The Wit and Wisdom of Jonathan Hayes
My friend Alafair Burke has a terrific interview with my friend Jonathan Hayes up on Murderati. I first met Jonathan, a NY medical examiner and novelist, at Left Coast Crime in Hawaii and liked him instantly…he's one of those people you meet and, after about five minutes, feel like you've known them your whole life. One of my regrets about Bouchercon in SF this past year was that I didn't get a chance to spend some time with him. He's got a wicked wit, a fierce intelligence, and he's a hell of a nice guy, too. Jonathan has a new book out, A HARD DEATH, which you've got to read…
You are a fierce Facebooker. Unlike many writers, you rarely even mention your books or your life as an author. Instead, you really show your actual life through photos, music, and video. What rings your bell about Facebook?
Yes, I am the bane of my publicist's existence – I'm frequently invited to comment on high profile killings on national TV, but always decline. I think it's inappropriate to hold forth on something so serious about which you only have third- or fourth-hand knowledge. All of us hate to be second-guessed; it's horrible to watch the jackals come out of the woodwork when a celebrity dies.
I've had a strong online presence for more than 20 years – I've had the same email address for all that time, and probably as many people call me "Jaze" as call me "Jonathan".
I find just about everything fascinating – seriously, I could get engrossed in an article about the history of cereal box typography design. As a result, I have the attention span of a magpie, regularly developing odd obsessions that are gushingly watered by the fountain of esoterica that is the Internet. And when I'm passionate about something, I want to share it, hear what other people think. So I post it on Facebook, or on my Tumblr blog.
Right now, for example, I'm obsessed by a mostly West Coast niche subculture: girls and young women who've developed a style fusing psychobilly rock style (fringes, retro clothes, Sailor Jerry-style retro tattoos) with facial and body piercings, breasts plumped up by clothing or surgery, Hello Kitty-style kitschy accessories and My Little Pony hair colors borrowed from Harajuku in Tokyo. It's an odd look, a deliberate, almost angrily in-your-face miscegenation of Kiddie Cute and Hypersexualized Adult. I think it's less rock'n'roll than a new incarnation of rave style; that scene was characterized by a conscious infantilization that had kids drowning in brightly colored, deliberately oversized clothes, carrying animal-shaped backpacks and handing out candy while they chewed pacifiers. (Admittedly, those last two were to help deal with the jaw-grinding and clenching that are a side effect of the drug Ecstasy, but, still.)
Uh, here's my Facebook album for that – careful; depending on where you work, it might not be 100% safe for you.
I don't talk about my work work on Facebook because it's not appropriate; people died to make their way to me, and that should be private. This is one of the reasons I write fiction: to talk about the things I see, and the reactions they evoke, without betraying any confidence.
Bloated Writing Credit
I've done a lot of WGA credit arbitrations and can't imagine what the committee that judged SOUL SURFER was thinking. The screenwriting credits for SOUL SURFER are the longest I have ever seen…
Screen Story by Sean McNamara & Deborah Schwartz & Douglas Schwartz & Michael Berk and Matt R. Allen & Caleb Wilson & Brad Ganin based on the book by Bethany Hamilton, Sheryl Berk, and Rick Bundshuh
Screenplay by Sean McNamara & Deborah Schwartz & Douglas Schwartz & Michael Berk
And it's not what you'd call a very complex story, as opposed to say the ten-hour GAME OF THRONES, which has this screen credit:
Screenplay by David Benioff & D.B Weiss, based on the novel by George R.R. Martin
Or, say, INCEPTION, which had this screen credit:
Screenplay by Christopher Nolan
What was so daunting and complex about the story of a girl whose arm is bitten off by a shark that it would require a team of seven credited writers to adapt and four to write? It boggles the mind.
Hot Sex, Gory Violence
Newsweek published this My Turn essay of mine back in mid-1980s, while I was still a college student and writing my JURY books, then called .357 Vigilante, under the pen-name "Ian Ludlow." Now that I have re-released the books, I thought you might enjoy it:
HOT SEX, GORY VIOLENCE
How One Student Earns Course Credit and Pays Tuition
My name is Ian Ludlow. Well, not really. But that's the name on my four ".357 Vigilante" adventures that Pinnacle Books will publish this spring. Most of the time I'm Lee Goldberg, a mild mannered UCLA senior majoring in mass communications and trying to spark a writing career at the same time. It's hard work. I haven't quite achieved a balance between my dual identities of college student and hack novelist.
The adventures of Mr. Jury, a vigilante into doing the LAPD's dirty work, are often created in the wee hours of the night, when I should be studying, meeting my freelance-article deadlines or, better yet, sleeping. More often than not, my nocturnal writing spills over into my classes the next morning. Brutal fistfights, hot sexual encounters and gory violence are frequently scrawled across my anthropology notes or written amid my professor's insights on Whorf's hypothesis. Students sitting next to me who glance at my lecture notes are shocked to see notations like "Don't move, scumbag, or I'll wallpaper the room with your brains.
I once wrote a pivotal rape scene during one of my legal-communications classes, and I'm sure the girl who sat next to me thought I was a psychopath. During the first half of the lecture, she kept looking with wide eyes from my notes to my face as if my nose were melting onto my binder or something. At the break she disappeared, and I didn't see her again the rest of the quarter. My professors, though, seem pleased to see me sitting in the back of the classroom writing furiously. I guess they think I'm hanging on their every word. They're wrong.
I've tried to lessen the strain between my conflicting identities by marrying the two. Through the English department, I'm getting academic credit for the books. That amazes my Grandpa Cy, who can't believe there's a university crazy enough to reward me for writing "lots of filth." The truth is, it's writing and it's learning, and it's getting me somewhere. Just where, I'm not sure. My Grandpa Cy thinks it's going to get me the realization I should join him in the furniture business.
I Wanna Get You Hooked…
…so, for a very limited time, JUDGMENT, the first book in the four-book JURY SERIES, is now just 99 cents.
This is an ALL-NEW edition, completely reformatted and repackaged for 2011.
JUDGMENT is the classic action/adventure novel that was a runaway paperback sensation under the title ".357 Vigilante" back in the 1980s…and was immediately snatched up by New World Pictures for a feature film (that, sadly, never happened).
But that screenplay adaptation launched my partnership with William Rabkin and our careers as screenwriters, so this book will always hold a very, very special place in my heart.
This is the ultimate JUDGMENT, as it was originally meant to be, taken from the original, first-draft manuscript.
Brett Macklin was a freewheeling son of sunny California, a collector of vintage cars and a connoisseur of beautiful women. But when his father is murdered by a street gang, Macklin becomes something else–a deadly weapon against crime, a relentless vigilante who won't stop until he's wiped out the killers who have turned Los Angeles into a war zone.
And here are the other reformatted and repackaged books in the JURY series…
And all four books in one:
The Jury Is In
New for 2011! The Jury Series
From Lee Goldberg, the bestselling author of THE WALK, comes all four of his acclaimed JURY novels..collected into one totally reformatted, repackaged, mega-sized, pulse-pounding, thrill-ride that will leave you breathless:
JUDGMENT * ADJOURNED * PAYBACK * GUILTY
The JURY SERIES is the complete saga of Brett Macklin, a one-man judge, jury, and executioner, fighting a war on terror on the streets of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Over 160,000 words/550 pages of non-stop action, wildly erotic sex, and wicked humor.
"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort […] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books
The series, published in 1985, under the title ".357 Vigilante," was written by Ian Ludlow… a pseudonym for Lee Goldberg, who wrote the books while he was a UCLA student, under the supervision of his professor, novelist Lewis Perdue ("The DaVinci Legacy," "The Queensgate Reckoning," "Daughter of God," etc). Goldberg would later go on to write and/or produce such TV shows as "Monk," "Diagnosis Murder," "SeaQuest," and "The Glades" and write many more novels, including THE WALK and the best-selling "Monk" series of original mysteries.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR LEE GOLDBERG:
"A high-octane mystery that moves like a bullet-train!" New York Times Bestselling author Janet Evanovich
"Can books be better than television? You bet they can — when Lee Goldberg's writing them," New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
"Leaves you guessing right up until the heart-stopping ending," New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner
"Lee Goldberg can plot and write with the best of them," Mystery Scene Magazine
"Entertaining and ruefully funny," Honolulu Star Bulletin
"THE WALK is a magnificent novel — by turns hilarious, scary, sad, witty and ultimately wise on its judgments about the way so many of us live these days. And it's one hell of a page-turner, too," Author Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene Magazine
"Harrowing and funny…" -Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
"With books this good, who needs TV?" Chicago Sun Times
"You'd be hard-pressed to find another recent work that provides so many hip and humorous moments," Bookgasm
Barnes & Noble 2.0
The Nook might just save Barnes & Noble if they commit to becoming a Nookstore instead of a Bookstore…making ebooks the primary focus of their brick-and-mortar stores as well as their website. That's the thesis of an interesting article from CNN Money.
"Barnes & Noble didn't get into this market very early, but when they got into this, they got into this very smart," says Forrester research analyst James McQuivey about the company's ereader. "They went in with with both feet, quickly got a device on the market as opposed to picking someone to partner up with like Borders did, and when the firestorm in 2010 hit, they already had their device ready to go. Borders did not." (Pop quiz: Do you even know the name of the Borders ereader? It's called the Kobo. And it's nowon clearance for $60 at Borders stores that are liquidating.)
In fact, McQuivey thinks Barnes & Noble has a better than 50% chance of making the switch to digital if it becomes even more aggressive about its Nook hardware, software, ebook and accessory business. And there is room for growth. Based on a Goldman Sachs analyst report, the Nook business is on a hockey-stick growth curve, with sales going from $62 million in 2009 (the year the device launched) to an estimated $1.163 billion for 2012. Meanwhile, the book business — sales at brick and mortar locations — will decrease, according to the same estimates, from $4.37 billion this year to $3.95 billion for the company's fiscal year 2012.
In other words, the day is fast approaching when ebooks will drive B&Ns sales and paper books will be little more than colorful decor in their Nookstores. Or, as the article concludes:
Regardless of the path executives take, the Barnes & Noble of the future (if there is one, of course) will probably look nothing like it does today. The company could even choose to drop the name altogether and let Nook become the consumer-facing brand.
Relentless Forward Motion
It's shaping up to be 'Interview Lee Week." The first of my three-part interview with Booklife is up today. Here's an excerpt:
And, along those same lines, what has writing for television taught you about writing novels?
Lee Goldberg: I think that being a screenwriter, particularly for TV, has made me a much better novelist. You have to write outlines for TV, so it has forced me to focus on plot before I start writing my books. I’m not figuring things out as I go along as some authors do. I know exactly where I am going…though I may change how I get there along the way.
Being a TV writer has also trained me to focus on a strong, narrative drive, to make sure that every line of dialogue either reveals character or advances the plot (or both), and to cut anything that’s extraneous or bogs the story down. I also suspect that being a TV writer has given my books a faster pace and more of a cinematic structure.Have you picked up any habits–good or bad–writing for television that you had to unlearn or put aside when writing novels?
Lee Goldberg: Not really, but if I have a bad habit, it may be the need to have a relentless, forward motion to the story. In TV, you cut anything that’s the least bit extraneous to keep the story moving and to keep your episode within your allotted running time. With books, I have to remind myself that it’s okay to take time out to contemplate a moment, an experience, or a place…but only if it’s a moment.
Off the Cuff
The Dabbling Mum blog did a long, Q&A interview with me about all kinds of stuff. Here's an excerpt:
What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to pitching yourself as a writer and what steps have you taken to overcome that obstacle?
I haven’t been a freelance journalist in almost thirty years. Nowadays, in the television and movie business, the biggest obstacles are my age and my history. There’s a lot of ageism in Hollywood and now that I’m in my 40s and have lots of credits to my name, I have to spend a lot of time and effort proving to execs that I am more than the sum of my credits…and that am capable of doing other things than the kinds of shows I have done in the past.
I don’t necessarily want my credits to define me…after all, there are some jobs I took because I needed the money or because they were the only folks hiring at the time.
With books, I don’t have to pitch myself anymore. The business has changed so dramatically in the last year or so that there’s more money in self-publishing than in publishing right now. So the only person I have to query is myself.
What is your best advice for getting past writer's block?
Write. No matter how bad it is. Just write. Give yourself permission to suck. Sometimes, all it takes is just hitting that one good line or paragraph to break the creative log jam. I also recommend taking a break and reading a good book. Reading forces you to work with words and your imagination. That said, I’ve found that writer’s block usually comes from a poorly conceived story. The problem isn’t that you can’t write, but that the project you’ve sat down to work on has a crippling creative flaw.
My Loss is Your Gain
Now, thanks to a temporary technical screw-up, you can get my runaway Kindle bestsellers THE WALK for just $1.99 and THREE WAYS TO DIE for only 99 cents.
It's infuriating for me…but a steal for you. But you'd better act now, because if I have my way, these savings will end as soon as possible.
And no, this is not a lame publicity stunt. I had nothing to do with the dramatic cut in prices and I am doing everything I can to get it fixed. But in the mean time, I need to sell a lot of books to make up for my losses…
So go for it…get the books cheap while you can!
UPDATE 4/15/2011. I am pleased to say that you're too late. Amazon has restored the original pricing.