Tod Goldberg

Cover Me

Over the course of the last week, I've been going over cover mock-ups for my new collection of stories, Other Resort Cities, which is both a fun and a little nerve wracking experience since people, you know, pretty much do judge a book by its cover. I've had good covers -- the paperback for Living Dead Girl, the cover for Simplify -- and I've had bad covers -- the off-kilter and easily smudged cover of Fake Liar Cheat that has a cell phone on the cover that now looks like a top-loading Betamax --and covers featuring Gabrielle Anwar's ass -- both of my Burn Notice books -- which, yeah, no one can complain about. In the case of Living Dead Girl and Simplify, I had final say on the covers offered to me whereas Fake Liar Cheat and Burn Notice were corporate decisions. At the time, MTV was doing the design stuff on the books that Pocket Books/MTV was putting out and you couldn't get authorial approval in the contracts even if you wanted it and with Burn Notice, hey, it's Gabrielle Anwar's ass!...but I have no say in how those books are marketed regardless.

For Other Resort Cities, we selected this rather arresting rendering (and remember, this is just a mock up, so it may well look somewhat different by the time it's in stores in October):

   

Thinking about book covers reminded me that I've always wanted to post up the covers for Living Dead Girl that I ended up not selecting which ended up being used by other books -- some more famous than others.

This was actually the cover I really, really wanted but it turns out that when Peter Dexter calls, he gets first dibs:

 

Interestingly, the paperback of Train uses a different cover and it's from the exact same photo shoot as the one used to make Peter Craig's Blood Father cover:

    

Clare Francis' book Betrayal was one of several books that over the years I've recognized as having been one of the rejected covers of Living Dead Girl, too -- there are about 15 covers out there that use this same woman floating in the water in different stages of life and death. As you'll see below, in Clare's book she's alive and showing off some serious cleavage, which seemed an odd choice for Living Dead Girl (as I recall, the fonts and layout were exactly the same for my book, too):

 

Perhaps you're starting to see a theme here: Water? Check. Body in water? Check. Depressing as fuck-all? Check. Which leads me to the book The Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall. I really liked the cover mock-up that featured the art below. In fact, it was going to be the pick after Peter Dexter stole my #1 pick from me. I didn't really think the flowers on the boat were quite right, but, well, maybe it would pull in women readers!

But then I went to Barnes & Noble and saw this book on the new releases table --  a full year before my book would come out, mind you -- and decided, you know, maybe someone should tell the publisher that there was already a book out using the art...

 

Finding another book with your cover is bound to happen when people use the same image companies, like Getty, to get the majority of their art. In the case of Simplify (and then Other Resort Cities), my publisher went directly to a gallery and found an artist the gallery thought might appeal to the aesthetic of the book, finding the awesome Ned & Shiva, who they then went back to for the new book. But I remember a few years ago bringing one of my UCLA classes to see Dan Chaon read from his book You Remind Me of Me and afterward Dan pulled out a rather disturbing thing: a Hallmark card that had the same image as his book cover. As I recall, the card was significantly sweeter -- maybe something about a child's first birthday or something similar -- than Dan's brilliant and disturbing novel.

The Reason Why I Nearly Had A Sex Change At 17

I think I liked this song in 1988. Why do I think this? Because I inexplicably began singing it to myself just now while reading some student work. There's no good reason for this unless I have recently suffered a grand mal seizure.

Where Are The Best Hot Dogs In Chicago?

I'm leaving for Chicago on Tuesday and find myself with an especially vexing problem: I don't know where to get the best hot dog.

I've actually been to Chicago quite a few times, but for some reason whenever I go there the people I'm with always take me for sushi. Which is weird, since I'm not really a huge sushi fan. Oh, sure, I'll eat it, but if I have any choice in the matter, I'm always going to go for cooked animal-based food over uncooked animal-based foods. I think it has something to do with being from California. People assume that if you're from California, you must want to eat sushi. Pretty much, I'd just like to have a steak. Or a hot dog.

Which brings me back to the question at hand: Where is the best hot dog in Chicago? Is it Superdawgs? I've seen that one on the Food Network several times, as well as in one of the documentaries on PBS where they go around to every state and eat junk food and film it and talk about it, which sounds to me like a great fucking job to have. People, I beg of you, give me the skinny. I need me some nitrites! 

An Open Letter To HP Customer Support Printer Division Tech Mehboob Ahmad

Dear Mehboob,

Go fuck yourself.

Best wishes,

                         Tod

25 Random Things I Hate About Fucktards On Facebook I Don't Know In The Least But Who, Nonetheless, Are My "Friends"

I swear to fucking Christ, if one more person tags me with their "25 Random Things About Me" list on Facebook, I am going to curse each and every one of you people with a kidney stone. A big one. The kind that can't get blasted. The kind that tears through your kidney and then plops out of your smallest of holes.

However.

I do love a list.

So, in the spirit of sharing, here are 25 Random Things I Hate About Fucktards On Facebook I Don't Know In The Least But Who, Nonetheless, Are My "Friends":

1. I hate your fucking kids. Really. And I hate that I know the score of their every fucking game. It's Little League, you annoying fucks, not the fucking World Series. You think anyone was rooting for me that didn't know me when I was on the 0-10 Cougars in the Walnut Creek AYSO in 1980? I needed some fucking support. Your children just need their parents to stop updating their fucking statuses with box scores and maybe, you know, read 'em a fucking book. 

2. I hate that I don't know you, have never met you, and that you leave comments on my facebook that indicates some close, personal relationship to me. In pleasant society, this is called stalking. 

3. I hate that you keep inviting me to fucking poetry readings in Indiana. I live in California. I am not coming to your poetry reading in Bloomington. It should be noted, just to be fair here, that I wouldn't come if it was in California, either. Why? Because I don't know you. 

4. I hate that I know you just got home from work and are having a Lean Cuisine and watching your VHS collection of Benson reruns. 

5. I hate that you poke me. Don't fucking poke me. I don't like it when my wife Wendy pokes me. Why? Because it's annoying. Small, lost children and homeless people poke you. Do you want to know why? Because they don't know you and they want something. What do you want? Huh? What the fuck do you want?

6. I hate that you sent me an email telling me that you'd like to be Facebook friends because you wrote a book on fucking dog psychology that iUniverse is bringing out next month!!! Yipee! When you get a dog to actually talk to you, let me know. We'll be friends.

7. I hate that you keep asking me to become a Fan Of Your Dumb Fucking Idea. Now, this dumb fucking idea is usually something along the lines of Fans Of Corey Haim Before He Got Fat, or Fans Of Afrin or Fans Of Toe Jam! I find that you are a fan of these things very troubling and they patently don't make me want to know you. They make me sort of want to get a restraining order on you. And trust me. When I tell you I'm getting a restraining order, I mean it.

8. I hate that you have been stalking my sisters Linda and Karen and now suddenly figure out that even though they won't speak to you, it might be neat to become friends with me, and my brother, and my mother, and my cousin Mike, and my cousin Danny, and my uncle Burl, and my wife Wendy. And none of us know who the fuck you are. And so we email each other and say, "Who the fuck is Irene?" And we all agree that we don't know. And then we agree, after reading your profile, that you need mental help and need to scrapbook a whole lot fucking less than you do.

9. I hate that, 30 years ago, you went to the same school as me and therefore believe that through some psychic connection we should suddenly become BFF. And I hate that in the weird emails you send me, you say things like [and this is a direct quote]: "I went to Palm Springs High School in 1973. Do you still live in the area? It would be great to get a cup of coffee and chat, as I am also a writer. We don't have to be BFF, but it sure would be nice to have a common thread." And when I don't respond, I hate that you don't take that as a hint.

10. I hate that when I silently de-friend you, you re-friend me. And then you send me an email that says, "Something crazy happened to my facebook and I lost you as a friend!"

11. I hate that I hated you in high school/college, but didn't really know you, and have only friended you to see if you look really fucked up now, but you don't. You look normal. You have too many fucking kids who play too many sports, but you otherwise look pretty well adjusted. I hate that.

12. I hate hearing about your fucking boat. Let me be clear here. I love hearing about my friends' boats, because they are my friends and they have very nice boats. But your boat is one of those that you take out on "the river." I have no idea where this river is, but my sense is that it's just as shitty as every other river and that invariably you spend your weekend drinking canned beer on the boat and beating your far-too-athletic-kids, whereas my friends just go out on their boats, listen to Jimmy Buffet and watch their children silently reading Kafka.

13. I hate your e-published romance novel.

14. I hate that you keep updating your status with what your fictional character is up to. I don't give a fuck what you're up to. I will never read your book, but if I did, imagine how disappointed I'd be to find out I already knew every fucking thing your fictional character was doing!

15. I hate that even though I don't know you in the least, you send me emails asking me why my other more famous friends won't friend you. And when I tell you that they won't be friends with you because they do not know who the fuck you are, you always write back and say, "Could you make the introduction?" No, no I can't. Do you know why? Because I don't know you, but I just read your profile and you like bad movies, bad books and bad television shows and write in a weird combination of uPPer CaSe and LowEr caseE letters. Which makes me want to eat my skin or send you the ransom money. 

16. I hate that sometimes I read your updates and think, Man, if this person is a fan of mine, I need to stop writing books. Because apparently only complete fucktards read my books.

17. I hate that you send me totally unfunny videos along with a note that says, "I know you'll love this! It's your sense of humor!"

18. I hate your dramatic over use of exclamation points and ccapitalization and your odd plurals and troubling misunderstanding of what the word "novel" means. For instance: My BRAND NEW fiction novel, In The Arms Of A Dark Stranger is out NOW!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!! This is my first fiction novel with my new publisher, LULU, and you can buy the book at BARNES AND NOBLES [GAD!!!] and Amazon.com [I'm number 899,000!!!!!] and BORDERS!!!!!! I love my writing group!

19. I hate that you sent me a long, rambling message about how I shouldn't make fun of Sarah Palin because she's a great mother and if I make fun of Sarah Palin, I'm making fun of great mothers everywhere. And why would I make fun of Sarah Palin when she's just like one of us. And I hate that when I responded, "She's not just like one of us. I am much smarter than Sarah Palin, and I'm still not smart enough to be Vice President," you wrote back, "America needs a strong mother figure to get us through this financial crisis. She knows how to manage her house!"   

20. I hate that on my birthday, you sent me a message that said, "Happy Birthday, fucktard! LoL!"

21. I hate your religion. There is no god. If there was a god, he wouldn't want you sending a heathen like me your fucking prayer messages. I'm not opposed to praying. I pray all the time. I prayed today that my fries would be well salted and hot when I got home. Fucked the pooch on that one. I prayed that Wendy wouldn't notice that I once again took the car with gas in it and left her the one with the blinking yellow image of a gas tank. Poor pooch got it again. So, yeah, pray all you want. But if you expect me to get down on bended knee for your "no gay marriage" prayer circle, I truly do hate you. Like for reals, yo.

22. I hate that you keep sending me your fucking resume. I also hate that you have a great idea for a book/movie/play/pop-up book/Choose Your Own Adventure that you want me to write and we'll share the profits.

23. I hate that you keep asking me to read your fiction because you really think social networking is a great way to get new eyes on your unpublished novel about the end of the Mayan calendar.

24. I hate you, you dumb motherfucker, who sent my agent a book and said that you were my friend and when she asked me, "Is this person your friend?" I said, "Uh, not that I know of." And then I got a wild idea and looked on facebook and there you were.

25. I hate your spouse. I hate your mom. I hate your dogs. I hate your cats. I hate your car. I hate your house. I hate your job. I hate your dreadful dating life. I hate that I see your picture and I wonder if you've been terribly burned. I hate that I know your spouse's name, that your mom is having a problem with her diabetes, that your dogs are SO CUUUUUUTE!!!!, that your cat is the most sentient being alive and you should be in those books helping to solve crimes, loL!, that your car got a scratch on it at the Piggly-Wiggly!, that you're cleaning out the gutters when you'd really rather be watching LOST, that your boss really saddled you with a shit load of reports on a Friday when you'd really love to be at home with your boyfriend Charles Shaw and that your last date was like an episode of Sex & The City! Cuh-razy!