Lee Goldberg

Double Takes

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DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE DOUBLE LIFE has been getting some very nice reviews from some very kind bloggers. Bill Peschel notes:

Fans of the “DM” series will know exactly what to expect: fast-paced
storytelling, some humor, and a nicely observed interaction between
Mark and his son, a homicide detective struggling to establish himself
away from his father’s accomplishments. It’s to Lee’s credit that, in a
genre that demands neat and tidy solutions, the personal conflicts
never get truly resolved, just as in real life.

Dm7a_1While the ScifiChick observes:

Goldberg weaves a complex mystery full of murders and puzzles. As
always, he gives Dr. Sloan so much depth, emotion, and humor that you
can imagine Dick Van Dyke playing the part on TV. Goldberg has proved
once again that he is a master of writing whodunits.

Chris Well says you don’t have to be a DIAGNOSIS MURDER fan to enjoy the book:

Goldberg does an excellent job of building on the
characters we know and love. He also displays a knack of creating
mysteries within mysteries, much like a puzzle box: no sooner do you
have one thing figured out than you discover it’s actually hiding
something even more sinister. As such, The Double Life is not just an excellent continuation of the series — but an excellent mystery novel.

And apparently Chadwick Saxelid didn’t take it personally that I killed him off in this book:
Dmlastword_1

Lee Goldberg has concocted a mystery concept so unnerving, it would even give veteran medical thriller writer Robin Cook the willies.

I want to thank all four bloggers for saying such nice things about the  THE DOUBLE LIFE, which leads directly in to THE LAST WORD, the final book in the series, which comes out in May. The cover for the book just showed up on Amazon (Click on the picture for a larger image).

Lee Said Read

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My Uncle Burl Barer has just landed a contract with Kensington for two more of his true crime books, the first of which has the great title MOM SAID KILL:

[It] will detail the shocking story of
Barbara and Heather Opel, mother and daughter, who murdered Barbara’s
generous employer in front of his elderly mother, made off with his
furniture and $40K from his bank account. Heather was about fourteen
years old at the time, and Mom promised her a new dirt bike for helping
in the murder. The kid never got the dirt bike.

Will Agents Consider Tie-Ins?

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This question was buried as a comment on an old post:

How receptive are literary agents to getting media tie-in novel
queries? Is there a reason they aren’t listed in the genres that the
agent will accept, or are tie-ins considered just part of the ‘fiction’
genre?

To answer this question, you have to understand what a tie-in is:  it’s a piece of fiction using characters licensed from a rights-holder like a movie studio, a literary estate, a gaming company, etc.

Usually the way a tie-in novel comes about is that the rights-holder will approach publishers with a property or publishers will approach the rights-holder. Several publishers, for instance, sought the rights to do "Monk" novels and Penguin/Putnam eventually won out.  Only after the rights are licensed to a publisher do editors seek out authors to write the books. That’s when an agent might enter the mix.

So it wouldn’t make any sense for you to query a literary agent with an idea for a tie-in novel…or the manuscript itself… unless you are the person who holds the rights to those characters.  Otherwise, what you’re asking an agent to do is sell your fanfic…and no agent will do that. That’s   why tie-ins are not among the genres  that agents are willing to consider for submissions.

If what you’d like to do is write for an existing line of tie-in novels (like, say, the STAR TREK series),  querying an agent isn’t the way to go. Agents simply aren’t looking for new clients to take to the editors of tie-ins…for one thing, there isn’t enough commission money in it to make it worthwhile. If an agent is going to suggest someone for tie-in assignment, it will be one of their current clients.

So, in general, you need to already be on a editor’s radar to get an assignment for a tie-in… it’s the editors you need to reach, not agents.

Momentum

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I haven’t conquered my jet-lag yet, but I’m not letting it bother me. Now that I am back in L.A.,  and it’s a "holiday" week of sorts, I don’t have to go into any office besides the one in my home so it doesn’t really make any difference what time I get up or go to bed. With that new attitude, and nothing to do but write, things are going much better with my script.

It’s amazing to me that, no matter how much experience I have at this, I still have the same insecurities and have to keep re-learning the same lessons… one of which is that writing goes better when you can generate some momentum.

I have been doing nothing but writing the last few days, rather than in  fits-and-starts like last week, so it’s no surprise than I am much happier and doing better work. The importance of momentum isn’t a new discovery for me…but it seems like I have to keep reminding myself  every time I start a writing project.

Am I Awake?

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On my last two days in Germany, I managed to overcome my jetlag and sleep like a normal person.  Alas, now I’m back in L.A. and my internal clock is completely screwed up. I fought to stay awake until 10 pm last night (though I had could easily have gone to bed at 8) and awoke at 3:30 this morning. I spent in hour in bed trying to get back to sleep before I gave up and decided to catch up on 10 days of mail. Now I’m feeling as if I’m on sinus medication…kind of zoned out. This is going to be a long day.

Man of Action III

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Cologne
Greetings from Cologne,  Germany, where I am holed up in my hotel room this morning, writing a pilot. I’m suffering from the worst jet-lag I’ve ever had…I think it has something to do with the fact it stays dark here until 8:30 in the morning and gets dark again around 5 pm…and in between, there’s not much sunlight. My internal clock just doesn’t seem to be adjusting, even after being here nearly 10 days. 

I haven’t been writing as much as I would like while I’ve been here. I’ve been having pre-production meetings at the studio in Cologne and with the network in Munich…and when I get back to my hotel room in the evenings, I’m crippled with fatigue and fighting to stay awake past 8 pm. I’m hoping when I get home I’ll rebound quickly from the jet-lag and have a nice, uninterrupted stretch to write so I can work up some momentum (the script is due Jan. 1). That’s also why you haven’t seen me posting here…I’m using the energy I have on the script. I like what I’ve written, it’s just harder to come by.

I still  have  Christmas shopping to do…I hope to  do a little  of it here before I return on Saturday.

Man of Action II

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This article about Action Concept and some of the work I am doing with them appeared in the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday:

Character counts on German TV
Joha’s ‘car crash company’ shifting focus to U.S.-style drama fare

By Scott Roxborough

COLOGNE, Germany — Veteran German producer-director Hermann Joha began his career as a stuntman and built up his company — Action Concept — with high-octane action series that were long on car crashes and short on plot.

But now Joha is trying to pull off a stunt that is the corporate equivalent of a 180-degree turn at top speed on the Autobahn.

With such U.S. series as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "House" and "Monk" outracing local productions in primetime, Joha has sent his company back to the shop for retuning. He has brought in Los Angeles-based media consulting group Media-Xchange to conduct its famed Writers’ Room workshops to teach German scribes how to deliver U.S.-style character depth and complexity on a deadline.

"When we started, it was enough to just have great stunts, that pulled in an audience," Joha said in an interview. "But that’s not the case anymore. Now you can have the most amazing special effects, and the viewers don’t care. What they want is a great story and great characters."

MediaXchange has hosted two Writers’ Room sessions for Action Concept this year, and four more are planned for 2007.

The investment already is paying off. Joha is in advanced negotiations with Sony Pictures Television International to produce a new action series developed during the first German Writers’ Room session. The concept — a Dirty Harry-style U.S. cop heads to Berlin and raises hell — came from Writers’ Room coach Lee Goldberg, a regular scribe for such shows as "Monk" and "Missing." The series has been given the working title of "Hurricane in Berlin."

"Hurricane" will be Action Concept’s first English-language series, the first produced using a U.S.-style writers’ room and the first specifically designed for an international audiences.

Goldberg, who has signed a one-year, first-look development deal with Action Concept, will act as executive producer and showrunner on the series.

"This is really a radical move for Action Concept," Goldberg said in an interview. "You have to realize, this used to be the ‘car crash company.’ What Hermann is doing is trying to position them as the ‘writers’ company,’ producing series of a quality that can compete with U.S. shows in Germany and internationally."

Joha is even applying the company’s new approach to his most prized possession: the long-running Autobahn cop series "Alarm for Cobra 11." The show, which kick-started Action Concept in 1996, will stage a major relaunch in March; Joha is retooling the series to give the cop-and-cars show more depth and backstory.

The new "Cobra 11" also will feature a fresh face: German star Gedeon Burkhard, known to international audiences from the cop-and-dog series "Kommissar Rex," one of Germany’s most successful TV exports.

"The new show will have more multiepisode story arcs, something we never used to do. All our shows were self-contained, one-episode stories," Joha said. "The main character is much more complex.

"We knew we had to revive the show if we wanted to keep it fresh after 10 years on the air," he said. "We were planning a relaunch anyway, but we sent our regular ‘Cobra 11′ writers to the Writers’ Room to teach them a few new things. And it’s worked. We’ve just finished the pilot, and I have to say, it is the best thing we’ve ever done."

Man of Action

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I am off to Germany again on Wednesday to work with my good friends at Action Concept and won’t be returning until Dec. 16.  So don’t be surprised if my postings here are sporadic. I am in the midst of writing a two-hour movie/pilot that will be shot in English in Berlin. If all goes well, it could go into production as early as this February. So I am off to do some pre-production work and meet with the German network that’s involved.  I’ll tell you more about the movie…and some of the other projects I’ve been working on… if and when they get closer to your TV, movie theater and computer screens (I am also involved in a very exciting, major web project that blends gaming and scripted drama in a new way).

You may have noticed I don’t talk much here about my TV and feature work.  Frankly, I don’t like to talk about specific projects that I am writing until they are in production…and there’s actually going to be  something for you to see. Speaking of which, Bill Rabkin and I wrote an episode of the USA Network series PSYCH that will be airing some time in January…

Scammer Sent to Slammer

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Writers’ Beware is reporting that Martha Ivery, the vanity press scammer and fake literary agent, was sentenced today to nearly six years in Federal prison for bilking aspiring writers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars with her many swindles under various aliases (Kelly O’Donnell Literary Agency, Craig Roussan, PressTige Publishing, New Millenium Publishing House, etc.).

Martha’s lawyer had argued for probation rather than jail time,
pleading serious mental illness, but the prosecution’s psychiatrist,
while acknowledging that Martha is one majorly fucked-up lady, did not
agree that this prevented her from distinguishing right from wrong. The
judge, fortunately, saw it the prosecution’s way.

Martha is
required to pay restitution to her victims (or, if they die, their
heirs), starting immediately, at the rate of 10% of everything she
earns or $100 per month, whichever is greater. Since the total
restitution amount is $728,248.10 (representing her "take" from nearly
300 victims), this is really more symbolic than anything else.

You can find a copy of her indictment here. Let’s hope this serves as a warning to all the other vanity press scammers out there (not that they are that hard to spot if you have an iota of common sense).

(Thanks to William Simon for the heads-up!)

The Name is Geek, Big Geek

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The theme song for CASINO ROYALE is so bad, that it made me long for the good old days of Shirley Bassey.  Here’s my ranking of the Bond songs…

1. Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey)
2. Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)
3. Tomorrow Never Dies (KD Lang) The original intended opening theme song. It played over the end credits and is referenced throughout the score
4. Diamonds Are Forever (Shirley Bassey)
5. Thunderball (Tom Jones)
6. Goldeneye (Tina Turner)
7. Nobody Does It Better (The Spy Who Loved Me) (Carly Simon)
8. A View to a Kill (Duran Duran)
9. For Your Eyes Only (Sheena Easton)
10. You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra)
11. We Have All The Time in the World (Louis Armstrong) (This technically wasn’t a theme song…but it plays a big role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)
11. Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow)

(from this point on, they are all pretty bad, so it’s hard to rank them)

12. Die Another Day (Madonna)
13. From Russia, With Love (Matt Munro)
14. You Know My Name (Casino Royale) (Chris Cornell)
15. Man With The Golden Gun (Lulu) (As bad as this song is, it’s one of my guilty pleasures anyway…it’s so incredibly cheesy that it’s irresistable…"love is required, whenever he’s hired, it comes just before the kiillllll…")
16. Never Say Never Again (Lani Hall)
17. License To Kill (Gladys Knight)
18. The Living Daylights (Ah-ha)
19. The World Is Not Enough  (Garbage)
20. All Time High (Octopussy) (Rita Coolidge)
21. Moonraker (Shirley Bassey)

UPDATE: A bigger geek than me has edited the original TOMORROW NEVER DIES theme (KD Lang’s SURRENDER) into the movie’s main title sequence so we can see how it might have been if the producers stuck with it instead of going with Sheryl Crow. Thanks to William Simon for the link.

Someone else with way too much time on their hands put Alice Cooper’s rejected attempt a MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN theme (released on his "Muscle of Love" album) onto the main titles of  THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.