Sunday, April 26, 2009

Tying-in at LA Times Festival of Books


IAMTW Members Tod Goldberg (BURN NOTICE), William Rabkin (PSYCH) and Lee Goldberg (MONK) signed their books at the Mystery Bookstore booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. BURN NOTICE creator Matt Nix (pictured below with Tod Goldberg) made a surprise visit and signed some books for delighted fans.  

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The End Game Has Got Game

IAMTW Member Tod Goldberg's BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME got a rave from Rod Lott at Bookgasm, who says, in part:
It is fun, capturing the show’s joyous, jubilant essence, but not, sadly, shots of well-endowed women in bikinis. [...]The book is quick, snappy and forever mirthful — just like its source material. And until that starts back up in the summer, this is a fine substitute for a weekly fix.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Appreciating Garforth's Avengers

Novelist & TV writer Stephen Gallagher (perhaps best known here for creating THE ELEVENTH HOUR) stumbed on tie-in writer John Garforth's blog:
Garforth wrote four Avengers novels for Panther Books in 1967. Two years earlier Hodder and Stoughton had put outDeadline and Dead Duck, two rather classy tie-ins written by Peter Leslie but with Patrick Macnee credited as their author... which seemed as transparent and ludicrous to my eleven-year-old self as it does now.

Both had their virtues. Leslie's books read like a literary source from which the show might have been adapted; Garforth's Panthers were shorter, racier, and had a more contemporary feel to them. All were true tie-ins as opposed to novelisations; which is to say, they were original works based on the series' characters, and not pre-existing scripts adapted into prose form.

Check out Stephen's appreciation and, of course, Garforth's blog.

Monday, April 6, 2009

On An Award Tour With a Mic in my Hand

(reposted from Tod Goldberg's blog)

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:

JKBurn 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.