Send me off to the Motion Picture Home

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On DorothyL, the mystery list-serv, Terry G. wrote:

Hi DLers, I was perusing the latest dl list and went off to check out the
mystery readers international site, which I was not familiar with, and
enjoyed an article by Elaine Viets and Lee Goldberg in particularLee, who must be in the sixty range in years since
his tv PI touchstones were about the same as mine, mentioned Richard S
Prather, who would certainly fit into the humorous thread that was being
bandied about for the last couple weeks.
Um, I’m 43. You know, it’s possible to read books and authors who are older
than you are. If I’d mentioned Sherlock Holmes, would that mean I was 100 years
old?
 
People always assume I’m much older than I am. I can’t tell you how many
times DIAGNOSIS MURDER viewers or readers meet me and say  "Oh, I thought you’d
be so much older." I guess they figure because the show stars an 80-year-old man
(and the books have his picture on the cover) that the author must be getting
the Senior Citizen discount at Hometown Buffet, too. I always smile politely
when people say that to me but I’m not quite sure how to take it…

Open Up Those Golden Gates

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I’m heading up to San Francisco today to sign books at Barnes & Noble in Walnut Creek tonight (7:3o pm), chat with the members of Mystery Readers International on Friday, and do a signing at M IS FOR MYSTERY in San Mateo on Saturday at 2 pm.  That means postings here may be sparse over the next few days. In the meantime, you can always go back and get yourself riled up by all the nasty things I have to say about fanfic and vanity presses.

Auto-Pilot

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TV writer Paul Guyot continues his unflinchingly honest and informative chronicle on the development and production of  the pilot he wrote for TNT. The network subsequently brought in a big-name showrunner and Paul found himself relegated to the sidelines (despite assurances to the contrary). Sadly, this happens all the time in our business and Paul, being a pro, knows that. Even so, it still hurts when it happens.   

What has been the hardest thing for me to deal with is that the network has
completely supported the showrunner and his "tweaking" of my script. My story.
My setting. My characters. After telling me (in the beginning), that they wanted
something unique and edgy (sic), what they now have that they so dearly
love, is the very thing they told me specifically they didn’t want… a typical
TV show. And not a conference call goes by that someone doesn’t rave about how
much better the script is now.

Hey look, it may be better. The
guy has Emmys and I don’t. I just wish the network had given me a shot to do
this other version, and then brought in their high-priced Showrunner.

It’s like this – the network wanted me to hit a home run. So in my first
at-bat, I hit a double to left. But instead of getting another swing, they bring
in another guy and he hits a double to right, and they all cheer and say,
"That’s just what we wanted! A double to right!"

But again, nature of
the beast, folks. Don’t feel sorry for me – I already took care of that. No need
to post comments about how much they suck or whatever. This is TV. Ask Lee.
Happens all the time. As I said earlier – you have two choices in these matters
– quit or ride it out. I chose to ride it out. Though it’s being done
differently than how I’d do it, and I’m being basically ignored throughout the
entire process, I’m holding on. I want to feed my kids. I don’t have the luxury
of conviction. And someone much smarter than me once warned about the paralysis
of conviction. Especially when it wasn’t your story to begin with.

All You Can Eat

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My Brother Tod reports on the hilarity and despair of this year’s Las Vegas Book Festival.

The festival itself was held at the Las Vegas Library, which is located Billy
Goat Gruff style just under a freeway overpass. It’s a nice library, actually,
and there seemed to be lots of people hanging around the place. Unfortunately, a
great many of the people milling about were there for the box of free Top Ramen
left out front and the handsome corners and nooks where, if you’re a junkie,
you’re allowed to fix without incident. What the homeless folks could have been
doing instead was hearing a bunch of notable authors talking about books. Aside
from your favorite frumpy Jew, the festival also included Rob Roberge, Steve Almond, Jeremy
Schaap, Neil Pollack, Chris Epting, Glenn Gaslin, Steve
Erickson, Francois
Camoin, another guy named Francois whose name escapes me, Joe Queenan, James McManus, Geoff Schumacher and many, many others
(including poets!). Alas.

New Hope for the Dead

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If BookExpo is where new books and dreams are born, then the Chicago International
Remainder & Overstock Book Exposition (CIROBE). is where
they go to die. Bookseller Robert Gray talks on his blog about the big sales expo for
remainder, overstock, and damaged books that’s coming up this week:

I’ll think, as I always do, about the rampant optimism of BookExpo in the spring,
when all is new and every book on the list has the potential to sell through.
"We’re very excited about our fall list," they say. And they should
say that. They should be excited. Every book is a gem at BookExpo, every
book a winner in waiting.

Well, maybe not every book.

Still, nobody expects a book to die needlessly. And yet they do, every day, die ugly
deaths and pass through to the underworld, Hades, or, in modern English, The
Bargain Table.

Maybe it’s not a cattle drive at this stage, after all. Maybe it’s a boat trip across
the River Styx.

Charon, the old man who ferries the dead to the underworld.

CIROBE, the show that ferries dead books to bargain book world.

Gee, what a clever idea. Why hasn’t anybody done this before?

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Publishers Lunch reports that PD Martin has sold his novel BODY COUNT to Mira Books and that the rights are being shopped worldwide. It’s the first in a series about an FBI profiler with psychic abilities who is chasing a serial killer.  I suppose this could strike you as a clever idea for a book…if you haven’t seen MISSING, MEDIUM, THE DEAD ZONE or any of the other psychics-who-solve-crimes shows on television. Haven’t there also been, like, 178 movies with the same premise? Maybe his next book can be about a private eye with a sociopathic sidekick and an irascible friend-on-the-force.

The Dan Brown Effect

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The impact of THE DAVINCI CODE is still being felt…now Publishers Lunch reports there’s yet another book trying to cash in on the formula.

Jennifer Carrell’s INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES, a treasure hunt whose clues are
codes and puzzles found in the writings of Shakespeare, to Mitch Hoffman at
Dutton, by Noah Lukeman of Lukeman Literary Management (world).

I think I’m going to write a thriller where the clues are codes and puzzles found in reruns of old 60s sitcoms like GILLIGAN’S ISLAND and MR. ED.  I’ll call it… THE TV GUIDE.

Writing Scams

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My friend author Joe Konrath has an excellent post today on writing scams. He discusses Fee-Charging Agents, Writing Contests, Paid Anthologies, Vanity Presses, and POD Publishers, among other things. It should be required reading for all  aspiring authors. Here’s a sample of his wise counsel:

PAID ANTHOLOGIES: Here’s another quick scam. You submit a poem, and it gets
accepted into an upcoming poetry collection. You get excited, tell all your
friends and family, and then get a letter in the mail saying that you can
purchase the anthology at $40.

Naturally you buy a copy, and so does Mom, and so does Aunt Grace and your
best friend Phil. When you get the anthology, you see it is 700 pages long, and
your wonderful poem is crammed on a page with seven others.

Do the numbers. If there are 3000 poems in the book, and each writer in the
anthology bought at least one copy, the publisher made $120,000.

Poetry.com was infamous for this scam. They’d also invite writers to awards
ceremonies, at staggering costs to the gullible writer, to receive a worthelss
award along with 1000 other ‘winners’.

Please pass the link to his post along to any struggling writers you know…they should print out his article and keep it handy. It will help avoid the temptation to pay an agent to read their books, pay to publish their book with iUniverse  or pay to enter one of those Writers Digest contests…

 

All it takes is two hours a day and you, too, can be a bestselling thriller writer

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Anyone who thinks being a bestselling author is  hard work hasn’t met Stuart Woods, who told BookStandard about a typical writing day.

Stuart Woods may be the perfect picture of the
gentleman-artist. Since publishing his first novel, Chiefs, in 1981, he has managed to create three
commercially successful franchises—one starring Holly Barker, one Stone
Barrington and one Will Lee—while spending healthy amounts of time flying his
single-engine Jetprop plane between his three homes, sailing yachts and enjoying
the life of a “born-again bachelor.”

TBS: You’ve written 33 books. How do you manage to be so prolific?

SW: It takes a certain amount of discipline.
Once I know the events that are going to take place in a chapter, I can write
the chapter quickly—usually in an hour or less.

TBS: What’s a typical workday like for you?

SW: I write generally between 10 and 12 in the morning. And I
don’t work everyday.

TBS: Do you ever get
your series mixed up?

SW: If I’ve been away
from the book for a while, I’ll sometimes have to read a few chapters to get
back into it and remind myself where I was. But for the most part, I have a gift
for keeping the plot in my mind—I don’t even re-read it when I’m finished with
it, I send it straight to my editor.

TBS:
You don’t re-read your work all?

SW: I write
a chapter at a sitting, then the next day I re-read it and make small
corrections and I go on from there.