The Mail I Get
Barbara Early sent me this amusing email
I thought you'd like to know what Amazon is recommending to readers of your books. I'm not sure what make of it.
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse by Lee Goldberg have also purchased Inside Animal Hoarding: The Case of Barbara Erickson and her 552 Dogs by Arnold Arluke. For this reason, you might like to know that Inside Animal Hoarding: The Case of Barbara Erickson and her 552 Dogs will be released on March 15, 2009.
The book is described as an indepth look at "one of the largest and most intriguing cases of animal hoarding in recent history." Why that story would be of interest to Monk readers is beyond me. But it does give me an interesting idea for a character that Monk can encounter in the next book…
He Is, He Said
Neil Diamond is now on Twitter.
Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy
That’s the title of my friend HelenKay Dimon‘s widely-acclaimed romance novel, now out in a mass-market edition. If the title alone doesn’t make you pick up the book, the punchy back-cover copy will:
Annie Parks came to Hawaii to gather information and settle a score, not spend time handcuffed to a sexy stranger’s bed. Okay, so this particular stranger saved her from drowning after she was pitched overboard by some goons. And he’s about six feet of hard, Hawaiian muscle and gorgeous cool that’s making forgotten parts of her say, “A-lo-ha!” She needs to stay focused, but a side dish of Kane Travers is awfully tempting.
Kauai Police Chief Kane Travers is not a vacation kind of guy. So it figures that when Internal Affairs suspended him, he’d end up rescuing a sarcastic, dishonest, extremely hot redhead who is clearly hiding something. Amnesia? Yeah, right. Kane’s got half a mind to give Miss Whoever She Is something she’ll never forget. His cop senses tell him that the lady’s in deep and needs his protection. But how can he get her to tell him anything when his mouth won’t stop covering hers?
If YOUR MOUTH DRIVES ME CRAZY is half as much fun as the jacket copy, you’re in for a treat. You can win a free copy at Alison Kent’s blog just by telling her something about your mouth…but you’d better hurry, the drawing ends on Monday, March 2 at 8 p.m. CST.
How to Stalk Stars
My wife stumbed on a website that lists the addresses of celebrities...and even includes aerial photos of their homes. Privacy is clearly a thing of the past.
Mr. Monk Gets Another Nice Review
Gary Mugford at Mugshots gives MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE a thumbs-up. He says, in part:
Goldberg has lots of fun at the expense of the typical SF convention-goer, but there seems be a respect deep down. […]But it’s really almost an Ambrose book. It’s Ambrose who provides the needed insight into the TV series, since he’s an expert on the show. It’s little insights into Ambrose that makes this something different rather than the same old, same old. That’s why this book gets a thumbs up. Goldberg continues to expand the tight little world that is Adrian Monk. As we head to the eighth and final TV season, it’s going to get harder and harder to find new sides to the mystery that is Monk. But for the time being, Goldberg continues to deliver solid entertainment in new and surprising ways.
Thanks, Gary!
TV Main Title of the Week – Special Foreign “Law and Order” Edition
Here’s the Main Title Sequence for the new “Law & Order: UK”
Here’s the main title sequence for the French version of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”
And, finally, the main title from the Russian version of “Law & Order: SVU”
Rehashes, Reworkings and Reimaginings
Once again, there are quite a few British remakes, shows based on movies, and "reimagined" old TV series among the pilots greenlighted to film for the 2009-2010 season.
Watching Harry O
I have been treating myself to episodes of HARRY O after a day of work. It's been an interesting experience. The first 13 episodes were shot entirely on location in San Diego and had a slow, laconic pace and a real style. David Janssen's Harry Orwell almost never did anything overtly physical…he had a bullet in his back, for God's sake, and he was hardly a buff guy. The plotting wasn't very rigorous, but individual scenes were often sharply written. But around episode 14, the show moved to L.A. and lost a lot, if not all, of its style. The main title theme/opening sequence was "toughened" and so was Harry, who although still world-weary, now gladly engaged in fisticuffs. Suddenly there were sexy and scantily-clad women everywhere and none of them could resist his non-existent charms (though he didn't seem very interested in bedding them). Much of the work that had been "on location" moved into the soundstage and looked it (one particularly cheap set was clearly, and superficially, redressed multiple times over two episodes). On the other hand, Anthony Zerbe came in as Lt. Trench, the best "friend on the force" in TV PI history (and a role that earned him an Emmy). The scenes between Harry and Trench, which would have been expositional hell in any other PI show (and in the first 13 of Harry O, with Henry Darrow as the cop, often were), crackled and became the best thing about the series. I am only three episodes into the LA-set episodes, though. There are still 24 more to see…including one where Henry Darrow's Lt. Manny Quinlan character came back to be killed off. (You can see the first scene of the second Harry O pilot and the first regular episode, "Gertrude," on YouTube)