The Perfect Set-Up for Mystery Novel

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The New Yorker reports that the world’s leading Sherlock Holmes scholar, Richard Lancelyn Green, was found dead under "mysterious circumstances."

He had been investigating the whereabouts of an archive of Conan
Doyle’s papers, which he believed had been stolen. At the same time, he
hinted that there had been threats to his life and that he was being
followed; soon afterward, he was found garroted in his room, surrounded
by Sherlock Holmes books and posters, with a cord around his neck.

Now the "subculture" of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle scholars are trying to deduce how Green was killed.

It’s an odd situation, detective-story enthusiasts
trying to solve a real-life mystery.

Not in TV-Land.  This week, Hallmark starts a new series of TV movies about a mystery bookstore owner who solves murders.

I’m Baaaack!

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I’m back from Hawaii… where it rained non-stop for 9 out of the 10 days that we were there. Ah well, it was still nice to get away from L.A. for awhile.

Many thanks to my brother Tod for keeping the blog lively in my absense… and doing his best to get me into trouble (again!!) with the fanfic community. 

(Note to Tod… as you proved here, and during your guest-hosting stint at Elegant Variations, you’re a natural blogger. When are you getting a blog of your own??)

You Thought Steve Perry Was Bad…How About A Little Roy Orbison Wrapped in Cling-Film!

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Lee returns from vacation today, so let me say thank you for allowing me to come into your homes in his absence. I hope I haven’t turned you off of his site permanently. I swear, he’ll be back with his normal take on all things TV and books. However…before I go…before Lee finds this himself and I am therefore angered at my own lack of ability to find odd and perverse things on my own, please note that Ulli’s Roy Orbison In Clingfilm Website is up and running and shames, I say, shames!, the Steve Perry one below for sheer erotic fan fic oddity. My favorite begins thusly:

In this fantasy Roy Orbison and I are the pilots of a magnificent rocket ship powering through space.

‘Adjust thrusters, Mr. Haarbürste,’ says Roy tersely, his calm capable hands adjusting the controls, the stars reflected in his trademark dark glasses.

‘At once, mein Kapitan!’ The precision-engineered BMW engines send us zooming through the stratosphere and push us back into our upholstered flight-seats.

‘Make your report, Lieutenant Jetta.’

The screen wired to the pod where Jetta nestles snugly flickers into life. ‘WE ARE LEAVING EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE AND ON COURSE FOR SPACE’ says the read-out.

And concludes with:

Everything goes strange. It feels as though my internal organs are sucked out through my ears.

And then…

‘I scoffed at the time but now I perceive you were wise. You will wrap me in cling-film at once.’

Roy unbuckles from his seat and floats out into the middle of the cabin. ‘Commence,’ he says.

We have gone back in time and I will have to wrap Roy all over again!

In space, no-one can hear you squeak with pleasure.

Welcome home, Lee. Enjoy the hate mail.

—Tod

The Road Ain’t No Place To Start A Family…Or To Write FanFic

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Unlike my brother, who has been involved in a long standing war of attrition with writers of fan fic, fans of Battlestar Galactica and a legion of Ken Bruen fans who want to beat his lily white ass, I try to stay away from calling people clueless morons or shut ins or hermits or other names because of their fandom. I mean, I don’t always understand it, and am a little frightened by some aspects of it, but I am generally more  disturbed  by authors who dress like their characters in their author photos.

However, when I saw a link on Gawker to Steve Perry fan fiction, I couldn’t help but think that on a sunny island in Hawaii, Lee would want me to mention it here…and, if possible, engage in a lengthy discussion with the writers of the fan fic, those who support it, lots of people from England (check out Lee’s previous threads on this…a surprising number of Brits call Lee all sorts of interesting names!). But the fact of the matter is…I love Journey! Yeah, I really do. Along with Rick Springfield and Nutella, Journey is one of my main guilty pleasures.  In college, when "Faithfully" came on during a fraternity party,  if you were in my arms on the dancefloor, it meant loving time. That and "I Need Love" by LL Cool J were my jams, man. (To answer your next question, I was in college from 1989-1994, we just had really bad DJs.)

So: if you’re going to write fan fiction about Steve Perry, lead singer of Journey, originator of the red leather pants and shirt tied at the waist look for men, maybe think about inserting a little Tod Goldberg action in there as well.

— Tod

Novelization Sparks Book Series

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It’s not unusual for tv tie-in novels to continue long after the TV series they are based on have ended ("Star Trek," "Murder She Wrote," "Buffy," "Diagnosis Murder" etc.) But in what may be a first in the book-biz, Elizabeth Hand’s novelization of the "Catwoman" screenplay has sold so well, it has sparked a series of original novels from Del Rey. What makes this news even stranger is that the execrable  "Catwoman" movie tanked at the box-office.

The success of the "Catwoman" novelization is also notable for another reason. More and more novelizations and tie-ins are being written by established novelists as opposed to anonymous scribes writing under house names (though such pros as Lawrence Block, Jim Thompson, Walter Wager, Dennis Lynds, and Harry Whittington wrote tie-ins and novelizations).   Elizabeth Hand is an established author of  Gothic horror and romance novels. Undoubtably, that experience made the "Catwoman" tie-in a cut above most of the novelization hack-work out there… and perhaps  tantalized her readers into sampling a book they otherwise wouldn’t have bought.

Max Alan Collins is perhaps the best example, regularly penning novelizations ("The Mummy," "Saving Private Ryan") as well as original TV tie-ins ( "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "Dark Angel").  Edgar winner  Stuart Kaminsky is writing original "CSI: New York" books and Edgar winner Thomas H. Cook wrote the novelization of USA Network mini-series  "Taken."

The availability of name-writers to pen novelizations may have less to do with publishers trying to raise the quality of tie-in merchandise than with the obliteration of the mid-list.  Authors who might not have been available,  or interested, in tie-ins/novelizations before are now glad to accept a quick paycheck for eight weeks-to-ten weeks of work. And now, with the lure of  that quick paycheck turning into a long-running gig, more authors may be lining up for tie-in opportunities.

While authors and publishers benefit financially, readers are getting better-written novelizations and tie-ins.  So is it a win-win situation? Not really. There is one serious downside.  More and more valuable bookshelf space is being taken up by merchandizing tie-ins while fewer and fewer original paperbacks are being commissioned from new authors.

As The World Turns

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While Lee continues to sun himself in Hawaii, the rest of us have to get back to living, which in my case means avoiding the writing I need to do…hence, a bevy links to things that have inspired me to great horror this afternoon:

The Literary World Waits With Baited Breath: Pop singer Ashanti has vast plans to take over the the writing world, she just can’t figure out which avenue to drive on, or, as she told Teen Hollywood, "I was thinking, do I want to do something for the children, or do I want to do something like Ashanti: Behind The Scenes?" I can’t tell you how I’ve clamored for both. I think: Ashanti — My Secret Desire To Be In the Battlestar Galactica Movie would cover both bases.

Dean Koontz Let His Dog Write A Book: And here Lee and I thought it was cool that our sisters will have a book out together next year.

A Year In Books: The Kansas City Star takes a look at the last 12 months of books…including this gem from January:

“Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls” screenwriter (are you ill yet?) Joe Eszterhas publishes his 700-plus-page memoir, Hollywood Animal, which will stand up 11 months later as one of the year’s worst books — or at least the one with the highest hubris quotient.

— Tod

Susan Sontag, Dead at 71

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Author, essayist and National Book Award Winner Susan Sontag died today at the age of 71.

Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died today. She was 71.

Sontag died at 7:10 a.m. today, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

The hospital declined to release a cause of death. Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.

— Tod

Exposition

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Screenwriter John August  discusses the perils of exposition on his terrific screenwriting blog.

Always ask yourself: Would the character actually say this, or is he
only saying it because you need the audience to know some fact or
detail? If the answer is the latter, you’re writing exposition and not
dialogue.

That’s not good.

The  advice he gives applies as much to writing novels as it does to writing scripts.

Wherever possible:

  1. Show the information, rather than having a character say it.
  2. Try to follow a natural line of thought:  A to B to C. 
  3. Simplify.  The reader may not need to know everything.
  4. Keep your hero active in learning the information, rather than passively listening.
  5. Balance natural speech patterns with efficiency.  People rarely say things as concisely as they could.

Avoiding exposition is hard, especially in plot-dependent stories.
But it’s one of the first things a reader notices, so spend the time to
deal with it.

Postcard from kauai

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Here’s the view from our condo in Kauai, where I’m enjoying the Christmas holiday with my family (click on the photo for a larger image).Poipukapili We’re having a wonderful time —  though the weather has been cloudy and rainy for the most part.  We’ve been going to the beach  and taking long walks anyway, even if it’s pouring.   I’ve managed to write a few pages on DM #6 since we got here…though not nearly enough.  We get up early, spend most of the day outside, and are exhausted by the time we finish dinner. We’re all in bed by 9 or 10. I’m sleeping really well (which I haven’t been able to do since my surgery last month), though the roosters outside wake me up around 4 a.m. and I have to put a pillow over my head to go back to sleep.  I still have to go to physical therapy here for my arm, but somehow it isn’t so bad when I can take a long walk on the beach afterwards.  We’ve only been here since Wednesday night…but I already feel so much more rested.

I hope you and your loved ones are having a Merry, and restful, Christmas, too!

Robert Sims Reid

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Whatever happened to author Robert Sims Reid? He wrote a bunch of cop novels set in Montana but I don’t think he’s had a new book out in nearly  a decade…

I read his book RED CORVETTE a few years ago, liked it so much that I picked up everything Reid ever wrote, and then for some reason didn’t get back to him until last week, when something made me pack BIG SKY BLUES among the paperbacks to read in Hawaii.  I’m glad I did. James Crumley, in a cover blurb, called the book

"Perhaps the finest police novel I’ve ever read. I absolutely loved it. Wonderful writing, fine characters, and a great story.  Reid has taken the police novel out of the genre and into literature."

I wouldn’t go quite as far as Crumley, but I thought it was a great book. For all the hoo-hah about THE GUARDS, I thought BIG SKY BLUES was better. At least I enjoyed it a lot more. Although it was published back in ’88, it seems so much fresher than the cop novels I’ve read the last few years. For one thing, the hero isn’t an alcoholic loner on a path of self-destruction who’s hated by his bosses and inexplicably desired by women. The hero of BIG SKY BLUES is married with a teenage daughter and isn’t addicted to anything. And yet, he’s still a deeply troubled, complex character whose life is falling apart around him, particularly his relationships with his wife and his partner.

When I get home, I’m going to catch up on Reid’s other books…