My Blog

Writing a Book

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I’ve just been offered a contract for four more DIAGNOSIS MURDER books… and the next one is due in November. I have the broad strokes of the story….but that’s it. The broad strokes. The equivalent of book jacket copy. I’ve still got to come up with the actual story. Since this one takes place in 1962, I’ve been able to procrastinate by doing research on the period… which has given me some plot ideas… but I’ve still goto figure out the murders, the clues, the characters and, oh yes, the story.

This is the hardest part of writing… the sitting around, staring into space, and thinking. This is writing, even if you aren’t physically writing. A lot of non-writers have a hard time understanding this. Yes, just sitting in a chair doing nothing is writing. A crucial part, in fact.

It can be hell… especially when you are on as short a deadline as I am. Everyone has their own method… this is mine:

Once all the thinking is done, I sit down and work out a rough outline… one or two lines on each "scene," with the vital clues or story points in bold. It’s what I call "a living outline," because it changes as I write the book, staying a few chapters ahead of me (and, some times, requiring me to go back and revise earlier chapters to jibe with the new changes I’ve made… like characters who were supposed to die in the story but don’t). I keep revising the outline right up to the end of the novel. I finish both the book and the living outline almost simultaneously.

While I’m still thinking, and while I’m outling, and while I’m writing, I compile and maintain what I call "my Murder Book," a thick binder that contains my outline, my working manuscript, and notes, emails, articles, clips, photographs, post-its…anything and everything relating to my story. By the time the book is done, the binder is bulging with stuff… including my notes on what my next book might be.

Now I’m in the thinking stage, which is why you might have noticed a sudden uptick in blog entries. I don’t have time to write… but I have plenty of time to procrastinate.

And think…

Wil Wheaton is Still Alive

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My brother Tod recommended Wil Wheaton’s blog to me a while back and I finally got around to reading it (in fact, Tod even wrote a Las Vegas Mercury column about the blog). Wheaton, you may recall, was the kid in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION… and his blog is surprisingly sharp, witty, and candid. It starts with his explanation of why he started blogging in the first place…an epiphany at Hooters (hey, if you’re gonna have one, there are worse places it could happen).

We walked in ahead of the lunchtime rush, so we could sit wherever we liked. We stood in the doorway, Bob Seger blaring above our heads that he was workin’ on a night move, and chose the section with the hottest waitress in the joint. As we were taking our seats, she came over to our table: a cute-but-not-beautiful girl in her early 20s. Bleached-blond, fake tan, long legs. Hooters. Her name tag said “Destiny.” She flirted with us as she took our order, all smiles and giggles. We ordered wings. Super Fire Hot, baby.

She stood up, and left to put in our order. Darin and I stared at each other. We still had it, and it felt good.

She’d only walked a few steps, when she stopped suddenly, turned around, and came back to our table. She looked at me, lustily. “Can I ask you something?”

“Oh, hell, yeah, Willie,” I thought to myself, “The ladies still want your sweet action!”

My throat went dry. My face flushed and my pulse quickened.

“Sure,” I croaked.

She screwed up her courage and leaned close to me, her full, pouting lips just inches from mine. Her perfume embraced me. Her ample cleavage seductively longed to bust out from beneath her thin cotton T-shirt. She drew a nervous breath, bit down on the corner of her mouth, and asked, breathlessly,”Didn’t you used to be an actor?”

“WHAT?! USED TO BE?! I STILL AM!” I hollered, as images of a hot Hooters threesome were replaced with images of myself on Celebrity Boxing.

She immediately knew that she made a mistake. She thought quickly, licked her lips, self-consciously fussed with her over-processed hair and tried again:”Oh, I mean, weren’t you an actor when you were a kid?”

All I could do was numbly answer,”Yeah, when I was a kid,” as I hung my head and ordered the first of many pints of Guinness.

Funny story, right? Yeah, funny like when you watch another guy get kicked in the nuts.

In the days that followed, I tried to write it off. Tried to bolster my wounded self-esteem by telling myself that she was just a Hooters waitress, so she didn’t matter.

But the truth was, this simple, scantily clad waitress had driven home with painful acuity my deepest fear: I was a has-been. I “used to be” an actor, when I was a kid. That weekend, my wife was out of town and I found myself in front of my computer, surfing the Internet, playing Diablo II, doing anything I could to get that Hooters waitress out of my mind.

Yes, that’s how badly it hurt me: I was actively trying to get a Hooters waitress out of my mind. While my wife was out of town.

Somewhere in that day, while I was battling the forces of polygonal evil on Battle.Net, I was hit with an inspiration: I would make a website and let the world know that I was still alive and still working.

I know from personal experience that he’s worked since his days on the Enterprise… I hired him in an episode of DIAGNOSIS MURDER and he did a great job.

Jim Huang Starts Blogging

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Bookseller Jim Huang has opened his blog with an interesting post on the state of mystery novel publishing today…

Where the business gets fouled up is in how is goes about trying to create blockbusters, in what publishers perceive is necessary to create a bestseller. Mostly, the approach boils down to “throw money at the problem.” They basically do this for one reason, so that the house can turn around and brag about how much money it’s spending. We’re supposed to be impressed that Putnam paid Jilliane Hoffman a seven-figure advance for her first novel, that they planned a $300,000 marketing budget and announced a 250,000 copy first printing. So impressed that as a bookseller, I’ll be compelled to stock lots of copies and that you as a reader will be compelled to buy it.

On the back cover of the advance reading copy of Hoffman’s RETRIBUTION, there are more words describing the marketing than there are describing the book itself — a lot more – and the few words devoted to describing the story are generic clichés. When Hoffman herself talked about the book at the Dearborn Library last fall, it was the money and the movie deal that she described. Readers — and we are all readers first — don’t relate to your advance. We relate to your book. In pitching this book on the basis of dollars and print-run, all Putnam does is bring to mind Oscar Wilde’s comment about people who know “the price of everything but the value of nothing.” That’s Wilde’s definition of a cynic, and it seems especially apt for a business with Jason Epstein’s attitude.

Three months into the book’s release, Nielsen’s Bookscan, which claims to cover 70% of the market, said that RETRIBUTION sold 16,000 copies. If the percentage is right and you do the math, you end up with total sales of 22,860. Under the circumstances, that’s pitiful. Personally, I’ve sold one copy.

I’ve been suckered by a few of those books… BREATHTAKER and DERAILED come immediately to mind.

The New Spy

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bondToday’s news that Pierce Brosnan is stepping down as James Bond isn’t entirely surprising given the huge success of THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (which topped DIE ANOTHER DAY’s opening weekend by more than $6 million with a $54 million opening). Even Variety was musing that Bond’s days were over…

Could “Bourne” be the new Bond?

Universal’s “The Bourne Supremacy” bowed to a boffo $53.5 this weekend, unspooling at 3,165 locations.

The spy thriller opened bigger than any pic in the James Bond series, topping 2002’s “Die Another Day’s” $47 million debut, and beat the bow of the biggest-opening Tom Clancy film, “The Sum of All Fears,” which grossed $31 million on its first weekend in 2002.

Studio was optimistic going into the weekend, but U didn’t expect to nearly double original “Bourne Identity’s” $27.1 million opening and set its best opening of the year, topping the $51 million drawn by “Van Helsing.”

The two Bourne movies, and Matt Damon’s performance, prove that it *is* possible to do a successful espionage movie that will appeal to a wide audience without resorting to your hero surfing a tidal wave (which Bond did, ridiculously, in DIE ANOTHER DAY).

In many ways, the two Bourne movies are throwbacks to the Bond of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and even GOLDFINGER, two of the best 007 films. Bourne is surprisingly human and relatable…and yet still able to accomplish almost superhuman feats.

So who will be the next Bond? According to Entertainment Weekly…


Unless Brosnan’s statement is a negotiating ploy — Sean Connery, for example, quit for a whole movie before being lured back for bigger bucks — England-based Eon productions, which produces the Bond flicks, must find another star to carry 007’s Walther PPK in the as-yet-untitled 21st Bond movie, which is already scheduled to be released on Nov. 18, 2005. Speculation surrounds Brits Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gerard Butler, Jude Law, and Ewan McGregor, as well as Aussies Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, and Eric Bana.

My hope is that the Bond producers will cast Clive Owen (who had a small part in BOURNE IDENTITY) as 007 and return to something closer to BOURNE than MOONRAKER.

Diagnosis: Work

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wakingnightmareI’m pleased to announce news that I will be writing four more DIAGNOSIS MURDER books, which will bring me to eight titles in the series by early 2006. The third book in the series, THE SHOOTING SCRIPT, comes out on August 3. The fourth, THE WAKING NIGHTMARE, the one I wrote with two broken arms, comes out in January 2005. I’m starting work on the fifth book, THE PAST TENSE, today…

Donut Holes

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The SEC is investigating questionable accounting practices at Krispy Kreme, which has sent their stock price tumbling…

Krispy Kreme, which operates nearly 400 stores in the United States and overseas, said it is confident in its accounting practices and is cooperating fully with the inquiry.

The company’s shares, which have fallen nearly 50 percent since the company’s profit warning, were down $2.08 at $16.58 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The real, burning question that no one has answered yet is… does this mean they are going to stop giving away free samples when you walk in?

The Amazing Sperm Race

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Just when you thought reality shows couldn’t get worse… Variety reports that Endemol, the folks behind BIG BROTHER, have two new reality formats they are debuting in Europe.

They’re called SPERM RACE and MAKE ME A MOM. Honest. I’m not making this up…

Endemol has said that despite the obvious shock value of the format titles, the subject matter addresses a serious problem– infertility– in an entertaining and informative manner.

Yep, there’s nothing more entertaining than watching infertile couples try to conceive. I can’t wait to see the CBS version…

Murder She Fucking Wrote

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dyingtoretireIt seems a reader at the Davis County Library in Layton, Utah has finally had enough with the obscenity and sex-laden adventures of Jessica Fletcher in the MURDER SHE WROTE books. Sarah Weinman discovered an article in the Deseret Morning News reporting that someone at the Davis County Library is “cleansing” the MURDER SHE WROTE books of obscenity.

I didn’t know there was any obscenity in those books. Christ, if people find that offensive, my DIAGNOSIS MURDER books must be hardcore porn…

The Big Grab

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Your agent is supposed to look out for your best interests. Now, it seems, you’re going to need an agent to deal with your agent.

Publishers Weekly reports that some literary agents are now sneaking in a clause that grants literary agencies the right to exclusively represent a work for the life of its copyright.

The contract provision, known as an “interminable rights clause,” means that even if the original publishing agreement has ended, the book has gone out of print or the author’s agent leaves the agency, the agency continues to be the agent of record for the work. The practice contrasts with that of some other agencies, which give up their claim on a work once the publishing agreement the agent negotiated ends.

“That was a deal buster for me. There was no way I was going to sign away all of those future rights,” said romance and suspense author Tina Wainscott, who recently left her agent, Mel Berger at the William Morris Agency, who had represented her on four books over the course of four years.

(Mel used to represent me, too… but I left him about five years ago and not because of this new, and frightening, power grab by lit agencies)

This clause strikes me as terribly unethical. An agent is supposed to be looking out for the best interests of their clients… but how could any author trust their agent after being asked to sign a contract with the interminable rights clause buried in it?

Unadulterated Plugs

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MonktitlecardOur episode of MONK, “Mr. Monk and The Godfather,” airs this Friday, July 23 on the USA Network… and while you’re at it, don’t miss the latest episode of MISSING, which airs on Saturdays at 10 pm. on Lifetime.