The Angel’s Game

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Angels-game I read THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon because my brother Tod gave it such a glowing review. And, at first, it seemed like the book more than deserved the praise.

The book starts out brilliantly, rich in a character, humor, and a powerful sense of place. I was utterly captivated. I couldn't wait to keep reading. I felt I was reading a truly great book, one I was certain would become a beloved favorite of mine.

I was so in love, that I was willing to overlook a nagging flaw — in a story where language and the craft of writing mean so much, where the writer himself aims a spotlight on authorial laziness ("Don Basilo […] subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency"), I was astonished by the repeated reliance on cliche phrase like these:

"In this neck of the woods, one doesn't have to run very fast."

"The editorial board had opted to take the bull by the horns…"

"technically, it was my father who paid, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

"my father came back and found me alive and kicking…"

It was especially bewildering since the author is capable of amazing, vivid, and fresh prose.  How could he possibly let a cliche like "he let the cat out of the bag" get past the rough draft?

Since the book is a translation, I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translator's fault and not his (one need only look at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  for an example of that).

But the cliches would be a minor annoyance if the rest of the book matched the brilliance of the first half. Unfortunately, the book quickly devolves into relentlessly dull exposition, delivered by one-note characters with absolutely no motivation or reason to deliver the speeches to our hero besides the author's need to relay the information.

Worse, the plot totally collapses into an unintelligble, incoherent mess that isn't satisfying or entertaining. Nothing that was "planted" in the first half pays off in the second. For me, the book was a crushing disappointment.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 9

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Kindlesales8311145

My third month of Kindle sales has ended (click on the picture of the Amazon Royalty Report for a larger image). 

My out-of-print novel THE WALK , priced at $1.99, is my biggest selling Kindle title (not including my MONK books, of course). I sold 444 copies in June and 373 copies in July. This month, I sold about the same, 380 copies, earning me a royalty of $266.  I have sold 1197 copies of the Kindle edition so far.

Sales have actually ticked up a bit for my short story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE.  I sold 69 copies this month at 99 cents each, for a royalty of  $24… that's up from 40 copies in July and 54 copies in June. So sales of both of my "premiere" Kindle titles have remained more or less steady.

In mid-July, I added two more of my out-of-print novels and one non-fiction book to my list of Kindle editions.

My novel MY GUN HAS BULLETS, priced at $1.99,  sold 65 copies this month, earning me a royalty of $45.50. That's down from last month, when it sold 95 copies in 17 days earning me $65 in royalties. The sequel,  BEYOND THE BEYOND, is also down, selling 21 copies as compared to 29 copies in 14 days in July. 

TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS was only out for two days in July, selling 17 copies at $2.39 each, earning me  $14.28. In its first full month of sales, however, it sold a mere 16 copies, earning me $13.44. That's a steep drop…and yet its consistently listed as the #1 bestselling TV reference book in several Amazon categories (History, Direction & Production, Guides & Reviews) on the Kindle. Clearly, that isn't saying much.

This month, I made several more of my out-of-print titles available in the Kindle format. 

I added Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw on August 2, priced at $2.39. I've sold 28 copies for  royalty of $24.36. Those sales are pretty weak…and yet that book is consistently listed as the #2 bestselling book in three categories:  TV reference, TV direction & production and TV Guides & Reviews.  TV reference books clearly don't sell well on the Kindle.

I added a Kindle edition of my out-of-print 1985 paperback .357 Vigilante: #2 Make Them Pay on Aug 5, priced at $2.99.  I've sold 25 copies for a royalty of $25.26 . On Aug 19, I added .357 Vigilante #1, also priced at $2.99. I've sold 21 copies for a royalty of $22.05

All together, I earned $436.45 in royalties on my out-of-print books in August, up from $375 in July. As I've said here many times before, that's found money on material that wasn't earning me a dime before, so I am very content with those figures.

I intend to add the two remaining books in the out-of-print  ".357 Vigilante" series to the Kindle in the next month or so, even though, as you can see, there really isn't much of a financial incentive to do so. 

I Am Looking Forward to “Dexter,” the reality series

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Variety reports that Showtime is bringing back THE L WORD…this time as a reality series.

Pay cabler has greenlit nine episodes of "The Real L Word: Los Angeles," from "L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken and reality producers Magical Elves ("Top Chef").
Show will follow six lesbians in Los Angeles as they go about their lives — a lesbian answer to Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise. Project is dependent on casting, the net said; if all goes as planned, "The Real L Word" would debut sometime next year.

If this works, the reality versions of DEXTER and THE TUDORS should be fun.

I Hate The WGA Elections

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Writers-guild-of-america-west-logo I hate it when we're asked to vote for new WGA officers and board members. We get inundated with mails, each side attacking the other, and then we get that bulging election packet, with its candidate statements, candidate rebuttals, rebuttals of rebuttals, rebuttals of rebuttals of rebuttals, the non-candidate statements, the rebuttals of non-candidate statements, and the endorsement ads. Accusations, counter-accusations, and counter-counter-counter accusations.

I don't bother with most of that crap. I read nothing but the candidates statements and make my decisions based on that, my personal knowledge (if any) of the individual candidates, and my own take on where the industry stands and what I believe the direction of the Guild should be. I do not vote according to slates. I vote according to a candidate's principles, experience, ideas, and vision. But most important of all, I vote. 

If you are a WGA member, I urge you to vote as well.

For what it's worth, here is who I voted for:

President: Elias Davis

Vice-President: Tom Schulman

Secretary-Treasurer: Christopher Keyser

Board Members: Patric Verrone, Howard Rodman, Carleton Eastlake, Dan Wilcox, Ian Deitchman, Linda Burstyn, Chip Johannessen, and Luvh Rakhe.

The Case of the Piss Poor Gold

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Big_0911EQMM My “novelette”  The Case of the Piss Poor Gold appears in the November issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which is shipping to subscribers now and will be available at newsstands across the country next week. The story is an excerpt from my upcoming novel MR. MONK IN TROUBLE and is a “standalone” mystery featuring Adrian Monk’s ancestor Artemis Monk, an assayer in the California gold rush town of Trouble in the 1840s.  

The book is set in the present day, but Adrian finds some startling similarities between the murder he’s solving now…and some of the cases Artemis investigated. The story in EQMM is about one of those cases.

I had a lot of fun writing the “Western Monk” stories in the book…but I couldn’t have pulled it off without help from western pros like Richard Wheeler and Ken Hodgson, who kindly answered my dumb questions and reviewed my rough draft. I hope you enjoy the story now and the book in December!

UPDATE: As if that wasn’t reason enough for me to pick up a dozen copies of the magazine, I just learned that there’s a rave review for MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP in the same issue. Jon Breen gives the book three out of four stars and says, in part: “As in the TV series, sharp character comedy combines with ingenious and fairly-clued puzzle-spinning. Don’t miss Lt. Disher’s hilariously non-sensical variation on Sherlock Holmes’ ‘eliminate the impossible’ dictum.”

Elmer Kelton Passes Away

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Elmer_kelton I just learned the terrible, sad news that one of my favorite authors, legendary western novelist Elmer Kelton, passed away this morning. He's considered one of the greatest writers of westerns ever…in fact, he was named the number one western writer of all time by the Western Writers of America, which has honored him with seven Spur Awards for Best Novel. 

His best known work is probably THE GOOD OLD BOYS…thanks to the Tommy Lee Jones movie version… but his many memorable novels include THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, THE SMILING COUNTRY, HONOR AT DAYBREAK, SLAUGHTER, THE DAY THE COWBOYS QUIT, and his "Texas Rangers" and "Sons of Texas" series. 

I don't think he ever got the credit and recognition he deserved outside of the western genre and that's a damn shame. His books weren't just great westerns…they were terrific novels by any measure. I was lucky enough to meet him once, a few years back, when he was in Los Angeles and found him to be a gracious, friendly, and funny man. He will be missed but I'm convinced that his work will continue to captivate, entertain, and enlighten readers for generations to come. 

UPDATE: Bill Crider,a top-notch western writer himself, remembers Kelton.

.357 VIGILANTE is back…run for your lives

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51-ySSZcRjL._SS500_ .357 Vigilante, the first book in my long out-of-print paperback series, is now available in a Kindle edition.

I wrote it under the pseudonym "Ian Ludlow" (so I would be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum) back when I was a college student in the 1980s. The movie rights were sold to New World Pictures…and my career as a screenwriter was born. Alas, the movie was never made. Here's the scoop on the book:

A Man Can Only Take So Much…Before He Takes Revenge.

.357 VIGILANTE

He lost a father, a friend, a whole way of life…now he's looking for justice down the barrel of a gun.

Brett Macklin was a freewheeling son of sunny California, a collector of vintage cars and a connoisseur of beautiful women. But when his father is gunned down by a street gang, Macklin becomes something else — a deadly weapon against crime. He won't stop until he's wiped out the rapists and killers who have turned Los Angeles into a war zone.

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort […] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books

The sequel, .357 Vigilante #2: Make Them Pay is also available on the Kindle….and will soon be followed by the other books in the series.

Writing Staffs Shrinking

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Variety reports what I've been hearing from TV writer friends for months…writing staffs are shrinking dramatically.

"I definitely feel as if there are (fewer) jobs out there," says Damon Lindelof, exec producer of ABC's LOST. "Whereas new shows from pilots that got picked up used to have 10 to 12 writers — that was the size of our staff in 2004 — we're just eight now.

[…]William Rotko, exec producer of the FBI-themed Patrick Swayze starrer THE BEAST, which finished its one-season run for A&E, says a confluence of events has altered the TV dynamic.

"I don't know if it's a combination of the recession and the prior writers' strike," he says. "They kind of landed one after another. After the writers' strike, it seemed this was going to happen anyway, but the recession sped up the process of reducing the size of the writers' room.

There are also fewer scripted shows than there were in the past. The major networks have all given up offering new, scripted fare on Saturdays, there's more reality shows than ever, and NBC has scrapped five hours of prime-time for Jay Leno's new show.

While cable has picked up some of the slack by producing original dramas, they are short orders with small staffs. It all adds up to the worst job market for TV writers than I have ever seen before. It's shocking to me how many of my friends…experienced, successful scribes, some with shelves of Emmy Awards… are out of work right now.