Haivng sex with midgets, burning human fecal matter, and dorms that smell of masturbation are just a few of the things you'll learn about listening to my brother Tod on Gelati's GZONE podcast.
Current Affairs
What We Do To keep Ourselves Interested
I write books more for myself than for my readers. I figure if I am not entertained, my reader won't be, either. Author Christa Faust feels the same way…
A reviewer recently accused me of creating a “Mary Sue” character in my Supernatural tie-in COYOTE’S KISS. For those who don’t know what that means, a “Mary Sue” is a too-perfect wish-fulfillment character that represents the author’s own idealized persona.
While I freely admit that the character in question is a wish-fulfillment character, it’s a completely different kind of wish. I created that character not because I’d like to be her, but because I’d like to fuck her. After all, we tie-in writers have to do something to spice up the daily grind.
I don't think I've ever created a character in a book or a screenplay that was a personal fuck fantasy figure. I'll have to try that one of these days…but I doubt it will be in a Monk novel.
Writing What You Have To
People are always asking Lawrence Block when he's going to write another Bernie Rhodenbarr book. He doesn't know. Besides, he's not interested in writing what you want him to write… because that's not what drives him, or most writers, to put words on the page. He says:
It’s counterproductive to tell me what you want me to write. I sincerely hope that my writing pleases you, but if you think I’m here to give you what you want, there’s a lot you don’t understand about writing, and no end of things you don’t understand about me. The greatest disservice I could do my readers is to try to give them what they want. That’s just not part of my job description. All I can do is write my books my way, and try to make them so irresistible that you enjoy reading what I want to write.
[…]as much as I might want to write a book about Bernie, or any other character, the desire’s not all that’s required. There are writers who can write anything they’re asked to write, and I thank whatever gods may be that I am not of their number. I probably was, early on, but I got spoiled, and for years now I’ve been unable to go on writing a book unless it engages me.
I love my readers. I need my readers. But some readers have the ridiculous notion that the novelists they read work for them and have an obligation to keep churning out the same book over and over. Some authors are quite content to do that. But even among those authors, I know many of them keep writing book after book about the same characters because they love it, because that's what they are driven creatively to do, and not only because its what their readers and publishers want from them. I'm on my 14th MONK book, and I can tell you I'm not writing them for the money. If I was, I would have quit long ago, because the money is far from spectacular.
Others, like Lawrence Block, would rather go where-ever their muse takes them, regardless of whether it makes the most commercial sense or disappoints some of their fans (I am sure there are scores of readers who wish he'd do nothing but write Scudder and Burglar books for the rest of his life). He writes the story that he has to tell…not the story that you, or me, or the publishers want him to tell.
I admire that about him. Maybe it's that dedication to his muse, and not his readers, that's one of the keys to his prolific output and great success.
Man Undercover
Jeroen Ten Berge is a terrific cover artist. He' s done the covers for my books WATCH ME DIE and THE JURY SERIES…as well as the books coming out of Top Suspense, to name a few. Author Joseph D'Agnese interviewed Jeroen on his blog. Here's an excerpt:
How do you describe the work you do? Are you a designer, an illustrator, or what? (It might help if you tell us what your training/background is.)
I consider myself a designer first. However, illustration is a skill I almost always use to assist me in creating the design I have in mind. In some cases an illustration becomes the key element of a design. The Scientist & The Sociopath is an example, but the Serial-series covers I created for Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath are also illustrations, as is Suzanne Tyrpak’s Vestal Virgin cover. I also use stock photography, sometimes my own. Several of the covers I designed for Marcus Sakey feature my photos, as do several of Blake’s covers.
I guess I was fortunate to have studied graphic and typographic design at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague in the early- to mid-1980s. There was a strong focus on teaching the principles of design and typography, taught by people such as Gerrit Noordzij, one of the greatest type designers of his generation. There was, however, equal attention paid to illustration and photography. The philosophy was very much, "Why ask someone else to make an illustration or photograph for your design if you can do it yourself?" In retrospect I can see that graduating the year before Apple MacIntosh was introduced to the Netherlands helped as well. Knowing how lead type works, and why there are certain rules of design helps me on a daily basis. That said—I have worked on an Apple for more than 20 years now, and would consider a career change if I had to go back designing old school.
Vote for Carleton Eastlake for WGA Board
My friend Carleton Eastlake is an incumbent running for re-election to the Writers Guild of America board of directors. He has done an exceptional job on behalf of writers and, if you are a WGA member, I hope you will not only vote for him, but will endorse him as well. I have. You can read his compelling and thoughtful candidate's statement and endorse him by going here.
Call To Danger
The HMSS Blog has a terrific piece on the saga of Call to Danger, a series concept that CBS kept trying to make work during the 60s and 70s. The idea was that a spy would recruit an ordinary citizen to help him solve a crime. I also wrote in detail about these pilots in my book, Unsold Television Pilots.
The network commissioned three pilots — in 1961, 1967 and 1973 — but none of them clicked.
Lloyd Nolan starred as treasury agent Robert Hale in the 1961 pilot, which was produced by Perry Lafferty, who later became a top CBS exec.
In the 1968 pilot, Peter Graves played Jim Kingsley, an agent for the Office of National Resources, who used a super computer to recruit citizens to help out…to a rousing Morton Stevens' theme. James Gregory played his boss. The network liked Graves so much, they made him the star of Mission Impossible. And they liked Stevens' Call to Danger theme so much that they re-used it in the score to the Hawaii Five-O pilot and as the "CBS Specials" theme.
In the 1973 pilot, written by MI producer Laurence Heath, Graves reluctantly signed on again. this time playing Treasury Agent Douglas Warfield, who also uses computers to recruit civilians to help him solve crimes…but with a different theme tune.
Here's the opening to the 1973 pilot
Books Without Borders
The demise of Borders, though widely expected, is sending shockwaves through the publishing industry that authors will undoubtedly be feeling in their wallets, as the Wall Street Journal reports.
When you lose literally miles of bookshelves, it's going to have an impact," said David Young, chief executive ofLagardère SCA's Hachette Book Group, which Borders owed $36.9 million at the time of its bankruptcy filing. "I hope other retailers will now step up and make offers for what they consider to be the prime sites," Mr. Young said. "It's a tragedy Borders didn't make it through."
The loss of Borders may also make it more difficult for new writers to be discovered. "The liquidation of Borders is an irreplaceable loss of a big part of the book-discovery ecosystem," said Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information, a unit of MarketResearch.com "Thousands of people whose job consisted of talking up and selling books will eventually being doing something else, and that's bad for authors, agents, and everyone associated with the value chain in books."
Hardcover and paperback book sales are bound to take a huge hit…and publishers are going to pass on the pain by offering lower advances. This is bound to drive more authors, particularly those in the ever-widening mid-list, to self-publishing. It will also have, oddly enough, a negative impact on at least one e-reading platform — the Kobo, which was Borders' answer to the Kindle and Nook (though the Kobo remains the device of choice for Canada's Chapters chain of book superstores).
The liquidation of the 400 remaining Borders stores could start as early as Friday.
Tied In to Writing
For the last few weeks, author Jonathan Maberry has been running a terrific series of lengthy, detailed interviews with Scribe nominated tie-in writers on his Big Scary Blog about the nuts-and-bolts of their craft. This week he focuses on the authors nominated for "Best Speculative Original." Here's an excerpt:
BIG SCARY BLOG: Talk about your process for creating a media tie-in book.
MATT FORBECK: If I’m not already familiar with the basis of the book, I immerse myself in it as best I can and become a fan of it too. As I do that, I look for story hooks, little “what about that?” or “wouldn’t that be cool?” bits. Those become the seeds of the novel. Once I have that, I write up an outline, get it approved, and dig in for real.
JEFF GRUBB: I think all media projects have a core ethos, an underlying truth about them. The original creators of the project may not know what it is, and in fact it may evolve over time. One of the goals I have when working on a media tie-in book is to dig down and find that piece, find that core ethos, and remain true to it in the story. Guild Wars 2 is very much about people coming together to fight a greater threat – that is one of Dougal Keane’s major conflicts in the book.
DAVID MACK: It’s a lot like most other writers’ processes, I imagine. Either I solicit an editor for a shot at writing for a particular license, or they approach me. Either way, if it’s a property I know well, I might already have ideas ready to pitch and develop. If it’s one that I’m curious about but don’t know intimately, I’ll dig in and immerse myself in it until I start to get a feel for its big picture, its characters and its broader storytelling arcs.
Next, I’ll try to find a story that interests me and seems to offer some new angle that neither the show nor its existing tie-in titles have explored. In some cases, such as a tie-in line that’s been running for a while, an editor might ask me to craft a story specifically to advance a part of an ongoing narrative.
Then I write a proposal, just a few pages, to see if my general idea is what the editor is looking for. Once we settle on an idea, I prepare a much longer and more detailed full outline that can be presented to the license-holder for approval. Once we get the green-light, I go to work on the manuscript.
To stay in the right mindset while working on a given franchise, I’ll try to listen to music soundtracks from it (if they’re available), and have DVDs ready for reference and quick refreshers on characters’ speech patterns, etc. Online references are also often invaluable tools, especially for a series that is still in production while one is working on it. Thank Heaven for the invention of wiki reference sites!
SEAN WILLIAMS: Well, firstly, I have to make sure I know the property sufficiently well to do it justice. With Star Wars or Doctor Who, say, that would be easy: I’ve been a fan of them for decades. Depending on the kind of project, the next step would be to get right down into the details of the story and character, since they’re the aspect of the tie-in most important to get right, at least in the early stages. This is always accomplished in collaboration with editors and other stakeholders in the project–the people who own the property, basically. I’m not just telling a story for me: in a real way I’m just channelling something for someone else. But that is a fun process, and a challenge, one I take very seriously. There are snafus sometimes, without a doubt, but whether I have one month or one year to write a tie-in, I give it the same energy and consideration I would give one of my own books. To do anything less would be to cheat everyone involved.
The entire series of interviews is well worth your time, regardless of whether you are into tie-ins. There's a lot of great insights into the craft and business of writing books shared by the authors, all of whom are experienced, hard-working pros.
Sizzling Summer Reads
It's going to be a long, hot Top Suspense Summer! Here 12 masters of the genre will keep you on the edge of your beach towel with 12 sizzling summer reads guaranteed to get your pulse pounding.
Join in the discussions this summer and win a free copy of our second anthology! With our second Top Suspense anthology we’ll each be contributing an award nominated, an award winning, or a personal favorite story. It will be out in the Fall, and anyone who reads and joins in the discussion on our Facebook page of four of our summer books–or better yet, reviews the books on Amazon–will receive a free copy before we make it available to the general public.
Watch the Top Suspense blog over the next three weeks as each Top Suspense author will talk about their sizzling summer books.
Blood Dreams by Jack MacLane (Bill Crider)
Dying Memories by Dave Zeltserman
Motion to Kill by Joel Goldman
No One Will Hear You by Max Allan Collins & Matthew Clemens
Set The Night On Fire by Libby Hellmann
Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara
Valley Of Lights by Stephen Gallagher
Voluntary Madness by Vicki Hendricks
And Watch Me Die by yours truly. And don't forget to join our Summer Sizzling Reads discussions all summer long at our Top Suspense Facebook Page!
Thriller Breasts
A few years back, I remember reading that Homeland Security was inviting thriller writers over to give them advice on what plots terrorists might be cooking up. The notion was widely lampooned but it was probably a very smart idea, because as author Lew Perdue points out, when it comes to terror plots, he's often been way ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to killer breasts:
The Obama Administration’s recent warning about terrorists using breast implant bombsreminds me that over my 35 years of writing thrillers, I’ve frequently developed ideas — including explosive breast implants — that once seemed preposterous, outlandish or impossible — but which have either come true or entered the realm of the dangerously likely.
[…]About two year ago, I outlined a thriller around women who had implants filled with a liquid explosive that does not require a separate detonator to explode. Nitroglycerine is an example one of these, but is less stable and not as powerful as alternative formulations available. […]I had stunningly attractive women with breasts surgically enhanced to Brobdingnagian proportions, which of course, require commensurate structural support including a substantial underwire superstructure.
The detonation mechanism consisted of two parts, both cleverly constructed to identically mimic bra underwiring. The actual detonator circuit was contained in side the implant was a simple variation on a spark gap. This was capacitance linked to external wiring in the bra. The connection as I designed it in the outline was a bit like those capacitance switches that work when you touch them with your finger. No direct connection is needed.
Similarly, the electrical charge to initiate the detonation in the breast implant bomb doesn’t need a direct connection. Just the closeness through the skin between the detonator and the electrical charge to set off the explosive. The electrical charge in my thriller outline came from a small netbook which had been rewired to route the power leads of the USB port to the earplug port. Very large capacitance charges can be achieved by gradual charging. But the advantage of a capacitor is that t can discharge all its energy almost instantly.
By bringing the slightly modified earplug near the implanted detonator wire and pressing the “PLAY” button on the netbook’s music player would detonate the implants.