Lee Goldberg

The Mail I Get

by

I have a huge backlog of ridiculous emails to share with you, I just haven't had a chance to go through them. But here's one that just came in moments ago…

Hi, I have read the first four books in your Diagnosis Murder series and loved the story and characters.  I attempt to only have family friendly books in my home and these books met this criteria with the exception of two of the books containing the word God followed by d***.  Can you tell me if any of the last four books in the seriers contain this word?  If not, I cannot wait to order them.

I replied that I've written eight DIAGNOSIS MURDER books and can't honestly recall if or when the word God followed by d*** shows up in them. I don't keep track of individual words or phrases from among the 75,000 words in each book. But if you're so easily offended by the coupling of those two words under any circumstances by any character that you find an entire novel unacceptable as a result, I would play it safe and avoid the rest of the books in the series. Come to think of it, and with no offense intended, you might want to avoid books by Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, J.D. Salinger, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bram Stoker, John Steinbeck,. A.B. Guthrie, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Larry McMurtry, perhaps even Mark Twain…heck, if I were you, I'd stay away from just about every book that ever won the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize or is considered a classic of literature (not that I am in their league, of course). There's a very high probability that the word God, followed by d*** appears in the majority of them.

Buy THE WALK for 99 cents this week…and get THE DEAD MAN for free!

by

The_Walk_FINAL (2) It was two years ago this week that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then…and to celebrate, I am pricing the book at just 99 cents until June 7th.   

For the most part, the book has consistently ranked in top 2000 Amazon. I would be absolutely thrilled if this limited-time offer could propel the book into the Amazon top 100 for the first time.

As an incentive to help me reach that goal, if you email me proof of purchase of THE WALK at lee AT leegoldberg.com, I will email you, in return, a free copy of my new book THE DEAD MAN #1: FACE OF EVIL. 

That's two books for just 99 cents. You can't beat that!

Cheesy Gold

by

GOLD is a terrible movie, but I absolutely love this cheesy Elmer Bernstein theme song. It's a true guilty pleasure. It's one of my favorite soundtracks.

 

Good JUDGMENT

by

0316 Goldberg ecover JUDGEMENT James Reasoner  first stumbled on my .357 VIGILANTE books in the mid-1980s when he was working in a used bookstore. Although he was a voracious consumer of pulp fiction, he'd never heard of Ian Ludlow, and the men's action adventure genre was dying, so he didn't bother reading it.  But now he's caught up with it again in JUDGMENT, my new re-release of the first book in the series. He says, in part:

This is a classic case of not knowing what I was missing. Now, of course, we know that “Ian Ludlow” was actually a college student named Lee Goldberg, who went on to become a top-notch novelist, screenwriter, and producer 

[…]You know right away that this is a little different from the usual men’s adventure novel because of the protagonist, Brett Macklin. [He] no superhuman men’s adventure hero. He screws up, he gets hurt, he’s lucky not to get killed several times, but eventually he uncovers an even bigger plot that puts a lot of people in danger.

This is a really entertaining thrill ride of a story with plenty of sex, violence, humor, social commentary, and great action scenes. When I think about what I was writing when I was in college . . . well, there’s really no comparison. JUDGMENT is the work of someone who was a solid pro, right from the first page.

I'm really flattered by James' review.  It's hard for me to believe that it's been nearly thirty years since I wrote those books. Some of the writing makes me cringe…and some of it is certainly dated..but mostly I'm amused by it.

What's really strange is that sometimes a sentence or a scene will bring back memories I haven't had in, well, thirty years. I can remember where I was when I wrote certain portions…or what was happening in my life at the time. The books are a time capsule for me in many ways. But I'm thrilled to learn that they are still entertaining to read for others.

Hawaii Lee-O

by

I am off to Hawaii this morning to attend the Big Island Film Festival, where my short film REMAINDERED is in competition. I'm really looking forward to the trip…I haven't been back to Hawaii since I was Toastmaster at Left Coast Crime  two years ago and I absolutely love it there, which is why I have set three books on the islands — Dead Space, Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant, amd Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii. Who knows, maybe a  fourth book will come out of this trip. 

I'll try to report back with photos and highlights from the festival.

 

“The Dead Man #3: Hell in Heaven” Is Out

by

_TheDeadMan_HellInHeaven_FINAL_lrg The third book in the DEAD MAN series, HELL IN HEAVEN, is now available on the Kindle, as a trade paperback, and on the Nook.  Here's the story…

Matthew Cahill was an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changed everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does. Now each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about, a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

HELL IN HEAVEN

The sign on the exit reads "Heaven." What better place could there be for a dead man to visit? But when Matt takes the ramp, he finds a banner welcoming him by name to a tiny town seemingly left behind by the 21st century… and waiting for him to rescue it. But when he agrees to save Heaven's citizens from a coming terror, he discovers that evil has more faces than he could ever imagine – and good is far more complicated than he ever dreamed.

BONUS MATERIAL

* the first two chapters of THE DEAD MAN #4: THE DEAD WOMAN by David McAfee

* The first chapter of JUDGMENT, the first book in the JURY SERIES, by Lee Goldberg.

I Wanna Get You Hooked…

by

0316 Goldberg ecover JUDGEMENT …so, for a very limited time, JUDGMENT, the first book in the four-book JURY SERIES, is now just 99 cents. 

This is an ALL-NEW edition, completely reformatted and repackaged for 2011.

JUDGMENT is the classic action/adventure novel that was a runaway paperback sensation under the title ".357 Vigilante" back in the 1980s…and was immediately snatched up by New World Pictures for a feature film (that, sadly, never happened).

But that screenplay adaptation launched my partnership with William Rabkin and our careers as screenwriters, so this book will always hold a very, very special place in my heart.

This is the ultimate JUDGMENT, as it was originally meant to be, taken from the original, first-draft manuscript. 

Brett Macklin was a freewheeling son of sunny California, a collector of vintage cars and a connoisseur of beautiful women. But when his father is murdered by a street gang, Macklin becomes something else–a deadly weapon against crime, a relentless vigilante who won't stop until he's wiped out the killers who have turned Los Angeles into a war zone. 

And here are the other reformatted and repackaged books in the JURY series…

ADJOURNED

0317 Goldberg ecover ADJOURNED
PAYBACK

0318 Goldberg ecover PAYBACK

GUILTY

0319 Goldberg ecover GUILTY

And all four books in one:

0298 Goldberg ecover The Jury Series

Relentless Forward Motion

by

It's shaping up to be 'Interview Lee Week." The first of my three-part interview with Booklife is up today. Here's an excerpt:

And, along those same lines, what has writing for television taught you about writing novels?

Lee Goldberg: I think that being a screenwriter, particularly for TV, has made me a much better novelist. You have to write outlines for TV, so it has forced me to focus on plot before I start writing my books. I’m not figuring things out as I go along as some authors do. I know exactly where I am going…though I may change how I get there along the way.
Being a TV writer has also trained me to focus on a strong, narrative drive, to make sure that every line of dialogue either reveals character or advances the plot (or both), and to cut anything that’s extraneous or bogs the story down.  I also suspect that being a TV writer has given my books a faster pace and more of a cinematic structure.

Have you picked up any habits–good or bad–writing for television that you had to unlearn or put aside when writing novels?

Lee Goldberg: Not really, but if I have a bad habit, it may be the need to have a relentless, forward motion to the story. In TV, you cut anything that’s the least bit extraneous to keep the story moving and to keep your episode within your allotted running time. With books, I have to remind myself that it’s okay to take time out to contemplate a moment, an experience, or a place…but only if it’s a moment.

 

Off the Cuff

by

The Dabbling Mum blog did a long, Q&A interview with me about all kinds of stuff. Here's an excerpt:

What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to pitching yourself as a writer and what steps have you taken to overcome that obstacle?

I haven’t been a freelance journalist in almost thirty years. Nowadays, in the television and movie business, the biggest obstacles are my age and my history. There’s a lot of ageism in Hollywood and now that I’m in my 40s and have lots of credits to my name, I have to spend a lot of time and effort proving to execs that I am more than the sum of my credits…and that am capable of doing other things than the kinds of shows I have done in the past. 

I don’t necessarily want my credits to define me…after all, there are some jobs I took because I needed the money or because they were the only folks hiring at the time. 

With books, I don’t have to pitch myself anymore. The business has changed so dramatically in the last year or so that there’s more money in self-publishing than in publishing right now. So the only person I have to query is myself.

What is your best advice for getting past writer's block?

Write. No matter how bad it is. Just write. Give yourself permission to suck. Sometimes, all it takes is just hitting that one good line or paragraph to break the creative log jam. I also recommend taking a break and reading a good book. Reading forces you to work with words and your imagination. That said, I’ve found that writer’s block usually comes from a poorly conceived story. The problem isn’t that you can’t write, but that the project you’ve sat down to work on has a crippling creative flaw.