My Blog

The Case for Hard Case Crime

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Bookgasm has a Q&A with Hard Case Crime editor/author Charles Ardai, who discusses the evolution of the imprint and the impact that publishing Stephen King’s COLORADO KID has had on their visibility inside, and outside, the industry.

this book has been very important to us. While we got plenty of media
coverage before publishing THE COLORADO KID, we got a lot more
afterwards. And with a print run in excess of one million copies, the
book was simply seen by a lot more people than our books normally are.
Far more people know about Hard Case Crime today than would have if
Steve had never written that book for us. How many of them will become
regular readers of our other books? That’s hard to say. But I imagine
some will, and we’re very grateful for that.

Coming Home

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I spent my last day in NY sitting around the table with the writing staff of MONK, going over each scene in the story, looking for the humor and the heart, the little moments that will add texture to the script. I left with very detailed notes and will start writing the script on Monday.

On the flight back to LA, I sat next to David Strathairn, the star of GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.  He was a very nice guy. He was on his way out for the SAG Awards this weekend. We talked a bit about movies and TV, but mostly we chatted about other things…the sort of stuff you might talk about with any passenger you meet on a flight. I was really struck by what a pleasant, polite, regular guy he was.

Flying Without a Pilot

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I didn’t write a pilot this season, but this post from Ken Levine reminds me of what I’m missing… notes, notes and still more notes.

This conference call features eleven people – one more David and three Katies. These are the network notes but the lower tier (development department) notes. Once these are done to all eleven peoples’ satisfaction it goes up the ladder, usually to the middle tier VP’s. Writing a pilot is like playing Super Mario Brothers.

I Love L.A.

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I just got back home to LA an hour ago… I’m too tired to post anything of substance. But I’ve scanned through the 87 emails waiting for me and a couple look blog-worthy. I also had an interesting experience on the flight to share.  More tomorrow. Good night, all.

Mr. Monk and the L.A. Writer

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This is my last night in NY, where I am working with the staff of MONK on an episode that Bill Rabkin and I will write for the upcoming season.

As I’ve said before, the episode is very loosely based on my novel MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE.  We pretty much have the beats of the story/mystery nailed. So today, as a group, we fleshed out the emotional through-line, fine-tuned some of the clues, and choreographed the details of the comic "set pieces."  Tomorrow morning we’ll polish up the details a bit more and then I’ll hop on a plane back to LA. On the flight, I’ll probably work on MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU, my third MONK novel. 

After this trip, I have an even clearer sense of the subtle ways my "literary" Monk differs from the "TV" Monk.  Many of those differences have to do with the nature of the two mediums — how stories are told in books vs. television.  But the biggest differences was my decision to tell the stories from Natalie’s POV.  The Monk we’re seeing in the books is Natalie’s Monk, and is therefore shaped by her character and her view of the world. The Monk we see on TV isn’t from any one character’s perspective…it’s from our individual perspectives as viewers.

Speaking of the MONK novel, I had breakfast today with my editor and publisher, who tell me the book is doing very well. I have a feeling they will be greenlighting more MONK novels very soon… I’ll certainly know, one way or another, before MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII comes out in June.

Run Screaming from the POD People

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Novelist Joe Konrath has an excellent post today explaining the financial reasons why paying to have your book "published" by POD vanity press is a really, really bad idea.

Let’s do the math. You’ve got to give the bookstore a 40% discount.
So you’ll sell them the books for $11.40 each. That leaves you with a
$5.70 profit per book. Not bad. But out of that comes the Happy Press
Package fee, the printing cost, shipping the book to bookstores, and
the effort to just get the bookstores to carry you (an effort that
traditionally published authors don’t have to make.)

Also figure in a 50% return rate.

If
you get 1000 books into stores, and sell 500, you’ll make $2850.
Subtract the $5700 (the cost of printing 1000 books at the 70%
discount) and subtract the package cost ($5000 for all the set up fees.)

You’ve only lost $4900, selling 500 books.

If you sell 2000 (which means you’ll have to ship 4000) your total cost would be:

$5000 set-up package
$22800 book printing costs
minus $11400 profit

Which means you’re losing $16400.

What a deal!

Flying off the Shelves at B&N

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I’ve just learned that MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE is #40 on the Barnes & Noble mass market bestseller list this
week and #5 on the B&N mass market mystery bestseller list.

Meanwhile, our episode for MONK is developing nicely. We’re having such a good time working on the story with Andy Breckman and his terrific writing staff.  The story has only passing resemblance now to MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE. The episode won’t even have the same title as the book and I’m fine with that. I think it’s worked out for the best — had we done a straight-forward adaptation, anyone who read the book after seeing the episode would have thought it was a novelization. Now the book can continue to stand entirely on its own and so can the episode.

Mr. Monk and the Pierce Brosnan Impersonator

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I spent the day out in Summit, NJ working with the MONK writing staff on our next script for the show.  It is so much fun cracking a story with them — you spend the whole day laughing (a stark contrast to, say, plotting a story on MISSING).  These guys have way, way too much fun. It’s a shame all shows can’t be like this.

The script began as an adaptation of my novel MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE but, for a number of reasons, is evolving into something very different and, I think, very funny. By the end of the week, my writing partner Bill Rabkin and I should be heading back to L.A. with an approved outline and the go-ahead to script.

What’s really weird for me is working on the MONK script by day, then returning to my hotel room to work on the MONK book by night.  I’m telling stories about the same character, but in two very different mediums.

I’m squeezing in a little socializing while I’m here — dinner with my literary agent on Wednesday, breakfast with my publishers on Thursday, and dinner on Thursday with my old friend Terry Winter, an exec producer on THE SOPRANOS. He’s come a long, long way since we worked together on THE COSBY MYSTERIES and THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLIPPER.