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My TV Book Addiction, Part II

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

I love Bear Manor Media. They publish TV books that no publisher in their right mind ever would. Who else but Bear Manor would publish books about the western Temple Houston and the sitcom Good Morning World, two shows that barely survived for a single season each back in the 1960s? You could probably fit all the potential readers of those two books comfortably in a motor home for a dinner party. I’ve never seen either one of those two shows, but I still bought the books… another illustration of my raging, TV book addiction. Bear Manor Media and, to a lesser degree, McFarland & Co, are my pimps. But enough about me. Let’s talk about the books.

Jeffrey Hunter and Temple Houston: A Story of Network Television by Glenn A. Mosley is a mess of a book (though much better than his book about the TV series The Deputy). As the title suggests, the book isn’t quite sure what it’s about. Is it about Jeffrey Hunter? Is it about Temple Houston? Or is it about network television? Basically, it’s three lengthy magazine articles — one on the very short-lived Temple Houston, one on aborted The Robert Taylor Show, and one on actor Jeffrey Hunter’s disappointing career, stitched together into a thin, and yet very padded, book. But the stories of Temple Houston, and the never-aired Robert Taylor Show are fascinating and well-worth the time, and the $14.95 purchase price of this book, for any student of the television history.

The apt title for the book might have been A Perfect Storm of Bad Decisions. It’s the story of how Warner Brothers’ decision to replace the president of their TV division with actor/director Jack Webb, and NBC’s decision to cancel the drama The Robert Taylor Show four episodes into production without ever airing an episode, and the network’s decision to rush Warner Brothers & Four Stars’ Temple Houston into production to fill the void, doomed them all. Mosley sums it up in his introduction.

In making the decision in the manner that it did, NBC effectively sealed the fate of two television franchises. The Robert Taylor Show would never see the light of day and, in the end, Temple Houston hardly stood a chance. NBC, Warner Brothers, and even Four Star would all end up in weaker positions as a result […] Temple Houston has most often been dismissed as simply a failed, one-season western on television. Fair enough– so it was. But the story of Temple Houston is more than that; it is also the story of the intersection points betwen careers, Hollywood Studios, and network television.

And it’s a great untold story, one that neither NBC, nor Warner Brothers nor any other network or studio learned from… and were doomed to repeat many times over.

The first 44 pages of this 121 page book (not counting the bibliography and index) chronicle the story behind the development and production Temple Houston, and its great stuff. I ate it up. Another ten pages later in the book cover the story of the never-aired Robert Taylor Show in more detail…and it’s also great stuff, maybe even more interesting than the Temple Houston story. Everything else in the book — the biography of Jeffrey Hunter, the episode guide to Temple Houston, the pointless rehash of Temple Houston episodes — is filler that doesn’t really convey much and often repeats material mentioned by the author before. But on the strength of the Temple Houston and Robert Taylor Show stories alone, I recommend this book for your TV reference book library.

Sadly, I can’t say the same for Good Morning World by Tim Colliver, who wrote this very thin, heavily padded book because the short-lived 1967 sitcom about a radio station inspired him to become a DJ. The problem is, the show just wasn’t very good and there wasn’t anything remotely interesting about it on any other level. As both Joby Baker, the long-forgotten star of the show, and the author of the book put it:

[Baker] also thought the scripts could have been better… a lot better.

“The reason I had trouble memorizig the lines is that they were horrible fucking lines.”[…]Throughout the course of the series, Baker thought the scripts were “corny” and the show “not really funny at times.” In all fairness, in looking back on the episodes now that they are on DVD, he was on to something.

Which begs the question, why write a book about a lousy show? Or better yet, why read one? My answer to both questions is: Don’t.

Note: I bought both of these books. They were not provided to me for review.

2014 Scribe Awards Announced

July 28, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

Mr Monk Helps Himself The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers gave out the 2014 Scribe Awards, honoring excellence in media tie-in writing, at Comic Con San Diego this past weekend.

There was a tie in the Best Original Novel category between Monk: Mr. Monk Helps Himself by Hy Conrad and Leverage: The Bestseller Job by Greg Cox.

Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller won the Best Origial Novel in the Speculative fiction catergory while Pacific Rim by Alex Irvine won Best Adaptation. The Best Audio Award went to Blake’s 7 The Armageddon Storm – by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright and Mike Hammer: “So Long, Chief” by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane won for Best Short Story. The Archie Comics tie-in Kevin by Paul Kupperberg won the Best Young Adult Scribe.

Author Diane Duane was selected as the 2014 Grandmaster, the highest honor awarded by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writing, recognizing her achievements writing novels based on movie and television shows.

The annual award, also known as the Faust, recognizes Ms. Duane’s huge body of work and amazing versatility. A true master of multiple media, Ms. Duane has written for television and comics, and authored short stories and novels. She has written Star Trek and X-Men, Spiderman and Seaquest DSV. Her original series include Young Wizards, Feline Wizards, The Middle Kingdom. Her tv credits include both animated (Disney’s Duck Tales) and live action (Star Trek the Next Generation) and Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King.

Congratulations to the winners! Here’s the full list of nominees :

Audio

Blake’s 7: The Armageddon Storm – by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright

Dark Shadows – 33: The Phantom Bride – by Mark Thomas Passmore

Dark Shadows – 37: The Flip Side – by Cody Quijano-Schell

Short Story

Mike Hammer: “So Long, Chief” by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane

Star Trek Online: “Mirror Image” by Christine Thompson

After Earth: “Savior” by Michael Jan Friedman

After Earth: “Redemption” by Robert Greenberger

Warhammer: “The Dark Hollows of Memory” by David Annandale

Shadowrun: “Locks and Keys” by Jennifer Brozek

Original Novel General

Monk: Mr. Monk Helps Himself by Hy Conrad

The Executioner: Sleeping Dragons by Michael A. Black

Leverage: The Bestseller Job by Greg Cox

Leverage: The Zoo Job by Keith R. A. DeCandido

Murder She Wrote: Close-Up on Murder by Donald Bain

Original Novel Speculative

Supernatural: The Roads Not Taken by Tim Waggoner

Fringe: The Zodiac Paradox by Christa Faust

Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller

Supernatural: Fresh Meat by Alice Henderson

Star Trek: From History’s Shadow by Dayton Ward

Young Adult

Archie comics: Kevin by Paul Kupperberg.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 byStacia Deutsch

The Croods by Tracey West

Adapted Novel, General And Speculative

Pacific Rim by Alex Irvine

47 Ronin by Joan D. Vinge

Man of Steel by Greg Cox

My TV Book Addiction

July 22, 2014July 21, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

I have an addiction — I love books about TV, even if they are about shows I don’t like or have never watched. I buy them on the off-chance I will learn something about the business, or about production, or about writing that I didn’t know before. I especially like books about old TV shows, because then I also learn something about television history. I’m telling you all of that so you’ll understand what possessed me to buy Jonathan Ether’s 640 page book devoted to Here Comes the Brides, a boring, utterly forgettable western series that lasted a mere two seasons in the late 1960s that is known, if at all, for a catchy theme song (“Seattle”) and for featuring Bobby Sherman and David Soul in the cast.

I don’t care about the show — the few episodes I’ve seen were lousy — but I really liked Etter’s The Here Comes the Brides Book: A Behind the Scenes History of the 1968-70 ABC TV Series from those crazy folks at Bear Manor Media (they’ve got to be crazy to publish books like this… but I love them for it). So why did I like the book if I could care less about the show? Because it’s packed with fascinating information about other shows. For instance, William Blinn, creator of Here Comes the Brides, spends a lot of time in the book talking about writing the TV series Bonanza and Shane….and that’s great stuff. And Brides’ star Robert Brown talks about almost starring in Hawaii Five-O, and his work on the unsold pilots The Yellow Bird with Carroll O’Connor and Colossus with William Shatner, among others. So it’s for those golden nuggets that I was willing to slog through seemingly endless, pointless chapters about actress Bridget Hanley (who?) and her marriage to director E.W. Swackhamer, or the tragic details of Mark Lenard’s multiple melanoma that took his life long after the series was over. The book desperately needed a good editor, but I’m glad it didn’t have one, because it’s the stuff that had nothing to do with the show, that should have been cut, that I liked best. But if you are one of the dozen living fans of Here Comes the Brides, you will absolutely love this book. Every episode is examined in-depth and every regular and guest cast member, and almost every crew member, with the possible exception of the caterer, are interviewed about their lives and careers.

Here’s the irony of me liking a book so much about a show that I could care less about: I bought David R. Greenland’s The Gunsmoke Chronicles: A New History of Television’s Greatest Western from Bear Manor Media because I love Gunsmoke, and yet I got nothing out of it at all. It’s a pointless book, a bland rehash of material presented better, and in more depth, by other books about the show. Oddly enough, Greenland acknowledges that fact in his preface: “By 2006, three books about the show had reached the marketplace, and even I conceded that the world did not need another.” And yet, he wrote one anyway, and shouldn’t have bothered, because he adds nothing new or particularly interesting about the series. It’s filler masquerading as content. Unlike the Here Comes the Brides book, there’s no gold here about other shows to make it a worthwhile purchase. Skip it.

Martin Grams Jr’s The Time Tunnel: A History of the Television Program, also from Bear Manor, is much like the book on Here Comes the Brides. It’s massive book (nearly 600 pages) about a TV failure (it lasted a single season) that’s packed with lots of interesting information…about Irwin Allen and his other shows and about the TV landscape in the late 1960s. Everything you could possibly want to know about Time Tunnel is here, from the original pitch to information on all of Allen’s attempts to do another time travel series after it was cancelled, from the number of pages shot on a particular day to the cost of individual props, from the notes from ABC censors on each script to lists of the stock music cues in each episode, from exhaustively detailed synopses of each of broadcast episode to detailed descriptions of the episodes that weren’t shot. There’s almost too much stuff. It’s as if Grams decided he had to put every single fact that came across his desk into the book just because he had them. The upside is that there’s something for everybody here, whether your interest is in TV production accounting or screenwriting. The downside is that it makes for tedious reading, even if you are really into the show or into TV history.

NOTE: I bought all three of these books. They were not provided to me for review.

Flanek: The Kentucky Columbo

July 18, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

Bud Flanek is a rumpled, amiable, deceptively low-key homicide detective on the Owensboro, Kentucky police force, the hero of three short, funny mystery movies that now have their own YouTube channel.

Nobody set out do a series of movies about the character… it was a happy accident. It began when Zev Buffman invited my friend David Breckman, the outrageously talented MONK writer-producer-director, to be a guest at the International Mystery Writers Festival at Riverpark Center in Owensboro a few years back.

David came up with the brilliant, insane idea of writing, producing, and directing a short film using primarily local talent … all during the course of the festival… which was, if memory serves, ran just four days. Amazingly, he pulled it off. The result was Murder in Kentucky, a twenty minute short starring Todd Reynolds as an unnamed homicide detective who solves a murder that happens during the rehearsal for a live-radio theater show. I loved it. But for reasons too complicated to go into, mostly technical, the movie only screened once and wasn’t seen again for several years (but don’t worry, there’s a happy ending to the tale).

Not long after that, Zev invited me to write & direct a short film in Owensboro. I decided to adapt my short story Remaindered, which had been published to some acclaim in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and was about a once-famous author on a miserable, last-ditch book tour that leads to murder. I cast Todd to play Bud Flanek, a homicide detective who appears late in the story. Although Flanek wasn’t intended to be the same character as the one Todd played in Murder in Kentucky, that’s what he became, main because he was the same actor playing a cop in the same town in the same wardrobe. And it helped that my cop had pretty much the same personality and attitude as David’s unnamed lawman.

Remaindered became a hit on the national film festival circuit, winning awards and rave reviews, including praise from writer-producer William Link, co-creator of Columbo, who loved Todd’s performance and christened Flanek “The Kentucky Columbo.” Wow.

So when Riverpark asked me to do another film, I knew I had to bring Todd back as Flanek. I adapted another short story of mine, Bumsicle, and recrafted it with Todd Reynolds in mind. Unlike Murder in Kentucky and Remaindered, though, Flanek was very much the center of this story, which was darker than the other two, but still had a few laughs.

Bumsicle also became a hit on the festival circuit and garnered lots of praise. After a year on the road, we brought the film back to Owensboro and screened it outdoors in a triple bill with Murder in Kentucky and Remaindered, drawing a crowd of over 500 people.

After that, we knew we had something special and decided to create a channel devoted to Flanek on YouTube. But first we had to tweak Murder in Kentucky a bit, which had poor sound (due to cheap equipment) and temp music lifted from Bonnie Raitt (due to the very hurried production schedule… did I mention it was written, produced, and shot in just four days?). So Firelight Entertainment Group in Hawesville Kentucky, with whom I shot Bumsicle and the Dead Man music videos, remastered the sound on Murder in Kentucky, and replaced the music. To tie the short into the series, I asked singer-songwriter Matt Branham, who did the score for my two films, to write & perform a new end theme song expressly about Flanek…”Nothing Fun About Murder”

..he even manages to mention Monk!

Now the Flanek channel is live with all three movies. Our hope is to whip up enough enthusiasm for the films to merit the funding of more short Flanek mysteries, perhaps even a webseries of 20 minute episodes. It’s in your hands.

So if you like the movies, please please PLEASE leave comments on our FLANEK channel, “like” our Flanek Facebook Page, and spread the word to all your friends!

How to Write a Crime Novel When You’re Afraid of Cops

September 12, 2014July 8, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

To write her hot new crime novel The Big Keep, my friend author Melissa Olson had to spend a lot of time in police stations, which meant conquering her fear of cops. Here’s how she did it…

I’ve been a little bit afraid of the police for as long as I can remember.

Maybe it’s because I was a child of the movies, where being a police officer is never just someone’s job; it’s a larger-than-life identity. Onscreen, a person and a badge are much bigger than just the sum of those two parts. Movie and TV cops are usually a representation of authority itself, charged with the power to do anything from ruin your day to kill you and make it look like an accident, Dirty Harry-style.

Or maybe I’m just afraid of cops because an encounter with the police represents getting in trouble, and I was never one for trouble. I never even had a detention; the idea of getting arrested in terrifying to me. I prefer my conflict on literary terms only, thank you very much.

At any rate, after a long path that wound from Wisconsin to Los Angeles and back, I ended up becoming a fiction writer. And despite my fear, I eventually found myself writing about a couple of very large, very famous police departments: first the LAPD (In Dead Spots and its sequels) and then later, the Chicago Police Department (in The Big Keep). While I was writing these books I decided to adopt a “forewarned is forearmed” attitude with some serious research, but that wasn’t always reassuring – for example, the CPD Wikipedia page alone has a long list of scandals and coverups for your perusal. It’s a skewed sample of what these departments actually do, of course, but it’s still intimidating as hell.

Before long I began checking over my shoulder as I wrote, half-convinced that at any moment the cops would knock on my door, angry that I was making them too cartoonish or too intense. I’m not much of a speeder to begin with, but by the time The Big Keep was in edits I was keeping a careful eye on the rearview mirror, especially whenever I found myself in Chicago. It’s only paranoia until you’re pulled over for a brake light that isn’t broken.

All right, I may be exaggerating the danger just a touch. Eventually, I got past these early anxieties and realized that the only way to write cops is to write people who work as cops. Although some television shows (not written by Lee Goldberg, of course) may depict all police in black hats or white hats, the truth is that real police officers come in as many shades of gray as any other group of people. In The Big Keep, there are kind, thoughtful cops, like the protagonist’s friend Sarabeth Warrens, and there are vulgar asshole cops, too, like her partner Flanagan and his cronies. But all of them have their own histories and motivations, because they’re still characters, modeled on people, and brought to life as part of a larger story. I made myself remember that having a badge may give you authority, but it doesn’t make you one-dimensional. And hopefully that comes through in my novel.

I might stay out of Chicago for awhile, though. Just in case.

Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and studied film and literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After graduation, and a brief stint bouncing around the Hollywood studio system, Melissa landed in Madison, WI, where she eventually acquired a master’s degree from UW-Milwaukee, a husband, a mortgage, a teaching gig, two kids, and two comically oversized dogs, not at all in that order. She loves Madison, but still dreams of the food in LA. Literally. There are dreams. Learn more about Melissa, her work, and her dog at www.MelissaFOlson.com.

A Feast for TV History Buffs

March 25, 2020July 7, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

Two new books from McFarland & Co. are a feast for TV history buffs.

Roy Huggins by Paul Green explores in great detail the TV career of writer/producer Roy Huggins, creator (or co-creator) of such classic shows as Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, Toma, Baretta, The Rockford Files, The Bold Ones: The Lawyers, and Run For Your Life, as well as the driving force behind the creation of the “TV movie.” He also produced many other series, including The Virginian, Cheyenne, Hunter, Kraft Suspense Theater, and Alias Smith and Jones, to name a few. The book is based on dozens of personal interviews, Huggins’ own unpublished memoirs, newspaper & magazine articles, as well as my own, six-hour video interview with Huggins for The Archive of American Television.

It’s a great book, exploring all of the creative issues, production details, political machinations (studio and network), and personnel matters (his relationships with actors, writers, producers etc), that shaped the weekly series, TV movies, pilots and mini-series that Huggins made as a producer, studio chief, and later as a hired gun. It’s exactly the kind of book that I wish somebody would write about Stephen J. Cannell, Glen A. Larson, Fred Silverman, Steven Bochco, Bruce Geller, Goff & Roberts, Levinson & Link, and so many other TV producers.

Green clearly admires Huggins, but is not so enamored of his subject that he ignores the producer’s faults, mistakes and failures. This is a serious, well-researched, information-packed reference work that is nonetheless an easy and engaging read. You don’t have to be familiar with Huggins’ shows to find the behind-the-scenes stories both fascinating and informative. This book isn’t just for fans of Roy Huggins or his shows — it’s a must-read for students of TV history and anyone interested in a career as a TV series show runner. It’s hands-down one of the best books ever written about a TV producer…or being one.

Everyone knows about George Burns the actor and comic, but few people these days are aware of his influence as a TV producer and head of a successful production company. Much like Desi Arnaz, another major actor/producer/studio chief of the 1950s and 1960s, Burns did ground-breaking work that is still influencing TV writers and producers today. That’s why Richard Irvin’s George Burns Television Productions: The Series and Pilots 1950-1981 is a much overdue and necessary piece of TV scholarship.

Burns famously broke the fourth wall with his Burns & Allen Show, about a showbiz couple with a TV show playing a showbiz couple with a TV show. He also produced such series as The Bob Cummings Show and Mr. Ed, and many of the writers, directors and producers that he worked with and supported went on to create huge hit series (like Paul Henning, who went on to create The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres). Burns and his company refined the art of using episodes as spin-off pilots, though none of the ones he did on Burns and Allen, or on Mr. Ed or The Bob Cummings Show, ever took off.

Irvin’s fine book delves extensively into every business and creative aspect of the Burns & Allen Show, the Bob Cummings Show, and The People’s Choice, as well as every single project that Burns’ production company ever produced…every series, every pilot, and even the stuff that never got made. It’s one of the few books about the history of a TV production company and its a strong one…and for that reason alone, Irvin and McFarland & Co are to be commended. This is clearly a labor of love for author and publisher…because outside of a few diehard TV historians, and TV geeks like me, I can’t imagine there’s much, if any, market for a book with such a narrow focus. Unlike Roy Huggins, this is not a book that is a must-read for scholars or wanna-be TV show runners. You’d have to already be interested in the shows that George Burns produced, or in unsold pilots in general, or in 1950s and 60s TV history, to find this book worthwhile. For me, it was a home run. I loved it.

A note on my biases/possible conflicts of interest: I bought my copy of Roy Huggins, because I have a strong interest in his work. I’ve admired Huggins since I was a kid. I interviewed Huggins many times during my career as a journalist. In fact, I went into this expecting to be disappointed, to find very little “meat,” lots of errors, and to learn little that I didn’t already know. I was very pleased to be wrong. I’ve also worked with Jo Swerling Jr., who is quoted frequently in the book, during my time as a writer/producer at Stephen J. Cannell Productions. And, finally, I was a writer on Hunter, but several seasons after Huggins produced the show.

I received a review copy of George Burns Television Productions from McFarland & Co, which published my reference books Unsold Television Pilots, Television Series Revivals, and Science Fiction Filmmaking in the 1980s over twenty years ago.

Janet Evanovich Books – A New Stephanie Plum Novel for June

June 3, 2014 by Kate Goldstone

Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich - On Sale June 17

Here’s a guest post from my friend Kate Goldstone, a big fan in the UK of crime shows, crime novels and everything noir, who has just discovered, thanks to The Chase, my good friend and co-author Janet Evanovich‘s Stephanie Plum books, which she says aren’t yet the mega-bestselling sensation over there that they are here…

Plenty of US crime fiction authors have already crossed the Atlantic with ease and aplomb, delighting British audiences with their books. Others are right on the cusp: massive over there, right on the edge of hitting the crime books best seller scene big time over here.

Lee’s friend and writing partner Janet Evanovich is the creator of the tremendously engaging bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, the heroine of 20 novels that have sold tens of millions of copies in the states… but haven’t made the same splash here yet.

Well, now that her 21st novel in the series, Top Secret Twenty One, is coming out in a few weeks, I think it’s about time Janet took our British crime book readers by storm. So I thought it’d be cool to take a look at Stephanie Plum and whet the appetites of all you UK readers out there.

Janet Evanovich Books – Treat yourself to a compelling 21 novel series

Janet’s writing career began with a series of short romance novels, written under her pen name Steffi Hall. They were pretty damn good. But she hit big time in the states with her light hearted mystery novels starring Stephanie Plum, an unlikely heroine, originally a lingerie buyer who became a Trenton, New Jersey bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job.

Now that’s what I call a great back story: knicker buyer turns crime fighter!

Janet and Lee on Set for TV interviews 1 — Janet Evanovich and Lee on the set for a TV interview for their book THE HEIST.

About Stephanie Plum – Best selling books with a difference

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum character was inspired by Midnight Run, the Robert De Niro movie. What was appealing to Janet about bounty hunters is that they are not nine-to-fivers, they can wear what they want, work when and how they want, with whomever they like. That gave Janet a lot of creative flexibility for her heroine and the stories she could tell. Janet then went out and spent a lot of time with bond enforcement agents, studying the way they work as well as spending time getting familiar with the novels’ setting, the city of Trenton in New Jersey.

The first in the Plum series, One for the Money, came out in 1994 and struck an immediate chord with U.S readers. The fact that the heroine is barely competent at her job lent the book considerable charm and it soon shot to stardom, becoming a New York Times ‘notable book’ of the year as well as earning Publishers Weekly’s award for Best Book of 1994. She even sold the movie rights, though it would be almost twenty years before the movie got made with Katherine Heigl in the starring role.

Hot Six, the sixth in the series, was the first to grab a place in the New York Times bestseller list and since then every one of Stephanie Plum’s romantic adventures has debuted at number 1, an astonishing achievement. As someone with one foot in the romance camp and the other firmly planted in crime fiction, Janet Evanovich’s work has an enviably wide appeal.

is the star of the novels anything like the author? It’s a question every reader loves to find the answer to. In Janet’s case it’s a resounding ‘yes’. Both are from New Jersey. And they share a bunch of seriously embarrassing real-life experiences. There’s nothing quite like a perfect, all-knowing, flawless character for making a reader feel inadequate. Plumb’s beautifully-expressed balls-ups are nothing if not realistic, and knowing that she is – on occasion – a bit of a twit adds an extra human dimension to the character and makes her even more appealing than if she’d been disgustingly, annoyingly, unrealistically perfect.

Janet Evanovich books – The Stephanie Plum series in order

It’s always better reading a series of novels in the right order, and it’s easier with her series than others, since the numbers are right there in the title! Here are the Stephanie Plum books in chronological order:

One for the Money (1994)
Two for the Dough (1996)
Three to Get Deadly (1997)
Four to Score (1998)
High Five (1999)
Hot Six (2000)
Seven Up (2001)
Hard Eight (2002)
To the Nines (2003)
Ten Big Ones (2004)
Eleven on Top (2005)
Twelve Sharp (2006)
Lean Mean Thirteen (2007)
Fearless Fourteen (2008)
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen (2009)
Sizzling Sixteen (2010)
Smokin’ Seventeen (2011)
Explosive Eighteen (2011)
Notorious Nineteen (2012)
Takedown Twenty (2013)
Top Secret Twenty-One (to be released on June 17, 2014)

More Janet Evanovich books – Fox & O’Hare

I hate it when I finish a writer’s work while I’m still more than halfway in love with the writing style, the characters, the settings, the plots, the Zeitgeist. Once you’ve read, enjoyed and digested all twenty-one of the current Stephanie collection, what’s next?

Luckily there’s the Fox & O’Hare series to get your teeth into, courtesy of Janet and co-author Lee, a literary collaboration well worth exploring. Pros and Cons, The Heist and The Chase, the third novel released earlier this year, await you. They’re action-packed stuff, rich in thrills, starring the master con artist Nicolas Fox and his sidekick, the tenacious FBI agent Kate O’Hare.

Let’s talk Plum…

If you’re already a convert, what’s your favourite Stephanie Plum novel, and why?

The Mail I Get – Lame Pitches Edition

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

I get some really lame pitches from people who want me to review their books, read their screenplays, or co-write novels with them. Here’s a sampling, the first one from a man who wants to co-author novels with me:

My Name is XYZ, I am a Law Man, writing such things as Natural Laws and Society Laws in drama, ENT and others. Lets Collaborate. It going to be good.I await your response.

How could I ignore such a compelling pitch? I’m setting aside my next collaboration with Janet Evanovich to write a novel with him. Here’s a review pitch, one of the many I get every day:

Hello.
I really need your help!!
I understand that you may be interested in reviewing erotica works?
I finally got my act together and published 5 works (Yay me!) but frankly, I have no idea if I’m actually any good or if I completely suck. I can’t give them to family to review because that would make family dinners really awkward and my friends (after mocking me big time) would only tell me they were fabulous because their my friends.
I’m already making steady sales on Amazon which is awesome but no one has left any feedback so I don’t know how the material is being received. Is it good, bad or completely awful? If it’s drivel, what do I need to work on?
I would really appreciate it if you could read and review one of my works:

So to find out if her books suck, she’s self-publishing them and asking people who don’t read or review erotica to post on Amazon their opinions of her work. Now that’s a winning strategy. Next time I’m in the mood for a book about a woman who gets it on with “one sexy, kinky horned God,” I’ll be sure to check her book out. Here’s another one:

Let me introduce myself, I am X, author of “XYZ” to teach you the perfect foundation of Knitting (Knitting Patterns, Crochet, Yarn) which is currently available in digital format on Amazon Kindle for 0$. I am inquiring if you may have the time to read and provide an honest unbiased review? I got your contact form Amazon Top Reviewer list, and from your profile it shows that you do book reviews.If you would be interested to review my book, I would be highly grateful. I’d be happy to give you a free copy of the book if you miss to purchase book on regular promo, just let me know. If you decide to post your review please write that you got it as free complimentary copy, or something which will indicate that you provided an unbiased review.

Aside from the fact I don’t knit, and I have never reviewed a book on knitting before, her pitch is loaded with grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors. It’s a solicitation that’s doomed to failure, just like her book.

I hope this email finds you in the best health. My name is XYZ and I, previously, offered you my FREE Appetizers book and I hope you like it. And I’d love to offer you my latest cookbook ‘Salad Recipes XYZ’. I figure it might well appeal to you, particularly if you’re in the mood for a light read and something different. I absolutely love your reviews, since they provide lots of value to potential customers and are absolutely honest and straightforward. Therefore, I want to ask you whether you are potentially interested to review my book?

If he’s read my reviews, which he clearly hasn’t, he’d know I don’t review cook books and that my idea of light reading for relaxation is not a book of salad recipes. Beyond that, his pitch is horribly written. Otherwise, it really works.

Robert B. Parker’s Latest Spenser Crime Novel – Courtesy of Ace Atkins

May 23, 2014May 22, 2014 by Kate Goldstone

Lee Goldberg and Robert Parker at the Edgars

Here’s a guest post from my friend Kate Goldstone, a big fan in the UK of crime shows, crime novels and everything noir, who has just discovered Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels (that’s me with Parker in the photo above at the Edgars). I envy her reading all of those great books for the first time…

Are you constantly on the look-out for the very best thriller books, from the pens of the finest thriller writers? If so, have you heard of Robert B. Parker, the ‘Dean of American Crime Fiction’? As a Brit, I hadn’t until recently, much to Lee Goldberg’s shock and disbelief.

Parker is best known for his remarkably popular Spenser private eye novels, which became the basis for two TV series (Spenser: For Hire and A Man Called Hawk) and even a bunch of well-loved made-for-TV movies. In fact, Lee broke into the TV business by writing four episodes of Spenser: For Hire, so he owes much of his career to Parker and the fictional private eye.

Parker died aged 77 in 2010. The author’s estate decided to continue his Spenser and his Jesse Stone novels with new writers. The Jesse Stone novels were initially written by the Parker’s friend Michael Brandman, who produced the TV movies based on the books, and they are now being written by Reed Farrell Coleman. The Spenser novels are being written by Ace Atkins to wide acclaim.

Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby was published in 2012, the first posthumous Spenser novel crafted by Atkins. Then came Wonderland in 2013 and the latest, released to considerable fanfare on 6th May, Cheap Shot.

If Parker’s work is new to you, an unexplored star in your crime fiction books firmament, you might like to find out a bit more about him and his work. If you’re into the best thriller authors, he’s an all-American classic. They aren’t just good thriller books. They’re great thriller books.

Avery Brooks as Hawk and Robert Urich as Spenser in Spenser For Hire

About Robert B. Parker – His Crime books and TV mystery series

Robert Brown Parker was known and respected for his epic, encyclopaedic knowledge of the city of Boston, Massachusetts. His crime novels are adored by readers, the great man’s fellow authors and critics alike, including stateside crime fiction luminaries like Robert Crais and Harlan Coben. In fact, they’re so good they’ve been cited as ‘reviving and changing’ the detective genre altogether. Big stuff… but then again Parker was a big writer in every sense of the word.

Robert B. Parker’s awards included two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and, in 2002, Grand Master Award for his Lifetme Achievement in the crime writing field. There are currently forty Spenser novels in print, and you’ll find a list of them all here, on Wikipedia.

About Ace Atkins – Continuing Parker’s legendary work

Ace Atkins is a popular New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award nominee with fifteen runaway hit novels under his belt. As a journalist he was originally a newsroom crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune. His first novel was published when he was twenty seven and he threw in the journalistic towel completely at aged thirty to write crime fiction full time.

Ace won a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a TV series based on his investigation into a forgotten 1950s murder, which ultimately formed the core of his excellent novel White Shadow. He’s best known for his masterful grasp of plotting, totally believable characters and highly entertaining, seamless and convincing mix of fact and fiction. And, by all accounts, he’s also blessed with an uncanny gift for mimicking the late Robert B. Parker ‘s style, to the delight of Parker’s many millions of fans.

Praise for Ace Atkins’ Cheap Shot

With a bit of luck the first three uncannily Parker-esque Spenser crime fiction novels will turn into a long run. Some things are just too good to come to an end. In the meantime, if you haven’t grabbed a copy of Cheap Shot yet, here’s what a few reviewers say about it on Amazon:

“Spenser is as tough and funny as ever, and Atkins has become a worthy successor.” – Booklist

“Assured… Atkins’s gift for mimicking the late Robert B. Parker could lead to a long run, to the delight of Spenser devotees.” – Publishers Weekly

“A well-conceived adventure that balances Spenser and friends’ experience with Akira’s innocence while drawing on Atkins’ own Auburn football days.” – Crimespree Magazine

“Cheap Shot is the best yet, with a whip-crack plot, plenty of intriguing and despicable characters, and the lovable, relentless Spenser at its center. Atkins also has a deft way with Parker’s style… Atkins is bringing his own energy and strengths to Parker’s series. Cheap Shot is Spenser, by the book.” – Tampa Bay Times

The Back-Door onto PrimeTime

December 29, 2023May 17, 2014 by Lee Goldberg

Last week, CBS picked up two series for next fall — CSI: Cyber and NCIS: New Orleans — that were shot as so-called “back-door pilots,” embedded in episodes of existing series. CSI:Cyber aired as an episode of CSI and NCIS: New Orleans aired as an episode of NCIS (which, itself, began as a back-door pilot as an episode of JAG).

A back-door pilot is a way to save money on making a pilot, a sample episode of a proposed TV series. Since standalone pilots that don’t lead to a seires cost millions of dollars, have no commerical value, and will usually never air anywhere, shooting them as an episode of an existing series allows studios to recoup their costs from the syndication revenue of a hit series. It’s a practice that has been going on for fifty years — The Andy Griffith Show began as a back-door pilot episode of The Danny Thomas Show.

The problem is, backdoor pilots usually end up being one of the worst episodes of whatever series is hosting them. That’s because the stars of the host series, by design, have to take a back seat to the stars of the pilot…and let’s face it, people aren’t tuning in to see the pilot characters, they are tuning in to see the characters they already know and love. Star Trek ended it’s second season with Assignment Earth, a back-door pilot starring Robert Lansing, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended it’s second season with a back-door pilot for a series with Bill Daily. Both pilots failed to sell.

The networks and producers can’t really disguise backdoor pilots — because they can’t function as pilots without being pilots, introducing us to the characters and franchise of the proposed show. But it’s a practice that has worked.

Some of hit shows that began as backdoor pilots (also known, some years back, as “nested spin-offs”) include Diagnosis Murder, NCIS, CSI: Miami, Maude, SWAT, Petticoat Junction, Laverne & Shirley, Barnaby Jones, Empty Nest, Knots Landing, and Stargate: Atlantis.

The many, many shows that have hosted one or more backdoor pilots include Magnum PI, Cosby, Spenser: For Hire, Star Trek, Vegas, Bones, Married With Children, Gunsmoke, The Practice, Charlie’s Angels, Barnaby Jones, NCIS, Ironside, Criminal Minds, Murder She Wrote, Smallville, House and The Rockford Files (which had four of’em!). Back in the day, anthology shows like Zane Grey Theater, Dick Powell Theater, and Police Story (which begat Police Woman, Joe Forrester and David Cassidy: Man Undercover) were often used for back-door pilots.

Bill Rabkin and I were the executive producers of Diagnosis Murder with Fred Silverman, the man who once ran CBS, ABC and NBC and was known as the “king of the spin-off.” Since Diagnosis Murder was a nested spinoff of Jake and the Fatman, which itself was a nested spin-off of Matlock, Silverman was a big believer in backdoor pilots and insisted that we do at least one every season. Diagnosis Murder tried at least six of them that I know of and they all went nowhere.

We personally did three of them, including Whistlers, basically a tame Lethal Weapon with women, and The Chief, starring Fred Dryer as the leader of the LAPD. Here’s the main title sequence for Whistlers:

and the sales pitch for The Chief:

We were very clever with how we structured The Chief as a back-door pilot…and it was the only one of the Diagnosis Murder backdoor pilots that actually had a shot getting picked up.

We wrote it as a tw0-hour, sweeps episode of the series…but crafted it in such a way that we could edit it down to one-hour and cut almost all of the Diagnosis Murder cast out of the show for internal sales purposes

Fred Dryer was great in the part…and newcomer Neal McDonough had real star power (since proven on Band of Brothers, Justified, Desperate Housewives, etc.). We were sure we were on to something. The two-hour movie was one of the highest rated shows of the week, #12 if memory serves, and when we had the one-hour version tested, the scores were among the best Fred Silverman had ever seen. Silverman was convinced we were a lock for the fall schedule.

Unfortunately, this was one of the rare cases where ratings and testing didn’t mean as much to the network as personality…nobody at CBS wanted to work with Fred Dryer (which begs the question, why did CBS let us cast him, and why did they pay the “pilot breakage” on his salary for the guest shot, if they had no intention of greenlighting a series with him in the lead?).

But Silverman wasn’t concerned. With the numbers and testing we had, and with Dryer’s successful track record with the hit series Hunter, he was convinced we’d have a sale in a matter of weeks with another network.

We took it to every network and pitched it face-to-face to their presidents (that was the power of working with Silverman), and every one of them had some personal reason for not wanting to be in business with Dryer…and seemed to take great pleasure in passing on the project in the room to his implacable face.

As it turned out, a couple of years later CBS did a very simlar show (The District) with great success and a star reportedly as difficult as Dryer reportedly was (Craig T. Nelson)…and NBC ended up reviving Hunter for six episodes and discovered, or so we heard, that Dryer was even more reportedly difficult than he’d ever reportedly been before.

I guess we dodged a bullet.