My Blog

Otto Hates Cozies

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Ron Hogan posts a scathing "anti-cozy" quote from Otto Penzler that didn’t make the final cut in Sarah Weinman’s Publisher’s Weekly article on the "tension" between mysteries and thrillers:

"I think noir writers are writing the very best books they know how to write. They may fail; there are terrible noir
writers out there. But the cozy chick lit stories are cynical, in the
sense that an editor says, this is the guideline, this is what I want
you to write… Look at how many really good-selling female traditional
cozy writers there are, with cats solving crimes and people taking an
afternoon off during a murder investigation to shop at Prada. I don’t
think those are writers who are stretching. I don’t think they’re
trying to write anything of enduring quality. I think they’re writing
to sell books, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you don’t have
to take it seriously as literature, and I don’t."

Also cut were quotes from yours truly about tie-ins.

A Brouhaha In Any Language

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Novelist John Connolly disagrees with the Crime Writers Association’s decision to disqualify "translated" crime novels from competing for the Silver Dagger, the UK equivalent of the MWA’s Edgar:

To those of us with a slightly cynical bent, it seemed that the main
reason why this decision was made was because translated novels have
been doing rather well in the Daggers in recent years, and ruffling
some feathers in the process. After all, it’s hard enough to win a
Dagger without Johnny Foreigner coming along and spoiling the party.
Lots of nice British and American authors, who speak and write proper
English, would rather like a dagger for themselves, not to mention the
whopping £20,000 cheque that will find its way into the pocket of the
victor in 2006.

He also takes a swipe at fellow crime writer Val McDermid’s stance in support of excluding translations:

Val McDermid – usually a fairly sensible type – offered her support for
exclusion by pointing out that if Peter Hoeg’s rather wonderful Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow had been read in its American version rather than its English version, then it might not have seemed so wonderful after all.

Now there really are only three appropriate responses to this. The
first is “Huh?” The second is to enquire just where exactly she
acquired her degree in comparative literature. The third, meanwhile, is
to wonder exactly how much Danish she speaks and reads to enable her to
make this kind of judgement. Curiously, McDermid was also one of those
who provided approving quotes for Silence of the Grave.
She described it as “a fascinating window on an unfamiliar world”,
albeit the type of window that she and her colleagues were apparently
happy to see closed in order to facilitate the future marginalisation
of foreign authors.

I think it’s incredibly wrong-headed of the CWA to exclude translated works from award consideration. The Mystery Writers of America and even the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes regularly honor works of crime fiction from other countries that are published in English in the U.S.  The CWA’s literary xenophobia  doesn’t reflect well on their organization or the Silver Daggers.

Thrilling THRILLER Thrillsite

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Global_left_rail_bookcover
The International Thriller Writers have launched a slick web page touting their acclaimed THRILLER short story anthology, which features stories by the biggest names in thriller fiction.  On the Thriller Thrillsite, you can listen to one free story each week…from writers like Alex Kava, Denise Hamilton, Lee Child, Heather Graham, Gregg Hurwitz, Gayle Lynds, Raelynn Hillhouse, David Morrell, Brad Thor, and James Rollins. You can even enter to win a copy of the book signed by all the contributors. What are you waiting for?

TV Deja Vu…Yet Again

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This week on TV…

On the season finale of GREY’S ANATOMY, one of the regualar doctors is shot. On the season finale of ER, one of the regular doctors is shot. (I’ve lost track of
all the doctors and nurses who have become patients in their own
hospital over the years on ER, but on GREY’S ANATOMY, I believe there
are now only three doctors who haven’t become patients…and they are
only in their second season)

On LAW AND ORDER, a cop wakes up and discovers a dead body in his apartment…and has no memory of what happened. On CROSSING JORDAN, a coroner wakes up and discovers a dead body in her home…and has no memory of what happened.

It’s bad enough that every show on TV these days seems to be called LAW AND ORDER or CSI…but now they all seem to be doing the same stories.  It hasn’t been this bad since the season when every show had to do their take on Chandra Levy…

 

 

The West Wing Finale…

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….is one of the reasons why God invented the "fast forward" button. What a snooze. It’s sad to see a once-great series end so badly (bad move airing the pilot first, it only illustrated how far the show has fallen).  But TV Critic Alan Sepinwall got all choked up and so did Bob Sassone over at TV Squad, who went one step further describing the episode’s obvious and maudlin final scene:

Could you have wished for a more orgasmically satisfying ending? Beautiful.

Dueling Poseidons

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Screenwriter Bryce Zabel, who wrote the THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE mini-series, compares and contrasts all three film versions of Paul Gallico’s novel. Among his observations:

All I can say about that is that it’s a good thing that the original
film, my mini-series take and the current feature only used it as a
springboard. It’s not that great and some things in it are just nuts.
Like one of the characters gets raped and feels bad, after the ship
capsizes, for the man who raped her. I’m not sure how that was
acceptable in 1969, but it sure is out of the mainstream in 2006.

UPDATE 5-15-06:  The feature POSEIDON sunk at the boxoffice…and Bryce has some thoughts on that, too.

The Invaders Have Been Defeated

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It looks as though all three of the "aliens invading" series launched this season have died. CBS cancelled THRESHOLD at midseason, ABC has reportedly cancelled INVASION, and the buzz is that NBC is scrapping SURFACE.

If ABC cancels COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF (which is likely), then none of their new dramas from last fall will have survived. But not all the news is bad for ABC’s 2005-2006 dramas… the network has reportedly renewed WHAT ABOUT BRIAN, the mid-season show from JJ Abrams. 

ABC’s new dramas for next fall include TRAVELER (about college students framed for a terrorist plot),  BROTHERS AND SISTERS (a new Calista Flockhart show), and MEN IN TREES (about a lady shrink who moves to Alaska).

And 7th HEAVEN may not be in TV heaven just yet…the rumor is that the entire cast is returning for 13 more episodes on the CW, which pay 20th Century Fox a $20 million penalty for failing to honor the WB’s  full season pick-up of REBA, a sitcom that skews too old and rural for the new network.

Deadwood Dead?

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Variety reports that HBO has let their contractual options lapse on the cast of DEADWOOD, which begins airing its third season in a few weeks. This decision frees the cast to pursue jobs elsewhere,  which strongly suggests that HBO has lost interest in a fourth season of the show before the third season has even aired.

HBO insisted that conversations about future
cycles of "Deadwood" are ongoing, and Milch told the Boston Globe in
the April 30 issue that he had always planned to exit the series after
the fourth season; he has been reported as saying that he’d envisioned
each season as a year, and the actual Deadwood camp was destroyed at
the end of four.

"If a series is successful, the commercial
interest is in keeping it on, even after the creative interest is in
ending it," Milch told the Globe. "With ‘Deadwood,’ my intention is to
end at the end of the fourth season. I can’t speak for anyone else, but
that’s where I’m getting off the bus."

Meanwhile, Milch is busy developing his HBO "surf noir" series with author Kem Nunn. I’ll be sad to see DEADWOOD go…it’s one of my favorite shows.