I flew to New York on Monday on Virgin America which, once again, was like flying in a synagogue. The plane was full of orthodox Jews, though at least this time they didn’t give me a Bar Mitzvah (or whatever the ceremony was they performed for me on my last NY flight...and no, it wasn’t a circumcision. Been there, done that). I had a wonderful dinner at Elaine’s last night with writer, producer and bon vivant David Black and today the two of us did a panel together for the MWA’s "Crime Writing University." Tonight I went to the booksigning for BLUE RELIGION, the MWA anthology, and
schmoozed with Megan Abbott, Harry Hunsicker, Jason Pinter, Paul Guyot (who is in the picture with me), Michael Connelly, Lee Child, SJ Rozan, and many other authors. Tomorrow I’m getting together with the folks at MONK to talk about my next book…and then will attend the MWA’s Editors & Agent’s dinner.
Davis Wins SFWA Presidency
International Association of Media Tie-in Writers member Russell Davis won the Presidency of the Science Fiction Writers of America in a landslide victory. This is very good news…and gives him the mandate he needs to make a lot of over-due changes.
We Are Family
The Goldberg siblings were out in force signing our latest books at the Los
Angeles Times Festival of Books. Tod and I were signing at the Mystery Bookstore while my sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino were over at the Borders booth. As usual, women threw their underwear at Tod and me while my sisters were deluged with cakes made by their fans. The cool Goldberg kids are wearing shades. Afterwards, Tod hid out from Dr. Laura, who has been emailing him since he besmirched her on his blog, while my sisters were busy stalking Julie Andrews, who was taking the necessary precautions. I took the high road and had a cheeseburger with my daughter.
Never Sing Never Say Never Again
The Rap Sheet clued me into the recently "rediscovered," rejected theme for the 1983 Bond movie NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN sung by Phyllis Hymann and composed by Stephen Forsyth. To be honest, I don’t think it’s any better than the bland Lani Hall/Michel Legrand tune (performed in the video below) that the producers ended up using… but you can decide for yourself.
Writer Beware
Victoria Strauss has an excellent post up today on her Writer Beware blog with great advice for aspiring writers about what to look for before signing with a small press. It’s a must-read for those considering signing with a POD press.
J.T Ellison also offers up some good advice today on How To Avoid Scams over on the Murderati blog:
The biggest problem new writers are faced with is desire. You’ve
worked so damn hard, have slaved away writing your book, and you WANT
to get it out to the reading public. We understand. We were there once
too. But DO YOUR HOMEWORK! There are several easy steps you can take to
ascertain whether the offer you’ve been approached with is legitimate.
Because that’s the problem with scams. The veneer of legitimacy can be
shiny and obscuring.
Book Festing
I just got back from day 1 of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I look forward to this event all year and, despite my vows to cut back on my book buying at the Fest, I always end up making several trips back to the car to unload my goodies…which included signed books by Richard Russo, Peter Carey, Richard Price, and Tana French and lots of architectures books. I ran into many old friends at the Festival today, and last night at the Mystery Bookstore party… authors like Lee Lankford, Paul Levine, Michael Connelly, Dick Lochte, Cara Black, Mark Haskell Smith, Naomi Hirahara, Bill Fitzhugh (who was on the way to an opening of a musical based on his novel PEST CONTROL) Bob Levinson (who I will be hanging out with in Owensboro Kentucky later this month), Loraine Despres, Thomas Perry, Denise Hamilton, and Susan Straight. I also chatted for a while with Lisa Lutz, Susan Kandel, and Rita Lakin.
Tomorrow, my brother Tod and I will be signing at 11am at the Mystery Bookstore which, as fate would have it, is the same time our sisters Karen and Linda will be signing at Borders…and then Monday I head off to New York for Edgar Week.
But I won’t have my MONK book hanging over my head during the trip. I sent MR. MONK IS MISERABLE to my editors yesterday. On Wednesday, I’m having breakfast with MONK creator Andy Breckman to discuss my next MONK novel…I’m hoping to come up with a vague idea for it on the flight to New York.
More Praise for HOLLYWOOD & CRIME
Jon Breen at ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE has given the short story collection HOLLYWOOD & CRIME a rave review, singling out my story "Jack Webb’s Star:"
Show business has long been a favorite criminous setting, and in
recent years more mysteries than ever have explored the worlds of film,
stage, television, music, magic, stand-up comedy, and other categories
of performance. Prolific anthologist Robert J. Randisi’s Hollywood and Crime
(Pegasus, $25) gathers original stories by such formidable writers as
Michael Connelly, Bill Pronzini, Terence Faherty, Stuart M. Kaminsky,
and Dick Lochte. Among those with the strongest entertainment industry
backgrounds are “Murderlized” by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V.
Clemens, a fact-based 1930s tale in which Moe Howard of the Three
Stooges investigates the mysterious death of former stage partner Ted
Healy; Robert S. Levinson’s “And the Winner Is,” about the 1960 Academy
Awards, gangster Mickey Cohen, and the bitter rivalry of columnists
Hedda Hopper and Louella O. Parsons; and best of all, "Jack Webb’s
Star," Lee Goldberg’s hilarious contemporary tale of a struggling TV
writer, his commercial actress wife, a traffic school led by an unfunny
stand-up comic, and Joe Friday’s star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk
of Fame.
Thank you, Jon!
No Romance for Plagiarist And Her Publisher
The Charlotte Observer reports that Penguin/Putnam has dropped romance author Cassie Edwards due to, and this is a phrase I have never heard before, "irreconcilable editorial differences." The differences have to do with Edwards’ lifting text from other people’s books and claiming it as her own, a practice brought to light in meticulous detail by the blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels.
In a phone interview in January, the author told The Associated Press
that she indeed "takes" material from other works, but said she didn’t
know she was supposed to credit her sources. She then asked her husband
to get on the phone. Charles Edwards said the author got only "ideas"
from other books and did not "lift passages."
They Never Learn
The Martinsville Reporter-Times reports that the FBI and the U.S. Postmaster have launched a joint investigation into the business practices of Airleaf Publishing/Bookman Publishing, a notorious vanity press scam that went bankrupt last year. Let’s hope this is just the beginning of a national crackdown on the deceptive practices of the vanity press industry.
But its hard to feel any sympathy for the Airleaf victims. Any reasonably intelligent person could have seen that Airleaf (and its previous incarnation Bookman Publishing) was a sham. Even if the aspiring authors were too blind with desperation and naivete to see the scam for themselves, a simple Google search would have turned up plenty of resources (including my blog and others) that talked about the company’s many deceptive practices and false promises.
They made a dumb, costly, and humiliating mistake.
So you’d think that now the Airleaf victims would know better than to ever get involved with a POD vanity press again.
Well, you’d be wrong.
Incredibly, many of them are once again writing checks to vanity presses, including Bonnie Kaye, who founded the Airleaf victims blog and whose relentless efforts are largely responsible for Airleaf’s fall and the subsequent federal investigation.
She’s now a customer of CCB Publishing, a print-on-demand vanity press that she calls her "new publisher." CCB’s former Airleaf clients include John Krismer, who has written a book that reveals this:
Few realize a New World Order plans to replace our constitution with a
Single World Government, nor that our Federal Reserve Bank is privately
owned and is not subject to oversight by Congress or the President.[…]George H. W. Bush, the undisputed “Overlord” of the Shrub Dynasty, in
his State of the Union Message in 1991 said: “What is at stake is more
than one small country, it is a big idea – a new world order.” Did We
the People ever agree to this treasonous act of turning over our
nation’s sovereignty to a Single World Government?
Uh-huh. This is the kind of unpublishable swill that the vanity press industry thrives on. Is it any wonder he has written a check to another POD printer?
I applaud Kaye for going after Airleaf and bringing the company down…but she’s still foolishly writing checks to a POD vanity press and deluding herself into thinking that she’s "published." By doing so, and praising the company to other Airleaf customers, she’s perpetuating the myths that the vanity press industry thrives on. How sad.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Some other former Airleaf clients have become customers of Jones Harvest, a vanity press that is run by former Airleaf employees! Those particular Airleaf customers aren’t victims at all. They are brain-dead morons.