My Blog

Jet City Journal

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I’ve been scarce around here the last few days because I am up in Seattle for some booksignings. I kicked off the trip speaking to the students at Jackson High School in Mill Creek, where I was bombarded with questions about writing books and TV shows (special thanks to school librarian Barbara Stoltzenberg and her terrific staff. I’ve never seen a nicer high school library). I have to admit there were a few quaestions that caught me by surprise, like "What kind of car do you drive?" and "does your wife look like Jessica Alba." It was a lot of fun, but after talking to hundreds of students over an entire school day, I had almost no voice left. (Did I mention it’s freezing up here? They are experiencing this thing called Winter. I’ve encountered winter a couple of times in my life before. I am so glad we don’t have it in L.A.)

Afterwards, my Uncle Stan Barer took my brother Tod and I to the Sonics game, where we had floor seats so close to the action we got to see the beads of sweat on every player.  It was also fun watching the  millionaires fight over the inadequate supply of free chocolate chip cookies in the VIP room at half-time. I’ll post some pictures from my Jack Nicholson-esque perch when I return to L.A.

This morning it’s off to the Seattle Mystery Bookstore and Barnes & Noble University Village to sign books, meet some friendly readers, and do the humanitarian work that allows me to write this trip off my taxes. The Seattle newspaper listings about the signings have amused me and irritated Tod — one read something like "Lee Goldberg will be signing his books MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE and DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE with his brother" and didn’t even mention his name. I had nothing to do with it. Honest.

Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

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The USA Network has gone all-out celebrating the Jan. 3 release of my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE. Today they’ve launched a terrific website devoted to the books, which includes a really cool presentation of an excerpt from the book, a dozen streaming video interviews with yours truly, and a bio with all the sordid details of my life including my years as sous chef at McDonalds and my professional reawakening as tantric sex instructor.  I wish all my books got this kind of promotion.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

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The vast majority of execs I’ve worked with in TV and publishing during my career have been terrific people who I count as friends. But I’ve had several situations in recent years where I’ve caught a few executives lying about me or the work that I’ve done. When I’ve confronted them with their dishonesty, they freely admitted it without shame or apology.

In one case, I accidentally found out about some damaging untruths about me from a friend and quickly contradicted the story, figuring there had been some unfortunate, but innocent, mis-understanding somewhere along the line. It never occurred to me that the exec I was working with had intentionally lied about me…until I heard from him.

"Why did you tell X the truth?" he demanded.

"Because someone gave X the impression that I’d fucked up." 

"That was me," he yelled.

I was astonished.

"But I didn’t fuck up," I said. "I’ve never done anything like that."

"I know."

"Then why did you tell X that I did?"

"Because I was the one who fucked up," he said. "Now you’ve made me look like a liar!"

"You are!" I yelled back.

"They don’t have to know that," he said.

"You lied about me to hide your own fuck-up. You made yourself look good and me look bad."

"So? You should have gone along with it," he said. "You’ve deeply hurt my feelings."

No matter how much I tried to explain that it was his fault, and that the injured party was me, he just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) understand. Nor did he seem to care about the damage he’d caused to our business relationship.

In another case, an executive told me how happy he was with my work writing/producing a TV series, how much he loved being in business with me, and how he hoped we’d enjoy a long professional relationship together. Which would be nice, except that I knew for a fact that earlier that same day he’d told another producer how much he hated me and offered him my job for the following season. What the exec didn’t know was that the producer was an old friend of mine and immediately called me.

When I confronted the exec with this, he simply said "So what? That’s business. Grow up."

Another exec we worked with took credit with the network, right in front of us (and in conference calls), for creating and developing stories and scripts he not only didn’t come up with or work on, but that he didn’t even see until roughly the same moment the network did.

We never confronted him about this, nor revealed it to the network of course, because it would have made him and the show (and us) look bad. But the exec had no problem whatsoever lying to our faces or, apparently,  any fear that we’d contradict him. I guess he was right on that score. I didn’t know how he could do it without feeling deeply embarrassed and ashamed every time he saw us. That said, we are team players and we thought that establishing that was more important to us and our careers than speaking up to him or anyone else. In the end, this came back to haunt us, but if we had it to do over again, even knowing what I know now, we’d make the same choice.

Lying isn’t new…but I think the complete lack of shame some execs are showing when they get caught in the act is a new wrinkle. I mean, they aren’t even bothering to make excuses or dodge blame or cover up…

Hmm. Come to think of it, I may have discovered a new kind of honesty: being honest about your dishonesty. Pretty soon, if we aren’t vigilant, that may become the new definition of integrity in Hollywood…

Wank Fic

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DuesouthThe new, living definition of  "pathetic":  someone who searches the Internet for masturbation fanfic:

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to search for wanking fic? I mean, are
there any useful search terms to use? Googling "masturbation" and
"fanfic" turns up things from Lee Goldberg and his ilk, with the yadda yadda
about how it’s all some poor, unimaginative substitute for … no, I’m not going
to go there.  At any rate, OMG, rec me some fanfic with masturbation in
it. Any fandom. It just needs to be hot and to involve someone touching themself
in sexy ways.

After "MarytheFan" posted her fervent plea on LiveJournal, someone enthusiastically recommended DUE SOUTH masturbation fanfic.

I haven’t read them in a while, but I recall there being a few damn hot ones in
there.

I wonder if they include the dog.

(Thanks to Tig for the link)

Sex Sex Sex

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Sex_1Novelist Tess Gerritsen talks about the difficulties of writing sex. She offers a lot of great advice, but the bottom line is:

Ask yourself, as a writer, what your love scene is supposed to accomplish. If
it’s just to show that your hero is a normal guy having sex, that’s about as
interesting as watching him eat bologna sandwiches. No, the best sex scenes are
those that accomplish something far more profound. They offer us a deeper
understanding of character, or show us emotional awakening or healing.

I agree with her. She was brave enough to share an example from one of her books to prove her point, so I will, too. This one comes from MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE:

I guess
something I learned from “Mannix” was true. Being a private eye really is an
aphrodisiac to women. Carol had never attacked me like that before.

I’m afraid the surprise and excitement were too much, because I came in about three minutes. But I
don’t think Carol minded; it calmed me down and allowed me to concentrate real
hard on getting her off. And believe me, it took my complete attention.
Pleasing a woman, especially Carol, isn’t easy and with me, at least, there’s a
lot of potential for embarrassment and humiliation.

She rewarded me for all
my hard work with a nice, squealing, writhing orgasm that nearly broke my nose
on her pubic bone, but I didn’t mind. I even jumped in, literally, to enjoy the
last few squeals of it with her.

It was so dark, and things happened so fast, she never saw my cuts and bruises, so she mistook my
occasional groans of pain for pleasure.

Carol fell right to sleep afterwards.

Between the sex, the pain, and the things on my mind, I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have
liked. But I get laid so rarely, I’m willing to sacrifice just about anything
for it, especially sleep, when I usually dream about having sex anyway.

While the scene is explicit, more by implication than actual description,  it’s not about the choreography or body parts. It’s about attitude and character — or, at least, I hope it is. To me, that’s how you get around the pitfalls of writing the sex scene, unless the point of the scene is to arouse the reader.

By the way, I’ve written my share of awful sex scenes. I honed my "craft" in college. My girlfriend was an editorial assistant at Playgirl and she got me a gig writing sexually-explicit  "Letters to the Editor" for the grand sum of $25-a-letter (Gasp! You didn’t know they were fake? You probably think Penthouse letters are real, too).  I actually had a lot of fun writing them (often in class, which got me some strange looks from the people around me)  and it helped me learn to write in different voices for different characters. Plus the letters got my girlfriend all excited, but that’s another story…

Blog Suicide?

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A few days ago, author Sandra Scoppettone  blogged about her editor, Joe Blades, leaving Ballantine and her anxieties about it.  This prompted an anonymous commenter to warn her that her very candid blog posts could be damaging to her career. Sandra angrily fired back. Soon, the ugly little argument spilled over to  other   blogs. Now Galleycat has picked up on the catfight, so-to-speak, and it will mushroom from there…

Unfortunately, it illustrates that even someone who’s been in the
business as long as Scoppettone has (and whose influence on two
different genres continues to be felt) can sometimes let things go all
too haywire. And it further illustrates the power of blogging in the
publishing world — because you never know who’ll be out there reading,
passing judgment, and jumping to conclusions.

The blog skirmish brings up an interesting issue — how honest should you be on your blog? I have to admit I cringed a bit at some of Sandra’s posts, and at my friend Paul Guyot’s surprising candor about the ups-and-downs of his pilot experience, and at my cousin regularly trashing her employer. Sure, it makes good reading and can be cathartic for the author  — but is it self-destructive? I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to find out for myself.

I’ve been very careful here not to talk about the shows I am working on (except to hype them when they air), or the executives and producers I am working with (or hope to work with), or authors/writers I work and socialize with (unless it is to hype their latest work).  I  rarely name individual producers, writers, editors or executives. I talk in general terms, for the most part, or about personal experiences that are safely in the past. 

I’m clearly not shy about expressing my opinion — but I’m careful about it. I don’t hesitate to criticize fanfiction, self-publishing scams, the RWA, or people searching the Internet for Lindsay Lohan’s nipples  — those are safe. But, for example,  you won’t see me trashing a producer, a studio, a network, or a major publishing company.

I think some bloggers forget that they aren’t writing a private diary — it’s like a column in a newspaper. You have no idea who is reading it or how your words are being passed around. Blogging is fun, but my career is far more important.

Post-Partum Depression

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I just completed my 7th DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, "The Double Life," which will be published in Sept. 2006, and delivered it to my agent. While it’s a great feeling to finish a book, it also leaves this big void. The book has been such a big part of my days, and my thoughts, for the last few months that it’s strange not to have it there any more. But I’m not taking much time to  rest. I delivered this DM early — 30 days ahead of my deadline — so that means I’ll have a little more time to plot and write the 3rd MONK novel, "Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu," and can enjoy the holidays without having to worry about scrambling to finish a book.