Attention K-Mart Shoppers

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Kmart

In REMAINDERED, the short film I will be directing in September in Kentucky, the central character is a once-successful writer now on a self-funded book tour through rural America, signing at K-Marts and stores like it. The story unfolds at two discount stores and a house. We've locked down the house location, but we are still looking for a discount store to shoot in (and that would double as two different stores). It hasn't been easy. We're only four weeks from filming and a couple of possibilities have emerged… but the uncertainty is driving me nuts.

I suspect whatever location we end up at will require some adjustments to the script and some cheating. For example, one possible location is an office equipment store…which makes no sense at all story-wise. But if I use an establishing shot of a discount store, and then shoot tight in one corner, and have a bunch of people pushing shopping carts filled with groceries, garden items, etc. past where my protagonist is signing books, I might be able to sell the notion that we are in a K-Mart or Save-A-Lot…and not in an office equipment place.

But I sure hope it doesn't come to that…

The Triumphant Return Of The Goldberg Brothers Band…Plus A Rabkin

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51bwbQd18mL._SS500_ From my brother Tod's blog…

Yes, the rumors you've heard are true: My brother Lee and I are putting the Goldberg Brothers Band back together for a limited engagement summer tour. We'll be playing all of our hits, a bunch of the B-sides you used to love, the songs with the backward masking and, of course, we intend to do our patented Hot August Night show where we cover, in full, Neil Diamond's original live album of the same name. And despite Lee's late career marriage to Cher, his weight gain and the time he spent in prison for cutting a fan with his glass-beaded shirt, folks I swear he still rocks. It all starts this coming weekend and then all of August will be spent hitting some pretty major county fairs, parks with well-lit gazebos (Pioneer Park in Walla Walla, I'm talking to you!) and then one final night at the Cow Palace. Scorsese is filming that one for a concert film.

We'll be joined by William "Billy The Axe Man" Rabkin for a few dates, too, so keep your radio tuned to your favorite AM rock station for the details. 

Here's where we'll be this coming weekend:

Saturday, Aug. 7th, 1pm

Mysteries to Die For

2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd.

Thousand Oaks, CA 91362

Lee will be signing his new Monk book (his 109th, I believe), Bill will be signing his new Pysch book, and I'll be signing my new Burn Notice book.

 Saturday, Aug. 7th, 4pm

The Mystery Bookstore

1306 Broxton Avenue

LA, CA 90024 (that's Westwood Village)

Same as above, but we'll have perfected our jokes and witty banter from the previous event. 

 Sunday, Aug. 8th, 1pm

Mystery Ink

7176 Edinger Avenue

Huntington Beach, CA 

Just me and Lee this time. Bill has a parole hearing that day. This is a new store, so there's a good chance it will just be me and Lee and no one else, really. So if you've ever wanted to have a private conversation with us about, you know, whatever weird shit happens to be on your mind, this is your chance.

 

What to Wear…or Not

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I’ve spent a lot of time tonight trading emails and photos back-and-forth with our two leads — Eric Altheide and Sebrina Siegel — discussing their wardrobe for the film.

Wardrobe is not my strong suit (no pun intended. Okay, maybe intended a little). And it can be awkward discussing what I’d like the actors to wear… or not wear…and what I’d like to see…and not see…in seduction and love scenes. It’s not so hard this time, since we aren’t going to actually see anybody making love, but it’s still a delicate topic, even when the nudity is more implied than seen. So tonight I talked about different kinds of briefs with Eric and the choices in bras, nighties, and the like with Sebrina. It was fine…and they immediately understood what I was going for.

It was more awkward for me when I exec-produced FAST TRACK, a TV movie/pilot I also wrote, and that we shot in Berlin a couple of years ago. In that film, we had two sex scenes…and a key dramatic moment centered on a guy catching his lover as she’s having an orgasm with another man. Discussing what we would see, what we wouldn’t see, and how the seduction and those scenes would be staged, was something new for me. And, to be honest, I worried about how I’d be able to discuss it with the actors.

But I knew exactly what I wanted, and what I needed, in order for the scenes to work dramatically and visually.  And I figured that all I really had to do was convey that vision to the actors, and then the actual details (what to wear or not to wear, what to touch or not to touch, etc.) wouldn’t be so hard to discuss, because they would understood what I was going for, too. And that’s how it went. They trusted me… and I trusted them…and it turned out very well.

I can already tell that the same is going to be true for REMAINDERED.  

 

Why I Love Harry Whittington

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This Pulp Serenade review of PRAIRIE RAIDERS pretty much sums up why I love Harry Whittington’s books. They write, in part:

One of the hallmarks of a Harry Whittington book is a protagonist driven by an all-consuming obsession, a mission that rises above morality, a cause that is more important that their lives. It is characteristic of both his Crime novels as well as his Westerns. In To Find Cora, Joe Byars hunts for his missing wife and eventually finds her in the clutches of another man as fanatical and as himself. In Shadow at Noon, Jeff Clane wasn’t supposed to survive the set-up duel, but he did, and found himself in more trouble than ever—only his thirst for vengeance keeps him going. And men, money and murder can’t satiate Bernice Hopper’s desire for happiness in Fires that Destroy, a title that is the perfect metaphor for many of Whittington’s characters and their desperate pursuits.

[…]A lean 103 pages, Prairie Raiders bolts along with the same force and intensity as Clay Webb. Whittington’s prose is fast and hard, the Western action stirring, and with a strong sense of psychology and character (two of the author’s strongest suits). There’s not a moment or a word wasted in this book. Chalk up another winner to the prolific writing machine that was Harry Whittington.

Should Authors Skip Publishers?

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Self-published author CJ West hosts an interesting webradio discussion with authors Joe Konrath, Boyd Morrison and Jason Pinter about whether authors should skip the NY Publishing establishment altogether and take their work directly to the Kindle and other e-book suppliers. David Wisehart's Kindle Authors blog interview with me also gets mentioned (it was funny hearing CJ seethe as he paraphrased my words and when he talked about the MWA not acknowledging self-published writers as published authors).  The show is informative, lively and definitely worth a listen. 

Tied In Ties Up Another Rave

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Novelist James Reasoner has given TIED IN a rave. He says, in part:

For someone like me, who’s very interested in the history of popular fiction, the highlight of TIED IN is David Spencer’s “American TV Tie-ins from the 50s Through the Early 70s”, which is almost a book in itself. It’s a fascinating historical discussion of how the TV tie-in novel originated and evolved over the years and touches on many of the books I was buying and reading when they were new. This article really brought back a lot of good memories for me. Along similar lines, also of great interest to me were fine articles by Paul Kupperberg about comic book and comic strip tie-in novels (I read a bunch of those, too) and Robert Greenberger about the connection between pulp magazines and tie-ins.


TIED IN is available as an e-book right now, with a print edition coming out soon. Either way, I don’t think you can go wrong. It’s informative, entertaining, and a must-have if you have any interest in tie-in fiction. Highly recommended.

Thanks, Jim!

Remaindered Cast

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We've cast my short film REMAINDERED, which I wrote and will be directing in Owensboro, Kentucky in early September, thanks to Zev Buffman, Roxi Witt and all the other terrific folks at the RiverPark Performing Arts Center. 

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Eric Altheide is Kevin Dangler, a once-bestselling author trying to get back to the top… 

Resized Bill Spangler shot 3
Sebrina Siegel is Megan, his adoring fan (perhaps too adoring)

Todd Reynolds
And Todd Reynolds is Detective Bud Flanek, Owensboro's answer to Columbo (as he also was in my buddy David Breckman's film MURDER IN KENTUCKY). Robert Denton and Lisa Baldwin play supporting roles. I can't wait to start working with these terrific actors, who were found thanks to the tireless efforts of our casting director Lori Rosas and our producer Rodney Newton.

I'll be keeping you updated on the production of the movie here and on the Remaindered Production Blog...and the Remaindered Facebook group. 

Mr. Monk and the Meme

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The Random Ramblings blog takes part in a Friday meme that quotes the first sentence of book and the fifth sentence of the 56th page. He chose my book MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT.

The first line is:

Some guys showed up the other day at the house next door, mowed the dead lawn, and spray-painted it green.

And now, for the Friday 56, I present the 5th sentence on page 56.

I also know that anyone who has evidence that could help solve a murder has an obligation to share it with the police, regardless of whether the police have just fired you and your comely assistant.

To be honest, I like both of the sentences.  They aren’t exactly moving the story forward, but I find them amusing and give a great feel for the tone of the book.

Sounds like a fun meme. Speaking of MONK, Ed Gorman gives CLEANED OUT a rave. He says, in part:

One of the things that makes this series so distinctive is the full and realistic portraits we get of Natalie and her daughter Julie. The writing here is especially strong. Lee Goldberg is good at describing the way we live now.

The old wrestling come on “This time it’s personal” applies here because Monk plans to trap, humiliate, debase and defoliate the “dude” (who said Monk is out touch?) who took his money.

A truly artful comedy that has a lot to say about the people who robbed us blind over the past three decades.

Thanks, Ed. Here’s the first line of his book DARK TRAIL.

The cigarette had two or three good drags left and Leo Guild was happy to take them.

And here’s the fifth line of page 56.


“He said that he didn’t know you were a man of honor.”

Those two lines actually do a pretty good job of conveying the feel of his terrific western.

The Prone Gunman

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411E10YZTGL._SS500_ Over the weekend, I read a slim, 1981 French thriller, published in the U.S. in 2002 by City Lights, and that I've had on my shelf for years. It's called The Prone Gunman (aka La Position du Tireur Couche ) by Jean-Patrick Manchette and it is a frustrating book. It starts off great, with some of the leanest, meanest prose you'll ever find in a noir… taking the familiar "hitman on his last job" scenario and making it seem fresh.  I fell in love with the prose and the world-view. The hitman, Martin Terrier, is an odd, interesting character…hardly the smooth, self-assured, perfect killer. He's quite possibly nuts. And all of that is wonderful, especially when he returns to his hometown to reclaim his old love. But then, after a short time, the story shifts into a break-neck, almost ridiculous action-adventure, and even that is a lot of fun, before ultimately devolving, inexplicably and disappointingly, into outright farce. It's a shame, because so much of the book works so well. It's as if Manchette lost faith his story, or got tired of what he was doing, and decided that his efforts were worthy only of ridicule, but finished it anyway, using his last few pages to insult himself. The book reminded me of The Four-Chambered Villain, an obscure novel and also uneven novel about hitman that's played perfectly straight, and also of The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian, which was *meant* to be farce but, to the author's dismay, was taken seriously as thriller (as I wrote in my chapter of 100 Must Read Thrillers). At least EIGER was consistent in its tone, PRONE GUNMAN is not. But it was intriguing enough for me to buy Manchette's other book, THREE TO KILL. If I judged the book purely on the first 2/3rds, it would have earned four stars.

I also recently read Angela S. Choi's delightfully subversive Hello Kitty Must Die, sort of a chick-lit DEXTER. It was a nice diversion…and offers a fresh perspective on the sociopathic killer-as-hero sub-genre.