Book of the Day: One of the Wicked by Harry Shannon

Book of the Day: One of the Wicked by Harry Shannon

Mick Callahan is doing a pal a favor. Bud Stone owes money to a gangster named Big Paul Pesci. He’s worried about his ex-girlfriend and asks Mick to keep her safe. But when Stone rips off a drug dealer to pay Pesci, the situation explodes. The girl disappears and Mick finds himself caught between the police and the Russian Mob.

Lee in a Nutshell

There's a nice article about me and my latest MONK novel in The Acorn, my local community newspaper. Here's an excerpt:

In his latest book, “Mr. Monk on the Road,” Calabasas author Lee Goldberg takes a brilliant but obsessive-compulsive detective on a new adventure to the open highway where “crime is a hitchhiker that won’t be ignored.”
Goldberg, 48, wrote numerous scripts for the “Monk” television show starring Tony Shalhoub. His novel for the complementary Penguin Group book series will be released Jan. 4.
“Books based on television shows do well because people enjoy reading about familiar characters,” Goldberg said.
Although Adrian Monk’s phobias and tics leave him incapable of handling the simplest aspects of day-to-day life, the detective is able to solve baffling murders.
“People love the character of Monk. He’s funny and everything works out in the end. People want that, especially in this economy,” said Goldberg, whose credits include “Monk,” “ Diagnosis Murder,” “ Baywatch,” “ Spenser: For Hire” and “The Cosby Mysteries.”
Goldberg also has produced shows and written dozens of novels and nonfiction books.
Goldberg said he works in an array of genres, including science fiction, crime, the occult, comedy and mystery to stay competitive in his trade.
 “As a professional writer, I can’t wait for inspiration to strike. I go where the work is. I’m an artist, but at the same time I’m practical,” he said.

Book of the Day: Florida Gothic Stories by Vicki Hendricks

Book of the Day: Florida Gothic Stories by Vicki Hendricks

One of my favorite collections of the year. Noir and horror at it's most primal level.--Dave Zeltserman

Still time for the Top Suspense Story Contest

There's still time to enter the TSG story contest. You want free books, don't you? Bragging right? Here's your chance!

Book of the Day: Black River Falls by Ed Gorman

Book of the Day: Black River Falls by Ed Gorman

"A Host of Shadows" collection by Harry Shannon is Kindle Boards "Book of the Day"

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,32691.0.html


Twenty-five short horror and crime stories by Harry Shannon, with an introduction by Rick Hautala. "A Host of Shadows" is available for $4.99 at Amazon.com, B&N, or just via the link on the Kindle Board site.

Book Critics Bruce Grosssman's and Chauncey Mabe's Best of Year

Bookgasm book critic, Bruce Grossman, announced on Facebook his two top reads of 2010.

#1 The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman
#2 Killer by Dave Zeltserman

Book critic Chauncey Mabe also picked The Caretaker of Lorne Field as one of his favorite books of 2010, saying:

If H.P. Lovecraft collaborated with Jim Thompson, the result would be something like this foray into horror from a writer best known for noir crime fiction. Dread, suspicion, paranoia and a completely new variety of monster combine in a highly original effort.

Ebooks Are the Future...and the Future is Now

Author Joe Konrath  made the front page of The Los Angeles Times in a story with the provocative headline "Authors Writing Off Publishers" (the headline makes a curious shift in focus in the online edition: "Book Publishers See Their Role as Gatekeepers Shrink"). Here's an excerpt:

Joe Konrath can't wait for his books to go out of print.

When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple Inc.'s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he'll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion.

As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all of them in digital form without having to leave his house inSchaumburg, Ill.

"I doubt I'll ever have another traditional print deal," said the author of "Whiskey Sour," "Bloody Mary" and other titles. "I can earn more money on my own."

For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and delivering books to bookstores. In the world of print, few authors could afford to self-publish.

The Internet has changed all that, allowing writers to sell their works directly to readers, bypassing agents and publishers who once were the gatekeepers.

It's difficult to gauge just how many authors are dumping their publishing houses to self-publish online, though for now, the overall share remains small. But hardly a month goes by without a well-known writer taking the leap or declaring an intention to do so.

It is certainly the hot-topic of discussion whenever I get together with my writer-friends. I even had a long talk about it with my publisher during Bouchercon, who seemed honestly stunned by the money I was making off my backlist, particularly THE WALK.

In fact, my wife was looking at my Kindle royalties the other day... which have hit an all-time high and are paid within weeks... and asked me why I even bothered continuing to write my MONK novels. Even the CreateSpace print-on-demand paperback edition of THE WALK is selling surprisingly well (If sales continue at the current pace, I'll sell 150 copies of the paperback this month, with a royalty of $4.04 per book). All of that is gravy...remember, these are out-of-print books of mine that we are talking about.

Even though the MONK books sell very well, in hardcover and paperback, my royalty rate is substantially less than what I earn on my out-of-print work on the Kindle.  And it can take more than a year, often much longer, before I see any royalty checks, particularly on my early, three-book deals that were cross-collateralized (on those, I don't get paid until all three books earn out my advance). And then, of course, there's the commission my agent takes from every check (and I am not begrudging her that at all, she worked very hard for it).

So yeah, self-publishing is looking very good to me. Something that would have been inconceivable to me as recently as two years ago. Here's more from the article:

Authors typically get 10% to 25% of the proceeds of digital sales if they go through a publisher, compared with 40% to 70% if they self-publish.

For Konrath, the math made his choice easy. He said he earned $1.17 in royalties for each digital copy of "Whiskey Sour" sold by Hyperion. That's roughly 25% of the sale price of $4.69.

When he self-publishes on Amazon, Konrath prices his books at $2.99 and earns $2.04 a copy, or just under 70%.

"If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I'd consider it," he said. "But anything less than that, I'm sure I can do better on my own."

He makes a good point...one readers of this blog have heard repeatedly. The publishing world has changed dramatically in the last twelve months and so has my thinking about my own future as an author.
I will keep writing the MONK books as long as they continue being successful...but I honestly don't know whether I will take my next original novel to publishers, unless my agent can convince me it's a game-changer that will be a break me out of the mid-list.

For an established mid-list author like myself, I can't say that working with publishers really makes much financial sense any more...it certainly doesn't to my wife, whose opinion carries a lot of sway with me.
But how do you get readers to find your work amidst the tsunami of sludge...all the hideous, not-ready-for-primetime swill that's being sold by aspiring writers? Here's what the article had to say about that:

With millions of titles potentially flooding the market, readers will have to rely more on external cues to guide their purchases, whether it's a favorable review from a celebrity, a tip from a social-media contact or the backing of a major publisher.

"Until someone comes up with an algorithm to sort the good manuscripts from the bad, publishers and their human network of agents and editors maintain an advantage," McQuivey said. "But sooner or later someone will create a new way for readers to find the books they most want to read, and that someone may or may not be a traditional book publisher."

It may not even be human.

Amazon, Apple Inc., Netflix Inc., Pandora Media Inc. and other technology companies use software that analyzes consumer behavior to recommend choices in music, movies and other products.

Indeed, the challenge in a world where anyone can publish a book is getting people to pay attention.

To that end, in my our own small way, I've banded together with Max Allan Collins, Vicki Hendricks, Harry Shannon, Joel Goldman, Dave Zeltserman, Ed Gorman, Paul Levine, and Bill Crider to create Top Suspense, a place where readers can find ebooks by estalished, acclaimed, award-winning writers whose work they can rely on to deliver the goods in a variety of genres...horror, westerns, mystery, thrillers, and crime. It's a small step...but it could blossom into something more. At this point, everything in the digital book world is an experiment of sorts...but exciting and full of possibilities nonetheless.

Book of the Day: Just Before Dark by Jack MacLane (Bill Crider)

Book of the Day: Just Before Dark by Jack MacLane (Bill Crider)

Book of the Day: Riptide by Paul Levine

Book of the Day: Riptide by Paul Levine

Introducing our newest member: Paul Levine

Paul with Elmore Leonard

A former trial lawyer, Paul Levine is the award-winning author of the "Jake Lassiter" thrillers. To Speak for the Dead, the first of the series, was named one of the top ten crime novels of 1990 by the Los Angeles Times and was adapted into an NBC World Premiere movie.

Levine is also the author of Solomon vs. Lord (nominated for the Macavity), The Deep Blue Alibi (nominated for an Edgar and the James Thurber humor prize), and Kill All the Lawyers (a finalist for the International Thriller Writers award). He also won the John D. MacDonald Florida Fiction Prize for the Lassiter series.

A linebacker-turned-lawyer, Lassiter is a tough guy with a tender heart, a guy with "old friends, old habits, and old values." Or, as Jake says:

"I don't drink fizzy water from France or booze in fluorescent colors. I don't have a life coach or an aroma therapist, and I'm not into tweeting, sexting, or spinning. I'm polite to cashiers and bartenders and the paperboy — okay, the illegal alien in the Ford pickup — who tosses the Herald into my bougainvillea each morning. I still help little old ladies cross the street, and sometimes, tall, pretty ones, too. In short, I'm a regular guy. A carnivore among vegans, a brew and burger guy in a Chardonnay and paté world."

Levine also wrote two critically acclaimed stand-alone thrillers: Reversal and Illegal. The Supreme Court thriller Reversal was the inspiration for "First Monday," the CBS television drama co-created by Levine and starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna.

Illegal is set in the world of human trafficking and was termed "timely, tumultuous, and in a word, terrific" by the Providence (R.I.) Journal.

Levine also wrote more than 20 episodes of the CBS military drama JAG. His next book will be Lassiter, a Bantam hardcover scheduled for September 2011.

More information at www.paul-levine.com

TSG: How'd you become a writer?

Paul: I was practicing law in Miami and woke up one day to discover I didn't like my cases, my clients, and even my partners. There were some judges I wasn't too fond of, either. At the time, I was an avid windsurfer. On a vacation to Maui, I got injured so I took out a legal pad and started writing my first novel. Somewhere, I still have the pad, smeared with suntan oil and speckled with sand. I didn't know it at the time, but writing the book was my therapy. Instead of seeing a shrink to talk about my mid-life crisis, I created Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, a tough guy with a tender heart. He could do things I couldn't -- like get in a fistfight with a witness and gladly go to jail for contempt.

TSG: Describe yourself as a writer?

Paul: I'm 6' 2", 180 pounds. Oh, that's not what you mean? I write crime fiction. Often legal thrillers, often with humor. Jake Lassiter is a hard-boiled guy but with a wry edge, a "carnivore among vegans, a brew and burger guy in a Chardonnay and paté world."

He's realistic about lawyers: "They don't call us sharks for our ability to swim."

Lassiter knows how the game is played. “A good lawyer is part con man and part priest, promising riches if you hire him, threatening hell if you don't."

In many ways, he's just a regular guy. "I don’t drink fizzy water from France or booze in fluorescent colors. I don’t carry a Blackberry, a Bluetooth, or a purse, and you won't find my mug on My Space or Facebook. I don’t have a life coach, and I’m not into tweeting, sexting or spinning. In short, I’m not a yuppie, a metrosexual or Generation X, Y, or Z. I have old friends, old habits, and old values. If I had to describe myself in one word, “throwback” comes to mind."

I've written seven Lassiter novels with the eighth due out in September 2011. It is titled, cleverly, "Lassiter." I've also written four "Solomon and Lord" novels, featuring a pair of squabbling lawyers, Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. They've been nominated for an Edgar, a James Thurber humor prize, and the International Thriller Writers award. My border thriller "Illegal," which was published last year in hardcover, will be out in paperback in January. So save some money, and buy it then.

TSG: Your influences?

Paul: Mainly Clase Azul tequila. Sometimes Jack Daniels. Oh, you mean writers? John D. MacDonald. Raymond Chandler. Elmore Leonard. Scott Turow. Outside the genre, Tom Wolfe. As I was beginning to write, I also was influenced by Carl Hiaasen's ability to express a strong, significant theme with humor in "Tourist Season."

TSG: Your first sale?

Paul: "To Speak for the Dead," the first Lassiter novel was sold in 1988 and published in 1990. I was trying a case in Islamorada in the Florida Keys when I got word from my agent. No cell phones in those days. I remember calling from a pay phone outside the courthouse. You could see the Gulf of Mexico from there, and it was just surreal. I'm up to my ass in alligators in a trial, and I'm on the phone with a guy in Manhattan who is about to change my life. Bantam offered a two-book, hard/soft deal. The feeling was indescribable, which for a writer, is tough to admit. I went back into court and said to the judge, "May it please the court: I'm a novelist." I finished the trial and won. True story.

TSG: Your biggest, most memorable thrill as a writer?

Paul: I think the answer to the previous question might do here, as well. One more thing, too. I'm not a big believer in awards to measure a career, though I suppose if you win the "Cy Young," you're a pretty good pitcher. Early on, I was honored with the second John D. MacDonald award for Florida fiction. The first winner was Elmore Leonard, one of my heroes.

TSG: What new books are on the horizon?

Paul: I’m out this week with the e-book edition of “Riptide,” a Jake Lassiter thriller. Here's the setup. A professional windsurfer and his girlfriend rip off Jake’s favorite client for $2 million. Jake chases the pair from Miami to Maui where he gets in way over his head. The woman is beautiful, a modern-day femme fatale who's a great athlete. The windsurfer is stone cold killer.

TSG: So “Riptide” doesn’t take place in the courtroom?

Paul: More like blue skies and turquoise waters, a jungle on Molokai, and a helicopter that flies over an active volcano with three men aboard and returns with only two.

Remembering Richard Jessup

Ed Gorman here...

I played The Cincinatti Kid the other night and as I watched I thought about what a hard mile Richard Jessup, the author of the novel, had walked before hitting it big before his novel became a major film.

We first see Jessup in the early `50s when Gold Medal was promoting him as their own angry young man. The books were thick and dealt with social themes such as race and juvenile delinquency. I haven't read them in years but I remember liking them a great deal. His mainstream work always had a hard edge. And somewhere in here he wrote radio and live TV including the science fiction series Tom Corbett. I believe that he also wrote some juvenile sf as well. Two of his long Gold Medals became movies.

His next incarnation, after the angry young man phase ended, comes in the middle to late period of that decade. Jessup, under at least two pen-names, writes crime novels and westerns. After the James Bond boom he creates a spy series that people seem to love or despise. He had a good time kidding the form. Having never cared much for Bond in any form, I appreciated the joshing. 

But then...

Jessup wasn't a one-hit wonder because he wrote three or four moderately successful novels after Kid. His publishers were careful to disassociate him from his genre work. I recall seeing an edition of Kid that gave the impression this was a first novel.

But he never came close to achieving another huge seller or one as culturally important as Kid. So what if he took The Hustler as his template and used poker instead of pool? Kid was indeibly Jessup just as Hustler was indeliby Walter Tevis. 

It's difficult to learn what he did exactly after the success of Kid. There were the books I mentioned but as an old paperback original writer he seemed to have a lot of time on his hands. He'd done a fair share of TV work early on, maybe he went back to that, though IMDB doesn't show much.

In the early eighties he wrote two door-stopper size suspense novels both of which were damned fine novels. My sense is that they were moderately successful. Jessup was a fine craftsman who worked comfortably in at least three different genres. 

I think what we're looking at here is the career of a working writer who got awfully lucky with the best book of his life but still was never recognized for much of the memorable (memorable to me, anyway) work he did early on.

Most of his books are great reads--he was a hell of a good western writer; and his Gold Medal Wolfcop is a fine hardboiled novel. He brought a precise, evocative style to all his books and at least once a novel he fried your brain. I'm thinking here of Wyoming Jones when Jones is caught with a young Indian woman who is betrothed to the Chief. Jones is tied to a post and prepared for being burned at the stake if the young woman doesn't prove to still be a virgin. An old Indian woman is to examine her. Chandler always said that you needed to work inside the formula, give it touches that only you could bring. Jessup did that frequently. 

He died way too young of lung cancer. It made me remember all those dramatic author photographs of him with a cigarette between his fingers.