My sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino are close to finishing up their third art book, one that is likely to be even more successful than their bestselling VISUAL CHRONICLES and JOURNAL REVOLUTION. It includes art by Jann Arden, Amanda Palmer, Rosie O'Donnell, Jen Foster, Sarah Bettens, SHeDAISY, Marnie Woodrow and more. Here's a peek.
My Family
The Windy City Loves Tod
My brother Tod is in Chicago doing readings and signings for OTHER RESORT CITIES, his new short story collection, and got the star treatment from Chicago TimeOut:
There’s something about a resort vacation that makes you appreciate home. For the characters living in the getaway destinations of Tod Goldberg’s latest collection, Other Resort Cities, leaving home is a desperate imperative. A Chicago hit man hides in Las Vegas, where 15 years later he’s a respected rabbi of a money-laundering temple. Trouble is, he wants out of all of it—the mafia, faux Judaism and especially Vegas. “Mitzvah” indeed. A cuckolded father abducts his children and ends up squatting in model homes, and another deserted husband converts his gated-community home into a Starbucks. Bad decisions come as naturally to Goldberg’s characters as his incisive wit is a natural part of his storytelling.
You Can Be a Kindle Millionaire, Part 7
Can you tell a book by its cover?
The original, St. Martin's Press cover for my 1997 novel BEYOND THE BEYOND was horrible. It was a giant penis bursting out of a TV set against a piss-yellow background. I'm not kidding. You can see it here. I know for a fact that it killed sales. I was sent on a national book tour and everywhere I went, the booksellers said "we can't stick that book in our window, there's a penis on the cover!"
So when I did the Kindle edition, I asked my talented and wildly creative sister Linda Woods, a professional artist and author (Journal Revolution: Rise Up & Create! Art Journals, Personal Manifestos and Other Artistic Insurrections), to design a new cover in the same style as the one she designed for the Kindle edition of my first book, My Gun Has Bullets (which also had a horrible St. Martin's cover when it was first published). BEYOND THE BEYOND is a sequel to MY GUN HAS BULLETS, so I thought some consistency was a good idea. Isn't that what branding is all about?
But while the Kindle sales for MY GUN HAS BULLETS have been brisk, the sales for Beyond the Beyond are flat. The culprit? I think it was the cover…again. It mayhave looked too much like the cover for My Gun Has Bullets and might have been confusing people into thinking it was the same book.
So Linda has tweaked the cover for me. It's the one on the right. It will be interesting to see if a new cover makes a difference…
Then again, maybe it's the book that sucks!
My Gun Has Bullets
My acclaimed, long out-of-print debut novel MY GUN HAS BULLETS is now available on the Kindle with a terrific new cover by my sister Linda Woods (I wish the book had this cover when it first came out). And this new edition wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for Dan Williams, who volunteered to scan the book…and he even cleaned up the formatting problems. Thank you, Dan!
Here's the book-jacket copy (which hasn't shown up yet on the Amazon listing):
The Mob is bringing its style of doing business to television. They don't cancel TV series. They kill them.
When Beverly Hills Police Officer Charlie Willis pulls over a speeding Rolls Royce hell-bent for Neiman Marcus, he’s surprised to see Esther Radcliffe, the geriatric star of the TV series "Miss Agatha," behind the wheel. He’s even more surprised when she guns him down and keeps on driving. A few hours later, he wakes up in the intensive care unit…to find a William Morris agent, a network president, and the head of Pinnacle Studios standing at the foot of his bed. They have a proposal for him: in exchange for conveniently forgetting who shot him, they’ll make him the star of his own series, "My Gun Has Bullets." So Charlie trades in his real badge for a fake one…and so begins an uproarious but deadly romp through the wonderful world of TV make-believe…with real bullets. To make it to sweeps week, Charlie will have to survive two homicidal stuntmen, a rabid celebrity dog, a hit man-turned-producer, a psychotic old lady, a sex-crazed blackmailer, and vicious ratings…with only a stunning, leather-clad "Baywatch" beauty to help him.
“It will make you cackle like a sitcom laugh track. Goldberg keeps the gags coming right up to the end.”—Entertainment Weekly
"It's Bullets Over Baywatch!" USA Today
“A very funny novel…a pinch of Carl Hiaasen, a dash of Donald Westlake, and a heaping portion of avarice and inanity Hollywood Style. It’s boffo!”—Thomas Gaughan, Booklist
"'My Gun Has Bullets' takes aim and hits the bull's eye of all good satire — the truth," Howard Gordon, Executive Producer, "24"
"Lee Goldberg has written a winner!"
—Stephen J. Cannell, executive producer/creator "The A-Team," "21 Jump Street," and "The Rockford Files."
"'My Gun Has Bullets' has an outrageous, laugh-til-you're-sick scene seemingly on every other page."
—Dan Petrie Jr. Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Beverly Hills Cop"
“A rousing send-up of everything and everyone in the world of show-biz.”—Judith Kreiner, The Washington Times
"Hilarious, suspenseful, action-packed…its band of merry, and not so merry, homicidal maniacs may be the greatest cast ever assembled," Warren Murphy, Edgar Award winning author/creator of the "Remo Williams: Destroyer" series
"The giddiest debut of the year!" Kirkus Reviews
Uncle Burl Barers All
Carl Brookins recently interviewed my Uncle Burl Barer, the Edgar Award-winning author of such true crime bestsellers as MOM SAID KILL and MURDER IN THE FAMILY. It's a fun interview. Here are some excerpts:
What’s the hardest thing about being an author? Making money.
What surprised you the most when you became a published author?
I was surprised that authors don't have groupies such as the ones who pursue rock stars and famous actors, or even disc jockeys. Never be an author to pick up chicks.
Have you ever collaborated on a novel? Would you consider it?
Yes, I collaborated on a novel (unpublished) with someone who wasn't a writer. I would love to collaborate with someone who is a writer. I did contribute to one of Lee Goldberg's pulp fiction novels that he wrote under an assumed name. I helped him with one of the sex scenes. He was, at that time, not as experienced with that topic as he has since, no doubt, become. When his Nana complained that the book was nothing but sex and violence, Lee wisely shifted the blame to my brother and me. My brother deflected criticism by insisting that he only helped Lee with the legal/courtroom scenes. When Mom called me, she asked How could you pervert your little nephew that way? I told her Mom, I only helped him write one sex scene, honest! She replied, It was the one with the ice-cream wasn't it? She was right. It was.
Tod Answers Burning Questions
My brother Tod talks at BiblioBuffet about writing the BURN NOTICE books, the latest of which, "End Game," just came out:
It was hard at first. I re-watched all of the first season (this all came about in November of 2007, so the first season had just concluded), read all of the scripts, talked to Matt about how he created the characters, their motivations, fears, etc. because I really wasn’t comfortable stepping into an established character. […] I essentially decided once I started writing that I’d treat the books like a band doing a cover song. I wasn’t going to get it exactly right and I really couldn’t hope to. It wasn’t going to be the same as the show, because, uh, it’s a book. You want a different thing from a book than a television show. But it would be pretty close and I’d put my own spin on it.
Tod’s Burning Sensation Explained
My brother Tod talks today about the challenges he faced writing his latest BURN NOTICE novel:
Writing these books is certainly a different kind of experience for me — I write them very, very quickly. More quickly than I'd like, really, but the turn-around time on them is such that I really only have about three months to write each one and have a normal life in-between. And by normal life, I of course mean a normal writing life…
But even after he turned in the book, he wasn't actually done writing it…
I wasn't happy and added a new chapter from Fiona's pov when the copyedits came in, which probably didn't thrill my publisher, but it felt like something was missing. I've been tinkering a lot with adding different povs into the books — Sam's, Fiona's, and in this new book I'm writing, you get the client's pov for a chapter, too — because that's the one thing I'm really able to do that you can't get on the show. Plus, it's fun for me as a writer.
And it's gonna be fun for you as a reader, too, because his BURN NOTICE books are great. And I'm not just saying that because we share a few genes.
Book Fest, the sequel
It was another fine day at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I chatted with lots of authors and readers….and did a signing with my brother Tod, William Rabkin, Patricia Smiley and Denise Hamilton. BURN NOTICE creator Matt Nix also stopped by and signed some books wih Tod. I showed my MWA spirit, and my rippling muscles, by wearing the new SoCal MWA t-shirts that were hot-sellers at our booth.
I was in so much back pain yesterday that I neglected to do a proper run-down of events here when I got home (all I wanted to do was lie down). So I didn't mention that Tod and I ran into Joseph Wambaugh, who gave my brother a big hug and me a signed galley of his upcoming novel HOLLYWOOD MOON. I think Tod was envious. Friends get hugs, fans get cool galleys.
Tod moderated a very funny panel on humor and race with Christian Lander, Lalo Alcaraz and Larry Wilmore and only made a half-dozen references to mastubation and didn't mention his bowels even once.
Some other observations…
The green room served the same food that they have in years past, which made me wonder if we were actually eating left-overs to save money.
Barnes & Noble, Borders, Book'em and some other bookstores were noticeably absent this year but there were a lot more booths for self-publishing companies, cults (Scientology had at least two booths) and products, including one for Volvo.
This was the first year that I saw a couple having sex at the Festival. Granted, it was in the parking structure, but it still counts. It's nice to know that books still make some people hot.
After my panel signing, me, Craig Johnson, and Robert Dugoni went over to the tent selling our books and offered to sign the remaining stock. But they were already packing the stuff up. I suggested they might want to keep some signed stock around for people who couldn't make it to our panel. The clerk says "we aren't a bookstore, we're the School of Health Sciences. We don't sell books." Apparently, they were only making the books available for the panels and then immediately packing up the unsold stuff without even trying to sell it over the rest of the Festival. This seemed particularly dumb to me. Authors and readers lose out…and so did the School of Health Sciences, which missed out on lots of potential sales. See, in past years, B&N or Borders handled the panel signing sales…and kept the books available all weekend, which was great. It meant you didn't have to snag immediately after the panels… you could come back later…in fact, you could browse by several times during the course of the Festival and always find new stuff. I wonder why the UCLA Bookstore didn't handle the sales this time. In any case, I hope they find a bookseller…or at least someone who will behave like booksellers…next year.
(You can see more of my Lee-centric book fest photos here. I took lots of shots of the MWA booth, and the MWA sponsored panels, for our friends on the MWA National Board. I wanted to show them the big bang we got for our sponsorship bucks)
The End Game Has Got Game
My brother Tod’s BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME got a rave from Rod Lott at Bookgasm, who says, in part:
It is fun, capturing the show’s joyous, jubilant essence, but not, sadly, shots of well-endowed women in bikinis. […]The book is quick, snappy and forever mirthful — just like its source material. And until that starts back up in the summer, this is a fine substitute for a weekly fix.
The Truth Hurts
I am ashamed to admit it, but everything my brother Tod is saying today on his blog about me and my sister Karen and our musical childhoods is true.
Helen Reddy, You and Me Against The World. Good christ, Karen played this song like she was earning royalties from it. The odd thing is that it’s actually one of two songs Karen played constantly that contained a lyric about going to the circus. There was a lot of Helen Reddy played in the Goldberg home back in the day, which might make one think that I’d be enlightened into the ways of women and not, you know, as I am.