Book Fest, the sequel

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P4260123 It was another fine day at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I chatted with lots of authors and readers….and did a signing with my brother Tod, William Rabkin, Patricia Smiley and Denise Hamilton. BURN NOTICE creator Matt Nix also stopped by and signed some books wih Tod. I showed my MWA spirit, and my rippling muscles, by wearing the new SoCal MWA t-shirts that were hot-sellers at our booth. 

I was in so much back pain yesterday that I neglected to do a proper run-down of events here when I got home (all I wanted to do was lie down). So I didn't mention that Tod and I ran into Joseph Wambaugh, who gave my brother a big hug and me a signed galley of his upcoming novel HOLLYWOOD MOON. I think Tod was envious. Friends get hugs, fans get cool galleys.  

Tod moderated a very funny panel on humor and race with Christian Lander, Lalo Alcaraz and Larry Wilmore and only made a half-dozen references to mastubation and didn't mention his bowels even once. 

Some other observations…

The green room served the same food that they have in years past, which made me wonder if we were actually eating left-overs to save money.  

Barnes & Noble, Borders, Book'em and some other bookstores were noticeably absent this year but there were a lot more booths for self-publishing companies, cults (Scientology had at least two booths) and products, including one for Volvo. 

This was the first year that I saw a couple having sex at the Festival. Granted, it was in the parking structure, but it still counts. It's nice to know that books still make some people hot.

After my panel signing, me, Craig Johnson, and Robert Dugoni went over to the tent selling our books and offered to sign the remaining stock. But they were already packing the stuff up. I suggested they might want to keep some signed stock around for people who couldn't make it to our panel. The clerk says "we aren't a bookstore, we're the School of Health Sciences. We don't sell books." Apparently, they were only making the books available for the panels and then immediately packing up the unsold stuff without even trying to sell it over the rest of the Festival. This seemed particularly dumb to me. Authors and readers lose out…and so did the School of Health Sciences, which missed out on lots of potential sales. See, in past years, B&N or Borders handled the panel signing sales…and kept the books available all weekend, which was great. It meant you didn't have to snag immediately after the panels… you could come back later…in fact, you could browse by several times during the course of the Festival and always find new stuff. I wonder why the UCLA Bookstore didn't handle the sales this time. In any case, I hope they find a bookseller…or at least someone who will behave like booksellers…next year. 

(You can see more of my Lee-centric book fest photos here. I took lots of shots of the MWA booth, and the MWA sponsored panels, for our friends on the MWA National Board.  I wanted to show them the big bang we got for our sponsorship bucks)

Book Fest

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Lee-victor I had a great time at the LA Times Book Festival today. My panel with Steve Cannell, Jan Burke, Robert Dugoni and Craig Johnson was a lot of fun — at least from where I was sitting (who knew Craig was so damn funny?).  All the authors were funny but also had some very revealing things to say about their approaches to writing and crafting characters. Afterwards, at the signing, a woman came up to me and said:

"I think you're very funny, and that you have a great personality, but I can't stand Monk or your books."Victor-brett-rabkin-denise-naomi

I kid you not. Robert Dugoni is my witness. But her comment was more than balanced out by the couple who came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed my novel THE WALK. Now that made my day.

(Photo upper left, me and Victor Gischler. Photo on right, Gischler, Brett Battles, William Rabkin, Naomi Hirahara, and Denise Hamilton, all at the MWA/Mystery Bookstore party. You can click on the images or a larger view).

More of This and That

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Naomi-sara-gary I limped into the Mystery Bookstore party Friday with my bad back (thank God for Vicodin) and had a great time mingling with Victor Gischler, Denise Hamilton, Brett Battles, Gary Phillips, Colonel. Carol Higgins Clark (she was with me and Col. Bob Levinson in Owensboro, KY back in June), Robert Lugoni, Naomi Hirahara, Cara Black, Sarah Weinman, Paul Levine, Louise Ure, Mark Haskell Smith, and many many more talented folks. (Pictured: Naomi Hirahara, Sarah Weinman, Gary Phillips)

Tweeting About Twitter

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I was quoted by reporter Chuck Barney for his Contra Costa Times article about celebrities using Twitter:

He says that, for many celebrity-obsessed fans, the glory of Twitter is all in the details.

 "I'm astounded by how mundane some of the interactions are," says Goldberg, a Walnut Creek native, who joined Twitter three months ago. "But it seems that the more mundanity there is in the tweets, the more personal and intimate the experience is for those involved. It's like, 'Hey, Madonna's having her period, and I know about it!'"

It's even more mundane than that. My Mom was totally thrilled to get a tweet from Neil Diamond letting her know that he was eating a Club sandwich for lunch. It allows people to feel like they have a intimate relationship with someone they actually don't know at all…and who doesn't know them, either. 

ABC Announces Renewals

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TV Critic Alan Sepinwall reports that ABC has renewed just about everything on their schedule except their midseason shows (CASTLE, IN THE MOTHERHOOD, UNUSUALS, etc.) and two sitcoms — SAMANTHA WHO and SCRUBS. But the missing shows, with the exception of LIFE ON MARS, haven't been given the ax just yet. Pick-ups for those bubble shows still could come once the network announces their new schedule in late May.

The full list of those shows that will definitely be on the air for the 09-10 season: "America's Funniest Home Videos," "The Bachelor," "Brothers & Sisters," "Dancing with the Stars," "Desperate Housewives," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Grey's Anatomy," "Lost," "Private Practice," "Supernanny," "Ugly Betty" and "Wife Swap."

The End Game Has Got Game

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51oTHoBG32L._SS500_My brother Tod’s  BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME got a rave from Rod Lott at Bookgasm, who says, in part:

It is fun, capturing the show’s joyous, jubilant essence, but not, sadly, shots of well-endowed women in bikinis. […]The book is quick, snappy and forever mirthful — just like its source material. And until that starts back up in the summer, this is a fine substitute for a weekly fix.

Party Hearty

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The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood and the Mystery Writers of America are hosting a big pre-Book Festival party at the store on Friday night, April 24, 5-9pm. Here's the skinny:

PRE-FESTIVAL OF BOOKS PARTY!

Join us for this annual celebration of crime fiction, featuring food, drink, and visits from dozens of our closest friends. Our guest list is always subject to last-minute changes, but these are some of the folks who have promised to join us:

Shilpa Agarwal, Brett Battles, James Scott Bell, Cara Black, Marc Blatte, Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, Dianne Emley, Tom Epperson, Christa Faust, David Fuller, Michelle Gagnon, Victor Gischler, Lee Goldberg, Chris Grabenstein, Robert Greer, Denise Hamilton, Naomi Hirahara, Gregg Hurwitz, Sue Ann Jaffarian, Craig Johnson, Leslie Klinger, John Lescroart, Paul Levine, Sheila Lowe, Lisa Lutz, Robert Masello, George Mastras, T. Jefferson Parker, Gary Phillips, William Rabkin, Cornelia Read, Patricia Smiley, Susan Arnout Smith, Mark Haskell Smith, Eric Stone, Kelli Stanley, Louise Ure, Sarah Weinman, Stuart Woods, Robert Dugoni, Jeri Westerson, John Morgan Wilson and Edward Wright!

This and That

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Yesterday I had lunch with my buddy David Breckman, writer-producer-director on Monk. He's an even bigger TV geek than I am, which means we always have a lot of fun talking about old TV shows. He shared with me a terrific Banacek-esque plot that he wants to use if the pilot he's working on ever goes to series. I shared with him my take on a feature rewrite that I am in the running for. I guess the lunch was inspiring because I got home and finished up my outline for the next Monk book and sent it off to his older brother Andy.

I got a pass on jury duty again today and I'm hoping my luck holds and I get skipped tomorrow too, ending my week without getting called. Tomorrow night is the big MWA party at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, which I am looking forward to.

I'm heading back to London in mid-May for more meetings with networks and production companies, so I am making travel arrangements for that today and then, once that is done, I'm going to scrape the rust off of my creativity and get back to the "stand-alone" crime novel I set aside to finish my last Monk book.

Scarpetta Movie is Bourne Again

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Fox has nabbed the movie rights to Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books as a potential theatrical "franchise" for Angelina Jolie. But Variety reports that they aren't going to adapt the books, but rather use them as inspiration for new tales in the same way that the Bourne movies have used the original Robert Ludlum novels. In other words, they'll be taking the titles and not much else…which makes some sense, since the forensics that seemed so cutting edge when "Post Mortem" first came out have been done to death on the small screen with the three CSI series, NCIS, etc. 

The movie rights to the Scarpetta books have been optioned many times, and actresses as diverse as Helen Mirren and Demi Moore have been attached, but the project has always stalled (as have attempts to make Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels into movies). It will be interesting to see if this one actually goes forward.

Whining and complaining

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I've been slightly jet-lagged since I got back from Munich, and I've been on-call all week for jury duty, and there's been a heatwave, but none of that is bugging me. It's the writing. Actually, calling what I've been doing this week "writing" would be generous. I've been doing a lot of staring at the screen. I'm having a hard time plotting the latest MONK book and I've been trying to pick-up where I left off three months ago on my "stand-alone" crime novel. It has been going sluggishly…when it's going at all. I'm hoping I'll get back in the groove soon.