Me Me Me

Those Who Can Do Teach

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William Rabkin and I will be teaching another session of our popular "Beginning TV Writing" online course for Writers University in May. There’s still time to sign up and a few open seats are left in our virtual classroom.

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.

Dumb Questions and Great Sex

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My brother Tod beat me to posting about some of the dumb questions I got asked at the Palm Springs Book Festival (though I got lots of great questions, too). Here’s one of them (though you’ll notice that Tod remembers it slightly different than I do):

Woman: Did you have to take acting classes to learn how to write dialog?

Me: No, but I’ve also never been a werewolf, a lifeguard, a psychic FBI agent, a 70-year0ld doctor who solves crimes, or the Captain of a submarine in the year 2032. I make stuff up. The dialog comes from the characters. I don’t need to be an actor to know how people talk. I just have to observe and listen.

Woman: Is there a class you can take for that?

The night before the Festival there was a reception for the authors. Only authors were attending (and their spouses, significant others and, in my case, my mother). But there are always one or two clueless idiots at these kind of events who use this as a selling opportunity. A lady came up to me and thrust her apparently self-published book in my face.

Woman:  I’m the author of GREAT SEX AFTER SIXTY. You should read this book.

Me: Do I look sixty to you?

Woman: Well, you will be, won’t you?

Me:  No, I’m planning on using plastic surgery and drugs to remain 44 forever.

Woman: But you’ll still physically be sixty even if you look 44 and you’ll want to have great sex.

Me: There will be a pill for that, too.

Woman: There might not be.

Me: I’ll take my chances.

I couldn’t believe she was still arguing with me. But I was saved by my Mom, who started laughing.

Mom: He’s my son and he looks sixty to you? My God, how old do I look?

At which point the clueless idiot thrust her God-awful book in my Mom’s face and asked her how her sex was… and I dashed across the room to talk to Gregg Hurwitz. Am I good son or what?

Palm Springs Book Fest

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It was a beautiful day for a Book Festival in Palm Springs today. Although the turn-out for the mystery & suspense panels was light for everybody, and I sold maybe two books, I had a terrific time anyway, hanging out with authors Doug Lyle, Theresa Schwegel, Loraine Despres, Kirk Russell, Thom Racina, JJ & Bette Lamb, Taffy Cannon, Eric Shaw Quinn, Barbara Seranella, Nichelle Tramble, Christopher Rice, Gregg Hurwitz, Bill Fitzhugh, and my brother Tod. I even managed to peek in on Chris Rice’s hilarious and informative interview with his mother Anne Rice, which was The Big Event of the Fest and was, predictably, standing-room only. The only downside was the hellacious traffic on the way back to L.A.

My God, reading this post, I feel like I’m channeling one of my Mom’s typical Desert Sun society columns from the 80s and 90s…

My Fan Club President is Impeached

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UPDATE 4-22-2006:  James Kosub appears to have come to his senses and deleted the ridiculous accusations against me that he posted on his blog, so I’ve deleted the post that formerly occupied this space (the comments, however, remain).

Schmoozing in the Desert

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P1010180_1 Tonight I went to the author’s reception for the Palm SpringsP1010178  Book Festival, where I will be appearing in front of all my adoring fans (my Mom, a vagrant, my brother Tod). I had a great time catching up with old friends like Carleton Eastlake, Loraine Despres, Christopher Rice, and Gregg Hurwitz (and his lovely wife). And I made some new friends, like Eric Shaw Quinn and retired SEALS Charles O’Connor and Ross Hengebrauch. My daughter Maddie absolutely loves QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY, so when I spotted Ted Allen, I had to have my picture taken with him. Maddie was blown away. Meanwhile my Mom, Jan Curran, got up close and personal with Tab Hunter. And I’ve got the photos to prove it. P1010179 (First photo is me with Ted Allen, the second photo is my Mom with Tab Hunter, and the third photo is me with Gregg Hurwitz, Eric Shaw Quinn, and Christopher Rice).

Why Couldn’t the New York Times Have Said This?

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I love it when people stay up all night reading my books. This came today from The Shaudy Life:

For some reason, I am awake. It’s 4 in the am, and I am still awake.
Just got done reading Lee Goldberg’s and William Rabkin’s "Successful
Television Screenwriting." Fabulous book!!! Absolutely amazing! I’ve
never read an industry book that I haven’t been able to put down, even
if it’s a topic I’m really interested in. They’ve got humor and wit.
And they’re a little cynical and neurotic, which makes me more
comfortable with being cynical and neurotic, myself. Fantastic book.

Thanks, Nina!

Why I Blog on Amazon

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I have an Amazon blog. It doesn’t take much effort to maintain, since it mainly consists of  "repurposed" material originally posted here. The blog can be read as a stand-alone "Lee Goldberg blog," or my posts can show up, along with those of other authors, in a reader’s "plog" on your Amazon home page.  I get a couple dozen positive "votes" from readers on each new post, but still I wondered if enough people were reading my Amazon blog to make it worthwhile and if  it made any difference in the way people viewed me or my books. Now I know. I got this comment from Karen Oberst, a librarian in Oregon:

We get a lot of plogs, since as a library we order a great deal from
Amazon. However, the only ones I look forward to are the ones by Lee
Goldberg. I so appreciate the backstage look at both the television
industry, and how the writing is done. Thanks, Lee for your informative
posts, and for taking the time to update them so often.

The comment made my day. I never knew that libraries bought books on Amazon. The comment also told me that people are reading the Amazon posts and that maintaining the "Readers Digest" version of this blog over there is doing me some good.

Temptation

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This is a long post… so feel free to scroll past if you don’t have time to kill.  This week, I ran smack into an ethical dilemma and it was all thanks to this short email from a complete stranger:

Charles Willeford’s GRIMHAVEN. Looks like you expressed interest in it in a blog  a couple of years ago. Still interested?

Yes, I replied, of course I was interested. GRIMHAVEN is Willeford’s unpublished Hoke Mosely novel, his dark and self-destructive follow-up to MIAMI BLUES, his break-out hit. GRIMHAVEN  reportedly turned Hoke into a sociopath who murders his children. Willeford’s agent wisely counseled him that it would be career suicide to submit that book to his publisher and that, instead, he should bury it and write something that would capitalize on the success of MIAMI BLUES, rather than piss all over it. Willeford took the advice and wrote three more great Hoke novels before his death. But like all Willeford fans, I’ve been intensely curious about the book. The few people I know who’ve read it say it’s Willeford at his best and worst.

So hell yes, I want to read it.

A day or two later, I got another  email from the stranger. This time the note was longer, chatty, friendly, and full of tantalizing comments about the book ("it’s a viscerally sickening read, alright (I’ve got two girls), even if it has a certain internal consistency and simplicity"). 
He went on to talk about how he bought a xeroxed copy of the manuscript some years ago from a "bootlegger" for a mere $20 and that he came across  "some asshole" selling the same photocopy for $200 on the Internet. 

But I figure that it’s something the world should have, so I scanned and OCRed it, and after being distracted from it for about six months I’m finishing up the proofreading.  Right now I’ve got 200 tiffs and 200 individual-page text files, and once the proofing is done I’ll concatenate it into a single text file.  So the question is this:  What’s the best way to get it out to the people who want to find it?  Is there a torrent tracker favoured by traffickers of bootleg manuscripts?

Yes, I wanted to read GRIMHAVEN…but the idea that someone would take an unpublished manuscript that didn’t belong to him and distribute it all over the planet made me queasy…as did the idea that he thought that I would help him do it.

But why shouldn’t he think so? After all, didn’t I jump out of my seat when he offered me the book? Didn’t that make me just the kind of guy he thought I was? While I was wrestling with these uncomfortable questions, another email showed up from him:

Read more

I’m Done!

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I just this minute finished writing the final draft of MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU, my third book in the series, and had to tell somebody (everybody in my house is asleep already). I’m a week ahead of my deadline, so I will probably set the manuscript aside for a day or two and then read it again to make sure everything tracks. Or I may simply turn it in and be done with it.  Regardless, I won’t do anything with it until Monday.

The timing is perfect, because Bill Rabkin and I are about to start writing a freelance script for a hot new TV series (more on that later) and I won’t have to worry about finishing the book, too. I do have to start thinking about my eighth DIAGNOSIS MURDER book, though, which is due in three-and-a-half months…

So tomorrow I’ll do my little book-completion ritual. I’ll put my Murder Book (my binder of notes, outlines, photos, etc. related to the book) in a box in the closet and clean up my office, which tends to go to hell while I’m writing.

The Love Boat

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Today, I’m joining writer/producer Matt Witten (HOUSE, JAG, etc) on a four-day cruise to Ensenada on the Monarch of the Seas, where we will be talking to mystery fans about writing cop shows and crime novels. The cruise is another exciting program from Joan Hansen, winner of  an Edgar this year for her wildly successful, annual Men of Mystery seminars.  Matt is bringing along his lovely wife and I’m bringing my 10-year-old daughter Maddie.  This is the first time Maddie and I have ever gone on a trip together without my wife, and it’s the first time either one of us has been on a cruise, so it should be exciting.

I’ve stockpiled some posts that will show up here while I’m gone, but I won’t be around to clear your comments. But please go ahead and post your thoughts… I’ll get them on-line when I return on Monday.