Tod Goldberg

When You Write About A Spy...

...USA Today finds your opinion far more important than usual:

Burn Notice is fueled by Westen's frustrated efforts to come in from the cold — or in this case, the Miami heat. Blacklisted, he uses his spy skills inRobin Hood style, helping average Joes oppressed by evildoers ranging from drug dealers to white-collar thieves. Think A-Team meets MacGyver, mixed with a little I Spy and Rockford Files. Westen's crime-fighting partners are Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), the centerfold-sexy weapons expert more comfortable shouldering rocket launchers than designer handbags, and rumpled wingman Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell), a sarcastic former Navy SEAL and government operative as interested in babes and beer as bringing down bad guys. For more comic relief, there's Sharon Gless as Madeline, the boozy, chain-smoking Mom who can pierce her son's James Bond veneer by guilt-tripping him into fixing household appliances.

Burn Notice's burgeoning audience — spring's season finale drew a record 7.6 million viewers — has been a pleasant surprise for the cast, crew and network. How does Burn Notice ignite such interest? "It looks pretty, the writing's strong, the heroes have frailty, and there's a humanistic quality about people overcoming obstacles to make the world a little better," says Tod Goldberg, who has written three companion Burn Notice novels.

You can read the rest of the article here. And if that's not enough, Lev Raphael recently interviewd me about all things Burn Notice, too:

In The Fix you call Miami a city that was always home to ruffians and rogues, and is now overwhelmed by ostentatious wealth and envy. Does it share those qualities with Los Angeles? And Michael Westen seems completely removed from envy, but is he a rogue or a ruffian in your view?

I think Michael Westen is an anti-hero, which is part rogue and ruffian and, in his case, a guy who goes and fixes his mother’s sink. He’s done bad things. He’s killed people. And yet we feel empathy for him because there is someone worse than him, someone without conscience who has burned him. Plus he’s got an ex-girlfriend he still sleeps with, a dumb brother, dad issues . . . he’s a guy who has a job that has made him into something unusual, but he’s still just a guy with problems, which is why I think people are drawn to the character. 

I think most places are overwhelmed by envy—or at least the people who live in those places are. Los Angeles is a strange place in that you meet an accountant or a rabbi and they both want to get into the entertainment industry . . . or at least want to be famous. I’ve written about this before, in other books and stories, but I find that LA is unique in the sense that it’s the only place in the world where people who are file clerks at a studio say they work in the entertainment industry. 

 You can read Lev Raphael's interview with me here.

When Was The Last Time You Worked Up A Rondo Thirst?

I had the sudden desire this evening to fight a ninja and then find a soft drink that wasn't made for sipping. Sadly, I forgot to pick up my weekly sixer of Rondo and was left to drink, you know, water. 

 

Letters To Parade: Special Memorial Day Fucktard Extravaganza!

Two of the nice things about living in America are freedom of speech and freedom of the press. That's important to remember today, of all days, when we salute those who have died for our various freedoms. It's especially nice when you consider that in other countries simply speaking your mind might land you in prison or result in your death. And as a person who has been known to speak his mind on various topics and to tell the world that specific people are fucktards, I must say how happy I am to live in this lovely country and that I am able to do so while not also serving time in a forced labor camp or taking a dirt nap for calling, say, Greta Van Sustern, the scariest human being alive (and I mean that only in the sense that whenever I see her on television I think: Man, she really turned her face into a fucking meat circus -- what's wrong with having a few wrinkles, Greta? Grow old gracefully, I say).

So, yes, happy Memorial Day, everyone. And thanks to the fine men and women who stand in the way of harm so that I may live in a gated community on a man made lake and spout hate across the internet. Because really, what says Memorial Day like outing some fucktards? Specifically, the fucktards at Parade magazine. 

Yesterday's issue was a veritable fucktardapalooza, both from the standpoint of the morons who wrote to Parade and the morons who write for Parade. Let's take the second section first, shall we? Shirley Chamberlain of Vero Beach, FL (who I pray to god lives in an iron lung, because no one who lives and walks among us should care this much about a celebrity to ponder the emotional subtext of said celebrity's dating life -- though, really, if Shirley did live in an iron lung, my sense is that she would be best off focusing her attention on getting the fuck out of the iron lung, though that's just my opinion) wrote Parade because she just can't figure out something really, really important:

Did Jennifer Aniston have any warning things weren't working out with John Mayer?

A great question. And I can only think of one person who might know the answer. And that person isn't really a person at all. No, in fact, the only person who might have known that John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston might eventually break up was actually her dog. 

Yes. A member of Aniston’s family tells us that Jen’s corgi mix, Norman, growled and hid whenever Mayer spent the night at her Beverly Hills mansion. At the time, the Friends star couldn’t understand her dog’s behavior. Now, our source says, her boyfriends must pass Norman’s sniff test.

 

Parade, as I think we can all agree, is not the New York Times. But, nevertheless, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU USE A DOG AS A FUCKING SOURCE? I know, I know, it says a "family member" is the source, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if a "family member" is talking to Parade, that "family member" is not close enough to Jennifer Aniston to actually gain her confidence enough that she'd, you know, divulge the great secret behind the end of her relationship boiled down to her dog Norman. So, for all intents, Parade has just used a dog as their source of celebrity gossip. Janice Kaplan, who is the editor of Parade, writes fiction as well, so maybe she thought, Oh, what the hell, let's throw a talking dog into this issue and see if anyone notices. And next issue, let's make the dog Bionic! Now maybe this isn't as egregious as the time Parade said Osama Bin Laden was dead, or pronounced Barbaro fit (when he was already dead), or ran a cover story on Benazir Bhutto proclaiming her the one person who could solve Pakistan's issues a week after she was murdered, but it is the first time I can recall that Parade actually has depended upon canine intuition as the reasoning behind a break up.

Maybe I'm being too hard on Parade and editor Janice Kaplan for bringing a talking dog into the mix, particularly since the average person who writes into Parade is no smarter than my dog Scout who, though without the ability to speak, did recently eat some of her own vomit, which answered a lot of questions for me about my own interpersonal relationships. For instance, are the editors of Parade any less bright than Aubrey Jinks of Bullard, Texas, who writes:

Days of our Lives star Alison Sweeney recently had a baby -- as did her TV character. Does her real daughter play her daughter on TV?

Our soldiers have died for Aubrey to be this fucking stupid, people. Let's be clear on that. According to information I found on the internet just a few moments ago, I learned that Sweeney's character on Days recently spent time in the Witness Protection program. Aubrey, do you think Alison Sweeney is also in the Witness Protection program? Also, it appears that the baby on the show isn't really her character's baby! In fact, it was switched by Sweeney's character's arch enemy! Do you believe, Aubrey, that Alison Sweeney's baby in real life has been switched, too? Or do you believe that Alison Sweeney's baby is actually a talking dog wearing an Ed Gein-inspired vest of human skin? 

 

And I Didn't Even Mention My Charisma Points

Let it be noted that I do things for you, my readers, so that you don't have to. This includes reading Parade Magazine, periodically talking to Lee on the phone, and, a few weeks ago, playing Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in at least 25 years. The results of this last endeavor are in this weekend's Los Angeles Times. Here's a snippet:

I stood at the end of a dark passageway, illuminated by a strange blue glow. To my left slouched an injured dwarf and a shifty paladin, both drinking a miraculous energy-restoring potion. Behind me stood a half-elf who, I'd been told, was "the One" and his companion, a gnome with a pronounced desire to kill anything that moved near his friend. Me? I was your average time-traveling human who had seen things in the future and the past that made this moment fraught with danger.

The tension was unbearable. I turned to the half-elf and asked the one question that needed immediate answer: "Is there any beer left?"

You can read the rest here.

My Favorite Fucktard Of The Day

I just saw a new review of my first Burn Notice book up on Amazon that made me laugh. The person -- or, rather, the person's husband -- hated the book apparently, but clearly has a rather specific issue of their own, too [emphasis mine, obviously]:

 burn notice, May 14, 2009

By	L. Hansen (florida) - See all my reviews

My husband found so many misspelled words that he gripped the whole time he read it. Whatever happened to spell checkers?

I can't imagine what her husband gripped the whole time he read the book. Actually, I can imagine and my book was never intended to be read while gripping anything, least of all what Mr. Hansen was keeping in his gnarled fist while he read. Now, if Mr. Hansen griped the whole way through over typos, well, that I could understand. Particularly since the book reads like it was copyedited by a machete (that's what happens when a book is written quickly, edited in five minutes and literally printed a day later).  But really, people, if you're going to complain about typos, you have to be sure not to have them in your complaints. I think that's rule #1. If you're going to complain about fucktardish activity, you can't be a fucktard in the process. That's rule #2. And rule #3 is that Mr. Hansen should leave his own reviews.

Chicago And The Media

Gina Frangello, my editor at OV Books (the good people who put out Simplify and who are releasing Other Resort Cities in the fall) has a very interesting column up at Huffington Post about the suddenly hot book publishing industry in Chicago (where OV is based) and the intersection between new media and old media and the novel idea that people should earn a living from writing:

OK, let me preface this with the disclaimer that I realize it has in fact become widely regarded as gauche for writers (unless you are Audrey Niffenegger) to even discuss money or act as though we give a fig for its existence. But let's look at the facts here: it has always, always been very difficult for artists of all stripes to make anything resembling a living with their art, and most people do need to make a living. Now, with the onslaught of online media and independent publishing, and the decline of the dominant New York publishing industry and print newspapers/magazines, what was once "difficult" is now almost impossible.
These days, it has become pretty much a given that publishing your book with an independent press means no advance and -- with bookstores' outdated Depression-Era model of payment (where they can over-order books at no financial risk, the publisher later being slaughtered by the costs of returns) -- often no royalties either. But fine: it was always hard for writers to earn a buck, and at least now more can be published since indie presses are thriving, right?
But what about literary journalists? What about the Rick Kogans and Donna Seamans of the future? Well, with online sites and collective blogs increasingly taking the place of any kind of paying print media, "journalism" is totally up for grabs and increasingly an unpaid gig. While your readership may knock the socks off what you'd have found writing for a small, local paper, at least that small, local paper would have paid you for your contribution, and with that payment -- and many others like it -- a book reviewer or cultural journalist could piece together a living, maybe even finding a longtime situation like writing a column or becoming a staff writer or editor.

Top 5 Post-Apocalyptic/Alien Labor Camp Music Videos

There was a time -- we'll call it the 1980s -- when music videos were played on something called MTV. During that time, I used to watch a lot of music videos. I don't mean this in a passive way. I mean that I would sit on the couch for hours watching music videos, actively noting which ones "sucked" and which ones "ruled." This was very important to me. I don't know what I gained from this endeavor, precisely, apart from an encyclopedic knoweledge of bad pop music that has enabled me to sing along to every single song on every single station of my satellite radio. Oh, and to lose on Rock-N-Roll Jeopardy. 

Anyway, it was the satellite radio today that reminded me of a particular favorite subset of music videos: The Post Apocalyptic/Alien Labor Camp. I thought of it when Rick Springfield's dreadful song Bop Til You Drop came on that 80s station and I suddenly had a vague recollection of Mr. Springfield in torn clothes helping members of a forced labor camp find freedom. As a kid, I classified this video in the "rules" column. Clearly, I was being ritually abused by the Solid Gold dancers:

I can't expect you to watch this entire video, because to do so would be to ask for mental torture, but if you scroll to about the 3:00 you'll see that Rick Springfield frees the human slaves and then that dance scene from the second (or was it the 3rd?) Matrix breaks out. I actually learned a couple of important things from this song and video. I learned the word "suss" and I learned that mullets exist in the future and in space, so that's pretty cool.

Interestingly, Duran Duran used the same alien labor camp for their video Wild Boys, though it's hard to tell if there are actual aliens using said camp, or if it's just post-apocalyptic genetic mutants torturing Simon LeBon's mullet:

The main difference between the Rick Springfield video and this one is that Simon doesn't free any slaves. Instead, he released a plague of Cirque Du Soleil performers into the world and now Vegas is overrun with them.

Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself doesn't contain any forced labor camps, but it's healthy on the mullet and post-apocalyptic-world-as-denoted-by-torn-clothing-that-is-nonetheless-comprised-of-very-weird-folding-parts-on-zombie-like-creatures-who-for-all-we-know-might-be-aliens-but-who-find-freedom-through-dance!:

I used to really like Dancing With Myself because I was told, in 7th grade, that it was about masturbation. Listening to the lyrics now, it sounds like it's about absolutely nothing at all. "If I had the chance, I'd ask the world to dance, and I'd be dancing with myself." That doesn't sound like masturbation. That sounds like a guy who doesn't know what the fuck he's saying. 

Lick It Up by Kiss is the single worst thing that has ever happened on Earth. It takes the Road Warrior, adds Gene Simmons' out of control Jew-fro, precisely three human skulls, Vinnie Vincent, a world that is either just coming out of a nuclear war or an alien war, but which nevertheless contains only 80s Sunset Strip skanks and...voila:

This video was also the first instance of KISS removing their make-up, so it was something of an event. It was also the exact moment when I realized, without the make-up, that Gene and Paul looked a lot like members of my extended family. I was thus no longer afraid of KISS, since all I could think about was them sitting around eating kugel with their Nanas. Additionally, Lick It Up confirmed what I think is clear now: KISS fucking sucked.

The Warrior by Scandal is truly unique in that it also contains a rape and a murder performed by an alien creature on a Cirque Du Soleil performer. It takes place in the future, clearly, because people are living in torn clothing and come up from beneath the  street, and though there doesn't appear to be any forced labor, there is a general sense of bondage throughout the video:

The Warrior shoots at the walls of heartache, bang, bang, but I still can't figure out what the song or video are about. It seems like the dude in the makeup is from outer space and he likes to rape and kill women in proto-Victorian dress, but then he encounters Patty Smythe, and because she's The Warrior -- bang, bang, et al -- when he tries to deliver a dirt nap unto her, he is stymied and decides, instead, to dance it out and ad lib to fade.  

Today Is Gonna Be The Day That I Bring It All Back To You

It's hard for me to believe this, but my first tour of duty on Burn Notice is just about over -- pending, of course, a new contract -- as today is the official release date of my second Burn Notice novel, The End Game. I am about 30 days from being done with my third Burn Notice novel, called The Giveaway and that will then be 18 months, 3 books and 180,000 words. The publisher hasn't told me if there will be more, though I understand the first one has done well and the fans seem to like it and it was critically well received, which is always nice. Writing these books is certainly a different kind of experience for me -- I write them very, very quickly. More quickly than I'd like, really, but the turn-around time on them is such that I really only have about three months to write each one and have a normal life in-between. And by normal life, I of course mean a normal writing life, which in this case means that while I wrote those three books these last 18 months, I also completed a new short story collection -- Other Resort Cities -- which will be out in October and which I am exceptionally excited about as well, wrote dozens of book reviews and essays and articles and also have a day job directing an MFA program in creative writing. So it's been a challenge to write quickly and lucidly while keeping the voice of Michael Westen in my head all the while. 

So, The End Game. Here's a little Behind the Music on it:

I knew I wanted to do something somewhat sports related and so Wendy and I hatched the basic plot one evening over pizza. I had the plot of the novel written on scraps of receipts and such and when I presented it to Matt, he liked it but also suggested I talk to Rashad Raisani, a staff writer on the show, who had a similar idea that was just too expensive to shoot. That week I came into the BN production offices for a couple of days while they broke the episodes of the second season so that I could get the flavor for the changes the show was going to take, as well as get an idea where the show was going in season three, too, since obviously my books are written not at the precise same time that the show is written. (For instance, I've been getting the scripts for the 3rd season over the course of the last month or so, but by the time I turn in The Giveaway, I'll probably have only seen the first 9 episodes on paper.) Rashad kindly gave me the notes he'd written up about these very cool yacht races and I incorporated some of that research into the book, plus I picked his brain on a few ideas I had on the caper itself, since that had been one of the things he was still trying to work on when they ditched the idea. So it was very cool to have someone who basically was on the same wave-length with me before I actually started the writing.  I then spent three months writing the book...and then I wasn't happy and added a new chapter from Fiona's pov when the copyedits came in, which probably didn't thrill my publisher, but it felt like something was missing. I've been tinkering a lot with adding different povs into the books -- Sam's, Fiona's, and in this new book I'm writing, you get the client's pov for a chapter, too -- because that's the one thing I'm really able to do that you can't get on the show. Plus, it's fun for me as a writer. Writing in the same voice in back to back books, as I did essentially with The Fix and The End Game, which were written with very little break in between, can be boring, frankly, so in order to stay inspired and excited about a project, writers trick themselves on their down days, they add new POVs, they blow up a boat, they kick someone in the head, they bring in a new character, whatever. 

As in The Fix, there are a couple of inside jokes for folks in the know. A villain is named for two friends of mine, one of whom is a big time famous author. A mutual friend of mine and Matt Nix's shows up briefly, by full legal name at least, The husband of a well-known romance-author-friend of Wendy's appears as a former NSA agent. Two other friends end up as one very odd therapist (the same two friends also ended up in The Fix as an odd character named James Dimon...but now I've used all of their combined names, so they won't be in the next book...I guess I better make some more friends...) and several sentences begin "when you're spy" because, dammit, that's what the people want and I am a people pleaser. 

(Though, despite that, I'm not going out on the road to please the people for this book as it unfortunately is being released right when the new book is due. But fear not people, as I'll be touring the world in the fall for Other Resort Cities and will happily sign all the Burn Notice books you'd like. But if you really want a signed copy of The End Game, I suggest you contact the wonderful people at either Mysterious Galaxy or the Mystery Bookstore, both of whom have a bunch of signed stock. )

A Burning Question

Why do callers on sports radio stations refer to the teams they follow as we? For instance, I was listening to NFL Radio on Sirius yesterday and a guy called in and said, "I think we made a good choice of Heyward-Bey in the 1st round. We need a guy who can out run the defense and who JaMarcus can't over throw. We get him signed and in camp, I think we'll be fine." Other examples: "We need to run block better." "We need a Mike backer who can go sideline to sideline." "We need to listen to the coach and we'll be fine. What we don't need is another cancer in the locker room. We got torn apart by that last year." 

I understand what it means to be a blood loyal fan, since I've followed the Raiders and A's and Warriors and Lakers literally my entire life (Laker games used to come in on my AM radio as a kid in Walnut Creek, otherwise I'd root for only shitty teams, so I got lucky there), but I've never had the mistaken notion that I was actually on the team or running the team, even while screaming at the television. (My brother-in-law Dustin-- Linda's husband -- actually, I believe, has this delusion. He literally coaches the team from his living room, always screaming the same thing, no matter the sport: "In and out, in and out!" I'm not sure what this means in football, but he seems to think it has some importance and that the Raiders should employ it on offense...and defense, too) But when you listen to these callers on talk radio, it's as if they've all been tutored by the same life coach and have disassociated themselves to the point that they no longer follow a team, they are the team. (Isn't it odd, incidentally, that the team you root for is selected at age 8 or 9 or so and if you happen to change allegiance at some later point in life, like say when you're an adult, you are somehow viewed as a turncoat? I can't think of another thing that you begin to identify with at such a young age that becomes permanent like that, can you?) I'm going to start referring to authors I like in the we voice: We think we could write another Frank Bascombe novel. We feel pretty strongly that we could write a sequel to The Things They Carried. We were upset with the review Michiko gave us last week.