Monk Galley Giveaway

I have two extra, bound galleys for MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY which I will be giving away at random.

Here's the deal...post a review of your favorite MONK novel on Amazon and send me a copy of it by June 1st at: lee AT Leegoldberg DOT com.

I will put the names into a hat and select two winners at random to receive a signed galley. Please be sure to include your snail mail address in the email. Winners will be announced here.

The Scribe Awards and How You Can Enter

The Fourth Annual Scribe Awards are now open for submissions. The Scribes, presented by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (www.iamtw.org), honors excellence in licensed tie-in writing—novels based on TV shows, movies, and games. Here are the submissions guidelines:

The Scribe Awards and How You Can Enter

The IAMTW will present SIX AWARDS in THREE CATEGORIES for books (& comic books and graphic novels) published in 2008. We will also honor one "Grandmaster" for career achievement in the field.
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SPECULATIVE FICTION (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Supernatural Horror)

BEST NOVEL (original) - A licensed, original novel using pre-existing characters or worlds from a movie, television series, computer game, play, or an existing series of novels (i.e., new novels extending a literary franchise, i.e., DUNE, James Bond, etc.)

BEST ADAPTATION - A licensed novelization based on an existing screenplay, whether a feature film, episodic teleplay, computer game, script, or play.
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GENERAL FICTION (Mysteries, Thrillers, Westerns, Suspense, Historicals, Psychological Horror, Romances)

BEST NOVEL (original) - A licensed, original novel using pre-existing characters or worlds from a movie, television series, computer game, play, or an existing series of novels (i.e., new novels extending a literary franchise, i.e. DUNE, James Bond, etc.)

BEST NOVEL (adapted) A licensed novelization based on an existing screenplay, whether a feature film, episodic teleplay, computer game, script, or play.
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YOUNG ADULT (All Genres)

BEST ADAPTATION (defined as above)

BEST NOVEL (original) (defined as above)

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GRANDMASTER (For Career Achievement)
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The Fine Print Regarding The Categories…

For a category to go forward, three submissions leading to at least two nominations must pertain. In the case of a category falling short of submissions and/or nominations, entries will be transferred to the nearest appropriate category -- for example, BEST GENERAL (Adapted) category would go into an overall BEST NOVEL (Adapted) category that would include both Speculative and General submissions.

In the case of BEST ADAPTED (YA) or BEST ORIGINAL (YA), should submissions fall short of the minimal two nominations requirement, entries would shift into either BEST SPECULATIVE (Adapted) or BEST GENERAL (Adapted), depending upon the genre.

In the event a combining of categories becomes necessary in a given year (i.e., BEST NOVEL Adapted) the judging committee is authorized (but not required) to give more than one Scribe, reflecting the combined categories, if the committee members feel such recognition is warranted.

Horror entries have been divided into "Supernatural Horror" under SPECULATIVE and "Psychological Horror" under GENERAL. This is a judgment call the authors and then committee chairs must make, depending upon whether a submitted horror novel is more grounded in reality than the fantastic. Should a committee chair reject a title on this basis, the chair will forward all copies of the submitted book to the appropriate committee chair, and inform the author of the decision.

Should the author already have submitted another title to the other committee, the author will be given the opportunity to choose which of the two titles he or she wishes to have considered (since we have a one-book-per-category submission limitation).

The future of the Special Game-Related Scribes will be decided after this year's Gen-Con. If we decide to continue this award, game-related submissions in the Speculative Original and Adapted Categories will be simultaneously considered by those category judges for the "Best Game-Related" Scribes. A gaming-related book submitted in those categories is simultaneously eligible for both the "regular" and "game-related" Scribe Award.
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How The Scribes Are Judged

The judging committees are made up of three of your peers from within the organization, writers who know the unique obstacles and restrictions that tie-in writers face, because they are tie-in writers themselves. The judges will read all the submissions in their category and select both the nominees and the winners (a system patterned after the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Private Eye Writers of America, among others).
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Rules for Submission

* Authors can submit multiple titles, but only ONE BOOK PER CATEGORY/ONE CATEGORY PER BOOK (i.e. you can't submit the same book in two different categories or multiple titles in one category. Authors who've done several books in any one category need to pick the one title that seems strongest and submit only that).
* Only authors can submit their books for consideration but we encourage you to have your editors/publishers send the actual books on your behalf so you don't have to raid your author's copies or pay the postage.
* Judges can submit their work, but obviously not in the categories they are judging.
* The book must be a licensed work published for the first time between Jan 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008. Only books with a copyright date of 2008 will be eligible for consideration. Though novels published through December 31, 2008, are eligible, entrants are required to get copies of eligible work into the hands of the category judges no later than December 1st, to allow adequate time to review the titles. Galleys are acceptable.
* All entrants MUST include a cover letter with each book. The cover letter must include the following information: the Category you are entering, Title of the Book, Name of the Author, Publication Date, Editor & Publisher, and email & "snailmail" addresses and phone numbers for the author and editor.
* A copy of all submissions—the book and cover letter—should be sent to each judge in the category you are entering and to the IAMTW. Please send an email to tieinwriters@yahoo.com for the list of judges and their mailing addresses. IAMTW members can find the list in the MEMBERS ONLY section of the IAMTW site.
* Submission is free for any IAMTW member. Non-members must pay a $10 fee for each submission to cover our costs (payable via Paypal or by check to IAMTW, PO Box 8212, Calabasas, CA 91372).
* A list of all the books submitted will be posted on the IAMTW site and updated regularly. The nominees will be announced, to entrants and the media, in March 2009. The Scribes will be awarded in July 2009 at a location and date TBD.

Scribe Award Nominees Announced

The Second Annual Scribe Awards, presented by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, acknowledges and celebrates excellence in licensed tie-in writing -- novels based on TV shows, movies, and games. We are proud to announce this year’s nominees for the Scribe Award.

BEST GENERAL FICTION ORIGINAL

CSI NY: DELUGE by Stuart M. Kaminsky
MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS by Lee Goldberg
MURDER SHE WROTE: PANNING FOR MURDER by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
CRIMINAL MINDS: JUMP CUT by Max Allan Collins

BEST GENERAL FICTION ADAPTED

AMERICAN GANGSTER by Max Allan Collins (nominee & winner)

BEST SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON by Kevin J. Anderson
STARGATE ATLANTIS: CASUALTIES OF WAR by Elizabeth Christensen
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Q&A by Keith R.A. DeCandido

BEST GAME-RELATED ORIGINAL (SPECIAL SCRIBE AWARD)

HITMAN: ENEMY WITHIN by William C. Dietz
FORGE OF THE MINDSLAYERS by Tim Waggoner
EBERRON: NIGHT OF THE LONG SHADOWS by Paul Crilley

BEST SPECULATIVE ADAPTED

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION by Keith R.A. DeCandido
52: THE NOVEL by Greg Cox
30 DAYS OF NIGHT by Tim Lebbon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ORIGINAL

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE DEATHLESS by Keith R.A. DeCandido
GOODLUND TRILOGY: VOLUME THREE: WARRIORS BONES by Stephen D. Sullivan
NANCY DREW AND THE CLUE CREW #10: TICKET TROUBLE by Stacia Deutsch & Rhody Cohon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ADAPTED

THE 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS by Steven Paul Leiva (nominee & winner)

The Grandmaster Award honors a writer for his extensive and exceptional work in the tie-in field. This year's honoree is ALAN DEAN FOSTER.

Foster's books include his ground-breaking novelizations in 1975 of the STAR TREK animated series and his subsequent novelizations of the first three ALIEN films, BLACK HOLE, STARMAN, OUTLAND, PALE RIDER, ALIEN NATION and, of course, STAR WARS (writing as "George Lucas"). He is also the author of scores of original novels as well as the story for the first STAR TREK feature film.

The Scribe Awards will be given at the Comic-Con Convention in San Diego in July. The Special Gaming Scribes will be awarded at Gen Con Indy in August.

The IAMTW is dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of tie-in writers...to working with the media to review tie-in novels and publicize their authors...to educating people about who we are and what we do....and to providing a forum for tie-in writers to share information, support one another, and discuss issues relating to our field (via a regular e-newsletter, our website, and our active discussion group). Our members include authors active in many other professional writer organizations (MWA, PWA, WGA, SFWA, etc.) and who share their unique perspectives with their fellow tie-in writers. Our name itself is a declaration of pride in what we do: I AM a Tie-in Writer. You can find out more about the IAMTW at our website.

Lee Goldberg interview on Geekerati Radio

Tie-Ins Dominate Bestseller Lists

IAMTW Member Karen Traviss' REVELATION, a STAR WARS tie-in, is number one on both the New York Times and the Publishers Weekly mass market paperback bestseller lists. Another tie-in, TOM CLANCY'S ENDWAR, by David Michaels (a pseudonym for an IAMTW member), is number nine on the PW list and number 10 on the NYT list. Congratulations to them both!

Ms. Tree On TV?

This could be a very big year for Max Allan Collins' MS. TREE. ComicMix reports that a new MS. TREE novel (based on the comic book) and a TV pilot are on the way.

Well, it turns out Our Gal Friday (that's a joke, but you've got to read Ms. Tree to get it) may be headed to the small screen. In an interview with Comics2Film, Collins disclosed the Oxygen Network has "gone beyond an option (and paid) the purchase price." They've assigned two screenwriters to the write the first movie, both women, and it's being regarded as a pilot for further movies and possibly a teevee series.

Obviously, things have been held up a bit by the WGA strike, but Collins took his original treatment and turned it into Deadly Beloved, a paperback novel published last December by Hard Case Crime. Cooler still (since Collins is the author of about a million mystery novels, including the aforementioned Heller boos, and teevee/movie tie-ins, including many of the C.S.I. books) the cover was painted by Ms. Tree artist Terry Beatty.

Considering other Hard Case covers have been provided by the likes of all-time paperback mystery master painter Robert McGinnis and Marvel Zombie cover king Arthur Suydam, Terry's in some pretty heady company.

I Am Michael Weston

From IAMTW Member Tod Goldberg, author of the Burn Notice novels...

Since the first week of December, when I sat down with Matt Nix to talk about writing the first book based on his show Burn Notice (called The Fix), I've pretty much spent all of my writing time, my waking time, much of my sleeping time, a considerable amount of free time, trying to think like Michael Westen. This means I spend a lot of time imagining I am doing spy shit. I now know how to blow stuff up really well using household items. I'm prTubbsetty handy in a fight. I've got witty rejoinders coming out of my ass. I know the streets of Miami like I'm fucking Philip Michael Thomas (I mean that literally -- I imagine if I were fucking Philip Michael Thomas that he'd drive me around a lot showing me places where he filmed episodes of Miami Vice, pointing out precisely where it all went so terribly, terribly wrong...).

In the past, I've generally written fiction without a deadline, which is actually a far more preferable way for me to work. I like to navel gaze. I like to ponder. I like to play Madden for three of four hour stretches. And the result is that it took me three years to write Living Dead Girl, two years to write a book that I ultimately decided sucked, ten years to write Simplify (of course, those were all stories...), a year and a half to write Fake Liar Cheat, about 18 months to write a new collection of stories (which I'm putting the final touches on now, too) and I imagine it will take me about a year or so to write the next big book I plan to write, which, as I've told many people over the years, will be about the Salton Sea in the 1960s. I've done the research. I know the characters. I have the story. But for a long time, I haven't been prepared mentally to write it. It's not a tremendous amount of fun to write a novel -- it requires monastic patience from those who love you and monastic personal patience -- particularly not a novel like Living Dead Girl, which really took the wind from me for a long time. I imagine this Salton Sea novel will be like that, too. I need to write it. I yearn to, really, but I also don't look forward to the kind of mental torture that sort of work puts on me. It happens the same way with stories, really -- there were two this year that did it to me -- one in Barrelhouse called "Walls" and one in Hot Metal Bridge called "Palm Springs", both of which got nominated for the Pushcart, so maybe I did something right -- but at least with a story, it's done with in two weeks, a month.

But...this Burn Notice book? It's a fucking hoot. Minus the 2 weeks I was in Bennington and the two weeks I had fucking Captain Tripps, I've spent every day from the first week of December writing The Fix. And it's true that not every day is a good day, as Ice Cube would agree, there are however many days where I feel like if I saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp it just might say Tod G's the pimp. I can see the finish line from here, maybe another 10 days to go, maybe slightly longer, and while I'll be happy to stop thinking I'm Michael Westen and to start thinking about these two short stories I've been putting off since December, I must say that writing this sort of comic noir is pretty damn fun to do. I've got two more to write after this one, each with a substantially longer deadline, thank god, and I've really had to teach myself that I don't need to have an unreliable narrator facing some sort of mortal pain in every line, like many of my stories and novels previously have had, and that it's okay to just have fun, line by line, day by day, writing for the entertainment of it all. I've been asked by a lot of people why I decided to do these books and my answer has been the same each time: It seemed like it would be pretty cool. It seemed like I'd reach about 50,000 more readers than I usually do. It seemed like a great way to learn, again, how to write something completely out of my comfort zone, to challenge myself in new and interesting ways. And the end result? Well, I guess you'll know in August.

Mr. Monk and the Parallel Universe

I thought the two-part MONK season finale was great, but it points out one of the pitfalls of writing a tie-in series while the TV show that it is based on is still in production. It means that there are going to be some continuity miss-matches between the TV series and the books...and there's nothing that can be done about it.

I finished my book MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY back in October 2007 and it will be published in July 2008. In between that time, the MONK writers wrote, produced and broadcast the season finale. I am now well into writing MR. MONK IS MISERABLE, which comes out next winter...by the time I deliver that manuscript, the MONK writers will have just begun writing the season seven scripts. You can see the problem.

Andy Breckman, the creator and executive producer of MONK, knows in advance what I will be writing and approves the storylines. But I certainly don't expect him or his staff to feel creatively bound to any of the events or details that I create in my books. The show comes first. That said, there are bound to be diehard fans who expect strict continuity between the books and the TV series ...and they are going to stumble over a few miss-matches.

Both my book and the finale, "Mr. Monk is on the Run," involve Monk encountering a man with six fingers on one hand. That's actually okay. A fan could assume that my book takes place before the events in the season finale. In fact, it only reinforces Monk's attitude towards the "second" man with 11 fingers that he meets. The book and the episode would fit together pretty well chronologically, "factually," and even emotionally, if not for the last scene of the two-parter.

Oh well.

I have a disclaimer in my books that warns readers that, while I try hard to stay close to the continuity of the show, the long lead time of the books makes that next to impossible (an entire season is produced between when I turn in the book and when it comes out).

I read all the scripts and I talk to Andy about what he has in mind for the season ahead, but even so, continuity problems are bound to happen. Hypothetically, for example, Sharona may come back on the show some day and the story they come up with may have nothing to do with MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS (and, unless they adapt the book, won't acknowledge those events at all).

I don't obsess about the miss-matches and neither does Andy. He once said to me that, in his mind, the Monk TV series and the Monk books are separate entities...the same characters in parallel universes...and while they are consistent with one another most of the time, there are bound to be some differences now and then.

There's the TV shows and there are the books. They are not one in the same. He is okay with that and so am I. I hope that most of the fans will be, too.

Where the Wild Tie-In Writers Are

More and more high profile authors are turning to tie-ins. Dave Eggers, author of A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, is writing the novelization of the movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's picture book WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. The novelization will be based on the script by Eggers' and director Spike Jonze, which expands on Sendak's 300-word book. Publishers Weekly reports that the novelization was Eggers' idea but it was Sendak who lobbied Eggers to be the one to write the tie-in. Harper Collins will publish the book, Eggers' first since 2000 not to be published under his own McSweeney's banner. It was not an easy deal to craft:

The publisher acquired world rights to the novel about a year ago, in a deal that involved not only Eggers but lawyers from Warner Brothers, since a tie-in book was already part of the movie contract. Intellectual property rights of both Sendak and HarperCollins (Where the Wild Things Are was originally published by Harper & Row) also had a bearing on terms. As [editor Dan] Halpern put it, negotiations involved “many different moving parts.” But the goal was always to have any tie-in book published by a Harper imprint, per the preexisting deal between Warner Brothers and Harper, which owns publication rights to the Wild Things franchise. Sendak, who has since been affiliated with other houses, agreed “there was something correct” about Harper doing Eggers's book.

Latest News from IAMTW Members

Karen Traviss and Sean Williams have been nominated for the Phillip K Dick Award.

Christa Faust's novel MONEY SHOT received a rave review in Crimespree Magazine and so has Max Allan Collins' AMERICAN GANGSTER novelization.