Ed Gorman's Blog, page 146

'SHE GOT HOW MUCH?!'

Lena Dunham's book deal is the talk of the industry.The 26-year-old creator and star of HBO series "Girls" has apparently sold her unwritten essay collection “Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned” to Random House for more than $3.5 million, according to reports.Forbes writes that she will probably need to sell around 1 million copies in order to make back her advance - something that Tina Fey's book did by September last year, having spent 23 consecutive weeks on the bestseller lists. But such success is far from guaranteed, especially for a first-time author.Though most author-publisher deals remain confidential, stories about huge sums paid out for celebrity books occur every few years. They are usually the result of savvy work by literary agents, who aim to pit publishers against one other in a bidding war. "What can I say?" said Dan Strone, who was Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Silverman's literary agent, in an interview with the NY Observer in 2008. "I mean, I don’t make people spend the money."Here are 11 other eye-watering book advances given to celebrities.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10... Eye-watering Book Advances

John Lennon's Letters: Beatle Was Quite The Curmudgeon

John Lennon's Letters: Beatle Was Quite The CurmudgeonPosted: 10/08/2012 9:31 am EDT Updated: 10/08/2012 2:37 pm EDT  HUFFINGTON POSTJohn Lennon may have penned peace-loving classics like "Imagine," but he wasn't always the conciliatory type.In a number of letters excerpted by Vulture from the forthcoming book The John Lennon Letters, the late Beatle rails against critics of Yoko Ono and even lambasts Paul and Linda McCartney. The full letters -- available in scans on Vulture -- are definitely worth a look, but here are five things Lennon actually wrote:1. To a Lennon fan who disparaged Ono: "Yoko's been an artist before you were even a groupie."2. To a critic who didn't like Ono's show: "I'd forgotten about people like you! Well, well -- you still exist, of course, in small towns across the world..."3. To Linda and Paul McCartney: "I was reading your letter and wondering what middle aged cranky Beatle fan wrote it. I resisted looking at the last page to find out -- I kept thinking who is it … What the hell -- it's Linda!"4. To Linda and Paul, continued: "I'm not ashamed of the Beatles -- we did start it all --but of some of the shit we took to make them so big -- I thought we all felt that way in varying degrees -- obviously not."5. To George Martin, a producer: "Of course, George Martin was a great help in translating our music technically when we needed it, but for the cameraman to take credit from the director is a bit much.""Love Me Do," the band's first single, turned 50 last week, marking half a century of Beatlemania. The band has thus dominated entertainment headlines. A flurry of new texts on the group and its legacy are due out soon, including a collection of photos taken by the Beatles' official photographer.

Publisher's Weekly on The Interrogator

The Interrogator and Other Criminally Good Fiction












Edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg. Cemetery Dance (www.cemeterydance.com), $19.99 trade paper (488p) ISBN 978-1-58767-336-8Heavyweights of the genre such as Lee Child, Laura Lippman, and David Morrell headline this strong anthology of 26 crime stories. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a dud in the bunch; surprisingly, the best entry may be a comic riff on Rex Stout—Dave Zeltserman’s “Archie’s Been Framed.” It’s hard to resist a line like: “While Julius refers to me as Archie, and I act as his private secretary, research assistant, unofficial biographer, and all-around man Friday, I am in actuality a four-inch rectangular piece of advanced technology that Julius wears as a tie clip.” Wry humor is in play in Jeffery Deaver’s “The Plot,” which takes some affectionate pokes at the James Patterson fiction factory. Other highlights include Loren D. Estleman’s Valentino mystery, “The List”; T. Jefferson Parker’s twisty “Luck”; and Doug Allyn’s Civil War thriller, “The Scent of Lilacs.” (Nov.)

Help!

I had somebody help me with an aol problem. Fixed that but left me with another that he can't figure out either. All the blogs I normally read...I log on and they open up to the background colors but not information. I can read them if I press rss but i don't get for instance bill crider's list of blogs which i need. If anybody has any ideas I'd love to hear about them at ejgorman99@aol.com THANK YOU.

Coming Soon: The Interrogator

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The Interrogator and Other Criminally Good Fiction will probably derive most of its notoriety from the fact that it was the last anthology put together by legendary anthologist Martin Greenberg (in conjunction with the equally legendary Ed Gorman), which is a bit of a shame. As notable (and unfortunate) as that particular bit of trivia is, it’s the book that deserves attention, a meaty collection of nearly thirty stories from many of the leading lights in crime fiction. Not every story hits, but plenty of them do, and there’s something for every palate.The opener to the collection is actually not fiction; it’s an essay by Jon L. Breen about the state of crime fiction in 2010. There’s some interesting material in there about the rise of the eBook, but what the piece really does is pin a collection that really feels timeless to a particular year, reflexively dating it. At the very least, the essay should have been moved to the end; where it sits, it sets expectations that the stories neither can nor should meet.But the stories, those are worth talking about. The author list includes David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates, the unfortunately ill Tom Piccirilli, Michael Connelly, Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane and numerous other recognizable names. What’s even better is that most of them are working outside their comfort zones here – Connolly does a “Lincoln Lawyer” short and the Collins-Spillane collaboration’s an early Mike Hammer, but most of the pieces push the envelope in exciting, interesting ways.One of the highlights of the anthology is the very last piece, a serial killer story from David Hong entitled “Plainview” that elegantly sandbags the never-ending stream of television police procedurals with their easy captures and smug punishments for the guilty. The case here – small-town murders with an obvious suspect – gradually becomes less important than what it means, and the effects it has on the men who live in its shadow. Clark Howard’s “Escape From Wolfkill” is another winner, detailing the escape of three elderly cons from a prison built especially for the elderly. Opening fiction “The Interrogator”, from David Morrell, follows the question of the efficiency of interrogation methods down a logical rabbit hole, to interesting, understated effect. Don Winslow’s “Old Men and Old Boards” is an elegiac love letter to a vanished California; the thematically similar “Sometimes You Can’t Retire” by Marcia Muller gives us a droll glimpse at a pet lover who takes his sympathies very seriously. And Kristine Kathryn Rusch pulls a switcheroo for the ages with “What People Leave Behind”, setting up an intensely sympathetic protagonist and then explosively yanking the rug out from under her – and the reader.Not every piece is a strong one, of course, but even most of the misses are interesting and challenging. Piccirilli’s “The Return of Inspiration” is less a crime story than one of self-realization, albeit with the trappings of a more dangerous genre. Robert S. Levinson’s “The Girl in the Golden Gown” takes a wonderful premise – a millionaire in love with the woman in a portrait he purchased, and a detective’s attempt to hunt her down for him – and rushes to its conclusion. “The Scent of Lilacs”, by Doug Allyn, is a Civil War tale that’s as much Western as it is crime fiction, and its elegiac pace may be a little slow for the readers impatient to get to the two-fisted Mickey Spillane stuff still to come. But even these pieces – Connolly’s light-hearted take on an indecent exposure charge in “The Perfect Triangle”, Lee Child’s “Section 7 (A) Operational” with its tongue-in-cheek peek at the the source of a thriller writer’s inspiration, and the rest – offers something interesting.Again, it’s highly unlikely that every reader is going to like every piece in the collection. But Greenberg and his co-editor Ed Gorman have done an excellent job of collecting stories that hew to the theme while expanding on it, changing up mood, tone and style in such a way that the book never feels repetitive or dull. Cemetery Dance could do far worse for one of its initial crime fiction offerings. Fans of the genre will find much to enjoy, and newcomers will get a well-stocked buffet of highlights to whet their appetites for more.

Forgotten Books: Stranger At Home

Way back in the Fifties I read one half of an Ace Double mystery novel called Stranger At Home. I really took to it. The writing was swift, dramatic, elegant. Supposedly it was written by the actor George Sanders. But even in my early teens, clueless as I was, I just assumed he hadn't written it. I'd read here and there about "ghosted" books.

The real writer turned out to be Leigh Brackett. I've mentioned this novel before because it's a fine whodunit set in the Hwood of the late Forties. For its time it's a blunt novel. Not even the protagonist Michael Vickers is much of a hero. The story centers on Vickers returning from the dead--one of his three friends (or maybe all of them) pushed him off the boat they were sailing on). Drunk, he nearly drowned. But he survived to return a few years later to find out what had happened to him that drunken night. He doesn't have amnesia, he just can't recall the moment he was pushed off the boat.

For years there were rumors that Brackett had farmed the book out but I don't think so. The writing is purely hers. Those sweeping sentences, those atmospherics, those bitter unhappy people. You find them in her science fantasy, her westerns, her mysteries. If there's an influence here it's Raymond Chandler, one of her idols. The difference is that Vickers, unlike Philip Marlowe, doesn't observe everything at one remove. He goes through the novel trying to find the culprit--and learning in the process what an arrogant ruthless bastard he was to those around him.

The book opens on a party scene that I'd out up against any party scene I've encountered in fiction short of Gatsby. Brackett must have known a lot of drunks because she gets them down just right.

This is a book that should be brought back and put on the Brackett shelf. It's one of her finest novels.

The new Cinema Retro-The best issue yet

Ed here: Every single article in this issue is a fully-realized fascinating piece of work. I didn't see how the last issue could be topped but this issue does it. Must-have reading!Issue #24 of Cinema Retro is being hailed by many readers as the very best in the eight years we've been publishing. What makes it so special? Consider the wide range of great films covered in this one, diverse issue:Major celebration of The Poseidon Adventure's 40th anniversary with articles by David Savage, Tom Listanti, James Radford and Chris Poggiali. Includes many rare photos, international movie posters and interviews with Carol Lynley and Mort Kunstler, the legendary artist who created the movie poster. Kunstler also provides his original sketches for the ad campaign, reproduced in this issue for the first time. 40th anniversary tribute to Deliverance. John Exshaw visits director John Boorman at his home in Ireland for exclusive interview about working with author James Dickey on the landmark film.Gary Giblin takes an in-depth look at another classic film celebrating its 40th anniversary: Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, complete with rare stills from sequences that the Master cut from the final version of the movie.Matthew R. Bradley looks at one of the screen's legendary baddies, James Bond nemesis Blofeld in both literature and cinema. The title of the article: The Importance of Being Ernst.Remembering Ernest Borgnine: a tribute to the legendary Oscar winner.Raymond Benson's ten best films of 1983.Lee Pfeiffer pays tongue-in-cheek tribute to the 1976 B movie cult "classic" Grizzly starring Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel and Andrew Prine. Gareth Owen revisits the early days of director Michael Winner's career at Pinewood Studios.Mark Mawston's new column Desert Island Flicks covers underrated gems like John Frankenheimer's Seconds, Frank Perry's The Swimmer and Don Siegel's Coogan's Bluff.Adrian Smith titillates readers with part two of his extensive look at the history of British sexploitation films in More Sex, Please. We're British. Dean Brierly's Crime Wave International covers British classic crime movies of the 60s and 70s including Get Carter, Payroll, Robbery, Villain and Sitting Target. Plus the usual reviews of the latest film books, DVDs and soundtracks.  

Tom Piccirilli News

Dear Ed, 
I'm here in the ICU. Tom made it through the five hour surgery tonight. He's talking, joking and looking great considering all he's been through. He'll get another MRI tomorrow and then we'll learn more.
Best,Michelle

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