Ed Gorman's Blog, page 185

THE GUNSMITH IS BACK!

THE GUNSMITH IS BACK! by Robert J. Randisi

Okay, he never left, but it was January of 1980 when GUNSMITH #1: MACKLIN'S WOMEN was first published. That same month was my first month as a full time free lance writer. I'm tempted to say here, "And the rest is history," but there's more to it than that. It has taken a lot of hard work to produce a Gunsmith novel a month since then, while also writing other series, and other genres. I am presently working on Gunsmith #368. Add to that 15 Giant Gunsmith novels over the years, and we're sitting at 383 book about good ol' Clint Adams. There have been more an 10 million copies in print (the publisher says 5 million on the books, but it has been saying that for a long time).

You can go to the Penguin website for the action western page to read up on the series:
http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pag...

There is also a Gunsmith Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Gun...

But the more amazing thing that is happening now is that The Gunsmith #1 is back., after being out of print for many years. In fact. Speaking Volumes LLC (http://speakingvolumes.us/indexflsh.asp) will be bringing the first 200 Gunsmiths out as ebooks and POD trade paperbacks, publishing them over the next five years. In addition, they are bring Gunsmith 1 & 2 out on audio, with more possible.

Book #2: THE CHINESE GUNMAN will be published next month.

In addition, all my other Adult Western series, which came out under different names during the 1980's, will receive the same treatment, so look for The TRACKER series, the ANGEL EYES series and the MOUNTAIN JACK PIKE series, all of which will be published as by "Robert J. Randisi writing as . . ." each pseudonym.

The Gunsmith books will continue to appear as by J.R. Roberts.

It's exciting to see old series making a comeback.

I agree with Seth McFarlane on this one...

Ed here: I'm a big fan of Seth McFarlane's work but when I see on TV he's a little smirky for my taste. Too hip for the room. However I agree with him about Jon Stewart here. I never could figure out the point of that big event Stewart had in Washington a few years ago. I pretty much felt he was celebrating himself and his status as a pundit. At least Colbert had the horse sense to mock it all with that ridiculous costume. Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann dared to say the same thing--what was the point? Stewart claimed that both sides were holding up progress in congress and they needed to get together. My ass. The GOP was holding it up per MItch McConnell's statement that his most important goal was to make sure that Obama was a one term president. So when Maher and Olbermann spoke up Stewart took shots at them. I dont know if they got phone calls from him but McFarlane sure did.

From Pop Eater/Huffington Post

Seth MacFarlane has a feud with Jon Stewart?
by Lanford Beard
Categories: Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, The Daily Show

During the taping for tonight's Piers Morgan, the muckraking Brit sprang questions about a never-revealed war of war of words between guest Seth MacFarlane and The Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart. According to Morgan's crack investigators, Stewart called the Family Guy creator up in 2008 after MacFarlane lampooned Stewart for continuing to air The Daily Show during the 2007 Writers Guild strike. MacFarlane described Stewart as "angry" and himself both "shocked" and "frustrated" during the hour-long the telephonic ambush. He explained, "I think [Jon's] response was 'Who the hell made you the moral arbiter of Hollywood?'"

When Morgan noted, "There's a certain irony in Jon Stewart ringing up and haranguing you for mocking him, isn't there?" MacFarlane responded, "If I say yes, he'll crucify me on his show for a year." MacFarlane, who admitted he was outmatched by Stewart's phenomenal debate skills, was surprised Morgan even knew about the altercation, saying, "My publicist has forbidden me to talk about this ever since it happened."

New Books: If The Woodsman is Late by Matthew Paust

Dear Friends - Another literary egg has popped out of this rooster's butt. This one is a collection of stories, some fiction but most of them of them true. There's a gun theme in many of them. The title refers to one of the stories, which reflects on what might have happened to Red Riding Hood had the woodsman who rescues her from the wolf in the fairytale gotten distracted or sidetracked or for whatever reason couldn't get to her in time to kill the wolf. The link below will take you to an announcement I posted on my Open Salon blog. I'm also attaching a photo here of the book's front and back cover. I trust all of you are well. Fall has finally arrived here with its cooler, friendlier weather. We're enjoying the change. Cheers and love. - Matt



If the Woodsman is Late

Foreword


Despite impressions you might have taken from the title and cover of this book that it is devoted solely to guns, please know that while guns do play a role in most of the stories – a mix of fiction and true – many are completely gun free. If you like the way I tell stories but don't like guns there's plenty for you here. In truth, guns have played a significant role in my life from as far back as I remember. In today's world this would be unusual. Today a boy can be expelled from school for drawing a picture of a gun. When I was a boy my best friend brought a real gun to school for show and tell. While an adult eyebrow or two might have been raised, no one called the police. He carried the German Luger openly from home several blocks away, dazzled his classmates with his uncle's war trophy, and carried it home again.

It is this contrast between yesterday and today that interests me, and I hope will interest you, as well. Although my biases may be obvious, I will do my best not to batter you with them. One of the first rules of good writing is not to tell but to show. I have attempted to follow that rule in these stories. I don't consider it my job to try to change your mind on anything, but I can't deny I'd be delighted if my stories helped you to see and understand a point of view that might be different from one you already hold.

I've included the gun-free stories to help you gain a more rounded perspective of a man who otherwise might be seen only in the glaring light of what has become a highly adversarial issue. To those at one extreme of this spectrum, who might see someone like me as a stereotypical gun nut, unstable and dangerous, I hope to reveal a gentle, good-humored family man who shares most of the same fundamental values as they. Folks at the spectrum's other extreme might find me lacking sufficient militant fiber to carry the Second Amendment battle flag into the enemy camp, at any cost. They may be right. I don't know.

Carl von Clausewitz defined war as "the extension of politics by other means." From this view, the politics of gun ownership is still in play. At stake are hearts and minds. To this and to life I write.

I've arranged these stories in no particular order, although I have grouped several of them by subject. The newspaper stories are together, if not in any particular sequence, as are those reminiscences of my Army days. I've dropped in a whimsical piece here and there for variety. The fiction should be readily identifiable, but to avoid any confusion I've indicated in the table of contents those that came entirely from my imagination.

Gorman Interview - 1999

Ed here: This is from a 1999 interview on a Stephen King website. Stephen Booth is giving my website a new look so he wants me to find quotes. While doing so I stumbled across this interview on the King page. Here's what I was saying eleven years ago.

-------
Ed Gorman is the Shamus-award winning author of over thirty novels. He's won a Shamus award for best detective story (for his short story "Turn Away"), been nominated for a Stoker and an Edgar, and continues to write with such fecundity he rivals Stephen King in terms of sheer output. Gorman's new novel Voodoo Moon (St. Martin's Press $22.95) just appeared. Fangoria said "...in simple but incredibly compelling prose...Gorman gives us a mess of semi-inbred monsters of the human kind, dark secrets locked away in the attic and a general nastiness that make this a very unsettling ride. It's his portayl of a dark and damning world that cements his place as an entertaining writer and Voodoo Moon a worthwhile read." Masters of Terror said "The story is a powerhouse...adrenaline-stirring entertainment...and atmosphere that is more sinister than in most horror novels." A writer of many styles and many genres, Ed Gorman seems to have mastered them all. Recently, he took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few of my questions.

First off, congratulations on "Out There in the Darkness" being selected for 1999's Best American Mystery Stories (even though, oddly, "Darkness" was originally published in 1996.) Working mainly in genre fiction for most of your career, is it odd to suddenly have your work anthologized with such "mainstream" writers as Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike?

Believe it or not I was recently asked to introduce John Updike when he spoke at a local college. I declined. I told the woman booking the evening that it'd be like having Lawrence Olivier and Bobcat Goldthwaite on the same stage.. I don't belong in the company of Oates and Updike. I'm a pulp writer and know my place. This isn't aw, shucks self-effacement. Just the simple truth.
I would have been embarrassed and I'm sure Updike would have been, too.

-In your most recent "Gormania" column (Cemetery Dance, Issue #33) you discuss the future of e-book publishing. With the number of downloads of Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet" and The Plant, it seems that e-books are becoming more popular. Is this just a case of name-driven success, or are e-books about to take the publishing world by storm?

There has been a rush to judgement (in my opinion) on e-books. Certainly, they'll play a major role in future publishing but I think we're still a few years away from that. My grandkids will grow up with e-books. They'll be a natural form to them. Downloading books is still alien to Boomers like me.

-Your earlier books (from 1985's Daddy's Little Girl to 1992's The Serpent's Kiss) were all published under the name Daniel Ransom. Pseudonyms have a long history of giving authors freedom to write on subjects they wouldn't under their own name; do you have a similar story?

Except for The Fugitive Stars, which is an adequate Fifties invasion-type novel; Zone Soldiers, which is my OK Keith Laumer sf adventure novel; and The Serpents Kiss, which I think is a good, solid horror novel, all the Ransoms (I'm not even sure how many there are) are crap and not worth reading. I didn't know any better/desperately needed the money.

-Your recent short story "Angie," (in the anthology 999) scared the crap out of me. This story seems to confirm the Jerry Springer mentality of the late 1990's – a lot of glittery surface, with no moral fiber to back it up. This type of horror story is becoming more and more prevalent, the terror of dire actions without remorse. Any idea why?

Very perceptive. Jerry Springer exactly. That kind of floating sociopathy endemic in our society today. We know that serial killers are secretly proud of their bloody work; I think if I was humping my first cousin, I'd probably keep it to myself. I wouldn't go on Springer and have a fist fight with my other first cousin, who was also humping her. Even perverts should show some discretion for God's sake.

-Your fiction often focuses on small town America, especially in Iowa and the surrounding states. Is this a case of "write where you live," or is there something more intrinsically magical or mysterious about small towns?

Writing what I know. I'm one of those folks who live in little Midwestern burgs and pass through life pretty much without notice (except for my drinking days when I attracted far too much notice). I think small, I dream small, I don't want fame or fortune, I just want some kind of peace of mind and when my time comes to pass, to pass over without undue terror. My favorite noir isn't Bogart or Mithcum but Robert Ryan--that kind of gnawing Catholic sorrow.. There are millions and millions of me and I write about us because, if I don't always admire us, I think I at least understand us. My loved ones are my utmost concern. They give me joy and solace. Kissing my wife, holding my grandkids, making my mother laugh--those are my true pleasures. The rest of life is largely abstract and bullshit.

-The story you won the Shamus award for, "Turn Away," isn't your typical detective story. It's not often the tough-talking P.I. is allowed to grow old, let alone face questions of slow mortality. What prompted you to write this unique and moving story?

I've written my share of "typical" detective stories, I suppose, but I try not to. Old men have always fascinated me, especially the tough working-class old men of the various neighborhoods I grew up in. My Dad had a lot of factory friends like that and in the early Fifties they'd sit on our porch at night and drink Falstaff and swat mosquitos and catch fireflies in their hands and tell all kinds of stories about women and the big war they'd all been in and the things that scared them and the things they held dear. I'd sit on the porch and listen and long years later a lot of those tales found their way into my fiction. "Turn Away" could easily have been a porch story. I also worked for a year as a railroad yard clerk. Long winter nights I'd hear a lot of the old guys tell great tales.

-You've been successful in so many genres (mystery writer, horror writer, anthology editor … the list goes on and on), is it difficult to secure a place in the literary world? Is it better or worse to be a "brand name?"

I've mismanaged my career from the start--I should have concentrated on one type of book--but I've done a number of things I'm proud of so fuck it.

-Your Sam McCain series has been referred to as "a Bob Greene newspaper column set inside a mystery" (Publisher's Weekly). Much of your fiction takes place in "bygone days." Is it difficult to capture a sense of nostalgia in this type of fiction without sounding stodgy?
I
'm not sure most of my fiction takes place in bygone days unless you mean my westerns. The McCains I write just because now, in my Fifties, the emotional truths of my youth (and I mean small truths, nothing cosmic) have come clear to me. I don't think of it as nostalgia so much as a kind of retroactive therapy.

As the editorial director of Mystery Scene magazine, you must constantly see new and exciting talent emerge (my newest favorites are Dennis Lehane and Harlan Coben.) Any standout writers you'd recommend?

-I never answer this question. I'd leave somebody out and hurt his/her feelings.

-Okay, because this is a Stephen King web site, I have to give you the requisite Stephen King question: name your top three favorite works by King, in any category.

Night Shift, The Shining, Pet Sematary/Misery. Plus all kinds of other stuff. The funny thing was, I didn't care much for him at first and made a negative comment in Twentieth Century writers that I've always regretted--to the degree that I literally cringe every time I think about it. Then my then-girlfriend was reading Salem's Lot and I picked it up one night and stayed up all night reading it (literally) and it proved to be one of the two or three most influential books I've ever read--like Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. It changed my whole approach to writing. I re-read King now constantly.

American Writers - too insular?

Ed here: I don't agree with everything Mr. Nazaryan says here but I do take his point about the insularity and narcissism of American literary writers. My agreement may simple be due to my age. When I was growing up literary writers such as Theodore Dreiser and James T. Farrell and John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck and Nelson Algren were still read and mainstream writers such as John O'Hara and Budd Schulberg and Jerome Weidman and (early) Herman Wouk were on the bestseller lists. These were writers whose works celebrated and critiqued the nation in addition to telling personal stories. For all intents and purposes they are forgotten and unread today. I think they disappeared after Formalism began to infect various college writing workshops. I remember a professor ridiculing Dreiser and calling him "an readable hack." Implicit in Mr. Nazaryan's piece is the question of Formalism's influence.

FROM SALON:
MONDAY, OCT 3, 2011 12:04 PM CDT
Why American novelists don't deserve the Nobel Prize
An American hasn't won in 20 years. The Academy finds our writers insular and self-involved -- and they're right

BY ALEXANDER NAZARYAN
TOPICS:FICTION
America wants a Nobel Prize in literature. America demands it! America doesn't understand why those superannuated Swedes haven't given one to an American since Toni Morrison in 1993. America wonders what they're waiting for with Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. America wonders how you say "clueless" in Swedish.

Okay, enough. But the literature Nobel will be announced this Thursday and if an American doesn't win yet again, there will be the usual entitled whining — the sound of which has been especially piercing since 2008, when Nobel Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl deemed American fiction "too isolated, too insular" and declared Europe "the centre of the literary world."

Boy, were we upset. Over at Slate, Adam Kirsch penned a scathing essay declaring that "the Nobel committee has no clue about American literature," arguing that Philip Roth should have won the prize. New Yorker editor David Remnick said, "You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lecture." He added John Updike (then living) and Don DeLillo to the mix of worthy laureates.

It's true that the Academy, like any body of judges, has made some ill-informed decisions. And they've not done themselves any favors with some George W. Bush-era selections that plainly had more to do with politics than literature.

In 2005, British playwright Harold Pinter fulminated during his Nobel lecture about "the crimes of the United States" with all the embarrassing authority of a college freshman who just discovered Howard Zinn. In 2007, the prize was given to South African novelist Doris Lessing, who called 9/11 "neither as terrible nor extraordinary as [Americans] think."

That only fed the vitriol directed at Stockholm, obscuring a valid point about American letters: we've become an Oldsmobile in a world yearning for a Prius. Our paint is flaking. Nobody wants our clunkers.

for the rest go here:http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/1...

The Planet Stories line -Robert Silverberg & others

If you grew up reading science fiction in 1950s the name Robert Silverberg (and his many pen-names) was familiar to you in both the more serious magazines (Astounding, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)) as well as those aimed at younger readers, Amazing/Fantastic, Imagination/Imaginative Tales and a few others. Now Silverberg is heralded world wide as one of the great stylists and innovators in science fiction history. Awhile back I realized I've been reading him for fifty-some years. I own thirty-seven of his books if that tells you anything.

I believe I have all of his Ace Doubles, skillful adventures on distant worlds filled with wonders and treachery. What always set Silverberg's adventure stories about was how they reflected and commented on our own times. A shrewd political mind was operating behind all the derring-do. Most of his Doubles came from the adventure magazines of the Fifties, notably Larry Shaw's Science Fiction Adventures.

Now Planet Stories is bringing back many of Silverbeg's finest tales in handsome and inexpensive trade paperbacks. The entire Planet Stories list includes writers such as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock and Joe Lansdale. And many many more Here's the link to the web page. http://paizo.com/planetStories,

I love these books and I think a lot of you will, too. That's why I asked publisher Eric Mona to talk about himself and his books.

1. Let's start by talking about Planet Stories. How did it come into existence and what do you see as its mission and its audience?

I've always been a huge fan of pulp magazines and the authors who wrote the fiction that inspired my favorite hobby, tabletop roleplaying games. When Gary Gygax wrote the Dungeon Master's Guide for the first version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in the late 70s, he included a neat little appendix listing the authors that had inspired his creation, people like Robert E. Howard, A. Merritt, Leigh Brackett, L. Sprague de Camp, and their peers. I tried to track down and read as many of these authors as possible (as well as notable related authors not on Gygax's list, like Henry Kuttner and Clark Ashton Smith), but over the years I ended up frustrated more often than satisfied. Not with the stories. Most of those were great or at least entertaining, with plenty of creepy monsters and fun magic. What was frustrating was actually trying to find some of these stories in print. The big publishing houses were focusing on big epic fantasies from people like Robert Jordan, and weren't focusing on quality reprints. I decided that if I ever got into a position to publish books, I'd bring some of this classic fantasy back into print for readers interested in un-bloated sword and sorcery.

I originally thought that the Planet Stories audience would consist largely of gamers interested in exploring the roots of their hobby. Paizo Publishing got its start producing Dragon and Dungeon magazines, the official magazines for D&D, and our existing audience is made up primarily of gamers. A lot of them have checked out what we've done in the line (though most of them seem to prefer their bloated modern epics, frankly), but I think a lot of the Planet Stories audience consists of well read science fiction and fantasy fans who have at least heard about some of the authors we publish, and who want to read the material for themselves. I guess my mission for the line is "bring back awesome science fiction and fantasy adventure tales from the past and present them to a new audience for as long as possible, losing as little money as possible."

2. Judging by your really interesting personal blog you obviously know a great deal about pulp fiction of all decades. So I guess you were aware of Bob Silverberg's early work in sf action adventure?

Yes, although I wasn't an expert on Silverberg himself or his material. I'd read a few of his more modern works, but I wasn't really aware of his pulpier early material. I met Bob at World Con in Denver a few years ago, and he was very complimentary toward the first year or so of our Planet Stories releases. I remember him saying nice things in particular about Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, and following the convention we struck up a long email conversation about Kuttner's work. Bob has been a life-long fan of Kuttner's, and we exchanged notes about our favorite stories with an eye toward having Bob write an introduction for a Kuttner collection I was considering. That collection never happened, but in the meantime Bob suggested I check out some of his earlier material, as it was explicitly written in the style of the old Planet Stories magazine. Bob just barely missed a chance to be published in that epic classic pulp (it died just as his career was getting started), so I think the idea of some of that material seeing print in a revival of the title excited him. The more I read of Silverberg's original adventures, the more I realized they fit our line perfectly. I'd already been looking to shift away a bit from sword and sorcery and offer some more space opera and outer space adventure tales, and everything came together as if fate had intended it that way in the first place.

3. This first volume is packed with some of my favorite stories from Science Fiction Adventures, a favorite magazine of mine for two reasons-because of Bob's constant presence in it and because it was edited by Larry Shaw a man, I always felt, who never got his due. Infinity, as Bob points out in his introduction to Space Witch, was another Shaw magazine that was important in its era and holds up well even today. Who chose the stories for Hunt The Space Witch?

Bob talks a lot about his admiration for Larry Shaw in the introductions of all three books we'll be publishing of his, and while I wasn't alive when those magazines first appeared, I'm sure I would have been all over them at the time. I've subsequently picked up several issues now that I know which of Bob's many pseudonyms to look for, so I'm amassing quite a collection beyond the stories we've already contracted to reprint.

I think Bob suggested most of the stories, and we worked together to determine which ones fit best in which volumes, or which ones maybe didn't fit at all. We worked around most of his material from the era that's been reprinted in the recent past, so many of the stories in our three Silverberg books have not seen print for decades, and in some cases they have never been reprinted since their original appearance!

4. As I reread the stories in Space Witch, I realize why Bob's sf adventure stories were almost always the best in any magazine. Even though he was generally using standard tropes, his characters had more depth than most pulp folks and the feel of the world building felt fresh and modern. He incorporated some of the political issues of his time and that gave the stories a real substance. Do you have a similar take on his early work?

Yes. I've spent most of the last several years reading science fiction and fantasy from the 1930s and 1940s. Most of these stories were published in the late 50s, and you can sense a little bit of the Cold War creeping into them. They've all got shrinking rays or rockets or blaster guns, sure, but many of them also deal with espionage, clashing cultures, and paranoia. Even though these stories all come from the early years of a career that would move on to significantly more sophisticated material, they're definitely more "modern" in presentation than their immediate predecessors, and it's easy to see that Robert Silverberg was on the vanguard of the next wave of science fiction authors, even as he dealt with many of the tropes of the pulp era. That makes the stories just about perfect for me, so I'm honored to get a chance to publish them for a new generation of readers.

5. I know this is only the first of a series of Silverberg projects for Planet Stories. Will you describe what follows this volume?

After Hunt the Space-Witch we have two additional Silverberg collections. The Planet Killers, which is on the way to store shelves as I write this, contains three early Silverberg novellas from the old Ace Doubles series. None of them have been reprinted in any form, which makes this volume triple-exciting for me. The stories are "The Planet Killers," "The Plot Against Earth," and "One of our Asteroids is Missing." All three are really fun, and I think the last is among my favorites of all of our upcoming Silverberg material. After The Planet Killers we have another collection of Silverberg novellas entitled The Chalice of Death. This book will collect "The Chalice of Death," "Starhaven," and "Shadow on the Stars," all of which also appeared in the old Ace Doubles series in the late 1950s.

I'm not exactly sure what's next for the line beyond our Silverberg collections. Paizo's Pathfinder RPG business is exploding like a supernova, and our game books sell an order of magnitude higher than the pulp science fiction, which is more a labor of love than a mega-money maker. As such, Pathfinder has sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room, and Planet Stories is kind of standing in the corner, choking a bit, waiting for a little more love and attention. I have some thoughts and some audacious ideas about what happens next, but we're taking it slowly and, at the moment, focusing on more pressing matters with our other product lines.


That's pretty much it. I hope those answers are useful to you, and I'm happy to provide follow-up answers to other questions, should you have them. I apologize again about the delay in getting back to you. It's entirely my fault, and not a result of any offense or anything like that.

Thanks for supporting Planet Stories, and for your patience with these interview questions!

--Erik Mona
Publisher

A great story about the writing profession; Morals Clause

Ed here: I've been reading Mike Resnick for thirty years. He's one of my favorite sf writers. Widely praised, winner of many, many awards. We've recently been exchanging e mails. Mike's experience reminds me of the experience of my friend Kevin Randle. While at the U of Iowa he was told by a writing instructor that he was bad writer. Then Kevin mentioned all the stories he'd been selling. :) Here's Mike (we'd been talking about our own early starts in the sixties and I'd mentioned the few men's magazines I'd been in):

Mike:

"I sold to some of the hairy-chested men's mags back in the 1960s. In fact, it's why I quite college. I was taking a writing course, didn't have time to do a new story, so I submitted a carbon of one I'd just sold to Stag or Saga, something like that, for $500, which would be like $3,500 today...and got a C-minus on it. At the same time my professor submitted to Rascal magazines (a round-chested men's mag that I was editing at nights under a pseudonym), and his story was so bad I gave him a form rejection. I thought about that for 10 seconds, quit college that day, and never went back."

------From Bestselling Writer and Damned Nice Guy Kevin J. Anderson MORALS CLAUSE

"My agent told me yesterday that HarperCollins has started inserting a "morals
clause" into their contracts�they can dump you and your book if they decide you
exhibit inappropriate behavior for an author (???)�if you're caught having an
affair, if you are arrested for civil disobedience protesting something you
disagree with, if you get a DUI...if you post an inflammatory blog? If you vote
democratic? Would that have given them grounds to dump Philip Pullman because
he became an outspoken Atheist?

Glad I don't have any current deals with Harper. This industry is committing
suicide in a dozen ways at once.

Kevin J Anderson
kja@wordfire.com

-----------The BRILLIANT Ursula LeGuin responds to the Morals Clause

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A Riff on the Harper Contract

Posted on January 18th, 2011 by Ursula K. Le Guin
New language in the termination provision of the Harper's boilerplate gives them the right to cancel a contract if "Author's conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work's reputation or sales." The consequences? Harper can terminate your book deal. Not only that, you'll have to repay your advance. Harper may also avail itself of "other legal remedies" against you.

From a blog by Richard Curtis.

* * *

Dear Mr Rupert Murdoch,

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Because I did not read my contract with your wonderful publishing house HarperCollins carefully, I did not realise my moral obligations.


There is nothing for it now but to confess everything. Before I wrote my book Emily Brontë and the Vampires of Lustbaden, which you published this fall and which has been on the Times Best Seller List for five straight months, I committed bad behavior and said bad words in public that brought me into serious contempt in my home town of Blitzen, Oregon. In fact the people there found me so seriously contemptible that I am now living in Maine under the name of Trespassers W. This has nothing to do with the fact that some parts of my book come from books by Newt Gingrich and other people, in fact quite a lot of them, but everybody borrows from great novelists, because information wants to be free. It was nothing really materially damaging, only just the money and i.d. I stole from the old man with the walker and some things I said about some schoolgirls with big tits back in stupid Blitzen. I have really suffered for my art. I hope maybe you will forgive me and not terminate me and make me pay back the money because I can't because I already had to give most of it to some stupid lawyer who said I had defaulted on a loan and was behind in my child support which is just a lie. That stupid brat never was mine. I am sure you will understand better than anybody else could that the only actual crime I have committed was writing my book. And I believe you will see that it was expiated by your giving me the contract for it and publishing it and making a lot of money out of it. So it is all right, I hope. I really hope so because I have nearly finished the sequel Alfred Lord Tennyson and the Zombies of Sex-Coburg and my agent says it is going to be a blockbuster as soon as it comes back from the person who is rewriting it. You would not want to miss it I am sure! And here in Maine I am paying strict regard to public conventions and morals just like you do. I would not go to a Democrat Convention if they paid me and crime is the farthest thing from my mind. I would feel so terrible if I damaged the reputation or sales of my Work, or your reputation. You are my Role Model.

Please believe me your loyal and obedient author,

Trespassers W

The Overacting Hall of Fame

Salon ran a two-part Overacting and Underacting Hall of Fame pieces. The Over includes such people as Sean Penn, Nick Oldham, Jennifer Jason Leigh and here's the piece on Al Pacino.

The overacting hall of fame
Slide show: Sometimes an actor has to go over the top to sell a performance. Here are some of the most memorable
BY MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
1 of 10

Al Pacino
"Scarface," "Sea of Love," "The Godfather, Part III," "The Devil's Advocate," "Heat," "The Recruit," et al.
I've already celebrated the great Mr. Pacino in my introduction, but let's talk about him some more here, because the man is a treasure, an American institution whose characters seem as though they belong in an institution. Nobody does BIG ACTING with quite as much imagination and panache. He's become so identified with this mode that any departures from it — "Donnie Brasco," "Insomnia," HBO's "You Don't Know Jack" — feel like bold experiments. But as film buffs and viewers of a certain age will tell you, from his breakthrough in "Panic in Needle Park" through the "Godfather" films, "Dog Day Afternoon" and even "Bobby Deerfield," "Cruising" and "Author, Author," he was known as a more naturalistic actor — definitely Method, but not ostentatiously so. Even his most flamboyant gestures seemed life-size.

Then came "Scarface," one of the great over-the-top performances in American film, complete with "choo touch my seester I keel you" accent and burn-a-hole-in-you stare-eyes. Pacino's star turn as Tony Montana warned the world, Say hello to my new acting style! After the box-office failure of 1985′s "Revolution," he took four years off, then returned in 1989 with "Sea of Love," and the new Pacino — the movie-star Pacino — was officially born. His voice was different — growly, insinuating, borderline Nick Nolte — and so was his body language. He didn't walk anymore, he loped or bounced. And man, did he grin a lot. His new go-to persona even crept into "The Godfather, Part III," about which a dear friend commented, "The biggest plausibility problem in this movie is that at some point between the second and third movies, somebody replaced Michael Corleone with Al Pacino from 'Sea of Love,' and nobody around him noticed."

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Ten Reasons Not To Write Your Novel

From The Huffington Post

Will Weaver Author, The Last Hunter: An American Family Album
Ten Reasons Not to Write Your Novel
Posted: 9/29/11 04:49 PM ET

1. Just because you speak English does not mean you can write English. Your boss is proof of that.

2. Someone has already written your novel, and better than you ever could. Certainly you've visited a bookstore, picked up a new release novel the plot summary of which filled you with loathing. "That's the idea I had," you mutter. See? What did I tell you?

3. And any way, the best novels are not about plot -- they're about good writing. Which you are not. That is to say, well, you get what I mean. I hope.

4. Writing a novel is way more work than you think (or remember if you've already written a novel). It's like building a house: you start with excavation and mud and rocks and groundwater you hadn't counted on, continue with dubious characters who seldom show up at the right time, nothing turns out exactly like you had in mind, everything is over budget, and it takes months if not years to finish, by which time you hate the place.

5. Instead of writing a novel, why not focus on, say, sex? Imagine that you give your wife, husband or partner the same amount of attention that you lavish on this, this idea -- these voices that you can't get out of your head. Imagine what perfection you would attain in the sack! Think of how heroic and loved you would be!

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Forgotten Books The Handle by Richard Stark

The Handle

Hard to know if a book was a fairly easy go for the writer or if it drove him to drugs and drink. I hope The Handle by Richard Stark was a pleasure for Donald Westlake to write because it sure is a pleasure to read.

The Organization has decided that it's tired of this German guy running his big casino on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. He's beyond the jurisdiction of the Feds and it's unlikely Cuba will do much about him. Thus Parker is hired to take the casino and its other buildings down--literally. To blow them up.

Now while The Handle is every bit as tough as Dick Cheney's heart, the hardboiled aspect is played off against the sorriest group of human beings Parker may ever have had to work with. And the sardonic way Westlake portrays them had me laughing out loud at several points.

Take your pick. There's the alcoholic hood who talks as if he's auditioning for a Noel Coward play; the mob gun dealer who had to quit drinking several months ago and has increased both his cigarette intake (four or five packs a day) while maintaining both his cancer cough and his enormous weight; the pedophile who turns out to be a ringer sent to spy in Parker and his friends; the Feds who are so inept both Parker and Grofield play games seeing who can lose their tails the fastest. And then there's the the married Grofield, Parker's professional acting buddy, who never passes up a chance to impose his charms on willing women. In this case he endeavors to put the whammy on the very sexy blonde Parker himself has been shacking up with. Isn't that called bird-dogging?

And then we have Baron Wolfgang Freidrich Kastelbern von Alstein, the man who owns the island and the casino and who, over the years, has managed to make The Third Man's Harry Lime look like a candidate for sainthood. Westlake spends a few pages on the Baron's history and it becomes one of the most fascinating parts of the book, especially his days in Europe during the big war.

The book is filled with the little touches that make the Stark books so memorable. My favorite description comes when Parker and the sexy blonde sit down to a dinner that Westlake describes as "viciously expensive."

A fine fine novel.