scandal. I laughed out loud at this comment from Jane Devin, one of their readers:

If all materials in the scrapbook had to be
produced by the artist, as the article and apparently the rules state,
where does this leave collages, magazine clippings and pics, special
paper. . .or any paper for that matter? If rubber stamps were used, did
they have to make their own? Did they have to use beet juice for paint,
and if so who grew the beet?

And, as Maria pointed out, what about using childhood pics? Or some
other tangible thing — say a bead, or a matchbook? Would the rules
exclude those because they were created by someone else?

 

Why Should Authors Care About the WGA Strike?

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Michael Connelly, Elizabeth Cosin, and Terrill Lee Lankford were among the MWA many members who have showed up to walk alongside the striking screenwriters on picket line recently. Obviously, there are many authors who are also WGA members (like Paul Levine, Robert Crais, Andrew Klavan, Steve Cannell, Lawrence Block, Eric Garcia, Mark Haskell Smith, Seth Greenland, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Robert B. Parker, Larry McMurtry, George Pelecanos, and myself, to name just a few). But why should a non-screenwriting author give a damn about how the strike turns out?

The answer is simple. Because we are a community of writers…not just book writers or screen writers. We should be concerned about any efforts to limit the royalties that writers receive from the commercial exploitation of our creative work.

Many of the corporations that own the studios and networks also own many major publishing companies…if they succeed in limiting what screenwriters get from new media, they will only be encourage to seek similar "rollbacks" from authors and other artists who, incidentally, don’t have the benefit of being represented by a powerful union. The final deal struck between the corporations and the WGA in those emerging markets could create a template  or how writers of books, computer games, and other media are treated.

SAG President Alan Rosenberg put it best: "This fight is for the rights of all creative artists and our collective future is at stake."

How they think

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My friend Jack Bernstein directed me to an excellent article by a former corporate attorney-turned-writer that’s full of insights into the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy.

Regardless of what camp you fall in, everyone is grasping for an
explanation of why the studios are acting the way they are. That’s
because with the exception of a few carefully prepared press releases,
a trade ad or two, and some supposed “leaked” stories, we haven’t heard
directly from any of the CEOs about the strike. We’ve only heard from
Nick Counter – their point man. Their lawyer.

I’m here to tell
you, as a former litigator who spent several years at one of the
biggest corporate law firms in the world, that we’re all in engaged in
a huge lawyering game, and things are proceeding accordingly.