Writing

Lawrence Block: A Passport to Yesterday

by

Headshotcolor Today I’m honored (and thrilled) to feature a guest-post by author Lawrence Block…discussing, among other things, the perils of time on a series character like Matthew Scudder and how he approached writing his brilliant new novel A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” That’s the sentence Leslie Poles Hartley chose for the opening of his novel, The Go-Between, and if those eleven words were all he ever wrote, he’d still deserve a spot in any proper collection of quotations.

Isn’t it a gorgeous line? And it has the added advantage of being true.

My wife and I are fairly intrepid globetrotters, and members in good standing of the Travelers Century Club. We’ve crossed borders on ships and planes, buses and trains, and a few more on foot, but we haven’t yet tried a time machine.

As a fictioneer, I’ve kept myself rooted in the present. I love period fiction when it’s done right (Thomas Flanagan, Jeff and Michael Shaara, Max Byrd) but have never felt inclined to get into the game. I have my work cut out for me trying to make sense of the world around me, right here and right now.

On May 12, Mulholland Books published A Drop of the Hard Stuff, my 17th novel featuring Matthew Scudder. I’ve been writing about the man since the early seventies, and he’s now in his early seventies, and no longer able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Which is my own damn fault, because I decided early on to have Scudder age in real time. I’ve never regretted it, because it’s made him more real for me and for readers as well, but this added realism brings with it an added sell-by date.

Now I may have to keep on working but why should he? The man’s got a rich wife and a pension from the city. And, considering all he’s been through, hasn’t he earned a comfortable retirement?
My wife’s bright and beautiful, but she never had Elaine’s opportunity to amass wealth. And all I get from the City of New York is a reduced-rate card for the subways and buses. I’m not complaining, mind you. . .

Still, the fact that I have to go on writing doesn’t mean I have to go on writing about Matt Scudder. But I was out for a walk one day, and it struck me that there was a gap of some seven years in Scudder’s story. (His fictional autobiography, you could call it, which I’ve been ghosting for him for the past quarter-century.) In Eight Million Ways to Die (1982), he leave a drink on the bar, goes to an AA meeting, and cops to his alcoholism. In Out on the Cutting Edge (1989) he’s seven years sober and living his life.

I didn’t skip this stretch of Scudder’s life because I figured it was uneventful. From what I’ve observed, early sobriety tends to be anything but. Thing is, I’d figured the series was done when he got sober, and it took me seven years to realize Matt and I weren’t through with each other.
Matter of fact, the book that followed Eight Million Ways to Die was a sort of prequel. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986) recounts events ten years earlier, when Scudder’s world centered upon saloons and hotel rooms and after-hours joints. When it was published, it got an enthusiastic review from Richard F. Snow, the longtime editor of American Heritage; he justified it by proclaiming the book an historical novel, and the 1970s thus a part of the past.

I thought of that when I returned to Scudder’s past in A Drop of the Hard Stuff. I’d had a couple of other dips into past time in three Scudder short stories, “Looking for David,” “Let’s Get Lost,” and “A Moment of Wrong Thinking,” each consisting of today’s Scudder recounting events from his NYPD days. But this would be different. This would be total immersion, a full descent into that foreign country of past time. And, while it would be bookended by a late-night conversation between Matt and Mick Ballou, and would take place in 1982-3, it would reach back even further into the past—to his years on the police force, and his boyhood in the Bronx.  Drop of the hard stuff-1

Well, you know, I make this stuff up, so it wasn’t as though I had to go interview people to find out what Scudder was up to back in the day. But I had to return in my own mind and memory to a very different world, a world without cell phones and personal computers, a world in which we somehow actually managed to find things out without Google or Wikipedia, and even managed to hook up without match.com or JDate.

If the past is a foreign country, its New York was certainly a very different city. Neighborhoods, now all squeaky-clean with gentrification, were mean streets indeed. You couldn’t walk a block without encountering a pay phone, but you might have to walk half a mile to find one in working order.

I didn’t get a computer myself until the early 90s, so in the interest of verisimilitude I suppose I could have forced myself to bang out A Drop of the Hard Stuff with a typewriter. But why? Did Jean Auel write Clan of the Cave Bear by scratching in the dirt with a sharpened stick?

I wrote the book my Mac, but the apartment I squatted in to write the book didn’t have wi-fi, so I was without Internet access during my working hours. While that didn’t exactly catapult me into the past, it made me realize just how much I rely on Google and Wikipedia (though not, I assure you, on match.com or JDate).

I didn’t do anything you could call research, having always been too lazy for that sort of thing, nor did I make a colossal effort to recall specifics. It seemed more natural simply to let myself slip into an earlier time when I was writing, rather as I slip into another voice or another state of mind or way of seeing the world. That, I suppose, is how fiction flows out of the imagination.

But I came away from the book with the perhaps obvious realization that the world has changed rather a lot in the years since Matt Scudder uncharacteristically left a drink unfinished and walked off to start a new life.

Barry Malzberg, my good friend and contemporary, had this to say about the book’s time period: “Completely different. 1982 is to the young Yuppie crowd today what 1900 was to us in the early sixties. Utterly historic. The Web and the social networks have not only changed, they have reformulated everything. We have survived to this world and it is a privilege and we can in fact handle it pretty well but I don’t kid myself: it might look like a bear and sound like a bear and shuffle like a bear but it isn’t.”

I think he’s got the proportions right: a 25-year descent into the past now, is the equivalent of a 60- or 70-year trip when we were young. The world moves faster, and the past recedes more rapidly with every passing year.

I can’t help thinking of “The Lightoliers,” a story of Stephen King’s. The eponymous entities were monsters, always at our heels, devouring the past. I don’t remember a thing about the story itself, but that one image lingers, perversely gaining in strength as the past falls away. The Lightoliers, forever chomping away, stealing all past time away from us.

Well now, isn’t that heavy baggage for a novel just designed to get you through a plane ride or a lonely night? But I won’t apologize. It’s the risk you run when you let a writer natter on about his work.

A very different place, the past. It’s hard to know what to pack, and you’d best have your passport in order. But a quick visit is not without its rewards.

And who’s to say? I might go back again. I can’t rule it out.

You can keep up with Lawrence Block and his musings on his blog, his Facebook page,  his website, and on his Twitter feed: @LawrenceBlock

Tod Gives Burn Notice the Burn Notice

by

10082679 After writing five BURN NOTICE  books, my brother Tod has called it quits, turning down a contract for more. Remarkably, the publisher has decided to retire the series as a result. Now that THE BAD BEAT,   his final book in the series is coming out, Tod reflects on his blog today on what he's learned from the experience. Here's an excerpt:

…writing Michael Westen taught me how to write series fiction and, beyond that, how to pace commercial crime fiction. See, previously, the crime fiction I wrote was decidedly not series and decidedly not commercial, really. (And I would argue that I never really set out to write crime, specifically, even if Living Dead Girl and Fake Liar Cheat and a bunch of my short stories are, you know, stories about crimes.) At any rate, writing the books required a completely different skill set — the deadlines alone required that they be almost completely plot and voice driven, which is somewhat different than my other work which tends to be character and setting driven. Writing Burn Notice has changed the way I approach crime fiction, which is good since the novel I'm writing now — more on that in a moment — is a pretty straight crime novel. 

[…] because the deadlines were so close, I also had to learn to not be an obsessive rewriter, which meant I had to keep a pretty tight plot, which meant I did more outlining than usual…and by that I mean I outlined anything at all, which I typically don't do. I also ended up trusting myself more. Usually when I'm working on something new, I show drafts to my wife or to my agent or trusted friends to get some feedback, but I just didn't have the time to do that with these books and the result is that I ended up needing to be honest with myself. Not an easy thing for any writer.

Now I don't feel so guilty about getting him the gig.

I Hate William Rabkin

by

WRITING-600x900 (1) William Rabkin has a new screenwriting book out on the Kindle — Writing The Pilot — and I hate him for it.

I hate him because I only meant to browse the book the other day…but I ended up getting sucked in by his engaging, smart, and entertaining voice and spent all !@#$% night reading it.

I hate him because it would be the perfect update for our long-in-print screenwriting book Successful Television Writing.…and now it won't be, the greedy bastard.

And I hate him because I actually learned some things about a subject I thought I knew at least as well as Bill, my best & oldest friend and my long time writing partner…who also happens to be Adjunct Professor of creative writing in the University of California, Riverside's MFA Program, Palm Desert Graduate Center, and also teaches television writing at the UCLA Extension.

But even through my blinding hate, I have to admit he's a terrific and justifiably beloved teacher and that Writing the Pilot is both extremely entertaining and jam-packed with useful information.
His analysis of what makes a great pilot…vs what makes a great opening episode for a series…is simply brilliant.

His indepth analysis of the pilots for Fast Forward, Life on Mars  and Fringe were particularly smart and insightful. He also deftly uses examples from our own career, in particular our unproduced CBS pilots Ella Clah and Silhouette, to illustrate the thought-process behind developing and writing pilots (and candidly discusses some of mistakes along the way and what we learned from them).

Spec TV pilots are all the rage right now, contrary to what we said years ago in the last chapter of our Successful Television Writing, and his book couldn't be more timely. If you want to get into the TV biz, or if you are a veteran TV pro struggling with pilot-writing issues, Writing the Pilot is a must-read.

The book will soon be available in trade paperback and Nook versions as well.

(Pictured: Tod Goldberg, me, and Bill Rabkin signing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2010)

UPDATED 8/19/2011 to add new cover.

Me on Me Again

by

The Writer Underground interviewed me this week about, well, writing…here's an excerpt.

Q: You came to writing early; you wrote and sold your first novel while still in college. How many novels have you written over the course of your career?

Eight Diagnosis Murder novels, 13 Monk novels, four Jury novels, My Gun Has Bullets, Dead Space, Watch Me Die, and The Walk.

Q: In an era where a lot of “experts” suggest you have to specialize to succeed, you write in several different formats (novels, online, TV, etc); how has that versatility paid off during your career?

It’s kept me alive. I have never put all of my eggs in one basket. So when TV lets me down, the books pick up the slack, and vice-versa. I also work as a TV consultant to studios and networks around the world.

Q: How do you approach new projects when you have little or no experience with that kind of writing (e.g. — your first script, your first novel, first tie-in novel, etc)?

With terror… and excitement. I like challenging myself. It keeps me sharp. I usually begin by researching the subject and talking to experts in it… before tackling it myself.

Q: Any quirky writing habits that would immediately endear you to my readers?

I write in the nude while listening to TV themes. I’m joking, of course. I at least wear underwear.

Q: You’ve got a pretty active online presence; how much time are you investing in your blog, interviews, social media, etc?

Way too much. In fact, I shouldn’t even be answering these questions.

Q: Writing professionally means dealing with tight deadlines, yet “writer’s block” is still a hot topic among writers. How do you make yourself “creative” on a deadline?

It’s the deadline that makes me creative. I do much better when I have a drop-dead date. I have never missed a deadline, even when I had an accident and broke both of my arms.

Q: Any advice for novice writers, or observations about the mistakes they make over and over and over and over…?

Avoid clichés.

 

We Are Family

by

Famcroppedb My brother Tod wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal today about what it's like being part of a family of writers…and the dymanics that have shaped us into the authors were are today. He  says, in part:

the truth is that I didn’t really grow up surrounded by writers as much as all the people I grew up with – my older brother, Lee Goldberg, and my two older sisters, Karen Dinino and Linda Woods, who often collaborate – all became authors. We are separated by nine years, oldest to youngest, yet we managed to end up in the same place, at least metaphorically speaking.

My brother was first. His debut novel, .357 Vigilante, a slim men’s action adventure written under the absurd pen-name Ian Ludlow, was released in 1985 after he got a book deal through his writing teacher at UCLA. I would follow fifteen years later with my first novel and then my sisters, writing as a team, published their first book in 2006. Combined, we’ve published 50 books, hundreds of short stories, essays and features and, in my brother Lee’s case, written or produced 26 different television shows.

[…]We had a difficult childhood, all of us: our mother was dying for most of our lives, the victim of both lupus and cancer, though she’d actually live for 73 years, but that specter hung over us, along with her propensity towards madness. And our father was simply gone, long before he was actually gone. We each escaped into words from an early age. That’s the sad truth that lives under the happy result. The “how” is easily revealed: we enjoyed the escape so much that it became our physical world.

For more, check out the article. You'll know more about us afterwards than you'd ever want to.

 (Pictured: l-r Linda Woods, Lee Goldberg, Maddie Goldberg, Valerie Goldberg, Tod Goldberg, Wendy Goldberg, Karen Dinino, and Jan Curran)

My Favorite Child

by

Copy of Watch Me Die_5   I’ve written thirty novels – eight of them Diagnosis Murder books and thirteen of them Monk tales – but my favorite out of them all is Watch Me Die, which was originally published in hardcover in 2005 under the title The Man with the Iron On Badge.

It’s about a guy who learns everything he knows about being a PI from reading books and watching TV shows. It's about the clash between fictional expectations/stereotypes and reality. The book is something of a spoof…and yet, at the same time, a straight-ahead crime novel full of explicit sex and violence. That shifting tone made the book a hard sell…because it didn't fit into a particular marketing niche. Is it a satire? Is it a PI novel? Is it a thriller?

Most of  the editors who rejected the book back in 2003 praised the writing but didn't see where it would fit in their publishing line.  There were two editors at major houses who loved it and wanted to acquire it…but  couldn't convince their superiors. Another wrote a LONG rejection letter, saying how much she loved it, that it was the best PI novel she'd ever read, and how it pained her not to be able to publish it. (In the mean time, I wrote a screenplay version of the book, which landed me the gig writing the Dame Edna movie. It never got made, but it was a very, very big payday for me and was my first solo screenwriting job outside of episodes of TV shows that I'd produced).

It was frustrating not being able to sell the book because I felt it was the best novel I'd ever written. I loved writing it and I very much wanted to write more about Harvey Mapes, the main character. I couldn’t complain too much, because I was having a lot of success with other books. Even so, this one meant more to me than the others. I approached my Diagnosis Murder & Monk editors at Penguin/Putnams about The Man with the Iron-On Badge…but as much as they liked me, and my work, they weren't willing to take the gamble.

Finally, after two years of  shopping the book, we took it to Thomson/Gale/Five,  which had a reputation for putting out fine mysteries…and for being a place  where  published authors can find a home for their "dropped" series and unpublished works.  It was an imprint run by writers (like founder Ed Gorman) and editors (like legendary book packager Martin Greenberg)  who truly loved books and appreciated authors. They produced handsome hard-covers that were respected and reviewed by the major industry publications. I had a great experience with them on The Walk (another book that was a hard sell that but went on, after it fell out of print, to sell 20,000 ebook copies in two years)  and I knew they would treat the book well.  6a00d8341c669c53ef00e553a33d7d8834-320wi

The downside with Five Star was that they paid a pitifully  low advance, primarily served the library market and had very limited distribution to bookstores.  Still, it was possible to win wide acclaim and impressive sales with a Five Star title. And I did. Here's a sample of the reivews:

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

 “This was a witty, wonderful book,” Deadly Pleasures

“Goldberg delivers a clever riff on the traditional private eye novel, resplendent with witty and dark turns,” Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

“A fast paced, first person thriller about an under achiever who has to strive to be more than he ever thought he could be,” Permission to Kill

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

"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 book] is a terrific read. Goldberg is the real deal and should be on everyone’s must read list." Crimespree Magazine

The book even got nominated for the Shamus Award for best novel by the Private Eye Writers of America (losing to Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer)

And  although it sold well for Five Star, it failed to land a paperback or foreign rights sales…and went out of print in 2007. 

Last year, I re-released it as an ebook…where it has failed to gain much traction, despite several different covers,  lots of flogging on this blog, and a stage production by the legendary Firesign Theatre.

So now I have re-re-released it as Watch Me Die. And am doing more flogging.

I really, really want Watch Me Die to succeed.

I want it to be my bestselling book…by far. Not so much for the money, but because I am proud of it.

And if it does finally do well, I can justify to myself (and, more importantly, to my wife), investing the time to write the sequel. Or a string of sequels. I would like nothing better than to write as many Harvey Mapes books as I have Monks…or many more….because Harvey Mapes is a character and a voice and an attitude that I love.

So please, help me do that. Spread the word about Watch Me Die.   

 (Pictured: Orson Ossman performing as "Harvey Mapes"  in the Firesign Theatre radio play/stage production, at the RiverPark Performing Arts Center in Owensboro, Kentucky )

What Does MWA Do?

by

I always feel guilty when I spend more time posting on someone else's blog than my own…which is what has been happening over the last few days. I have been cheating on you over at Joe Konrath's blog. He wrote a lengthy post castigating the MWA for not welcoming self-published authors as active members…so naturally I responded. A lot. But I think some of what I said, even without the context of the subsequent comment thread that prompted my remarks, is worth repeating here. 

So you can read Joe's post for yourself...then come back and read this. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, good to see you back.

First, let me say, that I am speaking for myself, and not in any way for the MWA.

I know ebook self-publishing is changing everything. I am earning far more self-publishing my out-of-print backlist today than I am from my traditional contracts.

I know that MWA will inevitably have to address that side of the business….but I think MWA’s rules will evolve and that these recent changes, while too incremental for Joe and some others, were a necessary and significant first step. 

There are many good points in Joe's post. But his overall argument that MWA should exist to help authors sell books is too narrow.  MWA does a lot of great things — like supporting book festivals & writers conferences, running speakers groups, funding Writer Beware, taking on predatory publishing practices, etc, to support their members and non-members alike.

He likes to use International Thriller Writers as a yardstick for comparison to MWA.  He says they get it right where MWA doesn't.

I agree that ITW does some great things for its members that MWA doesn’t…and vice-versa.

However,  the last time I checked, ITW had only let in three or four self-published authors as active members. Self-published authors are welcome to join ITW as associate members which, by the way, is also the case with MWA.  

I haven't seen ITW announce that they are now including e-publishers and POD publishers as Approved Publishers…and books exclusively published in e-format or POD as eligible for Active Membership…but MWA has.

The ITW, unlike MWA, is utterly beholden to, and dependent upon, “legacy publishers.” The reason members don't have to pay dues is because the ITW lives off the royalties it earns from its anthologies published by Harlequin, among others. If any organization exists to support the old guard, it's ITW.

While they are a different organization, they are also, in many ways, exactly the same. They also have an approved publishers list, they also rely upon "legacy publishing" as a primary yardstick for professional publication, and they also have a large associate membership etc.

So I'm not seeing how ITW is getting it right where MWA isn't.  

There are some also significant differences between the two organizations worth noting…

  • MWA took a strong, and very public stand against Harlequin that other organizations quickly followed (notably not ITW, perhaps because the anthologies that keep their organization afloat are published by Harlequin). MWA ultimately convinced Harlequin to substantially change a program that struck many as predatory and unethical.
  • MWA delisted and strongly condemned Dorchester for their miss-treatment of their authors…and other organizations quickly followed MWA's lead (notably, ITW has remained silent).
  • MWA has teamed up with SFWA to support Writer Beware to expose countless publishing and literary agency scams that prey on writers (What is ITW doing to educate writers about predatory publishing practice? Zero).

I am a proud ITW member, and they have been very, very smart in how they have positioned themselves and how they are helping published writers get more traction. But MWA is about much more than that. 

MWA's stand against Harlequin, for example, was geared entirely towards preventing unpublished authors from getting taken advantage of…and that's a big part of MWA’s mission…and why they partnered with SFWA to support Writer Beware. 

Not only that, but MWA makes substantial financial contributions to scores of big and small book fairs all across the country (including contributing to NY is Book Country, the LA Times Festival of Books, the Miami Book Fair, etc.) to help keep them afloat because they feel supporting writers, booksellers, and the love of reading is important. 

There are also countless workshops and speakers programs that MWA and its local chapters do in high schools, libraries, book fairs, and at community events nationwide to educate writers about writing, publishing, and the mystery genre.

Those efforts help ALL WRITERS published and unpublished, self-published and traditionally published, and teaches aspiring writers new skills, and encourages a love of reading and books that helps authors no matter whether they are published electronically or in print. 

MWA doesn't just exist to help authors promote and sell their books (though MWA promotes its authors with a strong presense at trade events like BookExpo, Printers Row, and ALA, etc.).

They put an enormous effort into protecting aspiring writers… people who ARE NOT MEMBERS… from getting ripped off by publishing scams and con artists who prey on their hopes, desperation, and naivete.

MWA does that by educating its members  as well as through the very existance of its Approved Publishers list (publishers are thoroughly vetted by the MWA’s membership committee and held to a set of high professional standards…as listed in our Approved Publishers criteria).

MWA also uses its might, which comes from its size and the respect it has earned, to leverage big publishers into halting unethical and predatory practices. That doesn't prop up the status quo…that's something MWA does, at great cost in time and money, because it's mission is more than helping successful writers be more successful. Again…all of this is done by volunteer writers. 

MWA's goals, and responsibilities, and what it does for members and non-members alike, are far broader than simply helping it’s members sell books and promote themselves.

Bottom line:  MWA is far, far more than just the self-publishing issue.

But you could argue, as Joe did in the comments to his post, that  “teaching writing craft is a good thing, but how do my dues benefit me when they are being used to teach some newbie how to add conflict to his first short story?”

That’s a fair question. I can only answer for myself.

I pay my $95 in dues not just for what MWA can do for me… but what it does for others. I get something important out of that. You may not. That's fine. 

You may not take any pride or pleasure knowing that your dues go towards teaching a newbie writer about conflict, story structure or dialog…but I sure as hell do. 

You may not take any pride that your money is going to support efforts to prevent publishers from engaging in predatory and unethical conduct towards writers. I do.

You may not see any personal benefit in your money going towards exposing publishing scams and protecting writers from them. I do.

What MWA does is not always for you. Sending authors to libraries or schools may not help you sell books…but it might inspire one kid in the audience to write…or spark a love of reading….or bring new readers to the mystery genre. 

I think that's a great use of my dues money. I get a personal benefit out of it that isn't calculated in books sold.

Actually, Joe and I agree on more than we disagree, though some who do not know us well would not know that from reading this long-winded post (or his).

I am the chair of the MWA membership committee, so I played a big part in crafting these rules.

I am a published author…but I am also a self-published author.

So I see this issue from both sides. 

I have said it before, and I will say it again…the MWA's eligibility criteria are a work-in-progress that will change as the industry does. 

Accepting novels published exclusively as ebooks or POD as making the author eligible for Active Membership is a big, and important step…one other writers organizations, including ITW, the Authors Guild, Horror Writers, etc. have yet to make. 

I am sure there will be other steps to come.

 

The Rap on Me and Monk

by

Lee Goldberg and Traylor Howard-2 Kirkus Reviews is spotlighting the MONK books today in an interview with yours truly conducted by J. Kingston Pierce, who also runs the excellent Rap Sheet blog.  Here's a taste:

The series focused primarily on Adrian Monk, but your books are told from Natalie’s first-person perspective. What affect has that had on your storytelling?

I think it humanizes Monk. It gives us a necessary distance and, at the same time, a perspective to frame what we’re seeing. In a way, Natalie’s eyes become the replacement for the TV screen that’s was usually between us and Adrian Monk. Also, a little Monk goes a long way. You can overdo the joke and all the obsessive/compulsive stuff. By telling the stories from Natalie’s point of view, we aren’t with him all the time. We get some space, a breather from his shtick, and I think that’s important.

It’s also a conscious homage to Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, who were seen as well through the eyes of their assistants.

The interview was huge, and all the stuff that Kirkus couldn't use, Pierce has posted on his blog.  For instance,we expanded on the previous question…

JKP: You’ve said before that telling these stories from the first-person viewpoint of Monk’s assistant, Natalie Teeger (played on screen byTraylor Howard), rather than from a third-person perspective more similar to what we saw on television, “humanizes Monk.” Could you explain that further?

LG: [I]t’s allowed me to add an emotional resonance to the storylines that goes beyond just Monk’s eccentricities and the solving of puzzling mysteries. The underlying theme of the book (and yes, there always is one in each tale) is often reflected in whatever is happening in Natalie’s life. Her personal story frames the way in which she perceives the mystery and reacts to Monk, so it’s all of a piece. It’s allowed me to make her a deeper, more interesting, and more realistic character. By doing that, I ground the story in what I like to think of as “a necessary reality.”

Without that reality, Monk would just be a caricature and cartoon character. Natalie humanizes Monk and makes the world that the two of them live in believable to the reader. Through her, we are able to invest emotionally in the story. Without that crucial element, I believe the books would have failed.

Doug Lyle is a Royal Pain

by

My friend 41G5ikeA7oL Doug Lyle, the medical advisor on my scripts & books, as well as my doctor, is writing the tie-in novels based on the hit USA Network series ROYAL PAINS. It was a series he was born to write…I just had to convince him first.

His opening novel in the series, “First Do No Harm,” has just come out and novelist Laura Benedict, whom I had the pleasure of sharing a panel with at a conference in Kentucky, has interviewed him on her blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Q:     I know readers and writers alike will want to know how you came to be chosen for the gig. Was there a writing/audition process?

A:  I have to blame my good friend Lee Goldberg for this. As you know, Lee writes the Diagnosis Murder and Monk novels. His brother Tod writes the Burn Notice novels and his partner Bill Rabkin writes the Psych novels. These are called tie-in novels because they are tied to a television series.

Penguin approached Lee about taking on the Royal Pains project, but he told them he was probably not the guy to do it but that I might be. He recommended me to them. So that’s basically how it began. After I spoke with my wonderful editor there, Sandy Harding, and my equally wonderful agent, Kimberly Cameron, I finally decided to sign a two book deal with them.

Q:    Royal Pains is such a fun television series. Were you a fan, first? You’ve done a terrific job with the characters’ voices in First, Do No Harm–particularly Divya’s. Does it help to have live actors as models for the characters that you’re writing? 

A:    Thank you. I’m glad you liked the characters and the story. Yes, I watched the TV show before I was ever approached to write the novels. Though I have problems with some of the medical stuff that Hank does–couldn’t happen in the real world–I really enjoyed the characters and their interaction. I liked the humor and I liked the other characters that surround the four main ones. And I thought it was an interesting premise.

As for having live actors as models, it’s a double-edged sword. I have these characters that are already created and so therefore I don’t have to come up with new characters out of whole cloth. But, it also means that I can’t tinker with them or take them in directions that I would like. You are constrained by the creators and the TV series as to what you can and cannot do. But overall it was fun.

He goes on to share more about wriing the ROYAL PAINS novel, as well as his other fiction and non-fiction books. You’ll want to check it out.

MWA Opens Active Membership to Ebook and POD Authors

by

The MWA membership committee, of which I am chair, has crafted a major overhaul of the criteria for Active Membership to embrace the new technologies that are changing our industry. These new guidelines, approved unanimously today by the MWA Board, opens the door to scores of authors whose books are published solely as ebooks or via print-on-demand, but they still exclude self-published works. An  email blast with all the changes went out to all MWA members moments ago. Here's the intro…

The publishing business is experiencing massive changes and if MWA is to remain relevant, we have to change, too.  That’s why we’ve revised our Approved Publisher criteria to make books published solely in e-book format or using print-on-demand eligible under certain conditions for MWA membership (and, perhaps later, for Edgar eligibility as well).  Self-published books, whether they are published in print or as e-books, still do not qualify for MWA active membership. [Note: The italics added by me for clarity in this post, they are not italicized in the actual guidelines]

In crafting the criteria below, we had to strike a balance between including books published using those new technologies while also  maintaining our high professional standards and our commitment to protecting our members (and writers in general) from the less-than-reputable publishers who seek to take advantage of them.

We hope you’ll agree that we accomplished our goal. 

There are a lot of tweaks to our existing rules, but here's the ground-breaking portion…the new section on Approved Publisher criteria for ebook publishers. If your ebook publisher meets these criteria, then your book qualifies you for Active Membership in MWA.

E-Book Publisher Guidelines:

Publishers interested in being on MWA's Approved E-Book Publishers List must fill out the affidavit and submit a sample contract. If all of the following criteria are met, contact the national office to begin the vetting process (the affidavit will be supplied if these requirements are met). The publisher must also meet all of the following criteria (the term "book" refers to all e-formats, "Publishing" refers to print, web, and other e-formats):

1. During the preceding year, the publisher must have paid a minimum of $500 in advances and/or royalties to at least five authors with no financial or ownership interest in the company.
a) The publisher must have paid a minimum royalty of least 25% of net revenue to authors.
b) The royalties must have been paid at least quarterly, with a detailed statement, breaking out books sold through affiliate sites, through the publisher's own site, as well as print books if applicable.
c) Payment must be in monies, not in barter for advertising or copies or any other considerations.
d) Payment must be actual – not, for example, a donation of writing deemed worth a given amount.
e) Payment must have been made and not merely promised.
f) A contract alone is not payment. Proof of payment may be requested by the committee.

2. The publisher must have been in business for at least two years since publication of the first e-book by a person with no financial or ownership interest in the company.

3. The publisher, within the past five years, may not have charged a fee to consider, read, submit, or comment on manuscripts; nor may the publisher, or any of the executives or editors under its employ, have offered authors self-publishing services, literary representation, paid editorial services, or paid promotional services. If the publisher is affiliated with an entity that provides self-publishing, for-pay editorial services, or for-pay promotional services, the entities must be wholly separate and isolated from the publishing entity. They must not share employees, manuscripts, or authors or interact in any way. For example, the publishing entity must not refer authors to any of the for-pay entities nor give preferential treatment to manuscripts submitted that were edited, published, or promoted by the for-pay entity. To avoid misleading authors, mentions and/or advertisements for the for-pay entities shall not be included with information on manuscript submission to the publishing company. Advertising on the publisher's website for any for-pay editorial, self-publishing or promotional services, whether affiliated with the publisher or not, must include a disclaimer that it is advertising and that use of those services offered by an affiliate of the publisher will not affect consideration of manuscripts submitted for publication.

4. The publisher must publish at least five authors per year, other than those with a financial or ownership interest in the company, such as an owner, business partner, employee, or close relative of such person. Those persons should be listed on the application.

5. The publisher is not a "self-publishing" or "subsidy publishing" firm in which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher or book packager. Among (but not all of) the situations defined as "self-published or cooperatively published" are:

a. Those works for which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher, website owner or book packager;

b. e-books published by a privately-held publisher or in collaboration with a book packager wherein the author has a familial relationship with the publisher, editor, or any managerial employee, officer, director or owner of the publisher or book packager;

c. Those works published by companies, websites or imprints that do not publish other authors;

d. Those works published by a publisher or website or in collaboration with a book packager in which the author has a direct or indirect financial interest;

e. Those works published in an anthology in which the author is also an editor, except an anthology for which the author is a guest editor;

f. Those works published in an anthology or magazine wherein the author has a familial relationship with the editor or publisher

6. The publisher pays for editing, copyediting, design, cover art, production, advertising, marketing, distribution, web design, graphics, and all other aspects of publication. They do not require authors to pay for any of the above.

7. Books must be available through major online retailers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore, and not just through the publisher's website.

8. The publisher must not be engaged in the practice of wrongfully withholding or delaying the payment of acceptance fees to authors.

As the industry changes, you can expect the MWA's criteria regarding Approved Publishers will evolve as well.

In the meantime, now that the Board has passed these new rules, the issue moves to the Edgar committee (which I also serve on) to determine how these new criteria will impact Edgar Award eligibility, award categories, etc. for the 2013 Awards (for books published in 2012).