Other Random Posts

Author Monica Jackson found these two interesting Book Standard articles about book publicists and their advice to authors. I thought this bit was particularly helpful:

Unless you’re friends with (and I mean have had the person into your home
numerous times), do NOT contact the media yourself. Reviewers and feature
writers do not like to be called directly by an author. Do NOT pay people to go
into bookstores and turn your books face out on the shelves, and/or pay people
to hang outside the bookstore and harass people going in with news about the
book. (Yes, this happens). DON’T ask your publicist to get you on
Oprah.

Oh hell. There goes my entire media campaign for my next book…now what do I do? And how do I break it to my grandmother that I’m not going to pay her to go into Sav-on and turn my books face out any more?

I made the mistake of seeing Woody Allen’s new movie MELINDA AND MELINDA today. Don’t make the same mistake.

The movie takes the story of a woman who crashes a dinner party and follows the ensuing events from two points of view, one dramatic, one comedic. The dramatic storyline isn’t dramatic and the comedic storyline isn’t funny. But both stories are equally dull.

The acting is stagey and artificial. The actors aren’t so much performing their lines as they are simply reading them. The casting sure isn’t what it used to be in a Woody Allen movie, either. Besides the handful of "name" stars (Will Ferrell, Chloe Sevigny, Amanda Peet), the rest of the cast is filled with LAW AND ORDER bit players who aren’t the least bit memorable.  Ferrell, who stars in the "comedic" half, spends his time imitating Woody Allen imitating Bob Hope. It’s excruciating. (Remember the big names Woody Allen used to be able to get for his movies? The way things are going now, Brad Garrett will star in his next one).

The movie looks and feels painfully dated and out-of-step, depicting a New York and New Yorkers that only exist in old, and much better, Woody Allen movies. Everybody is a writer, doctor, or artist who lives in a fabulous apartment, engages  in casual adultery and quotes Chekov in everyday  conversation.

It’s been years now since Woody Allen has made a good movie. I wish he’d take some time off to recharge and reinvent himself…instead of continuing to turn out these listless films.

Screenwriter Ben Ramsey has been hired to adapt James Patterson’s ROSES ARE RED for the big-screen. If the film is made, it would be the third movie starring Morgan Freeman as homicide detective Alex Cross.

After ten years of foreplay,  David James Elliott’s Harmon Rabb finally beds down Catherine Bell’s  Mac in the series finale of JAG, which CBS has decided to cancel…opting not  to continue with a re-formated version of the series with a new cast shot on the cheap in San Diego. Zap2It reports that the finale, scheduled for 9 p.m. ET April 29, will find Harm
and Mac "forced to face [their] feelings once and for all" following a
"bombshell" revelation by Gen. Cresswell.

The premiere of ABC’s private eye drama EYES tanked, coming in third for the hour, dropping 29% from its ALIAS lead-in and, more troubling, losing viewers at the half-hour mark.

As usual on my trips, I came home with a box of books. Here’s what I bought during my journey between L.A. and Santa Fe…

Hardcovers (used):
Dark Trail by Ed Gorman ($2)
Ryan Rides Back by Bill Crider ($2)
Texas Capitol Murders by Bill Crider (signed first edition $7)
Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman (signed first edition $20)
Blackening Song by Aimee & David Thurlo (signed first edition $20)
North of Montana by April Smith (first edition $4)
Ashworth Hall by Anne Perry (signed first edition $9)
Pentecost Alley by Anne Perry (signed first edition $9)

Hardcovers (new):
Sight Hound by Pam Houston (signed)
Rabbitt Factory by Larry Brown (signed)
Ya-Yas in Bloom by Rebecca Wells (signed)

Paperbacks (used)
Wild Wild West #3 by Robert Vaughan
Trailback by Robert Vaughan
The Lawmen by Robert Vaughan
Range Wars by Robert Vaughan
Galveston Gunman by Bill Crider
The Babysitter by Andrew Coburn
Diablo Grant by James Reasoner
Hawthorne Legacy by James Reasoner
Old Boys by Charles McCarry (An ARC)

As you can see, I’m  on a western kick lately.

We started our day by taking the aerial tramway up to Sandia Peak, where we took in the breathtaking views and lobbed snowballs at each other.  Afterwards, we went into Santa Fe where we strolled through the Plaza. We bought jewelry and moccasins for Maddie, a book and a cowboy hat for me (to wear while I read all the westerns I bought in Flagstaff), and some jewelry for Valerie. We returned to Albuquerque just in time for a wonderful dinner with my friends authors Aimee & David Thurlo, followed by dessert at their house in Corrales, where they plied us with fantastic sugar cookies (from a hundred year old recipe) and  introduced Maddie to their horse, their dogs, and their pet rats.  David says the rats actually gnaw affectionately on his fingers while he writes (he called it  grooming…I still call it gnawing). To me, rats chewing on my fingers while I write is a nightmare come true, but he likes it.  Hey, every author has their own unique way of motivating themselves. I’m sure there are some authors who use leeches.  Tomorrow, we plan on bumming around Albuquerque and visiting Page One books. On Wednesday, we head back westward to Sedona, AZ and lunch with author Richard S. Prather, one of my childhood idols.

I’m always amused by the way some actors and writers edit their credits, trying to pretend that some of their work never existed (you don’t hear Michael Mann talking about his days on VEGA$ much). Jessica Alba has been doing a lot of that credit-editing lately as she promotes FANTASTIC FOUR and SIN CITY. In her GQ interview, for instance, she charts the course of her career like this:

At 13 she decided to give acting a try and immediately found herself cast in an episode of the TV series Chicago Hope, playing a teenage girl who contracts gonorrhea of the throat from her 30-year-old boyfriend. Imagine explaining that
to your pastor. Next, at 16, she joined the Atlantic Theater Company
Acting School in Vermont, founded by David Mamet and William H. Macy,
where she was drilled in contrapositive Pygmalion fashion, on the intonation of lines like, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

She forgets to mention that, between her gigs with David E. Kelley and David Mamet,  she spent three years in Australia as a regular cast member acting opposite a zany dolphin on THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLIPPER  (you don’t see Emmy & WGA Award winning writer Terrence Winter hiding from his producing gig on that show… he even mentioned it in his Emmy acceptance speech. That’s being a man. That’s integrity, bucko. In fact, I’ll admit here and now I worked on FLIPPER, too… and, even worse, THE HIGHWAYMAN).

Alba wants you to think she just burst onto the scene with DARK ANGEL. Speaking of bursting, let’s talk about Dave Gardetta, the horny reporter who was interviewing Alba and aching to go more, much more, in-depth :

Alba made an off-color joke about lawyers, and she glowed: Her skin
glowed, her hair glowed, her lips glowed. Where once her carnal
features—lips, breasts, posterior—seemed preternaturally swollen, as if
in a dead-heat race to burst from her skinny, teenage frame, now Alba
and her twenty-three-year-old body have settled into delicacy and grace
and balance while still drawing chat-room catcalls like “Damn! Shortie
got back!”

Down, boy. And later he writes:

And then one day her body rebelled against God. Her teenage breasts bloomed; her buttocks began straining against her dungarees.

You can almost hear him panting as he beats the keys on his computer…or something further south.

I’m back from Hawaii… where it rained non-stop for 9 out of the 10 days that we were there. Ah well, it was still nice to get away from L.A. for awhile.

Many thanks to my brother Tod for keeping the blog lively in my absense… and doing his best to get me into trouble (again!!) with the fanfic community. 

(Note to Tod… as you proved here, and during your guest-hosting stint at Elegant Variations, you’re a natural blogger. When are you getting a blog of your own??)

While Lee continues to sun himself in Hawaii, the rest of us have to get back to living, which in my case means avoiding the writing I need to do…hence, a bevy links to things that have inspired me to great horror this afternoon:

The Literary World Waits With Baited Breath: Pop singer Ashanti has vast plans to take over the the writing world, she just can’t figure out which avenue to drive on, or, as she told Teen Hollywood, "I was thinking, do I want to do something for the children, or do I want to do something like Ashanti: Behind The Scenes?" I can’t tell you how I’ve clamored for both. I think: Ashanti — My Secret Desire To Be In the Battlestar Galactica Movie would cover both bases.

Dean Koontz Let His Dog Write A Book: And here Lee and I thought it was cool that our sisters will have a book out together next year.

A Year In Books: The Kansas City Star takes a look at the last 12 months of books…including this gem from January:

“Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls” screenwriter (are you ill yet?) Joe Eszterhas publishes his 700-plus-page memoir, Hollywood Animal, which will stand up 11 months later as one of the year’s worst books — or at least the one with the highest hubris quotient.

— Tod