Lee Goldberg

Book Fest, the sequel

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P4260123 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)

Book Fest

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Lee-victor I had a great time at the LA Times Book Festival today. My panel with Steve Cannell, Jan Burke, Robert Dugoni and Craig Johnson was a lot of fun — at least from where I was sitting (who knew Craig was so damn funny?).  All the authors were funny but also had some very revealing things to say about their approaches to writing and crafting characters. Afterwards, at the signing, a woman came up to me and said:

"I think you're very funny, and that you have a great personality, but I can't stand Monk or your books."Victor-brett-rabkin-denise-naomi

I kid you not. Robert Dugoni is my witness. But her comment was more than balanced out by the couple who came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed my novel THE WALK. Now that made my day.

(Photo upper left, me and Victor Gischler. Photo on right, Gischler, Brett Battles, William Rabkin, Naomi Hirahara, and Denise Hamilton, all at the MWA/Mystery Bookstore party. You can click on the images or a larger view).

More of This and That

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Naomi-sara-gary I limped into the Mystery Bookstore party Friday with my bad back (thank God for Vicodin) and had a great time mingling with Victor Gischler, Denise Hamilton, Brett Battles, Gary Phillips, Colonel. Carol Higgins Clark (she was with me and Col. Bob Levinson in Owensboro, KY back in June), Robert Lugoni, Naomi Hirahara, Cara Black, Sarah Weinman, Paul Levine, Louise Ure, Mark Haskell Smith, and many many more talented folks. (Pictured: Naomi Hirahara, Sarah Weinman, Gary Phillips)

Tweeting About Twitter

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I was quoted by reporter Chuck Barney for his Contra Costa Times article about celebrities using Twitter:

He says that, for many celebrity-obsessed fans, the glory of Twitter is all in the details.

 "I'm astounded by how mundane some of the interactions are," says Goldberg, a Walnut Creek native, who joined Twitter three months ago. "But it seems that the more mundanity there is in the tweets, the more personal and intimate the experience is for those involved. It's like, 'Hey, Madonna's having her period, and I know about it!'"

It's even more mundane than that. My Mom was totally thrilled to get a tweet from Neil Diamond letting her know that he was eating a Club sandwich for lunch. It allows people to feel like they have a intimate relationship with someone they actually don't know at all…and who doesn't know them, either. 

The End Game Has Got Game

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51oTHoBG32L._SS500_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.

This and That

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Yesterday I had lunch with my buddy David Breckman, writer-producer-director on Monk. He's an even bigger TV geek than I am, which means we always have a lot of fun talking about old TV shows. He shared with me a terrific Banacek-esque plot that he wants to use if the pilot he's working on ever goes to series. I shared with him my take on a feature rewrite that I am in the running for. I guess the lunch was inspiring because I got home and finished up my outline for the next Monk book and sent it off to his older brother Andy.

I got a pass on jury duty again today and I'm hoping my luck holds and I get skipped tomorrow too, ending my week without getting called. Tomorrow night is the big MWA party at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, which I am looking forward to.

I'm heading back to London in mid-May for more meetings with networks and production companies, so I am making travel arrangements for that today and then, once that is done, I'm going to scrape the rust off of my creativity and get back to the "stand-alone" crime novel I set aside to finish my last Monk book.

Whining and complaining

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I've been slightly jet-lagged since I got back from Munich, and I've been on-call all week for jury duty, and there's been a heatwave, but none of that is bugging me. It's the writing. Actually, calling what I've been doing this week "writing" would be generous. I've been doing a lot of staring at the screen. I'm having a hard time plotting the latest MONK book and I've been trying to pick-up where I left off three months ago on my "stand-alone" crime novel. It has been going sluggishly…when it's going at all. I'm hoping I'll get back in the groove soon. 

Festival of Goldbergs

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The Goldberg Brothers are going to be all over the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend at UCLA. I'll be kicking off the Festival by moderating the first panel on the first day — at 10:30 in Dodd Hall with authors Steve Cannell, Jan Burke, Robert Dugoni and Craig Johnson. The panel will be followed by a booksigning. The Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring all the mystery-track panels in Dodd Hall throughout the weekend, so you can pretty much park yourself there all day and count on having a good time.

My brother Tod is moderating a panel at 3:30 on on Humor & Race with writer/producer Larry Wilmore, Lalo Alcaraz and Christian Lander. And he's got another panel at 12:30 on Sunday, also about humor, where he'll be yukking it up with Carolyn Kellogg, Seth Greenland and Ben Greenman.

Me, Tod and honorary Goldberg William Rabkin will be signing our books at the Mystery Bookstore booth on Sunday at 2 pm. 

There's also a Danny Goldberg who is going to be at the Festival, too, but he's no relation to us and doesn't have our rugged, Redford-esque good looks.

Fanficcers say “Uncle”

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!BQZC7Z!BWk~$(KGrHgoH-CsEjlLlzPB1BJ4prspev!~~_12 That delusional TWILIGHT fan isn't the only one trying to sell fanfiction on eBay…fanficcers L. Lazarus & A. Morrisetti have copied the look of the original MAN FROM UNCLE tie-in paperbacks from the 1960s to sell their unauthorized UNCLE novels on the auction site for $21.95 each:. 

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. Continued…

NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE DISCONTINUED PRINTING OF THE BELOVED ACE NOVELS, NAPOLEON SOLO AND ILLYA KURYAKIN COME TO YOU ONCE AGAIN…IN PAPERBACK!

148 pages of sheer thrills and adventure just as you remember it from the original series. This book and the rest to come in this series are near exact replicas of the original paperbacks…but with new stories. Written by an actual screenwriter, you will feel you are seeing what you are reading.

A MUST HAVE for any U.N.C.L.E. fan.

Make room on your bookshelf right next to the ACE books you have loved and cherished for all these years.

They offer this laughable "disclaimer" :

THESE BOOKS ARE NOT ACE PUBLISHED NOVELS, NOR DO WE INTEND TO COPY ANY PART OF ANY ACE PUBLICATION. THESE BOOKS ARE FOR FAN USE ONLY AND ARE NOT INTENDED FOR MASS MEDIA DISTRIBUTION.

And yet, they have copied the Ace books and they are selling them on eBay, trying to make money off a property they don't own. 

One of the two idiots, who purports to be a "professional television writer with credits to include 'Hart to Hart''" is also selling an UNCLE novella for $18.00.

This is, of course, a blatant copyright violation, but my guess is that the guys think they can slide by because the underlying property is so old. My guess is that they are wrong.

UPDATE 4-19-2009:  They have revised their "disclaimer": 

These books are fan fiction and are not meant to infringe on any rights held by ACE Publishing, Warner Brothers, or any other entity who holds any rights to the Man from U.N.C.L.E., the television series or the previously published series of books. These books are NOT intended for mass distribution and are for fan use only!

I have news for these dimwits. Saying that you're not infringing on rights while you are doing just that doesn't make it okay. That's like saying "I'm not stealing your car even though I've just hotwired it, sped away in it, and am trying to sell it on Craig's List for money I will spend on hookers and blow. The car is intended for fan use only."

Day of the Living Dead

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Today I was so jet-lagged that I felt like I was sleep walking around Munich. I know I looked like the undead. But I fortified myself with some tea and chocolate at Kafer before the big pitch and it went well. Between the sugar, caffeine and adreniline, I've managed to stay alert from mid-afternoon until right about now (8:30 pm on Thursday night). We had a post-pitch discussion over dinner and then on my way back to the hotel I treated myself to a Kopenhagener pastry for a job well done. I am going to go to bed as soon as I finish typing this post.  Tomorrow morning I have a breakfast meeting with my friends at Hofmann & Voges Productions and then it's back to L.A.   All in all, I think it was  a very productive  five days that I hope to build upon in the coming weeks.