GOLD is a terrible movie, but I absolutely love this cheesy Elmer Bernstein theme song. It's a true guilty pleasure. It's one of my favorite soundtracks.
Edgar’s Checkered Past
I was asked – okay, more like begged — to chronicle the hilarious history of the Edgar for the Edgar Awards banquet program. Unfortunately, you’ll find more laughs reading the tax code. I hate to say it, but the history of the Edgar Awards is almost as boring as an Edgar banquet.
Perhaps that’s why they didn’t run the article (something I only found out about today when my copy of the program arrived in the mail). But since I hate to waste anything that I’ve written, I’ve reproduced some of it here:
The Edgar Awards were launched shortly after the Mystery Writers of America was created in 1945. None of the organizers wanted, at first, to give an award for Best Novel because they were afraid that any writer who didn’t get the award would quit the MWA. So they only honored a Best First Novel. It wasn’t until 1953 that they decided to take the risk. But if you see a bunch of authors walking out en masse tonight when the Best Novel award is announced, now you know why.
The ceramic Edgar Allan Poe statuette, made by Peter Williams, was first given in the third year of the awards. A couple of years later, Peter received an Edgar for his contribution. I’m sure he was thrilled to have another one of those Edgars around the house. (It’s sort of like honoring Sue Grafton by giving her a signed copy of one of her own books, but I guess it’s the thought that counts).
What’s really great about ceramic Edgars is that if yours breaks, any pre-schooler can fix it for you in class. It’s a shame there wasn’t a pre-schooler around when, a few years back, Joel Goldman and Sandra Brown awarded Alex Berensen his Edgar in pieces.
They should probably give out honorary Edgars to anyone who has attended more than one Edgar Awards banquet. Want to get an Al-Queda member to talk? Forget waterboarding. Make him sit through a couple of comedy routines by guys who spend their days in dark rooms writing about decomposing corpses. There’s a reason why Henny Youngman never wrote a serial killer novel and why you’ve never seen a mystery writer do a set at the Comedy Store. But it could be worse. They could sing instead.
Lawrence Block says that for years the Edgars were hosted by lawyer-turned-writer Harold Q.Masur, who worked summers in the Catskills during his teens, and told the same jokes year after year after year. One of them was about a letter to MWA that asked “Can you provide the number of mystery writers in America, broken down by sex.” And Harold’s answer?
“Well, the drink got a lot of them, and gambling has taken its toll, but. . .”
A lot of the same authors get nominated in the same categories year after year at the Edgars, so if you’ve had a few drinks, and hear John Hart, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly or T. Jefferson Parker being called up to the dias yet again, don’t panic if you’re not certain whether you’re conscious, or out cold with your face in your breaded chicken breast having a flashback to last year’s event. Or the one before. Or the one before that.
However, the Edgars are a great opportunity to see your favorite authors in a new light. For instance, I’ve seen Harlan Coben naked. Before an Edgar banquet back in the 90s, when he was still in the midlist, he asked if he could change into his tuxedo in my room. I hear he’s much bigger now.
Which leads me to my next point… the Edgars can also be a humbling experience.
At one of the banquets, author Bill Crider left his table to go the restroom and when he came back, he discovered that his wife Judy had given his seat to Stephen King. She wanted to talk to a famous writer instead of, well, her husband. I think Bill got stuck sitting with Jeremiah Healy and hearing about his prostate.
One author I know, who was nominated for Best Paperback Original, ran into one of the judges on that awards committee before the banquet and introduced himself to her. She’d never heard of him or his book. He took that as a subtle hint that he wouldn’t be leaving with an Edgar that night and left early. He was right.
Sitting at your publisher’s table is always a thrill. While you’re chatting with the marketing people and publicists who have never heard of you or your book, you can also worry about whether that expensive bottle of wine that your tipsy editor just bought is going to be charged against your royalties. It probably will be.
After the ceremony, free books are given away in the lobby and hundreds of writers, publishers, and editors, who get free books all the time, rush out to get them, stuffing novels and galleys into shopping bags, cardboard boxes, suitcases and their cleavage. One year, they had MWA bouncers stationed at the doors so people couldn’t sneak out of the banquet early to snag the swag. It’s a miracle no one has been trampled to death yet.
But the real surprise is how authors react when its their own books that are being given away. They just can’t resist taking some books to augment the three contractual copies that their publisher graciously sent them. In fact, I know of one author who was so busy hording free copies of his own book that he forgot all about his Edgar and left it behind.
I’m not sure what that anecdote demonstrates about the value placed on earning the admiration of one’s peers, as symbolized by a ceramic head, as opposed to answering the demands of one’s own ego, as symbolized by grabbing as many free copies of your own book as you can carry, but I’m sure it’s very profound.
You can think about that tonight as Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell are singing their duet or Dennis Lehane is telling jokes.
Review: 101 Best TV Crime Series
I'm a sucker for books about TV, so I couldn't resist nabbing Mark Timlin's 101 BEST TV CRIME SERIES. Let me state at the outset than I am a fan of Timlin's books, so if I had a bias going in, it was a favorable one. That didn't last long.
The pluses are that Timlin, a top-notch mystery author himself, is a real fan of the genre and he writes in a casual, easy-going style. As a whole, the book provides a nice overview of a bunch of UK series that are probably obscure and unfamiliar to most U.S. viewers.
The cons, however, far, far outnumber the pluses. Apparently, Timlin's actual knowledge of the shows he's talking about isn't as strong as his admiration for them…and nobody bothered to fact-check the book, so it is filled with cringe-inducing errors and unfortunate omissions.
For example:
1) he refers to the lead of THE FUGITIVE as Dr. David Kimble when, of course, everyone knows it's Dr. RICHARD Kimble.
2) He says the iconic IRONSIDE theme was composed by Oliver Nelson when it's actually among Quincy Jones' most famous pieces of music (Nelson supplied some of the episodic scores, but didn't compose the theme).
3) He says that the Quinn Martin shows had a voice over that went "This has been a Quinn Martin Production" when, in fact, each show opened with the narrator announcing the name of the series, followed by the words "A Quinn Martin Production."
4) He says the UK LIFE ON MARS began with DCI Sam Tyler walking down a Manchester street, listening to David Bowie on his iPod, when he's hit by a car. That is, in fact, totally incorrect, making this reader wonder if Timlin actually saw the show he was writing about.
5) When discussing HARRY O, he says the hero was an ex-LA cop. He was actually an ex-San Diego cop.
I could go on and on. Beyond the numerous errors, there's also a lack of detail. For instance, when referring to KOJAK, he mentions the 2005 remake with Ving Rhames but either completely overlooked, or was totally unaware of, the six KOJAK TV movies Savalas did on CBS, and later ABC, a decade after the original series was cancelled. In fact, almost all the entries suffer from a paucity of useful information in favor of irrelevant, personal asides by the author ("Oddly enough, it was 'Hill Street Blues' that got me my first video recorder; back when it started, I was offered a job driving a loser heavy metal band called 720. The show had just started and I took the job o the condition that the manager paid for the hire of a VCR. He agreed. Blimey the thing was the size of a suitcase…") Maybe Timlin is a celebrity in the UK, and the readers there are more interested in his asides than information about TV cop shows, but it doesn't play on this side of the pond.
One other beef…I found Timlin including his own series, SHARMAN, among the best TV Crime Series to be more than a little self-indulgent (although he didn't write the entry, he had someone else do it, which only makes the inclusion feel even more self-serving). If only he'd given all the other series mentioned in the book the same loving attention as he did his own (he gives THE SOPRANOS three tiny paragraphs, but the short-lived SHARMAN gets four pages!).
Overall, unless you can get this book at a major discount, I'd skip it.
Good JUDGMENT
James Reasoner first stumbled on my .357 VIGILANTE books in the mid-1980s when he was working in a used bookstore. Although he was a voracious consumer of pulp fiction, he'd never heard of Ian Ludlow, and the men's action adventure genre was dying, so he didn't bother reading it. But now he's caught up with it again in JUDGMENT, my new re-release of the first book in the series. He says, in part:
This is a classic case of not knowing what I was missing. Now, of course, we know that “Ian Ludlow” was actually a college student named Lee Goldberg, who went on to become a top-notch novelist, screenwriter, and producer
[…]You know right away that this is a little different from the usual men’s adventure novel because of the protagonist, Brett Macklin. [He] no superhuman men’s adventure hero. He screws up, he gets hurt, he’s lucky not to get killed several times, but eventually he uncovers an even bigger plot that puts a lot of people in danger.
This is a really entertaining thrill ride of a story with plenty of sex, violence, humor, social commentary, and great action scenes. When I think about what I was writing when I was in college . . . well, there’s really no comparison. JUDGMENT is the work of someone who was a solid pro, right from the first page.
I'm really flattered by James' review. It's hard for me to believe that it's been nearly thirty years since I wrote those books. Some of the writing makes me cringe…and some of it is certainly dated..but mostly I'm amused by it.
What's really strange is that sometimes a sentence or a scene will bring back memories I haven't had in, well, thirty years. I can remember where I was when I wrote certain portions…or what was happening in my life at the time. The books are a time capsule for me in many ways. But I'm thrilled to learn that they are still entertaining to read for others.
Talking Tie-Ins
Christa Faust will moderate Further Adventures: On Writing Novelizations and Media Tie-In, a special luncheon program sponsored by MWA/SoCal at the Sportsman's Lodge in Studio City on June 18, 11-2pm. Guests include Doug Lyle (Royal Pains), William Rabkin (Psych), Nathan Long (Warhammer), and yours truly. Lunch: $20 for MWA members, $25 for non-members. Visit the MWA website to pay via Paypal or to download mail-in form.
Big Island Film Festival Final Day
Alas, REMAINDERED didn’t win anything. But the films that did snag the big prizes certainly deserved them, so there are no hard feelings from this fellow. All in all, it was a great festival and I had a terrific time.
Big Island Film Fest Day 4
REMAINDERED screened today and received a very enthusiastic reaction from the audience. That was nice, but I have to say we're up against some stiff competition. I've seen a lot of great shorts this week…and every single one that I saw today was very well done, particularly THIEF, about a little boy who befriends a young Saddam Hussein in 1959 and then comes face-to-face with him again in 2003. It's not going to be easy for the judges or the audience to pick a best short from among so many fine films.
Before the screening, I spent some time on the beach. I glanced to my left and was startled to see Harlan Coben staring back at me. Alas, it was not the man himself but his enormous photo on the back of a hardcover book that a tourist was reading. I took a picture of the tourist, which I emailed to Harlan, then chatted with the guy, who was very nice. He's a salesman for a big drug company that is rewarding its best reps with an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii that also includes elaborate banquets by the beach, tons of free tours & activities, cash money for expenses, and goodie bags in their rooms each day stuffed with things like Raybans and cameras. I should have been a Viagra salesman instead of a writer. 
After the screening, I drove up to Waimea to Huli Sue's Barbeque. Their ribs aren't bad but what I really went up there for was their incredible Banana Cream pie…which may just be the best Banana Cream Pie on earth.
Then it was back to the Fairmont Orchid, where I hunkered down to work on MONK…well, that was the intent, instead here I am writing this post.
Tomorrow is the Golden Honu Awards Brunch, a concert, and the Best of the Fest screening. In between, I'm going to try to squeeze in some more lazing around.