If you’re a parent who, like me, had to read GOODNIGHT MOON to your child every night, you’ll love this New Yorker cartoon by Jack Ziegler as much as I do.
Wasserman is Out
LA Observed is reporting that Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the Book Review.
There since 1996, he informed his staff on Friday, after having a
discussion with editor John Carroll about his waning independence.
Wasserman has been known to be unhappy about the level of scrutiny he
receives from Deputy Managing Editor John Montorio and Associate Editor
of Features Tim Rutten. Some sources say the meeting with Carroll was
essentially an ultimatum, with Wasserman needing to hear that he would
be free to run the Book Review as he saw fit. He didn’t hear that, so
he resigned and reportedly has "irons in the fire," but no other job
yet. His last day
officially is said to be May 13.
This will come as sad news to all those insomniacs who have been using the Book Review as a sure-fire sleeping pill for the last few years. Speaking of which, The Elegant Variation conducted another brilliant autopsy today of Sunday’s D.O.A. edition of the LATBR.
The Suspense was Killing Otto Penzler
The winners of this year’s Agatha Awards were announced today:
Best Novel – Jacqueline Winspear, BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Best First Novel –
Harley Jane Kozak, DATING DEAD MEN
Best Short Story – Elaine Viets, "The
Wedding Knife" (from CHESAPEAKE CRIMES)
Best Nonfiction – Jack French,
PRIVATE EYELASHES
Best Children’s/Young Adult – Blue Balliette, CHASING
VERMEER
Congratulations to all the winners, but most of all my friends Harley, Elaine and Jacqueline!
Ah, the Eighties…
Patrick Hynes reviews the first season boxed set of DYNASTY for the American Spectator.
Dynasty is commonly classified as a "primetime soap opera," but it is
indeed more like a cartoon. Most of the characters in this serial drama are
avowed Republicans. As such they are greedy, lustful, and hateful of minorities.
(Not much has changed there, eh?) The angry Middle Easterners look more like
bronzed beatniks. Most of them are played by extras with Italian last names.
And, of course, the rich lead shiftless lives of exaggerated extravagance while
the poorer characters are wholly sympathetic saints……In another 25 years or so there will be another television show in which all the
villains are greedy, lecherous Republicans and the heroes are simple folk with
progressive values. That much is certain, the entertainment business being what
it is. We can only hope that the story surrounding these stock characters is as
juicy as Dynasty was. And still is.
Patrick doesn’t have cable, and doesn’t watch TV at all, so he missed the docudrama DYNASTY: BEHIND THE SCENES this season. Is it any coincidence the show came back in the midst of another oil crisis…and one trial after another of greedy CEOs? This time, though, the Middle Easterners were played by deeply tanned Canadians…
Coffee Shop Novelist
CBS has posted an interesting interview with my friend Harlan Coben, culled from his appearance on The Early Show. Here’s an excerpt on how he writes:
"I usually go to, like, a local coffee shop or the library. I like a
little white noise when I write, but not as much white noise as my
kids. So I usually go someplace. It makes me concentrate harder. You
look like you’re being a jerk writing in a coffee shop, but that’s
where I work best."Coben candidly admits he’s not as big on research as many other
fiction writers. "I’m more from the, ‘Hum a few bars and fake it’
genre," he says to Smith. "Tell you the truth, I do research, but I’m
really more concerned with making sure that I am holding you hostage
and gripping you. The research has to come secondary. Sometimes a
writer uses research as an excuse not to write, not to grip, to tell
you cute factoids. I don’t want to do that. I want it do it with the
story."
I have no problem making things up — it’s ficton, after all, so I agree with Harlan on that score. But I couldn’t write in a coffee shop or a Starbucks, I’d feel horribly self-conscious (especially in L.A.). You walk into any Starbucks in L.A., and people are sitting there writing scripts, almost as if they are striking a pose: "Hey, look at me, I’m a screenwriter. Are you impressed? Would you like to fuck me? Or, better yet, hire me?" It feel so fake to me. I’m sure some of them really are screenwriters, and they just like a good cup of coffee while they write, but I still hate it. So I try to avoid doing any writing at all in restaurants or hotel lobbies, especially in L.A., Vancouver or Toronto.
That said, I write a lot on airplanes, usually because I am on some kind of pressing deadline and can’t afford not to use the five or six hours. Writing on a plane isn’t so bad if I’m with my family or traveling Bill Rabkin, my TV writing/producing partner. But when i’m traveling alone, with a stranger sitting beside me, it’s extremely awkward. It’s not easy writing when my wife is looking over my shoulder, much less a complete stranger…especially if you’re describing a homicide or somebody having sex. I don’t blame the stranger for intruding on my privacy– we’re crammed so close together it would be damn hard not to look at the screen. So what I do is put on a pair of headphones, crank up the music, and pretend I am all alone. In a sense, I have to forget I am on an airplane at all — I have to lose myself completely in my fictional world. It usually works.
How do you feel about writing in public?
Otto is At It Again
Otto Penzler trashes writers of so-called "cozies" in an interview with Book Standard. This time, he says cozies aren’t worthy of Edgar consideration.
Are female mystery-writers—most often the authors of
the more non-threatening, proper cozies—even worthy of the award? Otto
Penzler, dean of mystery-writing in America, says no.
“The women who write [cozies] stop the action to go shopping, create a
recipe, or take care of cats,” he says. “Cozies are not serious
literature. They don’t deserve to win. Men take [writing] more
seriously as art. Men labor over a book to make it literature. There
are wonderful exceptions, of course—P.D. James, Ruth Rendell.”
Margaret Maron, president of Mystery Writers of America, which doles out the Edgars, and winner of one herself (for Bootlegger’s Daughter
in 1993), sniffs at this bias, as she considers it, saying that good
writers have been overlooked by the MWA as a result of unfair favoring
of male authors and their bloodier plots. “Wit, humor, and domesticity
haven’t been considered as significant as blood and violence.
He says this stuff, casually dismissing some of the genre’s best-loved writers and their books, and yet whenever he shows up at mystery conventions, people bow at his feet like he’s some kind of royalty. I don’t get it.
Selling Fanfic to Publishers
I received an email today from a guy who writes fanfic in "the SEAQUEST universe" and would like to see it published as novels. Here’s part of what he wrote me:
We see novels based on other universes published all the time. Be they
the Extended-Universe Star Wars novels written by people like Timothy
Zahn or the Star Trek novels which go largely uncreditted by Paramount
studios, and they seem to do fairly well. Do you have any tips on how
I may actually go getting Atlantis published? Obviously there would be
copyright issues that need to be resolved with Universal studios and
so on, but I don’t have the foggiest on where to begin!
First off, your initial premise is wrong: Paramount maintains rigid control over the STAR TREK novels as does Lucasfilm over the STAR WARS books.
I would say it would be impossible to get Atlantis, your SeaQuest-derived work, published and it would be an utter waste of time to pursue it. But, for the sake of argument, you would have to contact Cindy Chang at Universal Licensing in Los Angeles for permission to shop it around. Then whatever publisher you found would have to pay Universal a license fee to publish your work.
There are two ways that licensed novels are usually pursued.
1) The studio offers their TV or movie property to publishers.
2) a publisher contacts a studio and says they are interested in a particular property, what would it cost to license it?
In either case, the studio is paid a license fee, receives royalties, and usually maintains creative control over the property (ie they can approve or reject writers, stories, manuscripts, etc.).
For instance, in my case, Penguin/Putnam had tremendous success with the MURDER SHE WROTE novels (licensed from Universal) and wanted to come up with a companion series that would appeal to the same audience. So they approached Paramount and licensed DIAGNOSIS MURDER from them, then they came to me to write the books (though I had to be approved by Paramount first). I am paid an advance and a royalty. Paramount, in addition to the license fee, also gets royalties. All my manuscripts are read, and approved, by Paramount before they are published.
My advice to you is to move on. It’s time to write something original…and to put your efforts into getting that published instead.
Marmaduchy
I was doing research on the cartoon strip "Marmaduke," the huge dog, for my MONK novel (Monk loves Marmaduke), when I stumbled on this entertaining discussion of fandom at Websnark. He illustrates his ideas by describing what Marmaduke fandom might be like:
The Marmaduke fandom, on the other hand, spends a significant amount of time
on the Marmaduke forum (the Marmaduchy, let’s call it). They have many different
discussions on Marmaduke, and on things that have nothing to do with Marmaduke
— to the point that the Marmaduke forum moderators had to create a specific
topic for off-topic posts, and have to kick folks there whenever they stray.
They trade LJ icons and forum avatars based on Marmaduke art. They collect pithy
Marmaduke sayings. They affirm each other and their common love of Marmaduke,
and they find close friends through Marmaduke — friends that mean a lot to them
far beyond Marmaduke. This is what the Marmaduke Fandom has given them, and it
means everything to them.The idea, for many of the Marmaducets and duchesses (so clever, those
Marmaduke fans — the guys naming themselves after currency and the girls making
a delightful play on Marmaduke’s name), is not so much the individual Marmaduke
strips themselves, but the zeitgeist of all that is Marmaduke. It’s the
attitude. It’s how Marmaduke makes them feel, and how much they can amplify that
feeling in the company of others. It can be terrifically empowering and it can
be terrifically satisfying. Right here, in this little community on the
internet, Marmaduke is the coolest thing around, and by showing your love for
Marmaduke, you’re cool too. And as for Marmaduke-creator Brad Anderson? The
Marmaduchy provides feedback and, more importantly, validation. It’s damn hard
to be a cartoonist — or a creator of any stripe. It takes effort and ego and
skill and talent, and you spend a huge amount of time wondering if anyone gives
a fuck. The Marmaduchy tells Anderson "yes. Yes, we give a fuck. We give many
fucks. In fact, if you want us to, several of us will in fact have sex with you
if you want, because you have brought so much pleasure to our lives that we
would dearly love to repay you."
The dark side of fandom, he says, is Fan Entitlement, which he describes like this:
Kill Bill, Kill Cinema
I enjoyed KILL BILL. Well, at least parts of it. Was it a great movie? No. Was it visually interesting and fun? Sure. That said, I think Ron Rosenbaum’s observations in The New York Observer are absolutely correct:
I don’t blame you if any or all of these made it impossible for you
to stay awake for the eyeball-squishing, that moment of cinematic
mastery, the true climax of the two-part, four-hour Tarantino
"masterpiece."Still, it’s too bad if you missed it, because it was the perfect
epitome of and metaphor for what I would like to call "The Cinema of
Pretentious Stupidity." The eyeball-squishing represented the crushing
of vision by lead-footed pretension, the blinding of creativity by
referentiality. The idea that ceaseless tedious references to obscure
martial-arts movies known mainly by video-store geeks adds up to art.I’ve heard so many defenses of Kill Bill that depend on the
apparently marvelous and unheard-of-before wonder of its
referentiality. Dude, just because you make a reference—or many
references—doesn’t make it meaningful or worth four hours of our time.
(Thanks to Ed Gorman for the heads-up on this!)
Scientology on the Set
Here’s an astonishing little snippet from Spiegel’s terrific interview with Tom Cruise. The italicized comments in brackets are mine..
SPIEGEL: We visited one of your locations near Los Angeles and were amazed to find a fully staffed tent of the Scientology organization right next to the food tents for the journalists and extras.
Cruise: What were you amazed about?
[Translation: I’m rich and powerful and I can do whatever the hell I want. Don’t you realize that?]SPIEGEL: Why do you go so extremely public about your personal convictions?
Cruise: I believe in freedom of speech. I felt honored to have volunteer Scientology ministers on the set. They were helping the crew.
[Helping the crew with what?] When I’m working on a movie, I do anything I can to help the people I’m spending time with. I believe in communication. [I’m sure the crew was clamoring for a Scientologist on the set. Crew members often need to get in touch with their past lives while moving lights around. That’s also why you see so many ministers of other cults and religious faiths on movie sets.]SPIEGEL: The tent of a sect at someone’s working place still seems somewhat strange to us. Mr. Spielberg, did that tent strike you as unusual?
Spielberg: I saw it as an information tent. No one was compelled to frequent it, but it was available for anybody who had an open mind and was curious about someone else’s belief system.
[So why weren’t there ‘information tents’ from other religious groups and cults on the set…or on the sets of your other movies that don’t star Tom Cruise? I didn’t realize a movie set was a religion and cult faire].Cruise:The volunteer Scientology ministers were there to help the sick and injured. [Was it a movie…or a war zone? And what help could Scientologists provide to the sick and injured? Isn’t that why you have a nurse on the set? Or how about just calling some Paramedics?] People on the set appreciated that. [Oh yeah, I bet.]
Imagine what would happen if I was producing a TV series and invited
some Mormons or Jews or Christians or Muslims to pitch tents on the set and minister to the "sick and injured" on my crew. There would be an uproar, and justifiably so. But I’m not Tom Cruise. I don’t make billions of dollars for Hollywood studios.