Tony Fennelly, one of the Edgar judges in the Best Paperback Original committee, has gone on DorothyL, a discussion group of mystery fans and writers, to air her displeasure about the committee’s choice for the Edgar. She also talks about some of the deliberations (without naming the specific judges she disagreed with). This is the second year in a row that a judge has violated the confidentiality rules that govern Edgar judging and gone public with details about committee deliberations (Hal Glatzer did it last year in far more detail). This outrageously unprofessional behavior infuriates me. Judges go into the Edgar process knowing from the outset what the rules are and agree to them. Fennelly and Glatzer’s wrong-headed conduct reflects badly on the MWA, the Edgars, their fellow judges, and the award winners. I think it’s time that the MWA consider adopting disciplinary actions against members who violate the confidentiality of Edgar judging. What’s your view?
What To Do Next?
This is a post from my writing/producing partner William Rabkin. He asked me to share it with you so he could get your advice:
I’m facing a big question, and I’d like some advice from others who have
found themselves in this position. I’ve just finished my first novel — aside
from implementing whatever brilliant suggestions my esteemed partner will
inevitably have — and am ready to move on. But I am torn between two projects.
My question is: How do you decide what to start next?The one I just finished was a no-brainer. It was based on a completed
script that had been optioned by a Major Producer, who had then been unable to
set it up anywhere. I knew the story worked and would work even better in book
form.But now the decision is nowhere near as clear cut. I’ve got one sort of
Elmore-Leonard-Meets-PT-Anderson thriller based on a partial script I abandoned
when I realized that what I wanted to accomplish with it could only be done in a
book, not a script. (Not a salable script, anyway, not unless I just finished
writing and directing Boogie Nights.) The other is also a thriller, but more
personal and emotional.I’ve been planning on jumping into the first idea for months. But now that
I’m actually there, my heart and mind keep drifting to the other one. Downside
is, it’s going to be a lot harder. It’s not plotted — the other one is about
half-plotted, and I have a pretty good idea about the final trajectory — and
frankly, there are things in it I’m kind of scared to dive into for personal
reasons. But at the same time, it’s exciting me in a way the other one isn’t.
Sometimes scary is good.As for commercial potential, I’d say they’re about the same. As in, who
knows?My intellect is telling me to do the first one first, knock it out and move
on to the other one as my third novel. But my heart is pulling me in the other
direction. One way or another, I’ve got to commit.If you’re not Lee Goldberg, with deadlines rushing at you every month and a
new book coming out every other week, how do you guys choose your next
project?
On the Radio/On the Air
This is a test, of sorts. I want to see if I can integrate audio and video files into my blog posts. So here is a half-hour radio interview I did last week on Gregory Vleisides’ "Metro Voice" show on KCWJ in Kansas City:
Download goldberg_interview_.mp3
And here is the sales presentation for THE CHIEF, the unsold pilot I did a few years ago (and talked about in a blog post earlier today):
Please let me know if you’re able to download and listen/view these files. Thanks!
An Email I’m Not Going to Answer
I got his creepy email from The Netherlands today:
Hello mr. Goldberg,
How do you do? i’m not so fine.
Iám a big fan of diagnosis murder and also from the familly van Dyke, but i
don’t no how to write with them, i mis them very much. I hope that i can see
them some time, that’s my dream and it allways will be, because we haven’t no
money to come to America to find them.Please could you help me? I hope so,’you are my last change.
Weep for the Scammer
Get-rich-quick huckster Lori Prokop is "saddened" that aspiring writers, whose desperation for publication makes them easy prey, aren’t falling for her transparent BookMillionare Reality Show scam. She writes:
We
are building both a television show, television viewing audience and
online community to highlight the writing community. To see this
slammed by members of the writing community is a sad situation.
It certainly is for her…and probably a real shocker, too. She was counting on the proven gullibility of aspiring writers. But I had no idea that all Lori, whose personal email address is Cash@megabestseller.com, really wanted to do was help the community of writers and promote world peace. I feel so guilty.
This
type of slamming saddens me as I can see people who write and
communicate in this manner are hurt, frustrated and need help healing
past wounds. My heart goes out to them but I also request they refrain
from further slams and instead speak directly to me to receive the
facts.
Translation: "Stop talking about my scam in public, you’re scaring away all the suckers!"
iUniverse or PublishAmerica?
I received this email today:
I was just ready to send my manuscript off to them when I stumbled upon your
article. Last time I published I used iuniverse. Do you have any other
feedback that you would like to share with me regarding these two companies?
I replied: I think self-publishing your novel is a mistake, but if you’re going to do it,
go with iUniverse. They are honest about who they are and what they do and
they turn out a very nice looking product.
Good-Riddance to Star Trek
It’s about time STAR TREK was cancelled, or so says bestselling science fiction author Orson Scott Card in the Los Angeles Times. He was no fan of the original series, either.
The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few
exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show
could be bad.
Yikes, is he in for it from "The Fen. " And he takes a shot at them, too.
And then the madness really got underway. They started making
costumes and wearing pointy ears. They wrote messages in Klingon, they
wrote their own stories about the characters, filling in what was left
out — including, in one truly specialized subgenre, the "Kirk-Spock"
stories in which their relationship was not as platonic and emotionless
as the TV show depicted it.
He’s certainly one author who isn’t afraid to express a controversial opinion that could, uh, alienate his readers.
Flying Without a Pilot
TV Writer Paul Guyot tells all about the demise of his TNT pilot THE DARK, which he wrote and produced with Stephen J. Cannell and that was directed by Walter Hill. So what went wrong?
Who knows what happened – you can speculate and Monday morning
quarterback forever – but the bottom line was once the thing was shot,
edited and presented to the network, the original script and story just
wasn’t there. The first thing the network said when they saw the cut was "Where’s the script we bought?"Now, I’m not saying it was awful. I don’t love the finished product,
but I will say that, overall, I’m happy with about 70% of it. These
days that’s not a bad percentage. But it was that other third that
killed us.
A few years ago, we shot a two-hour, back-door pilot on DIAGNOSIS MURDER starring Fred Dryer as the Chief of Police of Los Angeles. The co-star was an unknown actor named Neal McDonough, who has since gone on to star in BAND OF BROTHERS, BOOMTOWN and MEDICAL INVESTIGATIONS (as well as a three-episode arc on MARTIAL LAW for us). The pilot was called THE CHIEF.
Since DIAGNOSIS MURDER was, itself, a spin-off of JAKE AND THE FATMAN (which itself was a spin-off of MATLOCK), Fred Silverman demanded that we do at least one pilot per season imbedded in an episode of the show.
This is a cheap way to make a pilot and allows the studio an opportunity to recoup their costs in syndication. You also go straight to film without all the intermediate steps in the development process. The other advantage is that the pilot will air and the ratings, if they are high enough, can be a valuable sales tool.
The downside is that backdoor pilots-as-episodes have a much harder time being taken seriously at the network because they usually aren’t developed through the usual channels and, therefore, there’s no one championing them internally at the network. (Of course lots of pilot-as-episodes have sold… CSI:MIAMI and MORK AND MINDY are a few such examples, my book UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS is littered with others that haven’t, like ASSIGNMENT EARTH from STAR TREK and LUTHOR GILLIS form MAGNUM PI)
THE CHIEF had a lot going for it. For one thing, we had Fred Dryer, a proven star with HUNTER and this role was absolutely perfect for him (and I have to say, he was great in it). For another, the two-hour pilot aired during sweeps and got fantastic ratings, ranking something like #14 for the week, a tremendous accomplishment for us. And finally, we tested the show with audiences at ASI and the scores were amazing, among the best our partner Fred Silverman (former head of ABC, CBS and NBC) had ever seen. We were sure we had a slam-dunk sale at CBS…and if they were foolish enough to pass on it, we definitely land at another next network. Little did we know…
We met with Les Moonves at CBS…and he passed. He didn’t want to work with Fred Dryer. We met with Jaime Tarses at ABC. She didn’t want to work with Dryer. We met with Dean Valentine at UPN. He didn’t want to work with Dryer. And so it went at every network. What killed us wasn’t the execution, the concept, the acting, the ratings, or the testing. What killed us was bad blood between Dryer and execs he’d worked with before on other projects. Basically, we were victims of the burned bridges Dryer had left in his wake. The television audience loved Fred Dryer, but the major network execs didn’t. Had we known that going in, we would have cast someone else as THE CHIEF. Then again, we might not have enjoyed the same terrific ratings and sky-high testing…not that they did us any good in the end. (Ironically, CBS ended up doing a similar show with Craig T. Nelson
called THE DISTRICT. And from what I hear, Nelson was no picnic)
I’ve since had another experience like that with another star which is why, from now on, we call around about the actors we’re thinking about working with so we aren’t derailed from the get-go by burned bridges or a history of "difficult behavior on the set.
(You can read the two-part pilot script here and here or watch a five minute sales presentation culled from the two-hour movie here, just go to THE CHIEF logo and click on it).
Hot Sex and Gory Violence
Graham at My Boog Pages has unearthed my sleazy past of Hot Sex and Gory Violence, which I wrote about in Newsweek.
[The article] detailed Lee’s work on a timelessly classic men’s adventure series, .357 Vigilante." I’d only read a few lines when I was shocked to realize that I had read this piece when it came out. 21 years ago.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.I
was a big fan of the Mack Bolan, "The Executioner" series back then,
and when I stumbled across the article in a doctor’s office waiting
room I read it. At that time Lee was a disaffected college student who,
instead of partying or dating, spent his time writing about a man with
a large, loaded, concealed weapon.
At the time, I liked to think of myself as a man with a large, loaded, concealed weapon. Sometimes I still do.
The Bottom Line
A reader alerted me to this "blowback" from my Hot Buttons post from last week. Vera, on her blog, thinks an interesting issue got lost in the 164 comments about fanfic the post generated.
He was reporting on a mystery writer’s knees-up and wrote some stuff
about controversial yet unspoken opinions among mystery writers such as
the inappropriately open membership of MWA (Mystery Writers of
America?) and how many mystery writers objected to fan fiction but were
too scared to ever say this to fans. What followed in comments was
mostly the expected back and forth between a reasonable pro-fan-fiction
writer and a crazy-arse anti-fan-fiction writer with some side comments
from other people.But what interested me most of all was that no-one – NO-ONE – addressed
the issue of why the mystery writers weren’t going to bring the subject
up with fans they met at cons and signings and things. These pro
writers Lee references behave as though they believe that the people
who are writing the fan fiction are the people who buy their books, and
all the associated merchandise should they be so successful to justify
it, and that to alienate those fans is to kiss good-bye to income. When it comes down to the line, it’s the bottom line.
So, what do you think? Are authors afraid to speak their minds on controversial issues for fear of losing readers or awkward encounters with fans?