My Family

Don’t Tell Tod I’m Better Looking Than He Is

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My brother Tod has a brilliant post about the dos-and-don’t of writer’s conferences. Here are a few of his rules:

5. Don’t take a novel writing course from someone whose novel is self-published.

7. Don’t ever say, "Can I buy you a drink and talk some shop with you after the
workshop?" Why? I don’t know. I’ve just never liked the term talk some
shop. Plus, after the workshop I’ve got a standing date with one of my
friends to talk about the craziest person in the class and that might be you.

10. Stop attending writer’s conferences. Really. If you’re one of those people
who travels the world attending writer’s conferences and, yet, you never sell
anything, maybe that’s because you spend too much time going to writer’s
conferences. And only go to conferences where someone is teaching you something,
not where you have to sit in a huge room and listen to a panel of people talking
about themselves for two hours. But really: stop attending writer’s conferences.
Go home and write.

Tod on Self-Publishing

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My brother Tod has used the letter posted here today from iUniverse CEO Susan Driscoll as a  starting point for his ruminations on self-publishing.

Publication is not a birthright. If you are being rejected by every agent and
publisher in the land, save for those who want you to pay them for your work,
it’s time to take a hard look at what you’ve created. Art for art’s sake is
fine, but if this is the career path you choose, at some point you have to ask if what you’re creating is, indeed,  marketable.

No Oral for My Boys

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Over on my brother’s blog, he’s talking about the lynch mob that’s going after Paul Ruditis for his book RAINBOY PARTY (and he quotes a column from a wacko at Jewish World Review, which sure as hell isn’t this Jew’s world. This is the same nutcake who wrote "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror" Need I say more?).

RAINBOW PARTY takes its title from high school parties where girls compete to give the most blowjobs to boys…and the boys compete to get the most head that they can.  Clearly, this isn’t the latest Nancy Drew, though if a guy is gonna win this, he’s got to be a pretty Hardy Boy.  I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say how graphic it is, or if its age-appropriate for teenagers. Be that as it may, I was struck by the Amazon review that Tod quotes:

Don’t buy it unless you’re going to burn it, May 25, 2005

Reviewer: PAUL C. FRY (Cleveland, OH USA) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

One reason that I’m giving this a lousy review because I’m a parent.
I’ve got two boys so far; I don’t want either of them giving or getting
oral sex when they’re teenagers. Or ever for that matter.

He doesn’t want his kid to ever have oral sex? And never  give it? Makes you wonder what poor Mrs. Fry’s sex life has been like (let me say here and now that when my daughter is an adult, I want her to have as much oral sex from her lover or husband as she would like. You go girl!). But Tod talks all about  the evils of oral sex, so I won’t belabor the point. What Tod didn’t do, and what I’ve done, is check out Mr. Fry’s Amazon wish list.  Most of the titles are right-wing political stuff and bible-related books like Scripture Matters: Essays on Reading the Bible from the Heart of the Church, They Think You’re Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, Swear to God : The Promise and Power of the Sacraments,  Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, and Lord Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession. But he’d also like you to get him the  CD Sonic Bullets: 13 From the Hip by Bambi Molesters (I kid you not!).

Is it any wonder he  wants to buy a book to burn it…and prays that his boys never have to endure a blowjob?  Or, God forbid (literally, I suppose), that they should ever have to orally pleasure their wives’ milky womanhoods?

Tod the Starmaker

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Brace yourself… here are two posts in a row pegged on my younger brother Tod, the literary novelist and teacher. Or should I say, star-maker. Two of his students have won big-time publishing contracts…and it ain’t with PublishAmerica.

First there was  Lorna Freeman, who landed a three-book deal with Del Rey for her fantasy novel COVENANTS, which became a bestseller.  She signed at the Festival of Books last year and Tod was so proud, I think he pushed her book more than his own.

Now there’s  Eduardo Santiago, who has just sold his first novel TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS to Little Brown.

The moral of this story? It pays to take Tod’s UCLA course.  Hell, I may take it.

Must Reading for Aspiring Authors

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My brother Tod takes a hard look look at Writer’s Digest and its list of the 101 Best Websites for Writers. 

Any magazine which purports to be "for" writers,  yet accepts
advertising from scam agents and sleazy publishers and regularly
provides some of the worst advice imaginable for aspiring writers is
doing no one any favors.  Needless to say, their 101 websites
mirror their excellent quality control standards.

Tod checked out a few of the sites. His peek at the Long Ridge Writers Group is especially revealing…and hilarious.

A Book No American Should Be Without

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CovernamesxVISUAL CHRONICLES, the new book by my sisters Linda Woods & Karen Dinino, is available for pre-order on Amazon. What  are you waiting for?

My brother Tod, also a novelist, talks on his blog about how cool it is that our sisters are joining us in print:

What are the odds of four siblings actually making it in publishing? All of which is a long way of saying I’m proud of my sisters and,
uh, yeah, people at the Today Show, gimme a call. Let’s book some time.
Or is it too late to be a family on the next Amazing Race?

I’m sure it won’t be long now before Tod’s wife Wendy has a book out, too, tightening the screws on the rest of the Goldberg in-laws to start writing…

A Romance Blogstorm

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I don’t read romances, but I love reading my sister-in-law Wendy’s blog about the field. It turns out Wendy has the Goldberg family touch for creating controversy. The other day, Wendy wrote about her disappointment  with Romancing the Blog, a blog of web columnists who explore  the romance genre.

I love the idea of RTB. I want the excitement I felt at first to
continue. No, actually, I want there to
be a reason for that excitement. When
RTB launched it quickly became my first web stop of the day. I couldn’t wait to see who posted and what
they had to say. Now it’s something I
get around to, more from habit that interest. Sylvia’s post
about the online romance community was the first column that held my attention
in…I can’t remember when.

I don’t expect the earth to move
everytime I click on a blog, any blog.  But, with all possibilites RTB promises,
I expect them to deliver more often than not.  That’s it. The almost unvarnished truth.

Her post seems pretty tame to me, but it apparently sparked a blogstorm of controversy and led  novelist Alison Kent to reveal herself as one of RTB’s anonymous founders. Helen Kay writes today about the brouhaha (don’t you just love that word? It’s like a diabolical villain’s laugh…"Today, Mr. Bond, I will rule the world! BrouHAHA!").

Congrats to Wendy for
having the guts to blog about RTB even though she knew it put her butt on the
line.  She’s a grown-up and can speak for herself but I do want to say something
– despite what some comments have suggested, she didn’t do it just to be
controversial.  She did it because she is excited about the concept of RTB and
wants it to be successful and, yes, sometimes that means RTB needs to be
controversial too.  She pointed out it also needs to be diverse and relevant and
interesting.  Constructive criticisms not snarkiness.  She is allowed to have an
opinion and should be able to do so without having her motives questioned.

Now I think it’s time for Wendy to talk about fanfiction, vanity presses, the LA Times Book Review, and people who call themselves "pre-published authors."

Things Not to Say in a Creative Writing Class

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My Brother Tod lays out the five things students shouldn’t bring up when discussing each other’s work in his creative writing classes. I like #4:

4. The word theme. See motif. And then get your head out of your ass.
Who cares about theme? I mean, really, when you walk into Barnes &
Noble, do you say, "I’d like to find a book today with a really good
theme," or when you see an ad on TV for a new movie like, say, Sahara,
do you immediately begin wondering about how cool the theme will be?
No. No you don’t. Do you know why? Because it is bullshit you learned
in high school because your teacher was lazy. I had a student last
quarter that I rather liked personally, but her story suffered because
she kept talking about getting the metaphor and theme right, until
finally I said, "Who gives a fuck about theme and metaphor? Let’s see a
show of hands." No one raised their hands — well, okay, one person
did, but she dropped the class with two weeks left, so she doesn’t
count — and I said, "No one gives a fuck about theme and metaphor
except high school English teachers." I then remembered, uh, yeah, she
was a high school English teacher.

By the way,  the total Fuck Count in the entirety of Tod’s post (ie the number of times the word fuck appears) is:  6. The Fuck Count should not be confused with the Fucktard Count, since fuckard is an entirely different word.