Lee Goldberg

The Business Traveler

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In the last six months, I think I’ve traveled more than I have in the last six years. Tomorrow I am off to Germany again…this time, with my friend Matt Witten (LAW AND ORDER, HOUSE, etc) to teach writer-producers there how we develop, write  and produce TV series here. Then it’s off to Sweden with William Rabkin to conduct the same course for their writer/producers. While all that is going on, I will be spending every free moment writing the next MONK novel and awaiting word on my two pilots…

I’ll try to check in here, too.

Links A-Go-Go

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I’ve been away in New York for a few days at the Mystery Writers  of America board meeting and am just now catching up on my favorite blogs. Ordinarily, I’d build whole posts around some of the stuff I’ve found…but I’m too lazy. So you will have to see for yourself what Emmy Award-winning writer Ken Levine has to say about Aaron Sorkin’s dig that he wasn’t a "real" comedy writer.  And you’ll have to experience for yourself the utterly bizarre "Galactica-A Team-V" crossover fanfic that my brother Tod stumbled upon.

Shelf Life

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In 1983, I wrote a "My Turn" essay that was published in Newsweek Magazine. Today, almost 25 years later, I got a nice royalty check for a reprint of the essay in the textbook MAKING READING RELEVANT: THE ART OF CONNECTING. This is not the first time the essay has been reprinted. It has actually shown up in scores of textbooks over the years, from MARRAIGE AND THE FAMILY EXPERIENCE to DESIGNING IDEAS: AN ANTHOLOGY FOR WRITERS. And each time it happens, I am stunned. I can’t believe something I wrote in a half hour so long ago has had such a long shelf life.

I Wrote a Book and it’s Up for the Nobel Prize in Literature

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I’m not a book critic, but even so every-so-often I get hit up by authors or publishers who’d like to send me a review copy of a new crime novel. I received a solicitation today from an author, and his pitch included the following publicity material (the names have been deleted to protect the innocent):

[The Book] has been blurbed by Famous Author #1, Famous Author #2, Famous Author #3 and Famous Author #4.  It’s up for the 2006 Edgar Award for Best First Novel – Famous Author #1 seems to believe it’s a shoo-in to win.

First off, the 2006 Edgars were announced last year and his book wasn’t one of them. He’s actually referring to the 2007 Edgars for books published in 2006. Fine. But it appears that he’s implying that his book has been nominated for an Edgar…which it hasn’t. At least not yet. The nominations won’t be announced until February.

So what he’s bragging about is that his book has been submitted for Edgar consideration. That’s hardly an achievement. Anybody with a crime novel published in 2006 could submit their book for consideration…and probably did. We’re talking about hundreds of submissions.

I  explained this to him as politely as I could and, to reinforce my point, I included the list of about 100 other authors who were "up for an Edgar" in the same category as him. I suggested that he drop the frivolous Edgar reference from his pitch.  What I didn’t say was that bragging that he was "up for an Edgar"  made him look ridiculous. He replied:

thanks for catching that about the Edgars, wasn’t trying to be squirrely — i’d best change it to "it’s in submission for the Edgars."

I cringed from head-to-toe in embarrassment for the guy. I probably should have dropped it there, but I wrote him back and told him that submitting your book for Edgar consideration isn’t an achievement, either. Any author with some postage stamps and a book out in 2006 could do that. What I didn’t tell him was that bragging about sending his book to the Edgar committee would make him look even more ridiculous than what he’d already written.

He may be a great writer but he has a lot to learn about self-promotion.

UPDATE  (Jan 19, 2007) He wasn’t nominated.  So much for being a shoo-in.

Mr. Monk and The Ransom Notes

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MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU received a rave review from Barnes & Noble’s Ransom Notes newsletter.

While the obvious audience for the Monk novels are fans of the multiple Emmy Award-winning television series, Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu
will appeal to anyone who enjoys lighthearted, comedic whodunits,
regardless of whether they’ve even seen the show. Goldberg’s succinct
writing style — with an emphasis on witty dialogue, laugh-out-loud
hijinks, and nonstop action — will make a devoted Monk fan of anyone
who picks up this surprisingly entertaining read. Rubber gloves and
moist towelettes not included. Paul Goat Allen

My publisher swears they didn’t pay for this. But even if they did, I figure it’s a win-win. Either B&N loved it, which is great… or my publisher is putting some real marketing money into the book, which is also great. So I’m smiling.

Literary Cannibalism

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Here’s a new twist on the fanfic debate:   an article in the Daily Telegraph implies that  Thomas Harris stole from Hannibal Lector fanfic for his novel HANNIBAL RISING. The article quotes some fanfic passages and compares them to passages in Harris’ new novel.

Trawling through the Lecter fanfic, one comes on other tantalising parallelisms. Six years ago, for example, ‘Leeker17’, on www.typhoidandswans.com
posted a narrative which uncannily forecasts the opening chapters of
Hannibal Rising in its detailed description of how the hero’s parents
and sister met their ends in 1944. So close is it that one might fancy
that Leeker17 had some privileged connection with Harris. Or that
Harris himself, under a nom-de-web, may be the ‘leaker’. Or, like
Blythebee, Leeker17 may just have struck lucky.

If
an author picks up and uses something from ‘his’ fanfic is he
plagiarising, collaborating, or merely playing games? One thing’s
certain. Harris won’t tell us.

(Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the heads-up!)

The Airleaf Morons

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Today, I picked up a letter sent to me in care of Mysteries To Die For, a bookstore in Thousand Oaks, California. The letter was from Airleaf Publishing, the vanity press company formerly known as Bookman Marketing, and they were offering to "sell MY GUN HAS BULLETS to a national audience!"  for the low, low price of $3000.

I wrote about these parasites back in November… when this same "opportunity" to flush your money down a toilet cost a whopping $7000. Since then, it appears that they’ve become a shade less greedy but monumentally more stupid.

The incompetence represented by this letter is so extreme, I almost don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with them sending this pitch to a successful, published author who has castigated them publicly for their business practices before.

And where do these idiots send their letter? They send it to me in care of a bookstore that’s already selling my books.

The folks at Airleaf Publishing are obviously trolling the catalogs at  iUniverse and other competing vanity presses,
figuring if the aspiring authors could be suckered once, they could be
suckered again.

But the dimwit who is doing the trolling apparently
doesn’t know when he’s picking books that are part of either Mystery Writers of America Presents or Authors
Guild’s Back-in-Print programs (both of which reprint
previously published books through iUniverse as a free service for their members).

The dimwit doesn’t realize that when he picks books from the MWA Presents or Back-In-Print authors,  he’s
dealing with experienced professionals who haven’t paid to be published and who know
better than to be suckered by an insanely pricey vanity press come-on.

The Airleaf Publishing corporate policy must be to hire people who are "mentally challenged" or born with only a brain stem…and to hope whoever gets their letters are just as stupid and have high credit lines on their Visa cards.

You’ve Heard It All Before

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You can find a new Q&A interview with me, filled with information avid readers of this blog already know, online at Storylink, which is an off-shoot of the Writers’ Store and Writers University. Here’s a tantalizing excerpt:

1) What were you doing before you "made it"?

I was a freelance journalist, putting myself through school by writing for publications like American Film, Starlog, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times Syndicate, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, among many, many others. I also had a girlfriend who as an editor at Playgirl,
who got me a gig writing sexually explicit letters to the editor for
$25-a-letter, but let’s just keep that between you and me.

A Clear Head

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On Christmas Day, I emailed my pilot script to the studio… even though I knew nobody was there to read it. The script is due at the network next week, so I wanted to make sure it was delivered in time for me to get notes on Monday, do a quick revision, and still make our deadline.

Over the last three days, I did something I haven’t done in months: I didn’t write a thing. I didn’t even think about writing (ie plotting the next book or script).   I didn’t even write anything for this blog.  I couldn’t even summon the interest to read a book or watch a movie or catch up on all the TV shows cluttering my Tivo.

I wanted nothing to do with story.

It felt good.  I think I could probably use two more weeks like that, but it’s not going to happen. I have a very busy couple of months ahead of me of writing and business-related travel (to New York, Germany, Seattle and Sweden).

And yet, I also felt strangely guilty… as if I was playing hooky or being irresponsible. Afterall, it’s not like I don’t have more work to do and looming deadlines to meet. But there was nothing pressing on me, not like the deadline for my last MONK novel or for this pilot script. I had the wiggle-room to give myself a couple of free days. 

So I cleaned my office, did some errands, and took my family on a spur-of-the-moment trip up the coast to Morro Bay and a first-time visit to the Hearst Castle.  I didn’t bring my laptop. I didn’t even bring a paperback book (then again, it was only a day or so, hardly a big sacrifice).

And now I’m back, procrastinating here on my blog, before starting to write again tonight. It’s only been three days and yet, I’m feeling rusty, as if I’ve lost my momentum. 

Silly, isn’t it? I have got to learn how to relax a little bit.