My Blog

Top Suspense

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Authors Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Max Allan Collins, Harry Shannon,  Dave Zeltserman and Vicki Hendricks have teamed up to create Top Suspense, a site showcasing their terrific books in e-format. 

Electronic books are soon to be a billion dollar business, yet it's more difficult than ever to find a good read, especially via digital download. With more than 700,000 ebooks already on line, with a good number of them self-published, ebook stores are becoming the equivalent of publisher's past 'slush piles'. […]The Top Suspense Group plans to slash through all the clutter.

[…]"Readers can count on us," creator and acclaimed author Dave Zeltserman explains, “Every member of our group has already made his or her mark on genre fiction, whether it's noir, crime, mystery, thriller, horror or Westerns, and in some cases, several of these genres."

[…]Zeltserman has spoken before about the difficulty readers have in searching for sites that offer seasoned professionals. Top Suspense Group members make some of their finest material available at affordable prices. Many of the ebooks will contain bonus material, such as the writer’s commentary on the book that has been purchased, or the addition of a free short story.

“We believe readers will appreciate a reliable inexpensive site that continuously delivers some of the best in contemporary genre fiction,” said Top Suspense Group member and multi-award winning author, Max Allan Collins.

It's a shrewd marketing move and they are a very impressive group of established authors with a strong line-up of books. Collectively, they've got all the genres covered, from mysteries to westerns, and have made major literary contributions in all of them. It will be interesting to see how their experiment works out.

UPDATE 11/25/2010 : Full disclosure. Since publishing this post, I have accepted an invitation to become one of the authors at Top Suspense.

The Mail I Get

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I got an unsolicited email today from a newbie author asking me to read his book and review it. The solicitation itself was polite enough, but where the author stumbled was in his pitch:

The book is aimed at the adult male market; the book provides a means for males to escape to some harmless, male orientated entertainment without being made to feel guilty about doing so. At the risk of sounding corny, I would describe the book as a ‘rattling good read for real men.’

This male doesn't need a means to escape to some male-orientated entertainment that will make him rattle. 

Bookpros is Booksleazy

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Now that it's possible to get your book published for free, you'd think the vanity presses would just fold their tents. But there are still some out there, hoping to snag the few remaining suckers. One such company is Bookpros, also known as Turnkey Press, Ovation Books, Synergy Books, Bridgeway Books, and Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists…and probably some names I don't even know about. They've billed themselves in the past as  "an author-funded traditional publisher," meaning they are a vanity press that wants to confuse newbies into thinking they're something else. Their crack publicists recently sent me a press release that read, in part:

I noticed you cover self-publishing topics from time to time, and I thought you might be interested in a trend piece on the evolution of self-publishing. […] With the promise of in-store distribution and full-service publicity campaigns, BookPros’ authors have easily competed at a national level. In the seven years since their founding, they have had eight bestsellers and have received more than 50 prestigious industry awards for editing and design. Many of their titles have been picked up by major commercial publishers, while others have attracted the interest of movie producers. BookPros offers a unique author-funded approach to publishing, giving authors access to quality editing and design, real in-store distribution and award-winning publicity.

Of course, they don't mention any of their "bestsellers' by name nor any of the "prestigious industry awards" that they've won because you wouldn't recognize any of the books nor any of the awards. Saying that their books have "attracted the interest of movie producers" is so vague that it's utterly meaningless. But empty boasts like that are typical in the vanity press biz.

What's truly special about this come-on is that they are touting their "unique author-funded approach" — as if they are the first people to come up with the idea of charging writers outrageous sums of money to print their books. That's chutzpah (and almost as ridiculous as vanity press huckster Brien Jones' claim in his bio at Jones Harvest Publishing that he "pioneered the concept of selling self-published books to bookstores." Yeah, right, Brien, nobody ever thought of that before).  

At this point, anyone foolish enough to go with a vanity press as blatantly sleazy as this one deserves no sympathy.

Hollywood on a Book Binge

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The Wrap reports that studios are buying lots of books these days by first-time authors, though not all of them are necessarily newbies when it comes to writing. For instance, Paramount snapped up Hank Steinberg's yet-to-be-published novel OUT OF RANGE, the first in a tw0-book series. While Steinberg may be new to publishing, he's hardly new to Hollywood — he was the creator of the long-running CBS series WITHOUT A TRACE. Even so, it's interesting to see Hollywood chasing books at a time when everyone seems to be wondering what the future of publishing is going to look like.

Jan Remembered

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I am just catching up on all the comments, tributes and blog posts about my mother Jan Curran, who died last week.  Desert Sun reporter Bruce Fessier, who wrote my mother's obituary, also wrote this touching blog post:

Jan Curran, my dear friend and an enormously popular society editor for The Desert Sun and Palm Springs Life in the 1980s and ''90s, died Tuesday night at her “active senior living” home in Calabasas. Her four adult kids were at her bedside.

She survived Lupus for more than 35 years and was given so many terminal diagnoses for cancer, we stopped believing she was mortal.

Late last year, they ran out of chemotherapy drugs to give her. She had used everything they had to offer and grown immune to each and every one. But she not only survived with a smile on her face, she published a novel after she was supposed to have been dead.

It was based on her life after being forced to move from La Quinta to be closer to her daughters and eldest son. It was called “Active Senior Living.”

I have the unpleasant task of writing an obituary about this woman who made society writing an art form.

In many ways, I like this post even more than the obituary that he wrote for her.  My cousin Danny Barer shared some thoughts about my Mom on his blog. He wrote, in part:

I've been watching the Japanese animated series "Tegami Bachi," in which one of the underlying conceits is that a person's humanity, or "heart," is a quantifiable and finite energy, and that letters or other writings are like batteries that store within them the "heart" of the person who writes them — an energy into which the reader taps. Jan undoubtedly poured a lot of her heart into her writings. And her writings remain — on her blog, in her Facebook posts, in the two books she wrote, and in her children's writings. The ability to preserve the energy of humanity through writing is one that should never be taken lightly. It allows portions wonderful people like Jan to remain after they themselves have left us.

Mom's old friend Ann Erdman blogged about her as well. She remembered Mom's campaign to make sure chemotherapy patients had plenty to read as they underwent treatment:

Aside from the obvious, one of the things that annoyed Jan about chemotherapy treatments was the lack of enough current magazines and books to go around. So she began taking her own magazines to the hospital to share with fellow chemotherapy patients, and the Jan Curran Fan Club was born.

A few years ago I headed to the desert for the inaugural gathering of the Jan Curran Fan Club. I stayed at her house (she lived in La Quinta then) and we drove to the Palm Springs Tennis Club for a wonderful luncheon where 50 or 60 people gathered in an outdoor pavilion. Magazines and paperbacks were everybody's ticket in. It was a long but productive day, and Jan was exhausted by the time we got back to La Quinta. We had a fun yet low-key slumber party, just the two of us, and lingered over breakfast and a long visit the next morning.

Everyone who was there that day took a vow to donate magazines and paperbacks to chemotherapy units, and the word spread to as far away as England and Germany.

Recently Mike Barer established a Facebook page for the Jan Curran Fan Club. How about joining it in Jan's memory?

My Mom's cousin David Zarkin blogged about her, too. He said, in part:

More than a cousin, she was my friend. She was an amazing journalist and storyteller with a great sense of humor. She will be well remembered by many wonderful people in Palm Springs where she has supportive friends and was a reporter with the Sun for many years. Jan could count among her friends the late President Ford, Sonny Bono, Artie Shaw and the actor Mel Ferrer. The collection of photos in her home of fabulous people she knew in her Palm Springs life is fresh in my memory.

Some of the most touching and moving comments about my Mom came from complete strangers…people who got to know her through her book, "Active Senior Living." Here are the ones that I shared in my eulogy. K . Jacobson said:

After reading your mom's book, she and I exchanged several emails and I treasure them. She changed my life and my attitude towards senior living and the obstacles that I faced. I can only imagine what it would have been like to know her in person. Please share that my thoughts and prayers will be with the family and her friends.

Elaine Benizzi said:

Lee, your Mom's book "Active Senior Living", was read by me during a unsettling time in my life and gave me great hope for my husbands health. I was prompted to write her a note which she responded to so gracefully. I am truly sorry for your loss, she was a kind and wonderful woman.

Sheri Bell said:

Oh, Lee, I am heartbroken to hear this news. Your mother's book was the very first book I purchased and read on my Kindle. As others have mentioned, we feel almost as if we knew your mother through her writing… and as such, she (and her marvelous sense of humor) will be sorely missed. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family at this time of loss and sadness. May your mother's courage, sense of humor and enduring spirit live on through the writing — and the intimate part of her life — that she shared with us all.

Irene Shaw said:

I'm crying as I write this, because I felt as I know many people did, that I knew Jan. Her book was the first download on my new Kindle back in February. I so wish I could have met her. She fought the damn big C for so long, with such grace and humor. RIP, girl! And prayers for you and your family, Lee.

These are just a few of the hundreds of comments, emails and condolences that me, my brother Tod, and my sisters Linda and Karen have received over the last week. We have shared and read them all. On behalf of my family, I want to thank you for your kind words and good wishes. They have meant a lot to us.

Get Badged

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GOLDBERG_Iron_On_Badge_FINAL Of all the books that I've written, my favorite is THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE. It was nominated for the Best Novel Shamus award by the Private Eye Writers of America, and won quite a lot of critical acclaim, before falling out-of-print. Here's a sampling:

"As dark and twisted as anything Hammett or Chandler ever dreamed up […] leaving Travis McGee in the dust." Kirkus, Starred Review

"Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat, but Goldberg succeeds with this engaging PI novel." Publishers Weekly

I want to introduce THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE to the next wave of new Kindle, iPad, and Nook owners this holiday season… and to do that, I’d like send you a FREE COPY of the novel in whatever eformat you prefer (epub, PDF, txt, html, etc). Here’s all that you have to do:

1. Send me an email at lee@leegoldberg.com with the subject FREE BADGE BOOK and give me your name and the address of your website or blog (don’t have one? That’s okay. Read on).

2. Agree to post a review, positive or negative (but with no spoilers!) on your blog, website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, or the Amazon listing for MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE by Christmas Day. (You don't have to buy the book on Amazon to review it there, you only need to have an account). 

3. Email me a copy of the review or a link to the post.

This offer is limited to the first 50 people who respond by November 30.

The book is about Harvey Mapes, a 26-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start. It finally happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife Lauren. 

The lowly security guard jumps at the opportunity to fulfill his private eye fantasies and use everything he’s learned from Spenser, Magnum, and Mannix. But things don’t exactly go according to the books…or the reruns. As Harvey fumbles and stumbles through his first investigation, he discovers that the differences between fiction and reality can be deadly. 

With the help of his mortgage broker neighbor and occasional lover Carol, Harvey uncovers a blackmail plot that takes a sudden and unexpectedly tragic turn…plunging him into a world of violence, deception and murder… and forcing him to discover what it really takes to be a private eye. 

Here's a sampling of some more of the critical praise the book received from authors and critics…

“A wonderfully fresh voice in the mystery genre, Goldberg will delight fans of Janet Evanovich and Robert Crais,” – Rick Riordan, author of "Percy Jackson & the Olympians"

"Lee Goldberg bravely marches into territory already staked out by some fierce competition — Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, the early Harlan Coben– and comes out virtually unscathed." The Chicago Tribune

"Goldberg has a knack for combining just the right amount of humor and realism with his obvious love for the PI genre and his own smart ass sensibilities. THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE is a terrific read. Goldberg is the real deal and should be on everyone’s must read list." Crimespree Magazine

"The Man With The Iron-On Badge is a quick, fun read with a satisfying and unexpected ending. Harvey Mapes is a hero I hope we see in a sequel." — Phillip Margolin, author of "Gone But Not Forgotten"

I hope you will like it, too!