Ed Gorman's Blog, page 200

An agent speaks out on current publishing and writing

From GalleyCat:

AGENTS
Andrew Wylie on 'Devaluation of Quality Editing and Writing'
By Jason Boog on May 26, 2011 9:45 AM

In the new issue of WSJ Magazine, agent Andrew Wylie shared his thoughts about the contemporary publishing industry in an opinionated essay. We got a sneak peek at the essay where the famous agent pondered our digital future.

His essay stressed that despite self-publishing options, the writing profession needs "a chain of people who have authority and can help convey what is essential." What do you think?

Here's an excerpt: "The devaluation of quality editing and writing is sad and it's inevitable. Each house has a large number of titles to publish, and with a difficult economy, fewer people to handle the publications. But publishers need to become smaller, leaner, and they will have to learn new disciplines. The whole one-year publication process must be reduced."

UPDATE: Readers respond on Facebook:

Hookline Books: "Authors still need the endorsement of an outside party, be it a publisher, a prominent reviewer, advocate"

Leah Cummins Guinn "I've read quite a few self-pubbed books, and even though some were very good and most were average, all of them could have been greatly improved by a good editor."

Olga Gardner Galvin "Some authors need outside validation; others less so. All authors need an editor and a proofreader."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misidentified the source of the essay.

Forgotten Books: Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark

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There are so many twists, turns, starts and stops in Lemons Never Lie by Donald E. Westlake as Richard Stark that the novel becomes a kind of crime picaresque filled with mugs, thugs, killers, victims and Parker's redoutable thespian friend, Alan Grofiled. There's also a lot of notably brutal violence.

The book begins with Grofield visiting Vegas to partake of a robbery that will give him the money to survive one more season in his summer theater. Grofield, in case you didn't know, is a "purist" when it comes to acting, his chosen profession. No movies or television for him. Stage only. But it takes his other profession, robbery, to support his theater. Only his long-supportive wife understands how hard he works at both careers.

A man named Myers has set up a robbery plan and has called in amateurs to help him. With the exception of a man named Caithcart and a dangerous man named Dan Leach, the group is a zero. As is Myers. Now Myers, who speaks with a boarding school accent, is one of the great villains in Westlake's world. He is a true sociopathic murderer; a serial killer of a kind. Grofield and Leach decide against working with him.

This is the set-up. There's an early twist that lets us know just how nasty Myers is. And then the various adventures start. Grofield resembles his friend (and fellow robber) Parker only occasionally. For instance, he loves chit-chat, feels sorry even for a guy who tries to kill him and lets another live that (as reader) you know should be killed on the spot, slowly and joyously.

There's also a lot of witty humor. Grofield gets into the damnedest conversations with people. Once in a while you may even forget you're reading a crime novel. Westlake has a great time riffing on all the cliche exchanges you read in most crime fiction. At a couple of point Grofield starts sounding like a TV shrink.

Lemons Never Lie is Westlake at his very best. While there's a screwball comedy-feel to some of the misadventures, the unrelenting violence reminds readers that the Richard Stark is the master of the hardboiled. The masterful plotting, the wry way the genre cliches are turned inside out, and the earnestness and humanity of Alan Grofield make this a pleasure from page one to the unexpected ending.

Traditional Publishing challenged big-time

From The Bookseller.com

Amazon's Kirshbaum move could reduce competition—BEA
24.05.11 | Gayle Feldman

Responses to Amazon.com's hire of Laurence Kirshbaum as publisher have varied from worried to fear of a "dampening" effect on competition among delegates at the BEA conference.

Word that started to spread Sunday night was confirmed first thing Monday morning with the announcement that Kirshbaum, former TimeWarner c.e.o.-turned-agent, would be heading up Amazon's publishing operation in New York.
Everybody knew that an Amazon push into frontlist publishing was coming: the move into original genre books and the cooperation with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was not enough to satisfy the giant's ever-hungry maw. Highly-placed executives from New York houses have been migrating to Amazon for a while, and the company ratcheted up expectations after circulating a recruiting letter for various personnel a few weeks back. The question was only when.

for the rest go here:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/ama...

Two cool interviews

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Ed here: Terrill Lankford's novels, especially Blonde Lightning and Earthquake Weather, strike me as a natural bridge between genre and literary fiction. The voice is true and modern, the prose is rich, Lankford's ability with both character and milieu are
remarkable. His detailing of La-La Land reminds me of an angry rather than forlorn Fitzgerald. Here he's interviewed by another fine writer, Alan Guthrie.

Can you sum up Shooters in no more than 25 words?

Horny guy gets his balls stuck in a pink bear trap. News at 11.

What was your motivation for writing it?

The greed I witnessed during the 1980s. When Reagan started what we're still paying for today.

How long did it take you to write?

It started as a screenplay in 1985. That probably took about two months to write and it eventually provided the spine for the novel. I think I started writing the novel in 1993 during a personal financial crisis. And it's the fastest book I ever wrote (but also the shortest). Probably about six months of writing and a year of rewriting.

for the rest go here: http://criminal-e.blogspot.com/

---------------------------------------- LES ROBERTS

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In my fifteenth in a series about Milan Jacovich, "The Cleveland Creep," notice the Slovenian Cleveland private eye has grown wiser, more mature, and has the same physical problems most senior citizens have. He's started drinking tea, for one thing, and he watches what he eats. Maybe I've actually begun writing a fictionalized autobiography!

When I created Milan in 1987, I made him not quite 40 and a Vietnam vet, divorced, with two boys aged 12 and 7---never dreaming that here I'd be, twenty five years later, still writing about him. Unlike Raymond Chandler telling tales about Philip Marlowe, I began by writing myself into a corner and now I'm stuck with it. I can't avoid the groundwork I laid down in my first effort---so now, yes indeed, Milan has grown older.

Guess what: so have I.

for the rest go here:
http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/

My way or--

Ed here: Don't know how many of you saw this so I thought I'd run it. I like independent bookstores. I know they're having a difficult time adjusting to the astonishing success of e books. All of us are. But I don't think this is the right way to proceed.



Amazon.com announced the launch of Thomas & Mercer, publishing
mysteries and thrillers. The new imprint will begin with four books to
be released this year: "Resuscitation" by D.M. Annechino, "Stirred" by
J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch, "The Immortalists" by Kyle Mills, and
"Already Gone" by John Rector. As a bookstore that supports writers,
we also appreciate the writers who support bookstores. Therefore,
Mystery on Main Street will not carry these books; earlier books by
these writers available through other publishers will not be stocked
and those on our shelves will be returned. With limited shelf space
and financing, we do not intend to offer either one to Amazon.com. We
will be putting our energies into promoting other authors.
DavidMystery on Main Street

More from Noir City Spring 2011 Raymond Burr

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One of the most amazing collections of noir-related articles and reviews I've ever seen. For information on how to get it here's the link to the Film Noir Foundation. www.filmnoirfoundation.org/

Ed here: The Burr article comes comes complete with a full filmology of Burr as a villain as well as interesting portraits of all the main players in the Perry Mason series.

RAYMOND BURR
From The Heaviest of Them All
Carl Steward

"It's no secret that Burr grew weary of being always cast as a heavy, despite his constantly fluctuating weight. But he didn't dismiss the period of his career in which he demonstrated his greatest range, and surely he would not have wanted it ignored. In a revealing 1963 interview on Canadian television, the actor admitted that a good number of his Ho lywood efforts were forgettable, but he lauded such films as Pitfall, Raw Deal, and Rear Window as as worthy productions.

"In the same interview, he maintained that it wasn't being typecast as a villain that troubled him, as much as finding fresh ways to interpret vil- lainy. This is, after all, a guy who played creeps named Nick in three separate movies. "I began to run out of ways of being bad," he said with a wry grin. Indeed, in movies that could be classified as noir, Burr played more than 25 bad-guy roles. On a few occasions, he got to play a cop, and in two memorable performances—A Place In The Sun (1951) and Please Murder Me (1956)—was cast as an attorney (a portent of his stardom as CBS's courtroom icon.) But Burr's bad guys deserve their own Wall of Fame, even if it's the wall of a post office or an alley somewhere in the meanest district of Dark City. Here's a Most Wanted list of the heaviest heavies, both well known and obscure, for the Raymond Burr Museum of Mayhem."

BARBARA HALE
World's Greatest Gal Friday
Vince Keenan
"Erle Stanley Gardner described Della Street, Perry Mason's secretary, as "dependable" and "easy on the eyes." It's as if Gardner knew that actress Barbara Hale would one day embody the character. The Illinois-born former RKO starlet perfectly captured the blend of competence and confidence that kept the Mason practice running. Along with her one-time RKO stable mate Ray- mond Burr, she beautifully replicated the low-key attraction that coursed between their characters in Gardner's books. As Della told Mason after one of several proposals in the novels: "You're not the marrying kind. I don't think you need a wife but I know damn well you need a secretary who's willing to go to jail occasionally to back your play." Both Hale's Della and Gardner's are all too aware that the only way to be close to Perry Mason is to be part of his work."

Vince also has another great article in this issue 5 Songbirds A Musical Survey of Romance, Ruin, and Remorse

Stephen King comments on possible "Carrie" remake

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From Entertainment Weekly

Stephen King sounds off on new 'Carrie' remake -- EXCLUSIVE
by Jeff Labrecque

Image Credit: Everett Collection
Thirty-five years after Stephen King's first best-seller roared into theaters and scared a generation of prom-going teens, MGM and Screen Gems have hired playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to resurrect Carrie with a more faithful adaptation of King's novel, according to Deadline.

But King, who famously disapproved of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, tells EW he still has a soft spot for Brian De Palma's original film: "I've heard rumblings about a Carrie remake, as I have about The Stand and It. Who knows if it will happen? The real question is why, when the original was so good? I mean, not Casablanca, or anything, but a really good horror-suspense film, much better than the book. Piper Laurie really got her teeth into the bad-mom thing. Although Lindsay Lohan as Carrie White… hmmm. It would certainly be fun to cast. I guess I could get behind it if they turned the project over to one of the Davids: Lynch or Cronenberg."

Aguirre-Sacasa, who recently rewrote the Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark script, is an accomplished comic-book author familiar with the King oeuvre; he adapted King's epic The Stand into comic-book form in 2008.

Edgar-winner Jack Vance's Mystery Novels

Forgotten Books: Bad Ronald by Jack Vance

Jack Vance is such a revered sf/fantasy writer his career as a mystery-suspense writer has largely been overlooked. One of his early mysteries won the Edgar, in fact, and at least one of his suspense novels was made into a TV movie, this being BAD RONALD which is a whole lot better than the 1973 Ballantine packaging would lead you to believe.

The era was still in the throes of Psycho. Numerous writers tried to run riffs on the basic Crazy Mama theme. Vance took the simple but suspenseful story of a seventeen year old kid named Ronald and paired him with an over-protective mother who had to hide him after Ronald committed an unthinkable crime, an event which Vance wisely skims quickly.. The only thing Mom can do is hide him in a hollowed out space in the house (a familiar trope in those days; in fact a more more celebrated novel was called CRAWLSPACE).

As grisly as the set-up is Vance deals with the rest of the novel (the police staking out the house; the nasty neighbors taunting her; and her near-breakdown) with, believe it or not, a healthy dose of black humor. All too soon Mom begins to understand Ronald is not only murderous but maybe even worse, he's a loser. He's pretty much happy to be hidden in the house. She feeds him three times a day (but makes him go on a diet); she gives him magazines hoping this'll keep him in contact with the real world--but he prefers working on his imaginary fantasy novel world; and he whimpers like a child when he can't get exactly the kind of "treat" he wants.

The dark humor only makes Ronald's psychopathology all the grimmer. We really are dealing with a freak here, one who should be chained to a dungeon wall for life. And the wily plot with many twists and turns shows just how many riffs you can run on freaky.

Unlike many of the PSYCHO riffs, there's a great deal of perceptive and nimble writing here. A very solid novel. The TV movie was straightforward and wasn't hip enough to include the humor.

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Here's a beautifully made reasonably priced three-book collection from the premiere small press Subterranean (though at the rating they're growing they're no longer "small") that contains Jack Vance's three finest mystery novels, including Bad Ronald http://www.subterraneanpress.com/ I read one a night and was reminded again that Jack Vance not only deserved his first Edgar he deserved a couple more, too.

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New Jack Vance in Stock and Shipping
May 9, 2011

Our mammoth (over 560 pages) gathering of three of Jack Vance's mystery novels is in stock and shipping. Included in Dangerous Ways are the Edgar Award-winning The Man in the Cage, the unforgettable hider-in-the-house thriller Bad Ronald, and the exotic South Seas murderfest The Deadly Isles.

You won't find a better example of an established author stepping outside the genre that made him famous—in this case sf—and putting his indelible imprint on another.

HENRY KUTTNER: MASTERS OF THE WEIRD TALE

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Ed here: A treasure of a collectable that will grow in value every years. The original covers, the black-and-white illustrations from the magazines...this is a true masterpiece of book production. For my taste the most impressive book Centipede/Millipede has produced to date.

HENRY KUTTNER: MASTERS OF THE WEIRD TALE by Henry Kuttner, intro by Stefan Dziemianowicz & Robert Morrish. Lakewood, CO; Centipede Press; 2011. 1st edition hardcover.

A four-hundred-plus page collection of the horror stories of Henry Kuttner, including his classic "The Graveyard Rats" and a number of other stories that have not been reprinted since their original publication in the pulps over fifty years ago. This collection features a striking full-color cover by Erik Gist and a color frontispiece and endpapers by J.K. Potter. Each book is SIGNED by Gist, Potter, and editor Stefan Dziemianowicz. Most of these works are not in print anywhere else, and are essential reading for pulp and Weird Tales fans. The introduction features photographs of Kuttner and full-color reproductions of all the pulp covers in which the stories were original reprinted. Each book is fully bound in cloth and comes in a handsome two-tone slipcase to match your other volumes in the Masters of the Weird Tale series.

Issued in a SIGNED/LIMITED (SIGNED BY THE 2 ARTISTS, GIST & POTTER & EDITOR DZIEMIANOWICZ) hardcover edition. Fine in pictorial boards without dj as issued.

FOREIGN ORDERS: please note will only be sent by EMS (Expedited Mail Service) which will be $70.00. Shipping will be adjusted at checkout.


cent22Regular price: $225.00Sale price: $175.00

The Real Humphrey Bogart

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Ed here: I want to thank Richard Wheeler for the link to this amazing review-essay about Stefan Kanfer's book on Humphrey Bogart. Jenny Diski writes not just about Bogart (whom she puts into the first realistic perceptive I've come across) but also the cultural and sociological influences that inspired noir and how the icons of the Thirties and Forties were of their time and can't be duplicated today. This appeared in London Review of Books.

"After the war, in books but most of all in old movies, these reluctant action heroes became perfect modern exemplars for the likes of Camus, who saw in them a stoic refusal to be held back by the status quo. Men who behaved as if there was a point in trying to right wrongs, even if they knew the world better than that. Mostly, in the early 1960s, we sat passively in the dark, in oversized black sweaters and tight jeans, watching the furious activity and dialogue, and then went home to read Being and Nothingness (or perhaps just its popularisation in Colin Wilson's The Outsider). And maybe, later on, it was Marlowe and Spade who gave us the courage and foolheadedness to take to the streets. We were young and had energy to expend, so movies and books weren't quite enough. We couldn't all be private eyes. And the lurking socialism in Chandler and Hammett fitted well with a postwar generation's fidgety need to blow holes in the self-sustaining establishment. I think they were part of the equation for the brief explosion of political and social activity."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n10/jenny-di...