My Blog

“Would You Be Interested In Writing a Book On My Life?”

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I got this email today. It’s so, um, incredible that the only way to truly appreciate it is to read the whole thing. I present it here unedited. All I’ve done is remove the sender’s name (why, oh why, do they write to me?)

Dear Sir,

I can only imagine once you have read the first coupple of lines
of this letter you will probably think that I am mad ? but who knows and no one
ever said there was ever any harm in trying?

I was wondering if you would be able to assist or if you would be
interested in writing a book on my life, or at least advice me on how to write a
book, I will give you a brief outline.
 
I was born in the UK my Dad died when I was little and I had a  real struggle growing
up. I joined the Royal air Force and had a good life in the military,
I was in there for 15 years until I met my girlfriend,I came to America and gave up a military career and  pension and
benefits because I got my girlfriend pregnant, I stood by her and did what was
right, I married her she is an officer in the United States Air force.
I was left with the child our son Rhys at 4 months of age while
she went away on a TDY and partied getting drunk and blowing away $7000 of my
money that I gave to her to pay off a car loan to benefit us as a newly wed
couple.

Read more

Zoe Sharp Conquers America

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AuthorMy friend Zoe Sharp and her "Charlie Fox" books are already a success in the UK and now she’s about to hit our shores with the  fourth novel in the series. Judging by the starred, rave review in Publisher’s Weekly, she could be poised for even greater success here:

Sharp’s aim is dead on in her stunning U.S. debut, the fourth
book to star ultra-cool biker chick Charlie Fox. The no-nonsense, 26-year-old
Charlie, a former British Army soldier (and survivor of a gruesome gang rape)
has joined the protection agency of her ex-lover, Sean Meyer. On her first
assignment, Charlie finds herself on a too thrilling roller-coaster ride in
Florida, guarding geeky 15-year-old Trey Pelzner, son of Keith, a computer whiz
working for a small software company specializing in accounting and data
manipulation. After an attempt is made on Trey’s life, Charlie calls for backup
that turns out to be anything but and soon discovers that Keith–the developer
of a faulty stock indicator program–has vanished, as has Sean. Action-packed,
tightly plotted and with an irresistible first-person narration, this crisp,
original thriller should win Sharp (Hard Knocks , etc.) plenty of American fans.
Agent, Anubis Literary Agency (U.K.) . (Sept.)

I’ll be signing with Zoe on Sept. 14 at noon at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, CA and at 7 p.m. at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks. I suggest you order one of her signed books in advance because the first editions are likely to sell out fast.

DM Fans Are The Best

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My Mom is going through chemotherapy for a third time and wrote about the experience on her blog. She was delighted and touched to get this email this morning from a DIAGNOSIS MURDER fan. So was I.

Dear Mrs. Curran,

You don’t know me, but I  know you through your son Lee.  I am a big Diagnosis Murder fan and a devoted reader of Lee’s books. Sometimes I click on your blog and read how you are. Today I read that you are facing a chemotherapy again.  I am sending  you my best wishes and hope that the new therapy doesn’t make you sick! Keep strong!

Sincerely Yours,
Ute

Ute was also one of the many Diagnosis Murder fans who inundated me with get-well cards, letters, emails and stuffed animals with bandaged arms when I had my bad accident a year ago.  I dedicated my DM:  THE WAKING NIGHTMARE to them but, in truth, all the DM books I write ar for them.  They’re the best!

The Struggling Writer

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Author Tess Gerritsen is saddened because her book only reached #17 on the NY Times Bestseller List.

I’m sorry to report that I didn’t drink champagne on Wednesday
night. Alas, the first partial week’s paperback sales of BODY DOUBLE
only got it to #17 on the NYT list. Sigh. Then I looked at the other
authors whose books debuted the same week: Nora Roberts. Dean Koontz.
Clive Cussler. Catherine Coulter. Janet Evanovich. And I realized —
whoa, there’s some pretty tough competition there! I’m going to hang on
tight this coming week and see what happens next Wednesday. And hope
that there are enough readers out there who care enough about Jane and
Maura to want to find out what happens next in their lives.

Publishing lesson: Success is never a sure thing in this business.
Ever. This is what keeps me humble and always feeling like a struggling
writer.

Gee, life is tough.  I guess when you reach a certain level of success, you lose all perspective. Having a book reach #17 on the NY Times bestseller list may put Tess  in the doldrums…but for the vast  majority of published authors, cracking the list at all would be cause for celebration. Surely, she knows that, right?

On the other hand, here’s a peek at the real world that most authors have to live in. Author Beth Ciotta has had three mass market paperbacks published but isn’t making a living at it.

Last week, I visited my family in Indiana. When I mentioned this box
office gig and the one I’m waiting to hear about, my mom said, "What do
you mean you had to get a job? Don’t you make money from your books?"

Last
night my husband and I met up with a group of musician
friends. Everyone asked if I was still gigging a lot, to which I had to
answer ‘no’ and then I mentioned the ‘jobs’. Again I got a strange look
coupled with comments like, "But I thought you had another book coming
out."  The thought behind it… can’t you live off of that?

Well…
no. Not yet. Just now I need to supplement my writing income to make
ends meet. It’s a reality many writers face. Another reality is
juggling the alternate job, writing, and promoting multiple
books–building a ‘name’. It ain’t easy.  Every now and then I allow
myself to dream and think, someday I’ll be writing full time and all
this angst will be history.

   

I bet if Beth reached #17  on the NY Times Bestseller list, she’d not only be drinking champagne, she’d be bathing herself in it.

Writing You Don’t Need

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Screenwriter John Rogers offers some excellent screenwriting advice on his blog today.

Your scene descriptions and actions — don’t waste time on specifics. Somebody
else is going to visualize the set, someone else is going to design the set,
someone else is going shoot on that set. Don’t write for the storyboard, write
what the TONE of the set is, conveying how it informs the actions, creates the
context for the characters within. Is this limiting? No, it’s freeing. It’s
paradoxically MORE power. You’re creating the world, mood, story — let other
people sweat the window size and wallpaper pattern.

Character intros:
gahhhh. I never, ever want to read a line of character backstory again. The
audience will know this character by what he says and what he does. (in that
sense, in-script backstory is actually cheating) The actor will create whatever
mindspace/backstory for the character they need to work the person up on screen.
Just get the best, snappiest description of who this person is — not how they
dress or how they talk or how their goddam hair’s cut, but who that character
is in the
script-world– and move the fuck on. Again, not saying we’re just typists. Not
saying it has to be bland. The challenge is to create the most telling
impression in the fewest words.

Don’t sit their like so many screenwriters
and try to jam whatever central casting idea of a character you have into the
reader’s head — create the notion necessary for the reader to complete the
image of the script in his head, to personalize it, and move on with the
read.

Great stuff. And there’s more, much more. Check it out.

Latest from Hard Case Crime

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File000I love Hard Case  Crime. They harken back to the glory days of Gold Medal Paperbacks… not only are their books are great but so are their covers.  Their upcoming titles include WITNESS TO MYSELF by Seymour Shubin, 
BUST by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, and THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins. They’ve also got reprints of Ed McBain ‘s  THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, Richard Stark’s  LEMONS NEVER LIE and Madison
Smartt Bell’s  STRAIGHT CUT in the pipeline (and, oh yes, an original noir novel by some writer named Stephen King).  I’ve been lobbying Charles to consider reprinting one of Richard Prather’s "Shell Scott" Gold Medal novels and some of Harry Whittington’s more obscure stuff. We’ll see what happens…

Score one for Brown

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Lewis Perdue reports that he  has lost the first round in his lawsuit against Dan Brown.

Judge George Daniels sided with the world’s largest publishing conglomerate and
issued a decision that would keep the Da Vinci Cover-Up complete.

I’ve
already talked with my lawyers.

We’re appealing because there is ample
evidence and law to indicate that Dan Brown copied my work and that a jury trial
is the ONLY procedure that will bring any measure of justice.

“We Don’t Know The Damage Yet”

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There were lots of funny and interesting observations about our industry to be found today nestled in the LA Times reviews of new movies and TV shows.  Paul Brownfield, in his review of the new Showtime series WEEDS, laments:

What has writer Alan Ball done to his industry? He’s like President Bush — we just don’t know the damage yet…

…the show feels more like the spawn of Ball’s "American Beauty" and his soon-to-conclude HBO series "Six Feet Under," where the answer to the question "How much more implied and expressed pain and suffering can we be witness to?" is always the same:  "More."

Kenneth Turan, in his review of the movie version of THE  DUKES OF HAZZARD, observes that "subversive" has taken on new meaning in Hollywood:

"The Dukes of Hazzard" is a film that is not there. It can’t really be reviewed
because it doesn’t really exist. It is not empty calories, which implies
pleasure, but simply empty. It’s a cosmic void where a movie ought to be…

…The only person who thinks "The Dukes of Hazzard" is a substantial piece of work
might be its producer, who told the Los Angeles Times, apparently with a
straight face, that the film is "a tougher, more subversive movie than one might
expect." If you buy that, you probably think Krispy Kreme doughnuts are one
tough, subversive food group.

Rober Lloyd, in his review of the movie SLINGS AND ARROWS, had this observation about Canada, where so many movies and TV shows are filmed:

Canada is all over American television, standing in for New York and Chicago,
for foggy San Francisco and rocky Colorado, but it is only in Canada that Canada
gets to play itself…

When Canada stands for Canada… the country is
revealed not as a fake America but an authentic Canada.

Whatever that is. Lloyd doesn’t say. And although I’ve spent lots of time up there, I’m not sure I could, either.

“Inside” Development Hell

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Writer/Producer Tim Minear talks to zap2it.com about  how his 21 JUMP STREET-esque pilot about an FBI agent going undercover in high school morphed into the doomed Fox series THE INSIDE.

It
began as a "21 Jump Street"-style tale of an undercover FBI agent (Rachel
Nichols) in high school. When that didn’t work out, Minear and pal Howard Gordon
("24"), who’d previously teamed on the short-lived 1999 ABC science-fiction
series "Strange World," reworked the idea, turning Nichols’ character into a
former childhood kidnap victim who parlays her unique insight into investigating
serial murder and other heinous crimes.

"I’ve got two unaired pilots," Minear says. "One of them is the original ’21
Jump Street’ version. The second one is the first attempt at shooting my script,
which we then went back and reshot."

If Minear never wanted to work in TV again, he could probably write a terrific non-fiction book about his experience.