Ed Gorman's Blog, page 124

Erle Stanley Gardner

MONDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2006Careers: Erle Stanley GardnerI've never been able to figure out why Raymond Chandler felt he owed such a literary debt to Erle Stanley Gardner. He told Gardner that he'd once copied a Gardner story so closely that he couldn't submit it for publication. I guess he felt it would look like plagiarism. But what did he learn from Gardner? Certainly not style. Certainly not dialogue. Certainly not structure. Writers learn from unlikely sources, true enough. But Chandler seemed to lavish so much praise on Gardner you have to wonder what inspired him exactly.

But Chandler was a snob and when you examine the nature of his praise, you get a sense he was being condescending. He said that only when you wrote at great speed (as Gardner did) could you make such unbeleivable plot turns palatable to otherwise sensible readers. I've always wondered what Gardner made of that. He was no fool.

All this comes to mind because I had several doctor appointments in the past few weeks and I'm always careful to bring fast and uncomplicated reads along with me. For the last few doc visits I brought along Perry Mason novels. Early Perry Mason novels, I should note, when Mason was still a creature of Black Mask rather than The Saturday Evening Post. Throughout his career he was wise enough to recognize one of the great true American boogeymen, big business. His social conscience came fom his days as a lawyer when he represented Native Americans, black Americans and Latino Americans in towns that did not want them.

I still find the Masons great reads for the most part.. True, Gardner worked with stereotypes--The Bad Wife, The Crooked Cop, The Loyal Servant--and he told his stories largely through (sometimes interminable) dialogue but while I'm reading them I'm almost always caught up in the puzzle he's given us. Nobody is what they claim to be. Everybody has a secret, usually a nasty one, the exception being the tortured person Mason has agreed to take on as a client, usually while shunning much more lucrative work.

The early Masons were written before Gardner decided to make his work "timeless." There is little place description in the later books. He didn't want to "date" them. I like the history I get from the first dozen Masons, from all of the Doug Selbys and even from the A.A. Fairs written during the war years. I enjoy sitting in the tea rooms, bars, mansions, hotels and trains of the Thirties and early Forties. His work became far less interesting when it was shorn of any physical specificity.

The Masons owe much more to the Golden Age than most critics seem to have noticed. Their plot pieces are no less unlikely, the clues no less exotic and the conclusions no less bombastic. But I'm not complaining. Most Golden Age stuff except for John Dickson Carr is difficult for me to gak down. But somehow Perry, Della and Paul make it all fun again.
posted by Ed Gorman @ 4:21 PM  5

The Wild Angels

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2007But the most interesting review is of Wild Angels, a movie I remember catching at a drive in the days of acid, crash pads and long discussions about what we'd do when we came to power in Washington, "we" being all the stoners in the room.
This was also the time when people such as Leonard Bernstein had to prove their hipness by inviting the Black Panthers to dinner parties. To me the Panthers were a mixed bag. I believe they were murdered in cold blood by Chicago police but I also believe they were generally as racist, intolerant and violent as the Klan even though, I realize, that their formation was a reaction to two centuries of slavery.
But it was a time of tourists, and there was no better emblem of that than Jagger and Richards hiring the Hells Angels to police Altamont. I'm a Stones fans (I always preferred them to the Beatles) but security geniuses they ain't. Their naivete got an innocent young man murdered.
I mention this because one of the films covered in the Cinema Retro piece is The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda, a film about those good old trustworthy honorable fascinating guys that cultural toursists briefly found just peachy.
No matter how stoned, drunk, sexually gratified you were in the course of this drive in flick nothing could lessen the impact of its brutality. This picture broke the contract movie makers have with movie goers. These are people you don't merely dislike. These are people you want to murder. And take your time doing it.
Here's a long paragraph from the review:
"Corman doesn't sugar-coat the gang lifestyle. The self-centeredness, lack of intellect and abscence of loyalty among the members is presented in a forthright manner. The person who is your friend one minute, mocks your tragic circumstances the next. Women are passed around like beer bottles to be used at will by the barbaric male members of the gang. Corman's emphasis on making the gang appear realistic also leads to an inevitable problem: there are no heroes in the film. In fact, there isn't a soul with a single redeemable attribute. Whether Corman sought to make these characters sympathetic seems doubtful. Rather, he seems to have simply been utlizing the Corman touch for exploiting a subject matter in a timely way. The film is primarily interesting because of its cast. Peter Fonda went from being a drab second-rate actor to a pop culture icon with this film and posters of him astride his chopper still adorn head shops today. Nancy Sinatra is largely wasted in a underdeveloped role that could have been played by any actress. Yet, Corman well knew the exploitation value of casting this popular singer. The supporting characters include Corman favorite Bruce Dern and his (then) real life wife Diane Ladd and in minor roles Michael J. Pollard and Gayle Hunnicutt. Members of the actual Hell's Angel's Venice, California chapter also appeared as bikers.Interestingly, Peter Bogdanovich worked on the film in several capacities without screen credit. The film boasts a hallmark of many Corman productions: stunning cinematography that belies the relatively low budget. The film remains a distasteful experience largely because the scum bums depicted onscreen don't confine their assaults to law enforcement officers. They gang rape a grieving widow from their own group- at the same funeral service in which they relentlessly beat and humiliate a preacher. A nurse who tries to care for a wounded gang member is sexually assaulted and the group sports Nazi flags on everything from clothing to caskets."posted by Ed Gorman @ 2:09 PM  

Bill Crider Texas Vigilante; Everything you need to know about the great e-book price war

Ed here: As you know Bill Crider is one of my favorite writers 
of every kind. His skills and range amaze me. In fact one time
when I got so sick I had to go into the hospital I asked him to
write the second half of my adventure novel. He did a 
tremendous job. As always. I just ordered Texas Vigilante.
You should, too.



Finally Available for your Kindle!Amazon.com: Texas Vigilante (Ellie Taine) eBook: Bill Crider: Kindle Store: In the western tradition of 
Louis L'Amour and Elmer Kelton, 
it's the action-packed sequel to 
OUTRAGE AT BLANCO. The men broke out 
of the toughest prison in Texas.
They kidnapped a child. 
They thought they'd get away with it. 
They didn't reckon on Ellie Taine. 
That was their mistake.


MONDAY, JUL 1, 2013 12:02 PM CDT
SALON



Everything you need to know about the great e-book price warHow the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the Big Six book publishers will affect the business of litBY LAURa MILLER 
TOPICS: BOOKS, E-BOOKS, APPLE, AMAZON.COM, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, PUBLISHING NEWS,ENTERTAINMENT NEWSJeff Bezos (Credit: AP/Reed Saxon)Closing arguments for the Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against Apple concluded last week, although U.S. District Judge Denise Cote is not expected to reach a decision for another couple of months. If you’ve found the case difficult to follow, you’re not alone. Still it’s worth getting a handle on the basics because the suit — or, more precisely, the business deals behind it — have changed book publishing in significant ways. Furthermore, Judge Cote’s decision could have impact well beyond the book industry.Apple was charged with colluding with publishers to fix e-book prices. At the root of the dispute lie two different ways that publishers can sell books to retailers.First, there’s the wholesale model, the way that book publishers have sold printed books to bookstores and other outlets for years. The publisher sets a cover price for a book, sells it to a retailer at a discount (typically 50 percent) and then the retailer can sell the book to consumers for whatever price it chooses.The other method of selling books is via the agency model, which means, essentially, on commission. The retailer offers the book to consumers at a price the publisher sets and gets a percentage of whatever sales are made. It’s rare for print books to be sold in this way, but it’s the method Apple uses to sell content like music and apps in its iTunes store.Until 2010 — as Albert Albanese explains in his admirably lucid “The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon and the ‘Big Six’ Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight,” a new “e-single” published by Publishers Weekly — book publishers had been selling e-books to Amazon using the wholesale model. They’d simply adapted the system they were already using to sell print books to the online retailer. This, they would soon realize, was a big mistake.The wholesale model is widely seen as an odd way to sell e-books, since what the purchaser buys is “licensed access” to a digital file, rather than a physical object like a book. But what would torment publishers most about this arrangement was the freedom the wholesale model gave to Amazon to set the prices of e-books.
With the launch of the Kindle, Amazon promoted a low baseline price of $9.99 for most e-books. That meant that Amazon was selling virtually all newly published e-books at a loss.For example: A new book with a hardcover list price of $29.95 would be given an e-book price of $23.95 — 20 percent less to account for the publisher’s savings in printing, binding and distribution. The publisher would sell that e-book to Amazon for $12, and Amazon would retail it for $9.99, taking a $2 loss.Why would Amazon do this? Observers have proposed several motives. Perhaps Amazon aimed to entice heavy readers to the newfangled Kindle; the customer could tell herself she’d make up the cost of the device in savings on the books themselves. Others have suggested that cheap e-books were loss leaders that drew customers back to Amazon over and over again, presumably so they’d go on to purchase high-margin items like TVs.The most popular theory by far holds that Amazon intended from the start to totally dominate the e-book marketplace. By using its wealth to subsidize the sale of e-books at a loss, it could drive any competitors out of the market. Bricks-and-mortar chains like Barnes and Noble and online start-ups like Kobo (both of which would introduce their own e-reader devices) or device-neutral rivals like Google would simply not be willing or able to bleed cash as long as Amazon could. And because the Kindle is a “closed platform” — Kindle e-books can only be read on Kindle devices or apps — the more Kindle e-books a customer owned, the more reluctant she’d be to switch to a different device.Obviously, however deep its pockets, Amazon would not be able to go on selling e-books at a loss indefinitely. But once Amazon was cemented in place as the uncontested sovereign of e-book retail, it could do whatever it wanted: force publishers to reduce their own prices, and/or raise prices on consumers.If this was the retailer’s strategy, it was initially an effective one. By the end of 2009, Amazon owned 90 percent of the robustly growing e-book market. Even though e-books still made up a small percentage of overall book sales, publishers finally saw the writing on the wall. Amazon had a near-monopoly and was furthermore devaluing books in the eyes of consumers — they began to think of books as worth $9.99, not $23.95. Book publishing is a low-margin business to begin with, and the mammoth retailer seemed poised to scrape even those minimal profits away.At that point, Apple entered the scene with a hotly anticipated new device, the iPad, and plans to open its own e-book store. Needless to say, the nation’s largest book publishers looked upon this rich new Amazon competitor with keen interest. The trial at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York this month has provided a record of what happened next.As narrated by Albanese and other observers of the trial, Apple approached book publishers about making their titles available in the iBookstore. Apple felt that it needed at least four of the “Big Six” publishers to launch the store, and it entered into discussions with all six. Initially, Apple’s primary negotiator, Eddy Cue, assumed they’d purchase e-books via the wholesale model. A couple of the publishers he spoke with proposed the agency model for e-books, an idea that had been kicking around the book world for a few months.Apple liked the idea. So did the publishers — they would make less money per e-book this way than they did by selling wholesale to Amazon, but they could live with that. What Amazon was doing wasn’t sustainable anyway. Under agency terms, publishers could control the pricing of their books and assert that $12.99 to $14.99 was a fair market value for most new titles. Although authors would also receive less in royalties from agency sales, the Authors’ Guild endorsed the move as the only alternative to watching “Amazon destroy the physical distribution chain” — that is, brick-and-mortar bookstores — in the words of Guild president Scott Turow. (If you want to know why bookstores are especially important to authors, read this.)However, Apple needed a critical mass of publishers to participate. Otherwise their store would have too few desirable titles. And none of the publishers wanted to be the first to go out on a limb and risk being the only one selling their titles for three to five bucks more than everyone else. Last but not least, Apple knew it couldn’t make the iBookstore a success if it sold the most in-demand titles for dollars more than Amazon did.By early April 2010, when the iPad and the iBookstore officially launched, five of the Big Six publishers had entered into agency deals with Apple. Each of those publishers had also informed Amazon that if the retailer wanted to continue selling their e-books, it would have to buy them on agency terms as well. As the publishers saw it, they’d stood up to a “bully.”

for the rest go here:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/every...
you_need_to_know_about_the_great_e_book
_price_war/

Pro-File: Mike Resnick

"A clever plot lifts Resnick’s sequel to 1995’s Dog in the Manger''
...A wealth of horse-racing and horse-breeding lore adds interest ."
-Publisher's Weekly

"[This] engrossing puzzler. . .captures the essence of the antiheroic PI."
- Library Journal 

"Lighthearted, but with a solid mystery, the book showcases Resnick’s ability to tell stories economically and to create characters who feel real enough to step off the page."-Booklist
        
       Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the trade paper of the science fiction field, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. When you add in his novels and related non-fiction, he stands fourth on the all-time list, ahead of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, George R. R. Martin, and Philip K. Dick.       Mike is the winner of 5 Hugo Awards, from a record 36 nominations. He has also won the Nebula, and other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Poland, Catalonia, Croatia, and Japan, and has been short-listed for major awards in England, Italy and Australia.       He is the author of 70 science fiction novels and 2 mystery novels, more than 250 short stories, and 3 screenplays (one for Miramax, one for Capella International, and one for Jupiter 9), and is the editor of 41 anthologies. He has also written 7 books of non-fiction.       Mike was the science fiction consultant for BenBella Books from 2004 through 2006, the co-editor of Jim Baen’s Universe from 2007 to 2010, and currently edits the Stellar Guild line of books for Arc Manor, as well as the bi-monthly electronic magazine, Galaxy’s Edge.       He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention, the highest honor the science fiction field has to offer.       His 2012 book releases included ­The Doctor and the Rough Rider (Pyr), Win Some, Lose Some (Isfic Press), Stalking the Zombie (American Fantasy Press), ­Masters of the Galaxy (PS Publishing), Resnick on the Loose (Wildside Press), Resnick Abroad (Alexander Books), The Incarceration of Captain Nebula and Other Lost Futures (Subterranean Press), Resnick’s Menagerie (Silverberry Press), Dog in the Manger (reissue with new material, from Seventh Street) and The Cassandra Project (a collaboration with bestseller Jack McDevitt, from Ace Books).       Published and/or coming in 2013 are The Trojan Colt (Seventh Street), ­The Doctor and the Dinosaurs (Pyr), The Gods of Sagittarius (collaboration with bestseller Eric Flint, from Baen Books), I.N.C.I.  (tentative title) with Tina Gower from Stellar Guild, and the anthology The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (co-edited with Robert Garcia, from Baen Books).       Mike married Carol, his wife of 51 years, in February of 1961. Their daughter, Laura, is an award-winning fantasy writer. In their spare time (spare time?) they bred and exhibited 23 champion collies, and  took half a dozen  prolonged trips to Africa.

PRO-FILE Mike Resnick
1.    Tell us about your current novel or project.
I have two current projects, both under contract. The first is a mystery novel for Seventh Street, the third in the Eli Paxton series, titled CAT ON A COLD TIN ROOF. I’ve also sold a new science fiction series, “The Dead Enders”, to Pyr, the first of which will be THE FORTRESS IN ORION. And in October, Baen will bring out an original anthology, THE WORLDS OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS,  which I co-edited with Bob Garcia.]
    2. Can you give us a sense of what you’re working on now?            Right now I’m completing a novel in the Stellar Guild line, which I edit. It consists of team-ups between a top science fiction writer and a protégé of his/her choice. My protégé for this one is Tina Gower, and the tentative title is I.N.C.I., which has some serious meaning in the book.
   3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?      Sleeping till noon, never wearing a suit, a tie or a wristwatch, and being able to tell anyone to go to hell without going broke. I also love my work. An interviewer once asked Picasso what he did for a hobby. His answer: “I paint.” No, said the interviewer, that’s what you do for a living. What do you do to relax, for pleasure? Picasso’s answer: “I paint.” Me, I write.        
   4. The greatest displeasure?           More than 100 books into my career, I doubt that I’ve ever been paid my signing advance, delivery fee, or royalties on time by any of the major New York  houses. The smaller presses are a bit better (but not much).          
   5. Advice to the publishing world?
   Fulfill the letter of your contracts. Don’t take so damned long to reply to new writers. And stop viewing e-books and audio as enemies.
   6. Are there any forgotten writers you’d like to see in print again?
   In mystery, Craig Rice, Richard and Frances Lockridge, M. E. Chaber (pen name of Kendall Foster Crossen), and Fredric Brown. In science fiction, George Alec Effinger, C. L. Moore (in mass market), R. A. Lafferty, and Barry Malzberg.  I don’t know how forgotten they are, but they deserve to be available.
   7. Tell us about selling your first novel. 
   My first novel was an “adult” novel I chose not to use my name on. (So were my next 20 or so.) My first science fiction novel, sold in 1966, published a year later, was an Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche titled THE GODDESS OF  GANYMEDE, that in retrospect I wishI hadn’t put my name on. My first mystery novel was DOG IN THE MANGER, sold in 1995 and reprinted in 2012.        
   I wrote DOG IN THE MANGER in 1991, and offered it to Ace, which was   publishing some of my science fiction at the time. They liked it and offered me a  3-book contract. Problem was, they were offering about 20% for each mystery  that they were paying for each science fiction, and I’d have been crazy to sign. Iasked for a one-book contract, they declined, I pulled it back, then got busy and didn’t think of it again until 1995, when I finally sold it to Alexander Books. I    loved writing it, but I was contracted years ahead, and in truth I half-thought I’d never get back to mysteries – until my editor at Pyr, where I’d sold maybe a dozen science fiction novels, told me in 2012 that Prometheus, his parent company, was starting a new mystery line called Seventh Street with an editor who knew his stuff. I sent him DOG IN THE MANGER and a proposal for a  sequel to be    titled THE TROJAN COLT, they bought both and got truly fine reviews, I owe them another now, and I’m thrilled to be writing mysteries again.   

Mike Resnick

New Books: Grind House by Dana King intro. by Charlie Stella

Introduction by Charlie Stella
Amici:
The first time I read Dana King’s work, I thought the publishing world was fast asleep. It wasn’t the work of some untested wannabe. Quite frankly, it was brilliant writing. I had the pleasure of reading one of his early drafts to Grind Joint, and I couldn’t have been more impressed. It was more than obvious this guy had slipped through the publishing cracks. I distinctly remember turning to my wife while reading in bed and saying, “This guys is terrific... Jesus Christ, this is good... how is this guy not published?”Flash forward a year or two and I’m still in disbelief that this guy hasn’t found a publisher. Enter Ed Gorman, a guy who can’t do enough for others. Ed did me the favor of handing Johnny Porno to Greg Shepard a few years earlier, and a new relationship was born. I’ve never been happier with a publisher. Mutual respect, amici, is a beautiful thing. Ed convinced Greg to open the door to original publications and now Stark House Press has a true gem—Grind Joint, by Dana King.Forget the industry mantra about mob fiction being dead. That’s just bullshit. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right set of eyes to bring a project to fruition, but over time great writing will not be denied.Dana King’s debut, Grind Joint, is wall to wall great writing—fact. No need to shock with gore and senseless brutality, or rapes or brutal murders, as way too many in the world of noir seem to depend on for shock value. Dana King does it the old fashioned way, with writing so good it reads like a documentary; narrative that sparkles, and dialogue as good as any in the game. My favorite mob fiction writers ultimately make a novel read like a documentary, and from the very first paragraph of Grind Joint, I’m hooked as if I’m watching it unfold on a 60” television screen.
The building used to be a mini-mall. Penney’s on one end, Monkey Ward’s on the other, with a handful of little local shops in between. Nail salon, barber, wing joint, liquor store. They closed years ago, boarded up the windows. The Blockbuster in an outbuilding went tits up last summer. The toy store next door saw half a dozen re-inventions before it managed to scrape by as one of those operations where everything was five bucks or less. That and the bank were all that were left. Kenny Czarniak would have thought it ironic, how only the bank and the discount store survived amid the shells of failure, but any sense of irony had left him long ago.
In that paragraph I not only see what is being described, I can hear Morgan Freeman providing the voiceover. And is there any doubt about the setting? It’s all there in one neat and tidy paragraph—a town down on its luck, one that is ripe for the picking.And if you’re unsure of the title, Grind Joint, the author’s clever dialogue makes it easy.
... The bartender came by. Nick asked what was available in bottles and ordered another draft. “What’s up with this casino bullshit? Are they serious?”“Oh, yeah. Not only will it make the owners rich, everyone in town is going to get well. Be the new Atlantic City.”“AC’s a dump.”“Then we have a head start.”Nick thanked the bartender for his fresh beer. “Seriously. That casino in Pittsburgh is supposed to be really nice.”“You ever hear of a casino that wasn’t supposed to be really nice?”“Point taken, but it’s no grind joint, not with the kind of money they put into it and who’s behind it. I drove by this place yesterday. It looks like an old Sears.”“Uh-uh. Monkey Ward’s and Penney’s.”“Even better. I’m not knocking Sears. I buy a lot of stuff there. It’s not my first choice of venue for an upscale entertainment experience.”“That’s where your big city uppity-ness loses touch with the real world. They’re not looking for an upscale experience. This is a grind joint, pure and simple.”“A casino for the working man.”Doc flashed to Kenny Czarniak, getting up at four AM to turn on the heat for people who actually did things. “Just what the working man needs.”
A casino in Penns River is the start of trouble for local law enforcement. Russian mobsters and gangbangers, and what’s left of the Pittsburgh Italian mob are fighting over turf. Local politicians and a real estate mogul also have an interest. And then there’s infighting among the cops. Mostly there’s Ben “Doc” Dougherty, the man readers will take a quick liking to and stay with throughout this wonderful novel. Doc looks out for his friends, as well as the poor schmucks just trying to make it day-to-day. When all is said and done, you’ll love Doc, and you’ll look forward to more of him in the future.Mob fiction is dead? Really? Me thinks the rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. The addition of Dana King to this particular niche in the literary world is a wonderful breath of fresh air all readers of fine writing will appreciate. For me there’s simply nobody writing better mob fiction in the industry today, and that includes the master, Elmore Leonard.Dana King’s Grind Joint does for mob fiction what prohibition did for organized crime—it provides the juice for it to flourish in a world consumed with special effects and cartoons; graphic novels and journalists turned private investigators turned vigilante killers. Grind Joint is a touch of reality in a world dizzy with a glitz de jour.A huge hat tip to Stark House Press for recognizing Dana’s writing, for putting him in print, something long overdue for someone this good.  The premier publisher of classic crime novels in the industry today has gone rogue yet again, publishing another original crime novel, Dana King’s Grind Joint, and we the readers are very grateful beneficiaries.Listen to me: Dana King is already one of the great ones.
—Charlie Stella2013
Dana King has worked as a musician, public school teacher, adult trainer, and information systems analyst. His short story, "Green Gables," was published in the anthology Blood, Guts, and Whiskey, edited by Todd Robinson. Other short fiction has appeared in New Mystery Reader, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, and Powder Burn Flash. Dana's first two novels, Wild Bill and Worst Enemies have received praise from authors such as Charlie Stella, Timothy Hallinan, Adrian McKinty, and Leighton Gage. The author lives in Laurel, Maryland.




Grind Joint978-1-933586-52-6A brand new Mafia crime thriller by the author of Wild Bill and Worst Enemies, both of which received profuse praise from authors like Charlie Stella, Timothy Hallinan, Adrian McKinty and Leighton Gage, plus a lot of great online reviews. As Charlie Stella says in his introduction, Grind Joint does for Mob fiction what prohibition did for organized crime. Due in November 2013

How accurate Is Californication? The great Ken Levine

Ed here: I  gave this series a full season and then stopped watching it. Did even Warren Beatty get laid this much? It teetered right on the edge of self-parody. It ultimately reminded me of how Jerry Seinfeld parodied the Eagles' "Desperadoes." Yeah if there was ever a group of real cowhands and gunfighters it was the Eagles all right.
Ken Levine:  http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/

For many of you the 4th of July holiday begins today. What better way to celebrate than with Friday Questions?


Dodgerdog has one near and dear to my heart:

Both "Episodes" and "Californication" have story arcs involving television writers getting it on with hot young actresses on their shows. (Hilarity ensues.) 

The public is well aware that movie producers and directors often have "special" relationships with star actresses, but in films, the writers tend not to be around for the shoot, whereas in TV, the writers are always there (along with the producers and directors of course). 

No question David Duchovny and Stephen Mangan are attractive guys. My question: since television writers are writing these shows, how much of this is from their own or observed experience as television writers, and how much is wishful fantasy? 

There’s an old joke – Did you hear about the Polish actress who tried to get ahead in Hollywood by sleeping with writers?

I’m not saying it never happens, but it just doesn’t happen enough. That said, there have been occurrences. Chris Thompson created NAKED TRUTH for Tea Leoni that resulted in a rather public and ultimately messy affair. David E. Kelley is married to actress Michelle Pheiffer. There should be a statue of him in front of the Writers Guild.  Katey Sagal is married to Kurt Sutter and Jenna Fischer walked down the aisle with writer Lee Kirk. There are other examples. I’m sure you can Google them.

But CALIFORNICATION is as realistic as I DREAM OF JEANIE is. Actually, I DREAM OF JEANIE is more realistic.

Charles H. Bryan asks: 

THE LAST KIND WORDS by Tom Piccirilli Interview

EG: Your new novel, due out July 7, from Bantam is a continuation of THE LAST KIND WORD, now out in trade paperback.  Both follow the adventures of a family of professional thieves, and the son, Terrier, who managed to extricate himself only to be drawn back into the family business, family secrets, and other matters of vengeance and violence.  The relationship between Terry and his brother Collie, who was on death row for a series of spree killings, was the lynchpin of the first novel.  How were you able to pull the other family members into greater focus with this book?

TP: The other family relationships were carved out in LKW but fell into the background because of the main theme of Terrier trying to save and/or forgive Collie.  This time out I was able to give greater in-depth storylines to Terry's parents, his younger sister Dale, and other members.
EG: You're currently working on your third Terrier Rand novel.  Will the series be a trilogy or do you intend to continue on?
TP: I suppose that will depend on what happens at the end of the new book.  I can't think too far beyond one novel at a time .  But if I have more story to tell after this one, then sure it will continue until I'm done telling my tale.  If people keep wanting them, I'll keep providing them.
EG: Why are you so mean to Terrier and his family?  You really kick the crap out of them, especially emotionally.
TP: They're noir heroes, they have to get the shit kicked out of them.  They've all got a date with fate.
EG: Is there any redemption for Terrier?
TP: I think there is.  It's doled out bit by bit across the books.  There's no big saving grace moment, but lots of little circumstances where he finds forgiveness for others and himself.  
EG: This is your first crime series.  What are you able to do with the Rand family that you couldn't with your other standalone novels?
TP: A series allows you to go back to the same well and keep mining it more deeply for hidden corners of your protagonist's personality.  I wanted to marry a mystery with a family drama and that's what I've done.  It's not just Terrier in the spotlight but everyone gets to take the stage eventually.  The whole play unfolds to strengthen the themes and twists.
EG: Thanks, Tom!
TP: Thank you, Ed!

Richard Matheson’s Classic “The Shrinking Man” Getting a Modern Adaptation; Carolyn Hart

Richard Matheson’s Classic “The Shrinking Man” Getting a Modernized Film Adaptation
Ed here: We can only hope for the best. Given the modest budget and the state of special effects the original was a memorable, powerful movie about loneliness and our place in the universe (to Matheson it was also in its way about God). I just hope the remake honors the dignity and pure storytelling pleasure of the original. Richard Matheson was attached to the remake which was the most hopeful sign of all. But now with Richard gone I hope his son, also attached, can convince the money people not to turn it into a special effects circus.
From SF Signal



Richard Matheson’s 1956 novel The Shrinking Man is no stranger to the big screen. In 1957, Matheson adapted it for the big screen as The Incredible Shrinking Man, a film that starred Grant Williams, Randy Stuart and was directed by Jack Arnold. In was about a man who, exposed to radiation, slowly began to shrink in size — a metaphor for how man’s place in the world was diminishing. In 1981, the story was radically rewritten as an uninspiring topical pro-environment comedy called The Incredible Shrinking Woman which starred Lily Tomlin.
It may hit theaters again.

According to Hollywood Reporter, Matheson (along with his son Richard Matheson Jr.) has been tapped by MGM for a modern remake. Reportedly, the tone of the original story will remain the same, but it will be updated to be more modern. For one thing, that means swapping out the radiation trigger for nanotechnology. The remake is being described as “an existential action movie”.


FROM CAROLYN HART





Dear Ed,      I wanted to share with you this exceedingly happy moment. Escape from Paris is the #6 book in the Summer Library Book Club Picks from Random House.




http://www.scribd.com/doc/147603050/Random-House-Book-Group-Brochure-Volume-6#.UcmW0Dvqm5I

Elmore Leonard--Valdez is Coming

"The basic structure of an Elmore Leonard plot," Larry Beinhart explains in How to Write a Mystery, "is that a big tough guy pushes a little tough guy. The little guy doesn't take it. He shoves back. The little guy is the kinda guy, the harder you shove him, the more trouble he's gonna be. In the end, the big guy really wishes he'd picked someone else to shove. When Leonard started he wrote westerns, and in those early books you can see the bones without an X-ray. I recommend Valdez Is Coming to anyone who wants to understand the structure of an Elmore Leonard novel."
Exactly and in all respects. One of the most enlightened and enlightening insights ever written about Leonard's work. 
Valdez is one of my favorite of the Leonard novels. The villain Frank Tanner is drawn in bile and blood and Valdez, thought by townspeople to be something of a loser, shines when reveals himself to be a former Army tracker and killer. 
The story is simple and straightforward. As part-time constable Valdez is tricked into killing an innocent man. Afterward, regretting what he's done, he asks Tanner and his cronies to at least chip in and give the dead man's widow some money. They treat him as if he were drunk and crazy. But he keeps on with his servile (he is a man who knows his place) until they begin to punish him. They crucify him as the cover depicts and leave him to death in the desert.
But he comes back to ask Tanner once again for the widow's money. Tanner declines and soon comes to regret it as Valdez now becomes the deadly man he was in his Army days.
We forget that in novels such as 52 Pick-Up and a few others Leonard had the power to hurt you. You see that especially in his western stories, the complete collection of which is readily available.

R.I.P. Richard Matheson-a piece from 2006

Mar 24, '06, 4:28 PM
Ed here: This is the first part of two part piece I wrote about Richard's book. He was one of my literary heroes, one of the most imaginative and suspenseful writer who ever lived. I'm having trouble with the blog tonight soI hope it turns out all right. I have no way to check it. 

Several of you have written me in the last month to ask where you could get copies of my interview with Richard Matheson, the one that appeared in Filmfax two years ago. Well, I'm updating it for inclusion in the Richard Matheson Companion which Matthew Bradley is doing.
For those of you unfamiliar with Richard's work, he's usually associated with horror, though in fact he's done nearly as much suspense as he's done horror. He wrote Spielberg's Duel, Kolchak the Night Stalker, all the important Poe films and numerous other suspense features. The only film Alfred Hitchcock asked to direct on his excellent one hour show was Richard's Ride The Nightmare, the novel being a true masterpiece of ever-ascending suspense, even though the TV movie doesn't quite make you break out in cold sweats the way the book does. With appearances in Queen and Year's Best among many other mystery anthologies, the suspense genre can certainly lay claim to him, too. Though as you'll see in the second half that runs tomorrow night, Richard considers himself a "writer" period. He writes whatever appeals to him at the moment.
So this is the slightly edited version of my Matheson piece. The interview itself appears tomorrow night. This is both the set-up and an overview of some of Richard's novels. Tor recently issued a beautiful trade pb that includes three of the suspense novels referenced here, Fury on Sunday, Someone Is Bleeding and Ride The Nightmare. (Thanks to Jim at Filmfax for letting me reprint the piece.)
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Just about every time I’ve ever written about Richard Matheson over the past thirty 30, I’ve started out the same way.The night of my eighth grade dance. My very first real dance. I’m duded to the max. Black suit and pink shirt and black tie. Like the one I’d seen Gene Vincent wear at the local dance club a couple of months earlier.
On this cold February night I am on a mission. I am going to win at least one dance with the girl I’ve loved with embarrassing fidelity since fifth grade. She must be aware of my painful condition—God knows I’ve humiliated myself enough because of it—but she’s far too busy fending off high school boys. Her beauty is quite apparent to them, too.
Well, friends and neighbors, this night, she does not go so well. The usual criminals I hang out with are nowhere around. They see this dance as strictly candy-ass. I am left, the only kid there with a true duck’s ass, to talk to boys in crew cuts and butch wax and gray suits. As I recall, they were friendly enough but wary of me because of the tough crowd I ran with. What the hell was I doing here? they wondered. And soon enough, I wondered, too.
Long story short: she danced with five or six different boys, and then a sophomore heartbreaker (just ask him) sort of commandeered her. She danced with nobody else but him. My chance was past.
I left for home early in the winter night. It was cold but at least the shadows were comforting. I felt a whole lot less foolish in the darkness.
Three blocks from my house was a pharmacy that didn’t close until 10:00. I stopped in there to have a Pepsi and a smoke. As always, I looked over the metal swivel paperback rack. This was 1955. I’d probably heard the name Richard Matheson in a few of the science fiction magazines I’d just begun reading, but I’d never seen a book of his before.
I took I Am Legend home, and two pages in forgot my broken heart entirely. I had never read a book that transported me so totally into its reality. Not only was it a harrowing suspense story, it had an emotional power and resonance that would remain with me the rest of my life. (Unfortunately, the heartbreak did return and all too soon.)
That night, Richard Matheson became one of my three favorite writers. He’s remained so for more than 50 years now.Back in 1955, I divided my reading between mysteries and science fiction. I generally felt closest to the mysteries, especially the Gold Medal novels by John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams, Peter Rabe, Lionel White, and several others for a simple reason: The world they tended to set their stories in was my world, a working-class neighborhood with more taverns than churches, a Greyhound bus station, serious games of craps and poker played in drafty basements, a fair number of teenage boys and girls alike shipped off to reform school or even prison, and cops who were always dragging your friends off to jail, especially if you happened to be black, as about a fourth of the neighborhood was in those days.
The next two Matheson novels I read were Fury on Sunday and Someone is Bleeding. They were every bit as brutal and real as any of my favorite Gold Medal writers, and with an added attraction: In Matheson novels, romance, often painful romance, drove the story as much as the violence did. To this day I prefer my novels to have man-woman stories in them. Not Romance. But romance.
A year later or so, Bantam did the first mass market edition of his collection Third from the Sun. Friends of mine who hated to read ate up every single page of it. If the subject had been The Works of Richard Matheson, these kids would have gone on to graduate school instead of flunking out of high school.
Matheson was one of the first writers I consciously copied. Those short, jabbing sentences. Those clearly defined settings. The dialog that could create a human being in just a few lines. And plots that just never let you go. I believe I read “Dying Room Only” three times the day I found it in a pulp in a second-hand store. Yes, he could write humor and adventure and even outré settings on far-off worlds. But mostly what he could do—whatever the setting or storyline or tone—was make it impossible to put down whatever story of his you were reading. The people were just too damned real, and their dilemma just too damned urgent.
He was also capable of constantly surprising his readers by shifting the types of stories and novels that attract him. Though he was known as a horror writer, he was equally skilled with suspense, Westerns, and pieces that are unclassifiable. Which he continues to do today in a variety of story types and the hell with career consistency.
His serious interest in the supernatural was first expressed in Hell House. His serious interest in spiritual matters was first expressed in What Dreams May Come. Now, you could argue that these novels evolved naturally from some of his previous work. Well, yes and no. Yes, he had written stories about hauntings and the supernatural before, but never with the singular and serious purpose of Hell House. And yes, his work had touched on matters of time travel and the quantum universe before, but never at the length or with the aching beauty of What Dreams May Come.
Same with the Western novels. Except for a few early stories, Matheson had never seriously attempted to work with that most venerable of forms. But when he did so, with Journal of the Gun Years, he wrote what has to be one of the most unique and powerful Westerns of the past quarter-century. With a single novel, he was up there with the big guys, Elmer Kelton and Ernest Haycox and Elmore Leonard.
There is no way to cover my favorite Matheson books in any depth in this piece, but I would like to pass along a few thoughts on a writer I’ve just never quit reading. Virtually all of his work has improved with age. The late mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner—whose smart-ass novels as by A.A. Fair I think you’ll enjoy as much as I do—wrote some of his fiction in such a way that it was “timeless.” At least this was what he thought he was achieving by almost never making contemporary references in his later Perry Mason novels. No song titles, no movie titles, no fashion styles were cited. But Gardner was too tricky by half with this ploy. What he achieved was not “timelessness” but an odd sterility of setting. The later Masons happen in a world that has no reality. It’s like a shooting a movie with the actors standing in front of a blank wall. I recommended his A.A. Fairs because they have a lot of atmosphere, especially those set during World War Two.
I mention this because while Matheson’s descriptions of time and place are usually spare, they still manage to evoke the decade in which they were written. The first couple of pages of A Stir of Echoes, as just one example, carefully and evocatively establish that our protagonists and his neighbors are working-class folks, something the under-appreciated film adaptation had the courage to match.
So now to some—but not all—of my favorite Matheson novels. But not the classics such as I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man. I’d rather talk about a few of the novels and stories that don’t seem to get much mention. The Shrinking Man is invariably and deservedly praised for its action set-pieces, especially the extended scene with Scott Carey battling the Black Widow spider. But I’ll tell you, for me the most difficult scene to write may well have been when Carey, now 49 inches tall, attempts to make love to his wife. Because what you have here, friends and neighbors, is a dirty joke. Think about the kind of bar patter this situation would inspire in any other hands. Seinfeld’s George and his “shrinkage” problem (yes, ladies, they really do shrink when you’ve been in cold water) was nothing compared to what Carey experiences. But Matheson makes this one of the most tender, emotionally compelling scenes in the book. It could have been lurid and freakish, and yet it defines Carey’s love for his wife Lou in a way no other scene in the book quite matches.
Earthbound is usually dismissed as minor Matheson, and I’ve never quite been able to figure out why. The bestseller, Stuart Woods did a book called Under the Lake which used many of the same tropes and tricks. He didn’t copy the Matheson book—he may not even have read it—but he did show us how not to write a novel about being possessed by gorgeous erotic supernatural women (though, to be fair, there are some nice long stretches of writing in it). Matheson takes what is essentially the material of a dirty joke—humping lady spooks—and turns it into a serious and moving look at a marriage that is beginning to fail, and a man who has begun to question some of his key values. The use of barren seashore winter images to contrast with the heat of the ghost is remarkable, as is the sorrow of the wife who can’t understand—or quite face—what her husband is going through. It’s one hell of a good, solid, eerie read. This is one of the few supernatural stories I’ve ever found believable, by the way.
Ride the Nightmare—This novel virtually vanished for two or three decades. There was an Alfred Hitchcock Presents version of it that a lot of people like, but which failed, for me, to capture the singular grinding terror of the novel. Familiar material turned into a masterpiece, if you want a slug line for this novel. Respectable married man with a Past finds his life turned into horror when a couple of thugs from his yesterdays turn up and try to blackmail him into helping them out with a new job. There is a particular '50s feeling to this material that enriches the way Matheson handles the marriage in this one. It dates well because it speaks of and to its era. I’ll tell you true—whether you’re an established pro or a beginner, if you want to take a graduate school course in writing suspense novels, memorize this book.
Shadows On The Sun—Here’s one for you, a horror-Western, the only good horror-Western I’ve ever read/seen/heard of, in fact. This was originally a screenplay but it adapted just fine, thank you, to prose. Would’ve made a really nice TV movie back when the networks were pushing that long lost breed of cat (I don’t count all those current Sunday and Monday night weepies as TV movies—they’re just long form soap opera installments). This would also make an especially fine graphic novel should anybody be interested. Here, atmosphere and plot trump character, though Matheson gives us some really nice glimpses into some really not nice people. His mixture of Indian supernatural lore with the spur-jingling realism of traditional Western tropes works very very well.
The Beardless Warriors is another one of those Matheson novels that disappeared for decades after a successful first appearance. This is likely one of his three or four most accomplished novels for two reasons—it is, for me anyway, his most ambitious in terms of the writing problems he sets for himself. The first difficulty is to shape a fast-paced drama coherently about a group of young draftees. A group, mind you; do a group but make them each individual enough that you remember them as separate people. This is no simple drama. He must describe a war, Pvt. Everett Hackermeyer's place in that war, and the young man's reaction to the numerous small dramas all around him. I love this book, and I generally hate war novels. But Matheson plays the entire symphony here—action, tragedy, poignance, humor, the lore of epic battle, and a stunning portrait of a young man's feelings about the requirements of war. No John Wayne crapola here. This is much more in the mode of Samuel Fuller's "The Steel Helmet," reporting the tedium and terror and ambivalence of young soldiers in battle. I can't over-estimate the grace or power of this novel. (This is one of the many recent reissues in handsome trade paperbacks from Tor/Forge.)
What Dreams may Come—My wife Carol read this shortly after she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. (Not to worry; she’s symptom-free now.) The book changed her life, as she always tells people when urging them to read it. She found in it elegance and beauty, the kind of spirituality she'd never been able to find in churches, a sense of spiritual well-being unfettered by dogma or doctrine. While my reaction was less dramatic, I was struck by how similar my own vague religious feelings are to Matheson's. This is the ultimate love story, of a husband who seeks, and ultimately saves, his wife even though he has died and exists on another plane of reality. I'm not drawn to novels of spirituality, but this one works as both a spellbinding fantasy and a serious speculation about life after death.
Bid Time Return. In gentler times, there was a fine fantasy writer by the name of Robert Nathan. His most famous book was Portrait of Jenny, which is one of the finest romances I've ever read. Then came Jack Finney who, after scaring the hell out of us with The Bodysnatchers, spent the second part of his considerable career re-imagining his beloved town of Galesburg, Illinois in two excellent historical novels. I'd say that Matheson, in Bid Time, demonstrates that he is their equal in matters of time travel mixed with romance. What an enormous accomplishment this novel is—a quicksilver story of a man and woman of different centuries who not only fall in love, but transcend the problems of time. It's hard to imagine any kind of reader not liking this book. The word "fetching" was created to describe it.
The Kolchak Scripts—Gauntlet Publications is in the midst of a major Matheson publishing and re-publishing program. That excellent journalist and reporter Mark Dawidziak has put all three Kolchak scripts (the third being a collaboration between Matheson and William F. Nolan) plus extensive (and excellent) essays on the entire Kolchak saga into a huge volume that is certainly the definitive book on the subject. If Psycho forever changed suspense movies and novels, the first Kolchak movie forever changed horror movies and novels. Yes, there had been gritty newsroom horror films before; and yes, there had been wry, even comic horror flicks before. But using Jeff Rice’s clever novel as a basis, Matheson brought his own shrewd take to this new form. Instead of using humor as farce or slapstick, he used humor to make the realistic elements all the more darker and more believable. I just watched it again, and it’s as fresh, sassy, and spooky as it was three decades ago. It’s a gloriously lurid and nasty piece of work, glitz played off just the right amount of gore, a true classic.
Chris Carter has always said that The X-Files was directly inspired by The Night Stalker, and when you think about it, it sure was. What is odd is that X-Files was imitative in many ways, but there were few Night Stalker homages (as we call them in the land of litigation). Maybe this is because the Matheson-McGavin duo brought a unique insolence to the respective parts they played. In places, Night Stalker teetered right on the brink of parody, both in the writing and in McGavin's acting. But it never crossed the line, remaining mostly dark and surprisingly realistic because Matheson gave the whole journalistic angle the world-weariness (if not cynicism) one finds in most real newsrooms.
Gauntlet also published Matheson’s award-winning and beloved children’s book Abu and The Seven Marvels, a bracing adventure that your kids and grandkids love (mine sure do). You’ve got your princess, you’ve got your hero, you’ve got your wizard, and you’ve got your quest. You might think you know what Matheson does with these familiar elements, but you’d be wrong. Matheson never gives us same old, same old. Never.
Camp Pleasant—Cemetery Dance Publications is another small press that has produced several beautifully made and important books by Matheson. Camp is a superior short novel about a summer camp that is turned into a concentration camp of sorts by the man who runs it. The writing here is outstanding Matheson, outright poetic in places, mixing humor and terror as the bully intimidates virtually everybody in the camp. This is a real page-turner with plenty of suspense, but most of all there is Matheson’s compassion for the weak who must suffer at the hands of the ruthless. A fine, quiet addition to the Matheson library.  Read more…