Tod Goldberg

Housecleaning

A few things I keep forgetting to mention:

1. Tonight (Wednesday), Ben Greenman will be reading and signing his new book Please Step Back at Book Soup at 7pm. I did a panel with Ben at the book festival this past weekend and really enjoyed talking with him. I also quite liked his collection of stories Superbad when it came out a few years ago, and if I wasn't having weird dreams about Abagail Freemantle, why, I'd drive right in to see him at Book Soup, too.

2. I've read two really great books this month that I've been telling everyone about, likely to the point of exhaustion: Once the Shore by Paul Yoon and Columbine by Dave Cullen.  It's only April, nearly May, but I'm ready to proclaim them 2 of the best of the year.

3. Good things, good people: My friend Mary Yukari Waters new book, The Favorites, comes out in June, but you can pre-order it now. For those of you waiting for a follow-up the The Laws Of Evening, you will not be disappointed. There's a nice big excerpt on the S&S site now, too. 

This Is What It Means To Say LATFOB

As I noted below, and every other year that I've had this blog, I love the LA Times Festival of Books in a way that borders on stalking. Part of this is emotional baggage: I remember going to the first year of the Festival of Books and waiting in line to get a Scott Turow book signed and telling Wendy, "One day, I'm going to be here, and people will be asking me to sign their books." A few years later, when Turow and I were both up for the Book Prize and I was signing a book for him I nearly broke into tears. And part of this is because I absolutely love books and it's a pretty incredible feeling to be surrounded by people who feel likewise.  

The Festival feels like a seamless event for the authors, no small thing when you go to other book festivals and you feel like you are somehow putting people out by being there to do what you've been asked to do. (I can't tell you how many festivals I've gone to where they don't ever take into consideration that after your panel, it would be a pretty good idea to, you know, have books for sale somewhere within, say, a mile of your event, but, even better, right after you've done your panel...at one festival that shall remain nameless, I remember well looking at my schedule and asking the organizer why I was doing a reading and panel at noon and signing at 4pm and the organizer saying, "We thought it would be better if the authors weren't actively trying to sell their books at the same time they are talking. It's just tacky to have the books for sale and all of you signing at the same time, don't you think?") From the moment you're invited to the moment you pull out of Lot 2 and head home, the LA Times event staff, headed by the awesome Maret Orliss and Ann Binney, make you feel so totally appreciated and admired for what you do that it's really kind of sad to go home, slip back into your boxer shorts and start, you know, typing again. Turns out there's no catered green room at home.

The weekend started this year with a somewhat muted Book Prizes, this year held at the LA Times vs. the normal fete at Royce Hall. It was still a lavish affair, it's just that Royce is such an amazing space and with a thousand or so people in the audience, the Book Prizes at Royce always feels a bit like the book Oscars. Still, it was a cool event and the Chandler Auditorium at the Times was filled with writers and literary luminaries for the awarding of the prizes. You can never predict the LAT Book Prizes because they are always so idiosyncratic, so everyone I thought would win the awards I was really invested in -- Crime, Fiction and First Fiction -- lost. I thought Nina Revoyr would win for Crime, Marisa Silver for Fiction and Uwem Akpan for First Fiction and I was wrong all accounts. The full list of winners is here. The single oddest moment was Terry Pratchett's acceptance speech for best YA novel -- his book Nation was the winner -- which was videotaped. That it was videotaped isn't the odd thing as every year a few people are piped in via video (I recall one year a 10000 year old Jewish fellow won for something and his video was like sitting and listening to my grandfather bitch about poorly made furniture, but less interesting by a large margin); no, the odd thing is that Pratchett's cat was in the video as well and all anyone could concentrate on was the cat. At first it started with a little nervous tittering as the cat licked its paws and pondered whatever Pratchett was saying and then, within a minute or two, people were just giggling outright all through the room and no one could hear a thing Pratchett was saying, particularly not when the cat turned and looked directly at the camera while the author was making a particularly salient point about the writing of the book. He could have announced a perfectly fine solution to the Gaza Strip issue and no one would ever know. 

Interesting Observation Of The Evening: Uwem Akpan, whose book Say You're One Of Them was one of my favorites of 2008, is also a priest. That's not the interesting observation. The interesting observation is that he came to the awards in full collar and black priest suit and the dude looked sharp. How come Rabbis never look that sharp? 

Wendy and I didn't stay at the party for too long, which is usually not the case, but we'd spent the previous two nights not sleeping on an airbed and were ready for bed before even getting to LA. Imagine our surprise upon getting to our hotel room and finding that we had a Murphy Bed:

Me: Uh, nice room, but where's the bed?

Wendy [investigating the bathroom]: What do you "where's the bed?"

Me: I'm in the living room. I see a sofa. I see a desk. I see a microwave, an oven and fridge, but no bed. Oh, and a big ass armoire.

Wendy: [coming in to investigate] What?

Me: Maybe this isn't an armoire?

Wendy: Oh, no, no.

Me: [opening the armoire] Uh...

Wendy:

Me:

Wendy:

Me:

Wendy: You got us a hotel room with a Murphy Bed?

Me: I'm thinking we should get one for our new house. Great space saver. Put it in the office.

Wendy:

Me: Imagine how convenient that would be.

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, it's just a bed, right? It'll be fine.

Wendy: You're an idiot. And this time I really mean it.

On Saturday, we headed to the book festival first thing in the morning and spent some time with friends in the green room before heading off to see Lee moderate a panel on crime writing and then to catch our friend Susan Straight interviewing Marilynne Robinson. Now here's the thing about Marilynne Robinson: Amazing writer. An icon. Housekeeping, Gilead and Home are all brilliant works of fiction. But as a conversationalist she's a little dry. Like the next time one of those states in the middle has a terrible flood where people end up standing waist deep in water in front of their barns, wearing only denim shorts and Testament t-shirts, you could drop Robinson into the middle of it all and she'd be like that old Bounty commercial. She just absorbed the life out of the room, which is tough because Susan is filled with energy and was asking really interesting questions that we're usually answered with a cock of the head followed by the phrase, "I don't know."

My panel that afternoon was at 3:30 with Larry Wilmore, Lalo Alcaraz and Christian Lander, the topic being Humor & Race. I'd like to be humble here and say it seemed like a good panel, but the truth is that it was a fucking hilarious panel from beginning to end. Larry Wilmore almost made me piss myself, Lalo Alcaraz did make me piss myself (sorry, Lalo, just send me the cleaning bill) and Christian Lander comported himself well while attempting to educate the masses on the little known facts about white culture. Hopefully there's video floating around somewhere.

Other hightlights: I introduced myself to Michael Silverblatt. He didn't punch me in the neck, but then he didn't really seem excited about the experience, either. This was noted by the fact that he, you know, didn't say anything. I'm pretty sure I'll be invited onto the show when Other Resort Cities comes out. 

I saw Bob Barker in the green room. He looked like someone wearing a Bob Barker Halloween costume. I wanted to have an awkward conversation with him, but he was projecting a "don't fuck with me, I'm Bob Barker" vibe. Which is why I always preferred Monty Hall. 

During my signing, a woman walked up to me and said, "You're funny. You should write books."

I said, "I do write books. They're for sale right over there."

"Oh," she said. "I'm not sure I'd like them."

"How can you ever be sure you'll like anything?" I said.

She stared at me for a few moments, didn't say anything, and then just walked away. So that was nice.

The weird thing about the book festival this year, and likely an indication of our economy, was that neither Borders nor Barnes & Noble had a presence at the festival. In year's past, B&N was a huge supporter with their own stage and a huge B&N tent selling books, and Borders, too, always had a huge tent and a really great line up of authors signing books (I'll never forget the great moments I shared signing next to Tom Arnold, who, as I recall, couldn't have been a large dick), plus both had lots of staff, including my two favorite bookstore people on earth, Jan Valerio of B&N and Lita Weissman of Borders, both of whom have been huge supporters of, really, my entire family. Instead, there were a notable number of ebook and self publishers with tents (alongside, of course, a ton of indie stores like the Mystery Bookstore, Vromans, Book Soup etc.). The oddest non-traditional publisher with a booth, without a doubt, belonged to Immigration Enforcement Publications. Inside their booth were two people, a man and a woman, dressed completely in black like they were Ninjas, but specifically Ninjas who were going to keep our borders safe from, uh, presumably, those awful brown people of all nations. And as ever, it's always neat to see various religious sects and cults parked next to one another, like the Kabbalah folks and the Scientologists (who were calling themselves Bridge Publications, which I guess is the arm of Scientology that publishes the non-fiction of L. Ron, as opposed to canonical texts of L. Ron...). Apparently the Ayn Rand people didn't want to get into a turf war and opted to be a few booths away. A shame, really, as it's fun to watch them all battle for the soul and minds of California's literary minded fucktards.

Sunday was another full day. We started early again, this time meeting up with our friends Ryan and Trinity so that they could eat breakfast with us in the green room. Ryan admitted to us, after Wendy and I had a brief conversation with Jane Smiley, that he really didn't like A Thousand Acres and didn't really see the King Lear comparison. When I noted that Jane was just a few feet away and that he should maybe, you know, take it up with her, he demurred. I pointed out other writers he didn't like, but still no luck in getting him to pick fights. I spent an hour or so my UCR-Palm Desert MFA booth, which was fun as I got to talk to people about the program. I sadly also had to talk to an inordinate number of fucktards about the program. Sample conversation:

Woman: So, I'd like to get my MFA but I don't want to read a bunch of books.

Me: That's sort of part of the deal.

Woman: I just want to have someone write my story.

Me: That's not part of the deal, actually.

Woman: Isn't everyone in an MFA writing?

Me: Yes, but they have their own stories.

Woman: But my story is very interesting. I lost my job about five years ago in a workman's comp scandal -- they didn't believe I'd hurt my wrists, but I had, and that's why I still wear these braces -- and how I was screwed by my old company and how I finally decided to sue them.

Me:

Woman: Like Erin Brockovich.

Me:

Woman: Don't you think someone would want to write that?

Me: Did they find toxic waste in your wrists?

Woman: No, no, of course not.

Me: Then it's not like Erin Brockovich. It's more like you lost your job and now you're suing your old boss for workman's comp. Not a lot of drama there, I'm afraid.

Woman: You're not selling your program very well.

Me: No, no, I guess I'm not.

I had a panel at noon with Seth Greenland and Ben Greenman moderated by Carolyn Kellogg, It was called Humor & Fiction. So it was a lot like the panel I moderated the previous day, only this time I was a panelist and therefore was allowed to just tell funny stories, or to laugh at Seth and Ben, which was very easy as both of them are quite funny. The interesting thing here, really, is that none of us actually write comic fiction. Seth's The Bones is funny, but funny, but it's pretty dark stuff, too, and Ben's new book, which comes out shortly, is a serious novel, too. I'm not sure if I've ever written anything intentionally funny -- well, maybe apart from some of the Burn Notice stuff and a few stories -- but there the three of us were talking about the nature of comedy, which somehow devolved  -- in the first question -- to be talking about teaching an entire class at UCLA with my penis sticking out of my pants. And, you know, it just went down from there. It was another excellent panel, needless to say.

After that, I headed over to the Mystery Bookstore to sign books with Lee and Bill Rabkin and was then joined, unexpectedly, by Matt Nix, the creator of Burn Notice and all around great guy. We had a good time chatting and he made dreams come true for a few folks who wondered up as we were closing up our time, notably Peter Balaskas, the editor of Silent Voices who lost his shit, to put it mildly. Peter is a good guy and I knew he was a huge fan of the show, so I was happy to watch him lose said shit. 

Then I went to Mysterious Galaxy and signed with Brett Battles, where we encountered a woman wearing the shortest skirt I've ever seen. I literally kept waiting for her lady bits to come tumbling out, though I didn't wait with too much active staring as her boyfriend looked like Lemmy from Motorhead, but with a more outward taste for human flesh. Nevertheless, Brett and I were heartened to see that the woman was a reader -- she bought the chick-lit mystery being sold by the woman sitting beside us. (Note to self: Write more chick-lit crime novels.) Later, a woman walked up to me, grabbed my latest Burn Notice book and said:

Woman: What's this about?

Me: It's about a boy wizard stuck in Miami against his will.

Woman: (staring at the cover) Oh, really? That sounds interesting.

Me: No, not really. He's an ex-spy living in Miami against his will.

Woman: (a look of disappointment on her face): Oh. I see.

Oddly, she ended up buying the book because she said it sounded like, "it could be like James Bond or something." When I told her about my other books stacked in a handsome pyramid, she told me they didn't sound very interesting at all.

Other highlights: running into Kevin Roderick of LAObserved in the green room, because I swear to god I read LAObserved so religiously that it's hard to believe there's an actual person behind it. I've met Kevin several times, but it's always weird, because I think, Oh, right, he's the human there. I'm not making sense, I know, but it was cool, especially since I thought at any moment Sam Zell would have him shot.

I didn't run into Alyssa Milano or Cloris Leachman, so my marriage is safe and strong.

Seeing so many of my former UCLA students, current UCR-Palm Desert students, Bennington classmates and Bennington professors, all often in the same place at the same time.

Seeing indie stores like the Mystery Bookstore and Mysterious Galaxy selling lots of books. These people love books and love writers and without them, all book lovers lose.

It was, in short, another great Festival of Books. I'm already getting excited for next year!

Your Annotated Guide To The LA Times Festival Of Books

This coming weekend is the 14th annual LA Times Festival of Books, which, if you like books, is made from the very fabric of awesome. If you love books, it's intellectual bukkake. (I mean this in a good way, I assure you.)

I'm doing a bunch of stuff at the festival, including signing copies of my new Burn Notice book, The End Game, which will be on sale at the Book Festival a full two weeks before its in-store release date. 

On Saturday, I'm moderating a panel on Humor & Race with Larry Wilmore, Lalo Alcaraz and Christian Lander. The panel begins at 3:30 and is followed by a booksigning.

On Sunday, I'll be a guest on panel called Enough About You: Fiction & Humor, moderated by the Artist Formerly Known As Pinky, Carolyn Kellogg, and I'll be joined by Seth Greenland and Ben Greenman. The panel begins at 12:30 and is followed by a booksigning.

Then, at 2, I'll be signing in the Mystery Bookstore booth with my brother Lee, followed by a 3:00 signing at Mysterious Galaxy, both of which will have copies of my new Burn Notice book. 

I also intend to spend a good sum of time in booth #359, which is being hosted by the UCR-Palm Desert MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. There will be free pens in this booth. There will be famous authors in the booth all day both days -- Mark Haskell Smith, Bill Rabkin, Mary Yukari Waters, Deanne Stillman, Rob Roberge, MG Lord and 100s (okay, maybe less than 100s) of others. So stop by. Get some education. And a pen.

I'll be twittering all weekend long, so come back and check the feed over the weekend to read about my interactions with fucktards...

 

Now, as a public service to you, my reading public, I thought I'd recommend a few events of interest taking place as well:

Saturday:

Alyssa Milano
Author of “Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic,” interviewed by Jon Weisman

A conversation I had with Wendy about this panel:

Me: Hey, Alyssa Milano is going to be at the Book Festival.

Wendy: Yeah?

Me: Yeah. So, I ask that you act like an adult if she wants to get with me.

Wendy: I'll see what I can do.

Me: I mean, I'm not going to force the issue. But if it happens, it happens.

Wendy: Isn't she all about baseball players?

Me: I'm in a fantasy league. So, I'm like a GM.

Wendy:

Me: And she's dated some guys who really have gone into the tank, frankly.

Wendy:

Me: Oooh, that hot chef Giada and Brooke Shields are also going to be at the Book Festival. 

Wendy: 

Me: Potential fantasy girl-fight!

Wendy:

Me: Anyway. 

Wendy: 

Me: Just saying. If she's in the green room, it's on.

Wendy: You're an idiot.

Mystery: A Dark & Stormy Night
   Moderator   Mr. Lee Goldberg
   Ms. Jan Burke
   Mr. Stephen J. Cannell
   Mr. Robert Dugoni
   Mr. Craig Johnson

Lee is a good moderator. He's not as good as me, certainly, but the kid has his own charms. Plus, any panels with Stephen J. Cannell are worth your time. The thing about Stephen, and I mean this, is that he smells really good and dresses like a  sexy PI. And he created Jim Rockford. If memory serves, Jan also once brought a dildo to one of her panels, so there's a chance she might anally rape Lee in the middle of the panel, which, I think we can all agree, is something a lot of people would pay to see.

Mary & Carol Higgins Clark in
Conversation with Amy Alkon
   Interviewer   Ms. Amy Alkon
   Ms. Mary Higgins Clark
   Ms. Carol Higgins Clark

Every year Mary Higgins Clark and her, uh, daughter? Sister? Siamese twin? Manitou?Carol do an event  together. And every year, I walk past their subsequent book signing and ponder just what the fuck I've done wrong in my life that I don't have that many people wearing fanny packs at my book signings.

Mysteries in Black & White
   Moderator   Ms. Sarah Weinman
   Ms. Denise Hamilton
   Mr. Michael Koryta
   Mr. Simon Lewis

I'm a little upset. Usually I do a panel with Denise and then we do a bunch of coke off of T. Jefferson Parker's rock-hard stomach. I guess Sarah Weinman gets that pleasure this year...

Mystery: Cops & Crooks in California
   Moderator   Mr. Robert Crais
   Mr. T. Jefferson Parker
   Mr. Joseph Wambaugh
   Mr. Don Winslow

...or maybe Robert Crais will.

Publishing: The Big Picture
   Moderator   Mr. Kit Rachlis
   Mr. George Gibson
   Mr. David Kipen
   Ms. Bonnie Nadell

The shortest scheduled panel. Kit will ask, "What's the future of publishing?" All three will respond "We're totally fucked," and that will be that.

Poetry: Line Breaks
   Moderator   Ms. Dana Goodyear
   Ms. Jorie Graham
   Mr. Robert Pinsky
   Ms. Cole Swensen
   Ms. Connie Voisine

A great looking panel provided it is not  performed  completely in poet voice

Memoir: The Bigger Picture
   Moderator   Ms. Dinah Lenney
   Ms. Gabrielle Burton
   Ms. Samantha Dunn

   Ms. Lynne Sharon Schwartz

A great panel of memoirists -- Lynne Sharon Schwartz is one of my favorite humans alive and will say something during this panel that will inspire you. I promise. 

Marilyinne Robinson in Conversation
with Susan Straight
   Interviewer   Ms. Susan Straight

   Ms. Marilynne Robinson

Susan in conversation with anyone would be a great event. But with Marilynne Robinson? You'd have to be dead inside not to go.

Fiction: Past & Present
   Moderator   Mr. John Freeman
   Mr. David Benioff
   Ms. Achy Obejas
   Ms. Susan Straight

Susan and David will both be excellent and though I've never heard of Achy Obejas, he (she?) has an awesome name that reminds me of some of my favorite baseball players from the 70s and 80s. Amos Otis, anyone? 

Writing from Different Angles
   Moderator   Mr. Michael Silverblatt
   Mr. Bernard Cooper
   Ms. Katherine Dunn
   Mr. Geoff Dyer

   Mr. Pico Iyer

Using my flux capacitor, I've been supplied with a transcript from this panel. It's from Michael Silverblatt asking Bernard Cooper a question:

Silverblatt: Bernard, while reading your book The Bill From My Father, I was struck by the way in which your father, in the sense that we all have fathers, and by fathers I mean the seed-givers, not only billed you, but billeted you as well, in that we are all billeted by life, in that we all are told where to sleep by our parents, the seed-givers of life such that life is a gift given to us not by parents, but by time, and by time I mean the way hands move across the face of a clock like hands move in front of Madonna when she vogues, but not in the sense that Vogue inspired the Devil Wears Prada. But that bill, Bernard, strikes me as malicious, like a virus, like a trojan horse, or a zebra, but without stripes, and in that way the bill is like an ocelot. Yes?

Cooper: I'm going to let Pico answer that.

Ray Bradbury with an Introduction by M.G. Lord
   Introducer   Ms. M.G. Lord
   Mr. Ray Bradbury

It's Ray Bradbury. He's angry and getting angrier. He is five times the size of MG and there's a good chance they might fight or have torrid sex on stage. So. Yeah. Get to that one.

Fiction: The Writer's Ear
   Moderator   Ms. Louisa Ermelino
   Ms. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
   Ms. Laila Lalami
   Ms. Julia Leigh

I heartily recommend Laila's new book, The Secret Son, and while I have no idea what this panel will be about, I have to assume that there's a good chance Laila might bite off Julia Leigh's ear and spit it into the crowd.

Growing Up: Young Adult Fiction
   Moderator   Ms. Cecil Castellucci
   Ms. Robin Benway
   Ms. Deb Caletti
   Ms. Lauren Myracle
   Ms. Lisa Yee

Robin and Cecil are bound to turn this conversation into a vile description of drug abuse and sex. We're talking rainbow parties here. 

Memoirs With a Twist
   Moderator   Ms. Erika Schickel
   Mr. Gustavo Arellano
   Mr. Chris Ayres
   Ms. Rachel Resnick
   Ms. Marion Winik

Oh, wait, no, maybe it's this panel that will devolve into wild tales of sex and drugs. I read Rachel's book just to make sure I wasn't in it!

Fiction: The Big Picture
   Moderator   Mr. Nicholas Delbanco
   Mr. Ron Carlson
   Ms. Antonya Nelson
   Ms. Marisa Silver

I fucking love Ron Carlson. I also feel very strongly about Antonya Nelson. Legally, I'm not allowed to go to this panel.

The Future of News
   Moderator   Ms. Karen Grigsby Bates
   Ms. Geneva Overholser
   Mr. Russ Stanton
   Mr. Jacob Weisberg

Another really short panel: "What's the future of print news?" followed by the sound of gunfire.

Clive Barker in Conversation with Gina McIntyre
   Interviewer   Ms. Gina McIntyre
   Mr. Clive Barker

I also received a transcript from this talk:

McIntyre: So, Hellraiser. How much of that was influenced by The Great Gatsby?

Barker: Oh, a great deal. Nick and Pinhead have quite a bit in common...

Dave Cullen in Conversation with David L. Ulin
   Interviewer   Mr. David L. Ulin
   Mr. Dave Cullen

Cullen's book, Columbine, is incredible. I reviewed it this week in Las Vegas CityLife, but I'll save you some reading time by telling you to just go out and buy it now and give yourself a full day to read it, as you won't put it down.

Sunday:

Mystery: Gun in Cheek
   Moderator   Mr. Rob Roberge
   Mr. Thomas Perry
   Mr. Mark Haskell Smith
   Mr. Paul Tremblay

There's a good chance Rob or Mark will say something to offend someone. 

Fiction: Breaking Point
   Moderator   Mr. David L. Ulin
   Mr. John Haskell
   Mr. Hari Kunzru
   Mr. Antoine Wilson
   Mr. John Wray

A real powerhouse line up here. I love me some Antoine Wilson  and Hari Kunzru.

iction: Exiles & Outsiders
   Moderator   Ms. Donna Rifkind
   Ms. Gioconda Belli
   Ms. Aimee Bender
   Ms. Mary Gaitskill
   Ms. Dylan Landis

I'm seriously thinking of skipping my own panel to hear Mary Gaitskill. I have a thing for her. And by "thing" I mean I'd wear a suit made from her hair and skin. I hope that doesn't creep her out.  Aimee, Gioconda and Dylan are great as well, I just wouldn't wear their flesh as an outfit, which I think they appreciate.

Fiction: New West
   Moderator   Ms. Susan Salter Reynolds
   Ms. Nina Revoyr
   Ms. Marisa Silver
   Ms. Marianne Wiggins

By this time,  Marisa may have won the LAT Book Prize, which will make her even cooler than she already is.

S.E. Hinton in Conversation with Jane Smiley
   Moderator   Ms. Jane Smiley
   Ms. S.E. Hinton

Stay gold.

All The Wrong Places
   Moderator   Mr. Thomas Curwen
   Mr. Will Chaffey
   Mr. Cash Peters
   Mr. Evan Wright

I'm a big fan of Evan Wright's Generation Kill and the HBO series it spawned. His new book looks very good, too.

Michael J. Fox in Conversation with Mary McNamara
   Interviewer   Ms. Mary McNamara
   Mr. Michael J. Fox

It's Michael J. Fox, people. The dude was in Back to The Future. Best recognize, yo.

Fiction: Borderlines
   Moderator   Ms. Veronique de Turenne
   Mr. Uwem Akpan
   Ms. Thrity Umrigar
   Mr. Luis Alberto Urrea

Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them was one of my favorite books last year. 

Publishing: From Keyboard to Bookstore
   Moderator   Ms. Betsy Amster
   Mr. John Freeman
   Ms. Kerry Slattery
   Mr. Johnny Temple

The number of people in the audience with velobound manuscripts is gonna be huge. The over under on the amount of time it takes for someone to ask if Betsy Amster will read their self-published book about the end of the Mayan Calendar? Five seconds after the Q&A begins. 

Fiction: L.A. Writes the World
   Moderator   Mr. Ben Ehrenreich
   Mr. Chris Abani
   Mr. Steve Erickson
   Ms. Rachel Kushner

A great line up of disparate LA voices. 

The Rest of the West
   Moderator   Mr. Steven J. Ross
   Mr. Mark Arax
   Mr. Scott Martelle
   Mr. Jim Newton
   Ms. Deanne Stillman

Deanne is my friend and at some point she's going to talk about how a particular book or story came to be and it will begin, "I was in a bar in the desert and a woman with teeth only in the back of her mouth turned to me and asked if I'd heard about the series of unsolved murders in the neighborhood..."

Fiction: The Post-Modern World
   Moderator   Mr. Jim Ruland
   Mr. Todd Hasak-Lowy
   Mr. Lee Konstantinou
   Ms. Fiona Maazel
   Mr. Jerry Stahl

Jerry Stahl is always pretty captivating at these things and you couldn't ask for a better moderator than Jim Ruland. 

James Ellroy with an Introduction by Patt Morrison
   Introducer   Ms. Patt Morrison
   Mr. James Ellroy

There's a pretty good chance Ellroy will steal someone's panties and smell them during this talk. 

 

The Most Awesome Thing In The History Of Awesome

I've done plenty of cool stuff in my life and seen my name in plenty of places I never thought I'd see it. But I don't know if I've ever been more excited about seeing my own name somewhere as I am about seeing it in the picture below:

Those are the production notes for the Jane's Addiction box set Cabinet of Curiosities (which is pretty fucking amazing -- if you're a fan, spend the 75 bucks and get the really nice one) and I'm listed there for photo credits and also for records & memorabilia, but the really, really, really cool thing is that in both cases I'm there with old friends Alex Katofsky, Jim Kochel and Dominic Zangari, plus Mike Kachko who got all of this together in the first place since he was the product manager for the project for Rhino. I knew it was coming, but just to see it makes me feel 18 again, like I'm at the John Anson Ford Theater on a school night 20 year ago (and it was 20 years ago, exactly...). They ended up using a bunch of pictures I took of Jane's from their concert atop Mt. Baldy  which I went to with Jim, but there's an absolute treasure trove of neat stuff in the set from all of my friends, which is particularly fun to see. But foremost, I'm a huge Jane's Addiction fan who has spent the better part of my adult life listening to the band's three albums with their original line-up (I bought Strays, too, but, well, it just wasn't the same...) and pretending I was, you know, in the band as I screamed along in my car/house/office, so just seeing my name on a Jane's album is so surreal as to be unbelievable. And yes, I know, I just gave them some pictures, but I can pretend, right? 

I Want To Blow Stuff Up And Do Some Urban Warfare: A Conversation I Had At My Local Bookstore

It never fails: Whenever I'm writing a Burn Notice book, I realize that I have absolutely no idea how to do some bad-ass thing and have to go searching all over the place for information. Sometimes searching just means I email a friend of mine in the middle of the night and ask him what it feels like to get shot (I have a lot of interesting friends) or it means I watch some 15 year old kid pick a padlock on YouTube and then I see if I can do it, too (remarkably easy, it turns out) or I need to know how to turn a Crock Pot into a bomb -- turns out pressure, styrofoam and some other stuff will do the trick. And sometimes, I just need to know what a person with military training just knows, which means I have to go out and buy some book that I might not ever really go out and purchase otherwise.

Today, I went to the bookstore looking for a book on urban warfare that also had some good how-to stuff in it and came across Combat Leader's Field Guide by Sgt. Maj. Brett Stoneberger. I spent about 30 minutes reading through it in the store to see if it had all the good stuff I'd need -- ie, things I can write after I wrte "When you're a spy..." and then went up to the counter to purchase it. Here's the conversation I had with the 17 year old girl behind the counter:

Girl (looking at the book): Are you in the Army?

Me: No.

Girl (looking at me, which is like looking at someone who robbed the Polo Outlet in Cabazon, because, yeah, I pretty much have): Then why are you buying this book?

Me: I need to know how to blow stuff up and do urban warfare.

Girl:

Me:

Girl:

Me: Is there a better book for that than this one?

Girl: I don't know. I can ask.

Me: No worries. This one will be fine. I can always return it, right?

Girl: I guess.

Me: If it doesn't work, that is.

Serial Killer

The good people at the Los Angeles Times asked me if I'd bat cleanup in the first round of their serialized novel project Money Walks and so of course I said yes. Normally, with my speed and eye I'm more of a lead-off hitter or #2, but I felt like my fast twitch muscles would suit the purpose at #4, particularly since there were will be 17 installments between this past Monday and April 24th, when the serial concludes, so, really, mathematically, I'm essentially Rickey Henderson. The results are now online (and in print Thursday morning if you happen to get the paper at home) for you to read. Here's snippet:

Angie believed nothing good ever happened in the Valley. She'd done her time there, like everyone else, working the day shift at Odd-Balls back in the '90s, stripping for CSUN frat boys who couldn't make it past Van Nuys, not even to see naked women. Even then, the cities of the Valley sounded like they wanted to get out: Northridge, West Hills, North Hills. . . . each one creeping on the fringe back toward the real Los Angeles.

The way the serial has worked from a writing point of view is pretty simple. About 24 hours before my 600 words were due, the first 3 sections were emailed to me. I spent the next 18 hours trying to figure out how the hell I was going to go from Diana Wagman's section, which I suspect started with Diana trying to figure out where to go from Seth Greenland's submission, which certainly had Seth trying to figure out just what to do with the initial section, penned by LAT's writer Mary McNamara. I was also thinking, while writing, how I might be able to set up the next section for my friend Aimee Bender, who was originally supposed to go after me, but who ended up moving further down the line, but who, originally, I was going to see the very night she'd have to write her section. See, I'm all about helping others. But, yeah, that didn't work out. So I took a more mercenary approach and decided that the story needed to have a caper and needed one right now, or else the entire project was going to go down in a burning heap. Whether or not anyone else thought this -- ie, the fine folks at the LA Times -- was not made clear to me. So. Yeah. That's what I did. 

It was actually quite fun to do this bit of experiemental storytelling. You can feel each writer attempting to inject their brand of storytelling into the work and also expressing a will about where they'd like it to go. I don't think people reading it can expect a uniformity in style or even for the writers to try to mimic each other's tone as part of the fun is watching what each of these talented folks choose to do, how their own aesthetic shines through. I fully expect that in Aimee's section, for instance, that everyone will turn into pumpkins. And when Mark Haskell Smith is up, I expect a prolonged scene of scatalogical excess. And then Susan Straight will make it all serious and beautiful. Personally, I'm hoping for scatalogical and downtrodden, but that's just me.   

Don't Tell Anybody The Secrets I've Told You

So, it occured to me last week that I have a book coming out in May and another one in October and I need to gussy the place up a little bit in case visitors stop by. Hence, I'm redesigning some things around here.

The first secret to redesigning, however, is that it's important to have big time famous artists in the family who can design new banners for you and tell you what colors to use and tell you where to put stuff according to important studies on where the eyes go while visiting websites and who can, also, tell you that "your font is stupid and makes you look like a girl. A dumb girl." You can't pay for advice like that. I mean that literally: Who would pay for advice like that? But, ever the good brother, I do as I'm told and thus the font has been changed, stuff has been moved around, new banners have been created and laboriously centered. I've added my Twitter feed, because the kids like the Twitter. I might add a link that goes straight to GoodReads that says, "There's a difference between TV and books, you fucking morons" but maybe that's excessive...though, I gotta say, the people who leave reviews of the The Fix on GoodReads must be the same people who write letters to Parade. Do people really not know that television is, you know, made up? I mean, for the love of all that is holy, what the fuck is wrong with people? Maybe I should make that a link. A What The Fuck Is Wrong With People link, that takes them to a psychologist who can help them with their myriad problems.

Anyway...

I turn to you, unfucktarded readers, with an important question: Do I still need a blogroll? Is that played out like Donkey Kong? Should I just have a few links to places I actually visit? Does anyone actually use the blog links over there on the side? Doesn't everyone know where they are going these days? Do you know where you're going to, do you know what life is showing you? Do you know?

On An Award Tour With A Mic In My Hand

I keep forgetting to mention that I'm a finalist for (which means I'll lose) a Scribe Award for my first Burn Notice book, The Fix. The IAMTW gives these awards in recognition of excellence in writing tie-ins and such, which means, essentially, I am excellent. Or I am a finalist to be excellent. Typically, I lose these kinds of awards (there was the LA Times Book Prize, the SCBA Award, the 57,000 Pushcart Prize nominations that have garnered me 2 Special Mentions etc. etc. etc.), though I did win the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize, which was awesome,  and I once won a free dinner at Quiznos at a raffle, so, yeah, close, but not excellent.

At any rate, the awards are given out in July at Comic-Con, which means I now have a reason to bust out my V uniform and full regalia, so that's cool, and I'd like to fucking win for once, okay? In case I don't, however, the good people at Las Vegas CityLife, where I'm a book critic,interviewed me on the topic on their blog today:

JK: Burn Notice is a great property, but what other TV shows, films and games are you itching to tackle?

TG: None. I wasn’t itching to tackle Burn Notice, but the show runner, Matt Nix,[and I] have known each other for a long time, I love the show and when it was offered to me it sounded like a ton of fun, which it has been. So I don’t see me writing any others, candidly, so don’t go running to the bookstore to read my take on, you know, My Two Dads: The Novel.