Me Me Me

Beyond the Beyond Sale

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Stand_beyond
As I mentioned here before, I’ve got hundreds of copies of my book BEYOND THE BEYOND that I need to unload to create room in my garage for my Mom’s stuff. In the last few days, I’ve donated books to the New Orleans Public Library as well as Better World Books, among others. But I still have plenty left.

I’ll be glad to send you a signed copy for $9.99, which includes media mail postage to anywhere in the United States. 

BEYOND THE BEYOND is about ex-cop Charlie Willis, who handles “special security” for Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to the
keep the peace in the land of make-believe. How he does it is up to him. In this book, a sequel to “My Gun Has Bullets,” he has to protect the president of a fledgling TV network from an assassin, an A-list screenwriter from his homicidal agent, and the cast of a cult TV series from its legion of rabid,
homicidal fans.

Here’s a sampling of the critical praise for the book:

“Goldberg uses just about everything he can think of to send up the studio system, fandom, Star Trek, Trekkies, agents, actors… you name it, he’ll make you laugh about it.” Analog

"An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary
showbiz,"Kirkus Reviews

“Mr. Goldberg has an observant eye and a wicked pen!” Washington  Times

“Beyond the Beyond reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It’s wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate,” Vancouver Sun

"Stingingly funny! B+" Entertainment Weekly

"Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find
it hard to crack a smile at the author’s gag-strewn prose. Likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble….the novel’s satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times

And yet, there were still 600 copies that didn’t sell. Even with a giant penis on the cover. Can you imagine that? If you’d like to buy one of them for $9.99,  just click on the button below:




What Should I Do With Hundreds of TV Guides?

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My Mom is moving to a smaller place close to the beach… so I am cleaning out my garage to give her some storage space. And I have come to the painful realization that it’s time to get rid of my 100s of  TV GUIDES. I don’t have the time or patience to scan each cover and sell’em individually on eBay… so I am coming to you, my loyal readers, for suggestions on what to do with them.  Is there a library I could donate them to, perhaps?  And while you’re at it, have you got any ideas on what I should do with:

  • 600 copies of BEYOND THE BEYOND?
  • 100s of publicity and set photos from movie & TV press kits? (the kits themselves are long gone)
  • A few hundred issues of STARLOG magazine?

I’ve got four weeks until she moves her stuff into my garage…

Hollywood & Crime

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Hollywood
Here’s  sneak peek at the rough cover for HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME, the new anthology edited by the prolific Robert Randisi (author of over 400 novels!). My contribution to this anthology, which comes out in February,  is a short story entitled "Jack Webb’s Star." My friends Max Allan Collins, Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connolly, Paul Guyot, Dick Lochte, Gary Phillips and Gar Haywood are just a few of the other authors who have contributed stories, all of which feature at least one scene at the corner of Hollywood & Vine (Les Roberts, whose name is featured on the rough cover, unfortunately has had to bow out).

Appreciating Failure

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Blogger Steve Thompson reviews my old book UNSOLD TV PILOTS, which is actually an abridgement of my two volume UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS 1955-1989. He  lists and describes some of his favorite flops collected in my book:

GOOD AGAINST EVIL-1977- the late Dack Rambo starred as a writer who
falls for…wait for it…Satan’s girlfriend, then teams up with an
exorcist to get her back, righting wrongs and solving crimes along
their way.
HIGH RISK-1976-Victor Buono, BATMAN’s King Tut and Joanna
(ISIS) Cameron as two of a group of circus performers who use their
skills to solve crimes.
ALIAS SHERLOCK HOLMES-1976- Larry (JR)
Hagman as a delusional motorcycle cop who thinks he’s the world’s
greatest detective and, with the help of his female psychiatrist,
conveniently named Dr. Watson, solves crimes.

Making a Living

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I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn’t worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn’t. He liked the idea of writing a book…actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There’s no question that I make most of my living in television…but I believe it’s important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories… most of the time while I’m simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn’t come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other — but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I’m not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that’s interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don’t even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it’s in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am… a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.

Immortalized

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I’ve been immortalized as a hitman in Victor Gischler’s new book SHOTGUN OPERA:

He was born Lee Goldberg in Sydney, Australia, but it had been many years since anyone had called him by that name. His stage name was Jack Sprat. He changed it after meeting the Fat Lady during a boardwalk carnival act in Atlantic City. Mavis was big and soft and beautiful, and Goldberg — now Sprat — fell in love.

They were married three months later and the stage names were a no-brainer. Jack Sprat was five feet five inches tall, all spindly hard muscle and sinew, a bald head and a big nose that gave him the appearance of a vulture.

He’s got my manly nose and sinewy bod down right, but the rest isn’t quite accurate.  I’veDm6a_1
returned the favor in my new book THE DEAD LETTER, where Victor shows up as a hitman, too:


Victor Gischler, known as The Do-er to the underworld of gun monkeys and the casual readers of the classifieds in Soldier of Fortune magazine, drove his growling ’68 Mercury Cougar up to the Monterey Bay
area from his home-base in Fontana, California, where he liked to hang out with his fellow members of the John Birch society, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Boy Scouts of America.

[…] he’d show them both the glorious American eagle tattooed on his belly, its talons clinging to his hairy navel, and they’d be overcome by patriotism and lust. They might even fight with each other over who got to have him first.

I haven’t seen Victor’s belly but if he doesn’t have an American eagle tattooed on it, he should get one.

Bouchercon

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I’ve just booked my hotel room for Bouchercon 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin ( if you attending, and haven’t made room reservations yet, you better hurry — the area hotels are selling out fast). I also received my Anthony Award ballot in the mail this week.  The Anthonys are selected by Bouchercon attendees and any mystery novel published in 2005 is eligible for nomination. I hope if you enjoyed THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE, and are attending Bouchercon this fall, that you will consider nominating the book for Best Novel when you receive your ballot.  My book aside, I can’t honestly remember all the good stuff that I read that was published in 2005. Please jog my memory with any suggestions you might have in the comment below. The categories are Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Paperback Original, Best Short Story and Best Critical/Non-fiction Work. Thanks!

Welcome Back, Goldberg

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I’ll be teaching the "Beginning Writing for the One-Hour Drama" course at UCLA Extension this summer (taking the baton from my friend Matt Witten). Here’s the info on the course:

Modeled directly on how writers write in the real world of one-hour
dramas, this course focuses on what is most central to creating a
strong script as well as the largest piece (40 percent) of the writer’s
deal with any show: the story and outline. The course goal is for you
to master the process of constructing an airtight story and detailed
outline so that you are ready to write a script for any current show as
quickly and expertly as possible. The steps you take include choosing
the best story for your spec script, mapping it out from beginning to
end, and writing a strong outline in proper script format. In the
process, you learn how to identify and capture the tone, characters,
dialogue, and themes of any one-hour drama series–the key to breaking
and staying in the field. This course also introduces students to the
various genres (police procedurals, medical, legal, etc.) and their
specific rules; what’s popular in the current marketplace; and how to
work within the special requirements of timeslots, outlet, and styles
(for example, single-character drama versus ensemble cast). All student projects must focus on current shows; no pilots.

The enrollment is limited to 20 students, so if you’re interested, act now while there are still some seats left.

I’m a Fraud

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That’s how I feel today. I have spent the whole day working on my latest book and all I’ve managed to write is absolute swill. One whole paragraph of it. Yeah, that’s it. One measly, rotten, pathetic paragraph…one so bad, so inept, no professional writer could possibly have written it (nor would he have spent all DAY doing it).

I don’t often have days like this, but when I do, it’s miserably depressing. I know that the best thing to do would be to just walk away from the computer and do something else, but I can’t. Instead I torture myself by counting how many days I have left until the book is due, how many pages I have to write a week, a day, an hour to make the deadline…and that’s not counting the days I will set the book aside to work on my next script (which should be getting the go-ahead from the studio any day now). So I have to take advantage of every free hour. Which of course, only makes me more anxious and upset at my lack of creativity. When it’s going this bad, I have to keep at it, trying to hit upon that one sentence or image that will break me out of this writing funk. Because it will happen. I know it will. I’m praying it will. Okay, enough screwing around on the blog, avoiding the unavoidable, it’s time to go back to it…

(I know what you’re thinking, "how could he post this after linking to Garrison Keillor’s essay about writers who whine?" I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a FRAUD.)

Mr. Monk and the Nice Reviews

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My week is off to a great start with two nice reviews for MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE.  The current issue of MYSTERY SCENE notes:

The first in a new series is always an occasion to celebrate, but Lee Goldberg’s TV adaptations double your pleasure. No longer restricted by time, budget and pace of TV production, this terrific TV writer’s latest, MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE brings everyone’s favorite OCD detective to print. Hooray!

And Cynthia Lea Clarke at FUTURES MYSTERY MAGAZINE says, in part:

If you are a fan of the television show MONK, you’ll love this book. If you never had the pleasure of watching a MONK episode, then you should read this book… (Goldberg’s) words are witty, charming and so Monk. Superb! It’s a fast, easy, delightful escape. An excellent read!

My thanks to both Mystery Scene and Futures for their flattering comments.