King City Crowned

Many thanks to Dick Lochte and Mystery Scene Magazine for the great review of the King City audiobook.

Because of his recent television and literary work (15 best-selling novels based on the Monk TV series, as well as scripts for that show and Diagnosis Murder) Lee Goldberg has become something of a specialist at humorous crime. But he’s actually a multi-genre man, with sci-fi and, more recently horror (The Dead Man series) as part of his rapidly, one might say even exponentially, expanding oeuvre. This effective, hard-edged, one off thriller is a case in point. It’s hero, Tom Wade, is an honorable detective in the corrupt King City in Washington State who helps the Justice Department take down a bunch of bent fellow cops and pays a high price for it. Ostracized by his own family as well as former friends and associate, he’s reassigned to Darwin Gardens, a crime ridden slummy section of the city that resembles nothing more than a wide-open frontier town in the old wild west. Assisted by two other department castoffs, he begins a Wyatt Earp-like town taming, focusing on a series of murders involving young women. Goldberg begins his tale on a moment of high tension – with Wade facing down one of the crooked cops – and lets up on the action only to add dimensional detail to the characters and the town he has created. Patrick Lawlor, one of Brilliance Audio’s more active readers, understands the need for maintaining a fast, almost breathless pace, but he also knows when to slow things down enough for listeners to share Wade’s danger or savor his clever victories.

What’s Yours Is Mine

This full-page "apology" from a fanficcer appeared in the most recent issue of the SFWA magazine:

Zimmer fic
Let's see if I have this straight. Mary Battle writes a novel using Marion Zimmer Bradley's copyrighted material and sells it on Amazon, B&N etc. It wasn't until the Bradley estate discovered the infringement, and ordered the sites to remove her book, that it occurred to Mary that maybe she should have asked for permission to use material she didn't create or own. So she did. And the estate denied her request and ordered her to pull all of the books from sale or face a lawsuit.

Naturally, she ignored them… and did it again.

So they sued her. And judging by Mary Mary Quite Contrary's "apology," she still doesn't get what she did wrong.

What Mary apologizes for is any "harm" she might have done…not for repeatedly, and intentionally, and despite multiple warnings, infringing on copyrighted material for personal gain.

That's because Mary Battle is arrogant, stupid, and like so many fanficcers, has a ridiculous sense of entitlement. She thinks that just because she read Marion Zimmer Bradley's books, and liked them, they belong to her in every conceivable way. She seems stunned that anybody would question that…or that the author, or in this case the author's estate, might actually enforce their creative and legal rights. 

I'm sure Mary feels that she's been horribly wronged in all of this…and that the bad guys are Marion Zimmer Bradley's heirs. That's because Mary is a sad, pathetic woman who doesn't live in the real world.

 

 

The Mail I Get

Today it's not my mail, but some that my friend author Joel Goldman received from a self-published author of erotic novels. She offered to swap reviews with him. He decided to play dumb, though he had a pretty good idea where this was going. He asked her:

Are we talking about reading each other’s books before we review them or just posting reviews of them?

And she replied:

Whatever suits you.

I checked out your work and it looks fine and properly formatted. If you want me to read and review it i’ll do it with five stars.

Similarly if you want me to post or reword your review I’ll do that too. What I’m after is a five star review on Amazon with as little work and as quickly as possible. I’m not asking you to read [title of book], I guess you have better things to do.

My first chapter is up there (on line), so you can judge the writing, I can post you a review to submit or reword or a synopsis to save you time.

Joel politely declined. This exchange would be funny if this sort of "review swapping" wasn't so common, especially among newbie authors. Just check out forums like Kindleboards and you'll see for yourself. 

What's really sad isn't how they are devaluing reviews, or how low their literary standards are ("it looks fine and is properly formatted") but that they don't see what's wrong with what they are doing, or how badly leaving rave reviews for books they haven't read (and are probably shit) reflects on their reputations, both as authors and as reviewers.

They simply don't care.

All that matters to them is garnering praise, even if its entirely fake and undeserved. They are so desperate for acclaim, success and respect that they have forgotten all those things have to be earned…and how good it feels when it is. 

And that's a feeling you'll never get from reviews by people who've never actually read your book…or, in the case of John Locke, from people you pay to buy your book and rave about it.

You're not just fooling customers, you're fooling yourself, and that might be the most hurtful swindle of all.

 

Imprints for Success

0383 Lee Goldberg ecover King City_14 (1)For a while now, the editors at New York publishing companies have been warning authors who are thinking of jumping ship to one of Amazon Publishing's imprints that not only won't their books be in brick-and-mortar stores, but they also won't make nearly as much money. 

"You'll disappear," they say. "Your career will be over. Nobody will be able to find your books anymore."

While it's true that you won't see many Amazon-imprint books at your local Barnes & Noble or at airport bookstores….so what? Ebooks are outselling prints books today. And while your ego may take a hit not seeing your book on a store shelf, your wallet won't. Unless you're an A-lister like Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, or Michael Connelly, etc., you will sell a lot more books and make a lot more money with Amazon than with a "legacy" publisher.

I know many authors, formerly with NY publishers, who are now with one of Amazon's imprints…and earning more than they ever did before. I'm one of them. KING CITY has already made me more money in the last 90 days than my last two MONK novels combined.

But I am not alone. Today Amazon Publishing exec Jeff Belle sent a letter to agents telling them what we Amazon authors already knew…that the imprints are a huge success. He also punctured the big lie, which I have heard repeated many times, that Barry Eisler made a costly mistake walking away from a $500,000, two-book St. Martin's contract in favor of working with Amazon. Belle said, in part:

We are especially focused on increasing the audience for our authors. The Detachment, by Barry Eisler, published last September by Thomas & Mercer, has sold over three times the copies of any of Barry’s previous New York Times bestselling books. New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway joined Montlake Romance as our launch author, and The Other Guy’s Bride has also gone on to sell more than three times the copies of her other recent titles. These authors, along with Amazon Publishing, are helping to redefine what it means to be a bestseller. We’re extremely proud of the results so far.

We are as determined as ever to make sure that Amazon Publishing authors reach a huge audience. In particular, we will continue to heavily market and promote them to our 180 million customers around the world, through online and offline advertising, our websites, through email, and on millions of Kindle and non-Kindle devices. Based in large part on our long experience as a bookseller, we are confident that this expansive marketing and promotional support will continue to yield strong sales results for our authors.

It's not just the sales that are attractive to authors… it's the talented, friendly and enthusiastic editors, who give authors an enormous say in how their books are packaged and marketed…it's the astonishing effectiveness of their promotional campaigns…and its the far more generous royalties, paid swiftly, and accompanied by clear, easy to understand royalty reports. Amazon Publishing treats authors like partners. And they publish great books.

Is it any wonder Amazon Publishing and their authors are doing so well?

Playing Santa Claus

I had the pleasure of calling writer Barry Napier to let him know that he’d won the “You Can Write a DEAD MAN Novel” contest. Today, he writes on the Kindle Daily Post about the call and his reaction to the news. Here’s an excerpt:

I was stopped at a red light on a Thursday afternoon at a busy intersection with my family. As a mini-meltdown from my son in the back seat rose to a thundering level, my phone rings.

“Hello?”

 “Hi,” comes an unfamiliar voice on the other end. “This is Lee Goldberg and I’m calling to let you know that you’ve won the Write a Dead Man contest!”

I paused for a minute. My son kept screaming. With the look of shock on my face, I think my wife must have thought there was bad news on the other end.

“Oh, hi,” I said rather stupidly.

For the next thirty seconds, Lee went through some details, most of which I only caught fragments of.  Feeling like an idiot, I could hardly speak when he was done. The light turned green. A good thing, too; it’s likely the only thing that unfroze me from the amazing news that I had yet to digest.

We’re looking forward to working with him on his DEAD MAN tale, which will be published in early 2013.

It’s the Story, Stupid

TOP SUSPENSE BLOG HEADER 3Seems to me that authors are losing track of what really matters… not the formatting, covers, tweeting, pinning and promotion…it's the story, stupid. I blog about it today at Top Suspense. Here's an excerpt:

I’ve listened to new writers at conferences or while lurking on writers’ boards and the newbie writers seem obsessed with everything except what matters most: the writing.

I believe it’s that misguided obsession that s leading to the ethical scandals we’ve been seeing lately… like John Locke who hired people to buy his books and write fake reviews (to artificially boost his rankings and acclaim) to establish himself… and Stephen Leather and RJ Ellory who both used “sock-puppets” on Amazon and social media to generate false buzz and fake reviews to boost their popularity and attack their "rivals."

What authors need to remind themselves is that all of that formatting, pricing, tweeting, social networking, etc. is meaningless if you don’t know how to tell a good story, create compelling characters, develop a strong voice, set a scene, establish a sense of place, or manage point-of-view.

I rarely hear writers anymore talking about the pluses and minuses of out-lining, the importance of an active protagonist, the different kinds of conflict, or the elements of structure. The craft of writing has taken a backseat to the business of publishing.

We Have a Winner!

We are pleased to announce that BARRY NAPIER has won the "You Can Write a DEAD MAN Novel" Contest, snagging a publishing contract for his DEAD MAN tale DREAMLAND, a $500 advance, and a $500 gift card.

Barry has published more than 40 short stories and poems in print and online. He is the author of the Everything Theory series, The Hollows, The Masks of Our Fathers, and Broken Nightlights, a short story collection. He has also had work published thought various small presses, including his novel The Bleeding Room, and two poetry collections. He has served as guest poetry editor of Inkspill Magazine and has recently completed compiling and editing the poetry anthology I Know What I Saw: poems of the unexplained.

You'll be seeing his book in the DEAD MAN series in early 2013. But you can get a sneak peek right now. His winning chapter is below.

Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest.

DREAMLAND
            She’d been in bed for so long that
it seemed unnatural to be standing again. 
Her old aching knees seemed fifty years younger and the lungs that had
hindered her lifestyle for the last five years seemed reinvigorated, breathing
in the crisp air of the afternoon.  When
she breathed the clean air in it made her body feel plump, a far cry from the
frail state she had last seen herself in.
            She was standing in the middle of an
ancient dirt road, the ditches to each side so worn and faded that she could
imagine the finger of God etching them shortly after Eden.  The dirt track wound away to both sides,
bending to the right ahead of her where it eventually merged into the distant
forest.  In the other direction, the path
sketched itself through an impossibly green field where it then narrowed to a
pencil point on the horizon of greens and blues.
            A butterfly passed by her, circled
back around her head and perched on her shoulder.  It seemed to be directing her eyes slightly
to the left where a long forgotten white house stood untouched by human hands
for countless years.  A once-white porch
sat crumbling and gray.  A porch swing hung
from a single chain with its fallen twin curled up in a rusted loop on the
porch boards.
            She knew this all; she had been here
before and she knew that something was missing. 
She looked beyond the house and saw a fence, the majority of it cracked
and fallen.  She waited for a human
shadow to fall across its weak posts but there was nothing.  The sun blazed down fat and bright but there
was nothing behind the fence to cast a shadow, not a man, not an animal, not so
much as a tree.
            She frowned and waited.  She knew that she wouldn’t be here long; she
could already feel the weight of reality tugging at her, pulling her towards a
world where her knees still flared with pain, where her now delicate fingers
were callused and weathered.
            She looked back to the wooden fence,
its rails splintered and cracked, waiting for that figure to appear.  But the blue country sky on the other side of
the fence and the golden fields that rolled out beyond them were all there was
to see.
And
as beautiful as this all seemed, she was still slightly disappointed; the man
that should be standing there by the fence post was not coming.
            In this to-good-to-be-true place,
she felt a tear forming in the corner of her eye.  It was the sweetest relief imaginable, the
most normal thing her body had done in weeks. 
And with that sign of human frailty, that other place stopped tugging at
her and simply claimed her.
            She let out a gasp and tried
desperately to feel the warmth of the tear on her cheek before she was taken.
            She opened her weary eyes to a white
ceiling, dreary walls and poor light. 
She felt something on her shoulder, wondering if she had somehow brought
the butterfly back from that country road. 
But when she lolled her head to the side, she saw what perched there and
it was not a butterfly.
A
plastic tube brushed against her shoulder where a small patch of her dry skin
was exposed by the yellow hospital gown that she wore.  The tube traveled upwards, into her nose and
then, in the opposite direction, over the side of the bed and into some machine
that hummed patiently.
            “Momma, you’re awake…”
            She looked over and saw
Chester.  His graying hair was frazzled
and the poor boy looked as if he hadn’t slept in ages.  Calling him a boy seemed foolish; the amount of life lived and the knowledge
acquired from it was evident in his eyes. 
But she had held him inside of her for nine months, had breastfed him,
had clothed him and sent him to college, had nurtured him through his first
broken heart, his first experience with death…fifty-five years old or not,
Chester would always be her little boy.
            “Yeah,” she said in a shaky hoarse
voice.  “Haven’t gone anywhere yet.”  
            She looked into his eyes, made tiny
behind the lenses of his glasses, and was reminded of the man she had not seen
by the fence.
            “You were smiling in your sleep,”
Chester said.  He grinned at her when he
said it, not voicing the fact that it pleased him to know that whatever dream
she had been having could very well be her last, and that he was glad it had
made her happy.
            The machine that she was plugged
into made a persistent beep-beep sound, like a metronome for the life she had
left to live.  But she did not hear
it.  These days, it was hard to hear
anything past the rattle in her chest when she breathed.
            There was a fleeting moment when she
knew that she needed to tell Chester something, but she couldn’t remember
what.  She knew that he would like to
know about the house she had seen, the failing fence and the winding country
road.  But that wasn’t it…there was
something more.
            Her eyes were growing heavy and she
felt the ghost traces of pain begin to tickle her at the knees.  She felt her eyelids fluttering and was
vaguely aware that her boy was reaching out, grasping her hand lovingly.
            “Chester,” she said, so softly that
she didn’t know if he had heard her. 
“The man at the fence…so handsome…please stay away from the man at the
fence…”
            But before her son could respond,
she was gone again.
            She wore a sundress and smelled of
jasmine.  The smell was pushed out ahead
of her by the country breeze at her back, making it so that she walked into her
own scent as she made her way over the gentle rise of an impossibly green
hill.  There was a man walking with her,
his eyes glued to her.  He usually wore a
hat but, in those times when chivalry wasn’t quite dead just yet, he held it in
his hands.  His dark brown hair stood up
in several directions as a result.
            “Do you not love me?” he asked.  “Is that it?”
            “Of course it’s not,” she said.  “Nothing is ever so simple that it can be
blamed on love.  Do all men think women
are that stupid?”
            He grinned and looked down to his
feet.  “No, I suppose not,” he said.
            She looked to him quickly, out of
the corner of her eye, and repressed a smile. 
There was the slightest trace of grass stains along the elbows of his
shirt sleeve from where they had been rolling in the grass, kissing. Yet when
his hands had found the waistband of her skirt, she had pushed him playfully
away, stood up and began walking.  It was
not the first time she had done this.
            “Are you waiting on marriage, then?”
he asked.  “If that’s the case, I think
you know I would marry you.”
            She smiled at him and stopped for a
moment.  “Not all women are that stupid, either,” she said and then
started walking again.
            She glanced down the hill and saw
the dirt track that would lead her home. 
The sunset cast out shades of subtle gold that seemed to be sewn into
the ditches along the track.  God, it was
such a beautiful day.  Had she had a few
more glasses of wine with her lunch earlier, perhaps she would have given him
what he had been seeking from her for nearly a year.  The thought made her tremble inside and she
felt an anxiousness in that place that her mother told her was supposed to only
be for the man she married.
            As they neared the dirt road, her
male companion tensed up a bit because he knew this is where they parted
ways.  “Do you want me to walk you home?”
he asked.
            “I’m a big girl,” she said.  “I think I’ll be okay.”
            He nodded, leaned in and kissed her
on the mouth.  He tasted like salt and
she knew that the taste of wine was still lingering on her own lips.  When their tongues touched, she felt that
creeping need once again.  She broke the
kiss and smiled at him.
            “Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
            She nodded and gave him another
kiss, this one on the cheek, and turned away from him.
            A few steps down the road, she
paused.  Up ahead she could see the
framing of a fence, like a giant crooked spine springing from the ground.  She felt the slightest bit of uncertainty and
the fear caused her to turn back towards her boyfriend.
            He was headed down the road, his
shoulder hunched like a defeated man and his hat once again on his head.  She smiled briefly at him, considered going
to him and then thought better of it. 
She watched him go until he was nothing more than a silhouette and then
she started walking again.
In
a blur of motion that only exists in dreams, she found herself standing by the
fence. The man she has been expecting is standing there as if he had been there
all along.  He wore torn blue overalls
and a straw hat on his head, but she somehow knows that this is not what he
wears most of the time.
“How
do?” she said.  
            The man grinned and adjusted the
straw hat.  He looked as if he might be a
bit uncomfortable, but he never took his eyes off of her.  He didn’t speak to her, only looked her up
and down.
            She stared right back, cocking her
head to the side and studying him as best as she could.  She felt her heart pulling in two directions,
one wanting to retreat back down the dirt trail, the other wanting to stay here
with this man, to venture into that old abandoned white farmhouse with him and
learn his secrets.
            Without a word, the man removed his
hat in a sign of chivalry.  The gesture
made no sense to her, but she instantly felt an irrational fear spreading
through her. 
            And then the smell of it hit her.
            Something dead…the smell of a gutted
animal left the rot in the woods in the summer. 
The smell was overpowering and she thought that it might be coming from
the man at the fence—a man that was very familiar to her. 
            “Why are you here?” she asked
him.  “I know this is just a dream. I know
I am old and dying in the real world. Why are you, of all people, here?”
            When he opened his mouth to speak,
she saw his teeth.  They were misshapen,
slightly yellowed.  Sharp.
            “The same as before,” he said, his
voice like a spring breeze.  “To let you know
it is almost time.”
“I
don’t understand.”
“We’re
coming,” he said to her with a smile.
            Then a scream rose up in her throat
(her dreaming throat and her real one) and she opened her eyes to the hospital
room.
            She saw Chester again, confused and
crying.  She saw the bright lights
overhead and a muted television on the wall. 
And for just a fleeting moment, she saw his shape there in the room with
her.  Seeing this, she screamed
again.  She kept screaming until two
nurses came into the room and gave her an injection which calmed her almost
immediately.
            As she rest her head back onto the
pillow, she looked to Chester and shook her head in defeat.
“Don’t
let him in,” she told her son.  “Keep him
out…he’s coming…”
           

The Mail I Get

People seem to think I'm available for hire, and at a moment's notice, too. I get a lot of emails like this one, which I received this morning:

could you please call me ref writing a book…I need help. here is my number: XXX-XXX-XXXX

Then, an hour later:

ok its early. my number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. Dont know if i could afford u but i would gladly pay to have this story portrayed as fiction..and it may save someones life thanks truth IS stranger than fiction

I'm not calling her. Ever. Or responding to her emails (I expect to get more as she awaits the call that will never come).

I also get a lot of variations on the following email:

My Dad is a big, big Monk fan and has read all of your books. Please send him an autographed book or a personalized, signed, chatty note by regular mail, preferably hand-written (NOT a form letter! It must be personal!). He would appreciate it very much. His name is Dave XYZ. Here is his mailing address. Thank you.

What always gets me about these kinds of emails are the very specific demands. My reflex is to ignore bossy emails like this one, particularly ones that want free books (they do know I make my living SELLING books, right??). But I do appreciate Dave's long readership, and don't want to penalize him for his son's "you-work-for-me" attitude. So I sent Dave a handwritten postcard:

Dave,

Mr. Monk says "never eat mixed nuts." Hope you follow his advice and continue to enjoy the books.

Lee 

PS – This card makes a handy bookmark or coaster. Never fold page corners or leave rings on tables.

Unethical Scumbags

Remember the good old days when ethical behavior mattered? Now we have guys like Todd Rutherford, who take pride in unethical and dishonest conduct…in his case, being paid thousands of dollars to write fake, positive Amazon reviews for authors… and scores of talentless authors so desperate for acclaim they will pay to delude themselves and swindle readers. The New York Times wrote about Rutherford’s lucrative scam today. Here’s an excerpt:

Suddenly it hit him. Instead of trying to cajole others to review a client’s work, why not cut out the middleman and write the review himself? Then it would say exactly what the client wanted — that it was a terrific book. A shattering novel. A classic memoir. Will change your life. Lyrical and gripping, Stunning and compelling. Or words to that effect.

In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site,GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.

There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.

A polite fellow with a rakish goatee and an entrepreneurial bent, Mr. Rutherford has been on the edges of publishing for most of his career. Before working for the self-publishing house, he owned a distributor of inspirational books. Before that, he was sales manager for a religious publishing house. Nothing ever quite worked out as well as he hoped. With the reviews business, though, “it was like I hit the mother lode.”

I think Amazon and Barnes & Noble should remove all the reader reviews for any author who has paid Rutherford, or any scumbags like him, for purchased praise.

In the article, author Roland Hughes, who is eager to become a “recognized author,” admits to paying for the positive reviews of his novel INFINITE EXPOSURE. So I left him this review on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for free:

I have not read this book which, according to an interview with Hughes in today’s New York Times, means I have a lot in common with the reviewers here… at least the ones who’ve praised the book. Hughes admits to buying positive reviews in his quest to become “a recognized author.” Here’s some advice. Actually write a good book. You do not gain readers, or recognition, by swindling readers into buying your books with fake praise. It’s unethical and shows a startling lack of respect for your reader…not to mention yourself. You can have this review for free.

But the big shocker is that “bestselling” author John Locke admits to buying as many as 300 fake reviews to bolster the popularity of his 99 cent detective novels.

Mr. Locke is unwilling to say that paying for reviews made a big difference. “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful,” he said. “But it’s a lot easier to buy them than cultivating an audience.”

Apparently, it worked for him. He’s sold a million books on Amazon and scored a publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. It should be interesting to see if he suffers any blowback for his highly unethical conduct. At the minimum, Amazon should delete all of his favorable reviews, since so many of them are now suspect.

Breastmania

Big-breastsI was searching the Internet, trying to learn more about Lee E. Wells, the author of the novel DAY OF THE OUTLAW, the basis for the great western movie of the same name that I watched yesterday, when I came across this hilarious review for his novel PAGEANT. Here's an excerpt:

While the plot travels like a rickety go-cart on the highway of disaster, all the characters are grabbing woman-flesh like it's going out of style. Neither protagonist can make it out of a room without plunging their eyes down the "swell of breasts", "the dark beginning of the valley between breasts" (!?), "full, white, tip-tilted breasts", "the outer curves of breasts", "the untanned swell of the upper curve of her breasts" and  "the swelling curve of upper breasts", "gold-bordered curves", "full-rounded breasts", "water-plastered breasts" and a score of relatively-tactful "full-figures". (For the record, these phrases are all in the first three chapters.)

 Why do his descriptions of breasts all sound like directions to my house? Follow the outer curve until the highway swells up the fully-rounded, untamed, tip-tilted hill, then plunges into the valley.