The Mail I Get – Question & Answer Edition

I get lots of questions about my books…and occasionally I even have a few answers.

I have read every Monk book that my library owns. They are wonderful! Will you be writing any more ?

Judy

Nope, I’ve been done with Monk for a while now. My last Monk book was Mr. Monk Gets Even. I’ve moved on to other projects and am co-writing a new series with Janet Evanovich. Speaking of which…

I’m love the Kate O’Hare and Nicolas Fox books you write along with Janet Evanovich. I seriously read all the books within days as I’m totally hooked by them. This is a surprise as I am one who will only read books if I am forced too.I would like to know of there is another book to the serioes that is being made or will be released soon etc. Thanks again.
Joanna

I’m so glad that you are enjoying the series. We are in the midst of writing book #4…it should be out this summer or in the fall.THE JOB by Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich

I have just finished King City, wow! Your characters in the Kate O’Hare and Nick Fox books with Janet Evanovitch were some of the best I had come across. Tom Wade is even better. Your blurb following the ending says you were hard at work on more Tom Wade books, but that was 2011. I was so disappointed to find none listed. And I guess I’m writing to encourage you to go back to that story and keep going. I liked the book so much in fact that I thought, well maybe I’ll have to write a sequel just to have more to read! A silly idea of course, but it will convince you how much I felt involved with your characters. I will now try The Man with the Iron-On Badge, and then maybe another series. Thank you, Elizabeth

Thank you for your kind words about KING CITY and the Fox & O’Hare series. I intended to jump on the KING CITY sequel right after I finished the book…but the Evanovich project came along and I haven’t had a chance to get back to it. My hope is to write it this year. BTW, “Man with the Iron On Badge” was re-released as WATCH ME DIE a few years ago in both ebook and trade paperback editions.

Dear Mr Goldberg,
Hello, how are you? Don’t want to take up much of your time…I’m a huge fan of the wonderful books you have written for the Monk series! I have a few of them and I was wondering if  you would sign the ones I have and send me the ones I don’t have yet with your autograph. Thanks for keeping Mr Monk and company going!
               -Meg : )

I genuinely appreciate your kind words about my Monk books, and your desire to have my autograph but no, Meg, I won’t sign the books you already have and send you all of the books in the series that you don’t have yet. I don’t give away my books. That’s not how I make my living. I also don’t sell books (not that you asked to buy any) because I am not a bookstore, either.

Lee: I wrote a full length script on semi vampire of genre fiction and fantasy recently and I want to sell it. Are you interested?

Why would I be interested? I’m a screenwriter. I don’t buy scripts, I write them. Besides, what the hell is a “semi vampire of genre fiction and fantasy?”

Hello Lee, I love your work and have read most of your books — Where can I see a list of new books coming out? I like to pre order so I don’t miss the  new ones. Thanks for the many hours of great reading — I can just loose myself in your books. Julie

Thank you so much, Julie! The best place to keep up with my releases is right here on my website. Or join my mailing list, using the form on the right. My latest novel, THE JOB, also co-written with Janet Evanovich, came out in November.

The Story Behind THE WALK

Here’s a new video interview with me about my thriller THE WALK, which twice hit #1 on the Amazon bestseller list and, if you don’t count my co-authored books with Janet Evanovich, is the bestselling novel of my career. It didn’t start out that way. It was a bomb when it was originally published in hardcover by Five Star, a small press, in the early 2000s. But I re-released it in a new ebook and paperback edition when the Kindle came along and it was an immediate hit. The novel has been published in a German and, starting TODAY, in a new French edition, too!

Mark Smith on Writing “The Death of The Detective”

My friend Mark Smith’s The Death of the Detective is widely considered to be one of the best detective novels ever written…and was a National Book Award finalist. It was a honor for me to be able to republish it this last month through my company, Brash Books.  I’ve asked Mark  to share the story of how his remarkable book was written. 

Death of the Detective Front CoverI think it was Heywood Hale Broun who said, “When a professional man is doing the best work of his life, he will be reading only detective novels,” or words similar. I hope, even at my age, I have my best work ahead of me, but when I was writing The Death of the Detective, in my leisure hours I was exhausting the classic English who-dun-its written between the Wars, favoring Dorothy Sayers and Freeman Wills Croft, while also re-reading Raymond Chandler and re-discovering Nero Wolfe. In this regard I shared the addiction with the likes of William Butler Yeats, William Faulkner and FDR, among others.

My first two novels, the companion novels, Toyland and House Across the White (original title, The Middleman), were psychological thrillers and a modern retelling of a fairy tale. Before taking on the ghost story, my fourth novel, The Moon Lamp, I settled on my favorite genre, the detective story. Originally sketched out as something of a short story in which the detective in his quest of a killer discovers only his victims, with each murder leading both men to the next, the book became seriously ambitious when I added the moral and ironic complication of the detective himself being somehow responsible for the deaths by reason of his continued pursuit of the killer. This seemed to me a wonderful metaphor for the America of my time and place. And the detective as my representative American—or hero, if you wish. So much better for an urban environment than a cowboy.

The novel became enlarged when I added an interwoven subplot of young people and a minor plot of gangsters and made the killer’s victims believable round characters who were either sympathetic or interesting, so that, in a departure from the genre and the movies, the reader would be emotionally effected when their deaths occurred. After all, the tradition in Chicago writing, from Dreiser to Bellow, is compassion. Adding to the novel’s length was my recreation of each particular setting where the corpses were found strewn across the landscape of what is now called ‘Chicagoland”, thereby involving as many varied localities as I could in the crimes.

Many readers would say Chicago was the main character in the book, a response that surprised and disappointed me. Only years later did I come to find there was some justification for this observation. In my day, Chicago, for guys like me, was pretty much an open city, and I felt free to venture where I pleased. After high school, I worked as a mucker (sandhog) digging the subway extension beneath the post office, was a tariff clerk for the CBQ Railroad, the timekeeper on the foundation work for the Inland Steel Building and a merchant seaman on the Great Lakes before graduating from Northwestern University and living on the Gold Coast– across from the Ambassador East, no less.

Some readers, including allegedly mafioso and their children, have claimed the gangster plot is the best piece of the book, and that the gangsters are entirely believable, recognizable characters, perhaps something of a first in American fiction. The question asked then, is how did I come by my insights and knowledge? Henry James said writers should “receive straight impressions from life”, a piece of advice I find irrefutable for a naturalistic writer. Lo and behold, at the age of sixteen I worked as a busboy one summer at a nightclub-restaurant on the outskirts of Chicago owned by a former Capone mobster that was frequented by his fellows in the trade, alone (sometimes to play cards in a closed-off dining room), or with their families. These people not only became human to me, they became ordinary, and for a writer, now accessible to the play of his imagination. For example, I witnessed the tipsy top mobster in Chicago at closing time fail miserably in his attempt to pick up a not-so-exciting waitress, while my boss, a rather comic character who reminded me of Lou Costello ( a new restaurant in the area that threatened to be competition for his restaurant was bombed that summer every time it tried to open) would show up at the restaurant furious after losing a bundle at the track and order the help to drain all the nearly empty catsup bottles into new bottles. Without these contacts I suppose I would have had to take my gangsters from the cliches of movies and television (pre-Sopranos) and yes, probably from crime novels, also.

Mark Smith
Mark Smith

I have a couple of regrets about the novel. I notice a reviewer claimed I had predicted the practice of criminal profiling. If so, I’m not sure where that occurs in the novel. However I did make two predictions that came true that I cut from the book when I reduced its original text by some twenty percent which included not only blubber but the author’s commentary, prophecies and missteps into outright fantasy. One was the prediction that we would suffer from some new and deadly sexually transmitted disease which I changed to suggest old-fashioned syphilis. It seemed to me that given our new libertine sexual proclivities with limitless partners that such was likely to occur. Hence, soon thereafter, Aids. The other was my direct assertion that the mindless violence on film and television not only deadened us to the pain of violence, but encouraged violence, making it a centerpiece of our culture, a notion that was dismissed as hogwash at the time, but seemed an obvious cause and effect to me. Today this observation is pretty much accepted. So much for my career as Nostradamus.

A final admission. Although the Viet Nam war is never mentioned in this novel, and occurred after the time this novel takes place, it occurred during the time I was writing it with the nightly death count on the news. I like to tell myself my rage against that misadventure, along with my nostalgic love-hate relationship with the lost Chicago of my childhood and youth, were the energy sources behind the novel’s composition. It could even be said, with some hyperbole, that I wrote this book alone in my study in place of publically marching with the thousands demonstrating in the street.

One of my great pleasures of publishing this book, along with receiving a nomination for the National Book Award and seeing the novel on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, were the invitations to join the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers Association.

The Death of the Detective is available from Brash Books, Toyland and The House Across the White, from Foreverland Press.

The Mail I Get – Advice Edition

Here are some recent queries I’ve received lately asking for my advice…

A number of readers have suggested my XYZ series of books would be a great springboard for a TV series. I’m not so sure of that, but it has occurred to me that my new release (XYZ) might be a good candidate for a movie, given the characters and setting. […] If you have the time and inclination, any advice about who to contact or where to promote it to producers would be appreciated. If not, best of luck with Brash (not that you need it!).

Unless your book is a NY Times bestseller, with a large following, and huge critical acclaim, your chance of selling it as a movie or TV series is nil. I say this from experience… and having worked on several TV series based on books (Spenser For Hire, Murphy’s Law, Nero Wolfe, Missing, etc) and having adapted many others (Aimee & David Thurlo’s Ella Clah, Mary Higgins Clark’s The Lottery Winners, William Kent Krueger’s Iron Lake, etc) for studios for film and TV that didn’t get made. Those books were all hugely successful. It took 20 years for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum to become a movie…over a decade for Lee Child’s Reacher books to become a movie…and they are among the biggest selling, most well-known authors on planet earth.

No offense, but your series is obscure, self-published, reviewed by little-known media outlets (The Kindle Book Review, Story Circle Review, etc) and blurbed by authors nobody has ever heard of (XYZ? His highest ranked book is #1,403,740 on Amazon…his worst #12,649,676. Why on earth would you tout his review?).

I don’t say this to hurt you feelings, or to be a jerk, or to kill your dreams, I am just trying to be honest with you about your chances of selling your books as a movie or TV series. Bottom line… you need to be realistic in your expectations. 🙂

Hi Mr. Goldberg,
Some film school student in L.A. just asked me if my XYZ detective series has been optioned yet. I get the general gist of that sort of stuff, but is that something a) to take seriously, given that he’s only tangentially in the biz or b) that would warrant getting an agent? Any quick advice or links to advice,

I don’t see any upside in optioning anything to a film student. What would be the point of that? I wouldn’t take it seriously. There are thousands of film students out there, most of whom will never make it in the business.

If he wants to shoot a student film based on your book, and you like the idea of that, then let him do it without optioning it to him. Just write up a document that says you’re okay with it as long as it’s never used / sold for profit (tickets, DVD sales, etc), not distributed to theaters, not shown on television, and that it’s clear he has no rights whatsoever beyond using it as a non-profit, project as a demonstration of his skills.

Sammy Davis Jr. Sings his Eight Favorite TV Theme Songs

One of my guilty pleasures are Sammy Davis Jr’s craptastic TV themes song covers… some of which he must have commissioned just to sell records (who knew there were vocals to KOJAK!?). Here they are:

1. KOJAK

2. THE JEFFERSONS

3. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW

4. CHICO AND THE MAN

5. MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN

6. HAWAII FIVE-O

7. BARETTA

8. MY MOTHER THE CAR

The Mail I Get – Lame Suck-Up Edition

I get lots of suck-up emails aimed at making me promote, or sample, or buy, or blurb, a stranger’s work. Here are some of the lamest, recent examples:

I’m always looking for professionally-written crime novels and I’m mostly disappointed. Having just published my 16th novel I know solid writing when I see it. I was pleased to discover your work. I’ve now read two of your books, “Watch Me Die” and “King City.” I’m trying to decide which one to read next. If someone were to ask me which books of mine I liked best  I would say “XYZ” and “XYZ.” Let me ask you the same question: Of your own books, which are your top two or three favorites?

This guy’s self-published books are ranked in the millions, meaning he’s not even selling copies to his family, and his covers look like they were drawn by hand. I wonder what his definition of “professionally-written crime novels” is?

Here’s one from someone sucking up for a blurb:

I hope you don’t mind my contacting you. I am a published author and playwright of “science-in-fiction.” Whatever it may be – quantum physics, the genetics of gender, or consciousness – such mysteries allow me to explore the big questions. For my newest book, due out this August, the editor at XYZ has asked me if I know an author who would be willing to read and review it in the interest of supplying a “blurb.” In fact, I don’t know many authors, but have a whole host of favorite writers whom I have always wanted to write to. (DELAYED DIAGNOSIS is a favorite.)

I’ve never written a novel called DELAYED DIAGNOSIS, so her attempt to flatter me fell flat. Note to people trying to suck-up: it’s important to get right the name of the person you are sucking up to and the titles of their books and shows that you supposedly love.

Here’s one sucking up for a job:

Dear Lee

I am a South African screenwriter who has recently completed a feature length screenplay that I believe your agency may be interested in representing.
Please find a short pitch below for your review.

Title: Side Time [copyright 2015]
Genre: Action Fiction
Pitch: U.S. Marines meeting Nazi’s soldiers throw a time machine

Log Line: The U.S. government is on the verge of completing the building of a time machine underground N.Y.C.

John [Project Manager] decides to test the time machine by going back to Germany during the time of WW2.
His private mission- to steal the Nazis biggest diamonds from Hitler’s treasury!

In general, it’s a good idea to find out if the agency you are sending your pitch to is actually an agency. I am not an agency. I am a writer. Secondly, if I was an agent, I wouldn’t represent you because your grasp of English grammar is iffy (“meeting Nazi’s soldiers throw a time machine”?) and your story sounds awful.

Working with Ernest Kinoy on Diagnosis Murder

Diagnosis Murder castI just learned that Ernest Kinoy. one of the most honored writers in TV history, passed away this week. I was fortunate enough to work with him on two episodes of DIAGNOSIS MURDER.

Dick Van Dyke really wanted us to do an “important” episode of DIAGNOSIS MURDER and felt we should get a “major” writer to do it (I suppose we could have been offended by that…the implication that we were doing mediocre episodes and were mediocre writers, but we chose not to take it that way). William Rabkin and I, who were the show runners at the time, were glad to do it. We saw it s a chance to not only work with a writer we admired, but also to get some critical attention. So we decided to aim high, to find an acclaimed, award-winning writer from the “golden age” that Dick would immediately recognize and respect…but that would be an honor for us to work with as well. Whoever we chose also had to be a writer with episodic experience, someone who wouldn’t have a problem working with continuing characters and delivering a story that worked within our franchise. That narrowed the field a bit. Our first pick was Ernest Kinoy but, to be honest, we thought he’d turn us down flat. After all, this was the guy who wrote Skokie, Roots, Murrow and  Victory at Entebbe and classic episodes of such dramas as The Defenders, Naked City, Route 66 and Playhouse 90. 

So we gave him a call…and to our astonishment, he was genuinely interested. We sent him some episodes of our show, as well as some issue-oriented story areas that we were kicking around. He immediately jumped on a notion we had about HMOs…insurance plans that require patients to use specific hospitals and doctors and that leaves life-changing medical decisions in the hands of bureaucrats who are more concerned with the bottom line than patient health.

Kinoy’s only hesitation was that it had been decades since he’d written an episodic teleplay and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pull it off.  He had no reason to worry. The guy was pro…one of the greats of our business.

He delivered a powerful story and a terrific script, entitled First Do No Harm, that stood out as the only episode of the show that didn’t have a murder. Yes, someone died, and Dr. Sloan investigates the death, but the perpetrator was a system, not an individual. The script captured the voices of our characters…but it was Kinoy’s voice that really came through. His dialogue had a unique cadence, one that Dick embraced. It was a real thrill for us, professionally and personally, to work with him, although it was long distance, by phone and fax.

We liked the experience so much that we invited him back to do a second episode the following season…another issue-based story, this one about assisted suicide…and it gave us the chance, as an added bonus, to reunite Dick with Kathleen Quinlan, his co-star in  the film The Runner Stumbles, his most dramatic role. Dick relished the part and we relished working with such a gifted writer. It was the last episode of season 6, the final episode that Bill and I produced of the series, and it was a great way to go out.

The two episodes ended up being Kinoy’s last, produced credits. I hope he was as proud of the episodes as I am.

 

Recovering from Bouchercon 2014

It’s taken me three days to recover (and to get my voice back) from my fun-filled weekend at Bouchercon 2014, the world mystery convention, which was held in Long Beach, California. It was four-days of talking about mysteries, thrillers and writing with my fellow authors, crime novel fans, editors, agents, and booksellers. It was a great event. I met so many new readers and learned so much from my colleagues.  I also talked up (before my voice went out) Brash Books, the new publishing company I launched on Sept 3rd with my buddy Joel Goldman, and our thirty new releases. And I signed lots of books, including THE JOB, my third Fox & O’Hare novel co-authored with Janet Evanovich. Here are some photos from the conference…

Lee Child, Boyd Morrison, Paul Levine, Jeffery Deaver, and yours truly
Lee Child, Boyd Morrison, Paul Levine, Jeffery Deaver, and yours truly
Phoef Sutton, Max Collins, Lee Child and Lee Goldberg at Bouchercon 2014
My friends Phoef Sutton, Max Allan Collins, Lee Child and yours truly
The Co-Authors club: Lee Goldberg, Boyd Morrison, and Phoef Sutton at Bouchercon 2014
We should start a Co-Authors club! That’s me with Boyd Morrison, who writes with Clive Cussler, and Phoef Sutton, who is writing WICKED CHARMS with Janet
Lee Goldberg, Christa Faust, Alison Gaylin and Michelle Gagnon at Bouchercon 2014
Me with my friends Christa Faust, Alison Gaylin and Michelle Gagnon at Bouchercon 2014
Brash Books co-founder Joel Goldman, and Brash Books authors Dick Lochte and Gar Anthony Haywood, with me.
Brash Books co-founder Joel Goldman, and Brash Books authors Dick Lochte and Gar Anthony Haywood, with me.

You can find more photos from Bouchercon in the photo gallery on my website.

Fox & O’Hare are Back in THE JOB

TheJobSliderI’m so excited! It’s pub day for THE JOB, the third book in the Fox & O’Hare series that I co-write with Janet Evanovich. The book is available in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia…and if you want to get signed editions, autographed by me and Janet, copies are available from Target, but you better hurry, they are going very, very fast.

We had a lot of fun writing this book, which gave me an excuse to visit Nashville for research and stuff myself at Monell’s restaurant three nights in a row. The action in this story also takes Fox & O’Hare to France (where my in-laws live, so I have visited often), Spain, Portugal and Turkey. I’ve been to all of the locations in the book except for Lisbon and Istanbul, but I had friends in both cities who were able to visit all of the places we wanted our characters to go and take lots of pictures for us. And we did a ton of research reading books, watching documentaries, and spending hours on Google Earth, an author’s best friend.

All of our “regular” characters return along with some new members of the team, recruited just for this mission (and one of them is going to make a return appearance in our  fourth book).

We’ve also just released a “prequel” short story, THE SHELL GAME,  that reveals how conman & thief Nicolas Fox and FBI agent Kate O’Hare first met…and the exciting con that that started their relationship. I didn’t have to go far to research this one…it’s set in Los Angeles, a city that Janet and I know well. It’s an ebook exclusive that you can find at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore.

Meanwhile, we’re already hard at work on the fourth book in the series. I’ve already taken a research trips to Oahu and Las Vegas…and will soon be heading to Hong Kong & Macao…all to add that extra touch of authenticity to the Fox & O’Hare adventures. I can’t wait to hear what you think of THE JOB and THE SHELL GAME. Please let me know!

The Boy Who Killed Demons

demonsMy friend and Top Suspense colleague Dave Zeltserman is a dual threat — equally adept at writing terrifying, and deeply unsettling horror novels as he is at writing stunning crime novels. His latest horror tale, The Boy Who Killed Demons,  earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and raves from both Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal.  I invited Dave here to talk about the influences that shaped his new book.

Every author has influences we’re aware of for our books, and sometimes we have subconscious influences that we might become aware of after the book’s been written. My first novel, Fast Lane, was heavily influenced by the great crime noir writer, Jim Thompson, even when I wasn’t aware of his influences. My crime novel, Pariah, was consciously influenced by the Whitey Bulger crime saga and a well-publicized plagiarism scandal involving a chicklit book. My Frankenstein retelling, Monster, was obviously influenced by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but also by the Marquis de Sade, the German horror writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, and John Polidari’s The Vampyre. While I wasn’t aware of any influences on my crime noir novel, Small Crimes, years later I could see Dan Marlowe’s influence in my writing. With my latest horror novel, The Boy Who Killed Demons, that’s being released today, there are obvious influences by Lovecraft, the film They Live, and Spider-Man.

The Boy Who Killed Demons chronicles the struggles of 15 year-old high school student Henry Dudlow to keep the world safe from demons. When Henry was 13 he was a normal, outgoing kid, but then he started seeing certain people as demons, and things change dramatically for him. After convincing himself that these really are demons, he sets about to determine what they’re up to, and when he discovers that they’re trying to open the gates to hell, he has to do whatever it takes to stop them.

When I was a kid I read all the Lovecraft I could get my hands on, often (as Henry does in the book) riding my bike into Boston to visit used bookstores. While stylistically The Boy Who Killed Demons is very different than Lovecraft’s writing, the influences can still be seen, both in the way I sometimes show Boston and with the forces at work to allow evil, all-powerful entities into our world that will cause the destruction of everything we know.

One of my favorite horror films is John Carpenter’s They Live, and Demons gives a nod to the film as Henry watches it on TV one night and identifies strongly with Roddy Piper’s character, and the sacrifices Piper must make once he can see the aliens for what they are.

Finally, there’s the Spider-Man influence. As a kid, this was my favorite comic book, and Henry keeps watching the first Toby Maguire Spider-man for inspiration, identifying strong with the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ idea, and later in the book the first Spider-Man comic book plays a role.