Ed Gorman's Blog, page 253

Happy Festivus

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Ed here: Of all the Seinfeld lines and set-ups I've memorized none resonate more at holiday time than" Festivus for the rest of us" and Frank Costanza's immortal line "As I was raining blows upon his head (I realized) there must be a better way." Thus was Festivus born. Apparently I'm not alone.

Here's a story from CNN

(CNN) -- Long before company celebrators bench-pressed fax machines, partygoers performed competitive face-plants into ice water, or family members gathered around an aluminum po...

Bad Reviews

There's been a particularly intelligent discussion on the Tie-In Writers site about responding to bad reviews. When I first began publishing novels twenty-five years ago negative reviews ruined not just my day but my week and sometimes my month.

Back then my friend Charlotte McLeod was still vividly alive. I asked her about a nasty review I'd gotten and told her that I wanted to write the reviewer a letter. She said don't do it. She'd been at it for a quarter century longer than I had so I to...

Brittany Murphy, R.I.P.

I didn't follow Brittany Murphy's career. I mostly knew of her from Clueless where she was very good and from the TV series King of The Hills where she voiced one of the animated actors. I liked her looks. There was real sweetness there. But there was always an air of agitation the few times I saw her interviewed. She seemed scared. The internet is 24/7 with pieces about her. The Wrap's Steve Mikulan had the only sensible things to say.


Brittany Murphy's Law: The Grim Fame of Death

By Steven Mi...

Nrittany Murphy, R.I.P.

I didn't follow Brittany Murphy's career. I mostly knew of her from Clueless where she was very good and from the TV series King of The Hills where she voiced one of the animated actors. I liked her looks. There was real sweetness there. But there was always an air of agitation the few times I saw her interviewed. She seemed scared. The internet is 24/7 with pieces about her. The Wrap's Steve Mikulan had the only sensible things to say.


Brittany Murphy's Law: The Grim Fame of Death

By Steven Mi...

Year's Best TV

Reading through several Best Of lists today reminded me of out of it I am. The lists in the new Entertainment Weekly are probably the best example. No matter the category there were thirty per cent of the winners and losers I'd never heard of before.

Since I don't see many movies first-run or buy many CDs or read the books that seem to dazzle most people the only list I can compose is my TV choices.

30 Rock is still my favorite comedy, though they've had a bumpy year. I enjoy the cast of The ...

Patricia Highsmith, comic book writer

I'm pretty sure the NY Times has now published three reviews of Joan Schenkar's new biography of Patricia Highsmith. This must be quite a book. The latest review, by Jeanette Winterson, makes fleeting note of Highsmith's days as a comic book writer.

"Highsmith had a kind of archive- attachment disorder; she adored lists. She chronicled, mapped, numbered and cross-referenced everything in her life, and even rated her lovers, but she wiped out what didn't suit her and only vaguely acknowledged, ...

Yes you can buy it now-nobody will stop you-honest

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Booklist
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Issue: January 1, 2010

Ticket to Ride.
Gorman, Ed (Author)
Jan 2010. 25 p. Pegasus, hardcover, $25.00. (9781605980706).

In the eighth entry in the Sam McCain series, set in 1965 and following
Fools Rush In (2007), the small- town Iowa lawyer becomes a lightning rod for animosity when he helps to
organize an antiwar rally.

Retired army colonel Lee Bennett is outraged at what he perceives to be the demonstrators' disrespect for the many young dead so...

PRO-FILE: MAX ALLAN COLLINS

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MAX ALLAN COLLINS

MAX ALLAN COLLINS, a frequent Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee, has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations for his historical thrillers, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). Currently he is completing a number of "Mike Hammer" novels begun by the late mystery writer, Mickey Spillane, starting with The Goliath Bone (...

FORGOTTEN BOOKS: CROSS COUNTRY; THE BOOK BIZ

Herbert D. Kastle wrote a number of science fiction stories in the 1950s. That's where I first read him. Later in the 1960s he was writing those fat sexy bestseller-type novels that owed more to marketing and Harold Robbins than his presumed muse. Then in 1974 he wrote CROSS COUNTRY. Here's a quote from one of the reviews: "This novel seems to occupy the same dark and twisted territory as the works of Jim Thompson. Characters interact in a dance of barely suppressed psychopathological urges a...

James Reasoner

James Reasoner recently posted a short piece about his amazing year--this year he wrote and published a million words. I've been meaning to acknowledge that (to me) staggering accomplishment so I'm reprinting James' pst as well as a Pro-File I did with him awhile back. Congratulations, James.

A Million and Counting
Around the middle of the day today, I passed the million-word mark for this year. That makes five years in a row I've written at least a million words. I don't say that to brag. I've...