My Blog

SF Chronicle Loves Wasserman

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The San Francisco Chronicle gave Steve Wasserman, the out-going editor of the LA Times Book Review, a nice going-away present this morning: a front-page, Datebook section story ("Editor Who Put West Coast on Literary Map Hangs up his Spurs") along with a commentary by Chronicle Book Critic David Kipen.
Obviously, they are a lot more fond of Wasserman in SF than we are down here in LA.  The folks at LAObserved have an interesting theory:

It was a no-brainer that Kipen would comment on the end of the Wasserman era
(and a surprise that I’m mentioned), but why the newsfeature? I don’t know, but
perhaps Chronicle top editor Narda Zacchino played a role. She started the
Festival of Books while a senior Times editor, and may even have hired Wasserman
at the review, I don’t remember for certain. Wasserman’s first job at the Times
was as the assistant to her husband, Robert Scheer (then a staff writer, now a
non-staff columnist.)

The Chronicle credits Wasserman with “turning the Sunday section into must reading for book lovers north and south, east and west.” They must have received a different edition up there than we did down here. Though Mike Davis, author of the fabulous CITY OF QUARTZ (among others), agrees with them:

"Wasserman may not be my cup of tea, but, objectively, he turned a book
section that most people threw out into undoubtedly the best book review section of any paper in the country. I’m often infuriated by specific reviews, but it is the most exciting book review section in the country.

They only pay passing attention to his detractors, with quotes from my brother Tod and former LATBR editor Digby Diehl.

"Steve Wasserman tried to impress his literary taste on the city of Los Angeles," author and blogger Tod Goldberg said. "But I don’t think it meshed with what people in L.A. were actually reading. L.A. is a company town and that company is Hollywood. I don’t think the review needs to be focused only on Jackie Collins and popular literature, but it needs to find a voice that is both popular and challenging."

The L.A. Times Book Review was launched as a stand-alone section in 1975 under editor Digby Diehl, whose mentor was the paper’s longtime book critic, Robert Kirsch. Though he applauds the vigor of the book festival, Diehl is a critic of some aspects of the Review.

"I’m sure there are many authors who are very grateful to Steve for the kind of books he reviewed, for his emphasis on very serious subjects and his wonderful treatment of a lot of books that wouldn’t get much attention outside of academic reviews," Diehl says. "I just don’t think that’s a good use of space in a Sunday newspaper."

Diehl’s tenure coincided with the birth of chain bookstores, which boosted ad sales for the book review. ("I made well over a million dollars a year for the L.A. Times," he notes.) Today, newspaper advertising from publishers and bookstores has all but disappeared.

The plummeting ad dollars the LATBR generated should speak volumes about how well read the section really is. They may be reading it north and south, east and west, but they aren’t reading it in L.A.

To be fair, though, Wasserman deserves our city’s undying gratitude and respect for creating the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which has truly changed the face of the Southern California Lit Scene. His Book Review may not have been memorable, but the Book Festival is his real legacy…and I, for one, hope it endures for a very long time.

The Night Stalker

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ABC has announced their fall schedule and one of the shows they picked up is Frank Spotnitz’s new version of THE NIGHT STALKER.  The original starred Darren McGavin as a down-on-his-luck wire service  reporter who inevitably stumbled on stories involving the supernatural. It was a very funny series with its share of scares. Think ROCKFORD FILES with ghosts.  But Spotnitz is seemingly going in a much, much darker direction…at least according to this report from TVTracker.

Network: ABC
Genre: Drama
Title: NIGHT STALKER
Studio: Touchstone
Television
Commitment: Series Pick Up (13 Episodes)
Auspices: Frank
Spotnitz (EP, W-Pilot), Daniel Sackheim (D-Pilot, EP N/W)
Cast: Eric
Jungmann, Cotter Smith, Stuart Townsend, Gabrielle Union
Logline: There are things in the dark, things adults deny but children are right to fear… When a pregnant woman is snatched from her home, the shocked citizens of L.A. believe it’s an act of domestic violence. But crime reporter Carl Kolchak
suspects that the truth is far more complicated. That’s because 18 months ago, Kolchak’s wife was killed in a bizarre fashion and he has been the FBI’s #1 suspect ever since. Kolchak’s determination to find out the truth behind his wife’s mysterious murder has led him to investigate other crimes that seem to have some kind of supernatural component. But he’s trying to piece together a puzzle that keeps changing its shape. Who or what is committing these crimes? How are they all related? And why do some victims end up with a strange red mark on their hands in the shape of a snake? With sidekick Perri Reed, a sexy if skeptical fellow reporter in tow, Kolchak will go to any lengths to answer these questions. But when he does discover the truth – will anyone believe him?

This, by the way, is one of two new series on ABC (the other is John Wells THE EVIDENCE) involving heroes haunted by the unsolved murders of their wives.  This is a popular theme on series television these days  (MONK is another example that comes to mind).

Location Scouting

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It’s getting "down to the wire" on the deadline for my first MONK novel, MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIRE HOUSE, which is due June 1. I’m not going to have a problem delivering the book on time, though I hope I never have to write a book in eight weeks again. (I’ve got 3 1/2 months to write my second MONK novel)

I’m up in San Francisco today, where MONK  is set, though it has been shot in Toronto and, for the last season or two, in Santa Clarita, California.  I figured it was time I got to know the city a little
better. Even though I am from the Bay Area (born in Oakland, raised in Walnut Creek), I am not as familiar with SF as I’d
like to be…or need to be… if I am going to create any sense of place in these
MONK books. 

I haven’t had to make a conscious effort to get to know a city for a book since THE WALK, my novel about a guy who walks across L.A. after the Big One hits.  The  DIAGNOSIS MURDER books take place, for the most part, in L.A. Since I live in L.A. , describing the city and neighborhoods comes easily, since I know the city well. Even so, I’ve also got a bunch of L.A. architecture and history books and travel guides to use for research when necesary…and occasionally have to drive some where and take some pictures to add more texture to the writing.

Although I’ve been back to SF maybe thirty times in the last, say, ten years, the problem is I  always go to the same parts of the city every time  (mostly the tourist spots at that). I’m making a big effort over the next two days to visit neighborhoods I haven’t been to in years or am unfamiliar with…and to take lots of pictures.  In doing so, I’m discovering a whole new San Francisco. I’m also picking up lots of books on SF while I’m here for research and to refresh my memory.

It’s fun, though I’m painfully aware that hours spent on the streets  are hours not spent at the laptop writing…

Website as Pitching Tool

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A number of people have alerted me to this news: a guy created a website to pitch his movie… and it worked. LAObserved has the story.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer set up a
website called The Dionaea House
last year and posted a series of correspondence between characters in his horror
screenplay. After all, if the Internet is there, why not exploit it to create
some buzz? The site got a ton of hits. Tomorrow’s Hollywood
Reporter says the website helped "build the mythology" of the project — and
Warner Bros. Pictures picked it up for David Heyman to produce at Heyday Films.

Round Table Pitching

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Today, I received this email:

Currently, I am writing a mystery novel – my first – and pitched to an executive editor from a film company at a conference late in April. He asked me to formalize the pitch and submit. Being new to the concept, I am at sea.

The idea I pitched had to do with my specific mystery, but for a tv series or film, shouldn’t the pitch be less specific? I have written four sentences that sum up the idea for a series/movie.

I also have written a cover letter to re-introduce myself to the editor. I have the submission packet from the company with standard submission forms to complete, but is there anything else I should
include?

Here’s how I replied: First, some questions for you. What is an executive editor at a film company? I have been in this business a long time and I have never heard of such
a position. If I may ask, what company are we talking about here? Are they reputable? Have they produced any TV shows or movies you’ve actually heard of?

Secondly, most pitches are done verbally in Hollywood, so submitting the pitch on paper seems odd. Even so, when I do a pitch, I usually leave behind a punchy one-or-two page synopsis  — think of it as book-jacket copy meant to entice the reader into buying the book.

Finally, are you pitching a TV series or a movie? They are two very, very different things and require very, very different kinds of pitches. Since I haven’t seen this company’s submission forms, and have no idea what they ask from you, so I don’t know if filling them out is enough.

This sounds to me like one of those round-table-pitching conferences where aspiring writers have five minutes to pitch their stuff to some development exec. I’ve never done one of those things, so I really have no idea how it works.

Procrastination 101

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I’ve got hundreds of signed first editions and, up until now, I’ve been using My Book Collection, a Filemaker-based program, to slowly catalog them. It’s a pain-in-the-butt and laborious. But along came Book Collector, a fantastic piece of software that uses a barcode scanner to catalog your collection, though you can also input books manually using title, ISBN, etc.  The software  downloads cover images, plot information, page count, price, and a ton of other details for you from a wide variety of sources in an instant. You can also tweak it in a number of ways to suit your own needs.  I was able to catalog my entire, 800+ collection of signed first editions this weekend in about three hours. It’s an amazing piece of software and it’s cheap, too…it’s $39.95.   The scanner, which you have to buy seperately, runs about $100 (mine is a Wasp handheld, which I bought on sale a few weeks ago at Frys).

I was so enthusiastic about that procrastination experience, I wanted to get my hands on a program that would do the same for my DVD and VHS movie & TV show collections. The folks behind Book Collector have a similar program called Movie Collector. I downloaded their trail version and compared it with another program called DVD Profiler. Personally, I found DVD Profiler much better at locating titles, cover images, and detailed information about obscure titles (and British titles) and it’s ten dollars cheaper, too… though they offer a shareware version that’s free.

I’ve put both Book Collector and DVD Profiler on my desktop and laptop so I can go where the books, DVDs, and tapes are rather than having to haul everything to my desk. From now on, adding new books or DVDs to my collection will be fast, easy, and nearly effortless.

Welcome to Fantasy Island

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039_27037Today, I received this email:

I would like to Email Mr. Wolf about an idea…If anyone knows his email address are a way I can get in contacted with please email me at StreetRacerBW@yahoo.com. Thank you, Victoria.

My reply: If you’ve paid any attention to Dick Wolf’s shows, you’ll notice they all have one thing in common. They were all created by Dick Wolf. Why would he want your idea? He’s making hundreds of millions of dollars off his own. But setting that obvious fact aside for a moment, do you really think emailing him an idea is going to work? Do you think he’ll read your email,  send a limo to your house, bring you over to the studio, and offer you a box of cash? I only have four words for you, Victoria:  Welcome to Fantasy Island!

Blog Blowback for Lori Prokop

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I’m not the only one amused by Lori Prokop and her ridiculous BookMillionaire reality show scam. Other blogs are having fun with it, too. For example,  Richard Cobbett took a look at the requirements to be one of the "contestants" on the informercial:

Onephoto_1You can apply if you meet any one of the following criteria:

You don’t need to have written your book or manuscript but you have an idea you feel would be a good book, or…

You may have been told by people that you should write a book, or…

You have a desire to become published and to live the incredible lifestyle of a rich, famous author, or…

You may have started writing your book, but it is not completed yet, or…

You may have your book written. It is completed but not published, or…

You may have published your book, but it has not sold like you wanted.

In
other words, you don’t need to write, you don’t need to have written,
you don’t need to know what you’d like to write, and a pulse would seem
entirely optional. According to the infamous host Lori Prokop – whose
name is an anagram of OIL PORK PRO – only about 5% of writing involves
writing, while the other 95% is buying her self-help books-oops, sorry,
business and marketing.

Applying to be a contestant also gets you on Lori’s coveted email list, as SeaWhyspers says.

Then you’ll be subscribed (forever) to the newsletter
which will solve ALL of your problems with writing: Become Best Seller
(does anyone else already feel nauseous over the pathetic grammer used
on this site?). I can’t say ANY of those bulleted items sounds remotely
like writing to me (scamming, sure), but what do I know? I’m not a Best
Seller, and I’m absolutely SURE it’s because I’m not getting this
newsletter.

 

For someone who thinks of herself as a marketing genius, she sure screwed up this campaign. Perhaps she’d have better luck targeting chiropractors again instead of writers.  If you’d like to add Lori to your own "Get Rich Quick" mailing list, her  oh-so-subtle, loaded-with-integrity, email address is: Cash@megabestseller.com.

(Click here and scroll down the page to hear  Lori pitch some of her get-rich-quick schemes as a tease for her presentation at the "Internet Gravy Train to Riches" conference that was held in 2003.)

EBooks & CGI Covers

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HecallsherjasmineI was reading my sister-in-law Wendy’s blog and noticed she’s reading "Heather’s Gift," an e-book from ebook publisher Ellora’s Cave, which seems to specialize in erotic romance.  DamonBut just because a book is published "electronically," do the covers also have to be CGI as well? Without reading a word, the covers imply that the writing will be as synthetic as the "people" on the covers. Fb2themanwithinThere’s something very unappealing about reading books about CGI characters having CGI sex…sort of the literary equivalent of an x-rated computer game.

Now to be fair to Ellora and her cave, I haven’t read any of the books and there are some covers that use actual models, or have artwork that actually resemble genuine human beings…Honoringsean

(Click on the covers for larger images).