Latest / WriterCon / Writing Books and TV with Lee Goldberg

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Writing Books and TV with Lee Goldberg · WriterCon

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This week on the Writer KHN podcast. Lots of books, good ones and
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bad ones. If you read a book and it excites you, it scares
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you, it thrills you, it arouses you, go back and look and
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see how they did it. How did they use words and pacing and plotting
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to evoked up emotional reaction. If you read a book and it sucks,
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if it loses you, if you don't believe the characters, if the dialogue
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is flat, go back and analyze why what mistakes did they make? One
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of the great things about writing is all of the greatest writers ever have shared
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their secrets with you. Welcome to Rider Khan, a gathering place for writers
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to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William
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Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books on writing,
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and Laura Bernhardt, award winning author of the Wonderland File series. Hey they're
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writers. I'm joined today as usual by our sound engineer, Jesse Ulrich and
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Laura Bernhardt, the award winning novelist and one of my co conspirators on Ryder
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Khan, which is as we record this exactly one week in the rear view
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mirror. Laura, you were there all four days. Did you have any
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favorite moments from ryder KHN this year? Oh, favorite moments? Of course,
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I had lots, but let me pare them down. I loved I'd
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set up ahead of time to do a meet up with some of our first
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timers, and that was a wonderful experience. I had so much enthusiasm in
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the hotel lobby when we joined together, and I took them around and made
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sure that they were comfortable, and they were delightful people. I also really
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love when we hand out the awards at the end, the looks on people's
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face, yes, the contest winners, people who were there. Was just
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there was such a good energy there this year that it really was a delightful
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weekend. But I think getting to meet all the new people and then getting
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to see people light up when they won the contest or probably won my favorite
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moments. Well, that meeting is important, and I gotta admit I don't
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really even understand it, but I can see in the email that I get
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people are going to the to a writer's conference for the first time and they're
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very nervous about it. I mean, to me, show up, have
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fun, learn stuff, but I know that's out there, so you were
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there to calm nerves and what. Yes, I've been to some conferences before
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where I didn't feel like people who'd been there really reached out, and it
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gets to be what I was trying to avoid was that people had been there
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before, we're kind of in a group, and new people were kind of
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left feeling like outsiders. I wanted everyone to know they were very welcomed with
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very open arms. And I thought, if we did that the night before,
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we'll get it out of the way and everybody can start first minute,
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day one and hopefully have a great experience. So that's what I was wanting.
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I didn't I've been to some places where I just didn't feel like anyone
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cared if I was there or wasn't, and we do. So I wanted
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to make that, make that very absolutely do well. That was terrific.
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Jesse, how about you? You were all over the place, since she
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had about six different jobs. Favorite moments from ryder Con. I mean,
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so I loved how there was a group of younger than me people there,
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which felt it was nice as not being like the younger person. Scarlett,
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the thirteen year old old I was gonna say me talking to Scarlett and her
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mom I think was the highlight of my time. It was just Scarlett's amazing
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and her like incredibly supportive mom who also loves reading. Like they were just
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great, and it was just such a well put together thirteen year old,
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like she could have an adult conversation with me about adult things, and I
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can ask her like fun things about her illustrator and her pets. We were
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compared cat photos at one point. It was it was just great to have
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such a weird, fascinating mix of different kinds of authors there this year.
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Some of those younger attendees dubbed me conference mom, which I also dearly love.
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Yes, and they were all dressing up throughout the weekend, which was
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just it sort of mixed my two loves, which is like comic con and
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cosplay and read. So it was great. It's fantastic. Well. Our
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interview today is with Lee Goldberg, who was one of the few people I
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know who's been successful with both novels and screenplays. He's a number one New
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York Times bestselling author over forty books. He's had enormous success with his eve
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Ronan series. He created the Hallmark movie series Mystery one oh one, and
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now he's gotten what was originally going to be a standalone thriller called Malibu Burning.
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I mean, it's still coming out. It's just the first book in
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a series. Now. I don't want to confuse anybody, but Malibu Burning
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has just been released. It involves a master thief with a conscience and the
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dogged investigators trying to stop him from pulling off the ultimate heist amidst a raging
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wildfire. And boy can he talk about fire. We will talk to Lee
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after the news segment, Jesse take us away. This first story caught my
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eye, not because I read it and thought, well, that'll help people
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learn how to write, because it probably won't, but it does for me
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reinforce why we do it. You know, the great the importance of art
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and particularly I think writing. And that's derived from a New York Times article
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about people using writing programs as therapy and performance art in jail. And it
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does a wonderful profile with someone they call mister Johnson, who brings to the
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jails in the Minneapolis area, sometimes as much as forty times a month.
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He visits them and tries to tap this incarcerated pool of literary talent, brimming
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with insights about of course the criminal justice system, but other things as well.
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He gives them writing prompts, they respond, they generate some really first
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rate material. According to these sources, Johnson founded a nonprofit organization called Free
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Writers. He trained his instructors, and now they're branching out to many other
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companies, and people are saying that this is a wonderful addition that these writing
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programs have generated critically acclaimed work and provided intimate glimpses into life behind bars in
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the United States, which is you probably know, has the largest incarcerated population
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of any country in the world. Laura, I know you've taught writing in
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many different venues. Are you saying how this could be beneficial to the prison
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population. Absolutely. I've actually seen I've seen a group who takes rescue animals
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into prisons and the people there, incarcerated, are taught a skill of basically
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working like a vet tech, and they're taught how to care for these animals,
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and it gives them something beneficial that they're doing that gives back. I
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think this is a likewise incredibly helpful outlet for people so that they can work
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through things, and it's not something we're proud of that we have more people
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jailed in the US. And I think we can learn from other countries finding
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ways to help avoid incarceration. But people who are there, keeping them busy
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and active and allowing them to nurture, whether it's another another like an animal,
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or their own drive to write and share their experiences, I think can
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only be full. Yeah, I think so too, Jesse. You have
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any thoughts on this? Yeah, well, this reminds me. There's a
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nonprofit here in Oklahoma called Poetic Justice that teaches mostly for women in prison,
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but teaches them poetry as a way of dealing with the trauma of their lives.
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And it's an incredibly moving experience when you read someone who never really thought
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about poetry, maybe didn't care that much in school, but like using the
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medium of writing to sort of deal with the situation that they find themselves in.
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And it's incredible. I mean, we are imprisoning a lot of people.
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We should find better ways of actually rehabilitating them instead of just putting them
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somewhere for a long period of time. Agreed, And isn't it a nice
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change of pace to have a story that's not about mystery writer murdering anyone or
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yeah, and then writing a great book with their children about said murder.
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Yeah. Instead somebody using writing, you know, to do what it's supposed
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to do to create good in the world. Okay. News story number two
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has to do with the fairy lute phenomenon. That's Lute l Oot. Did
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I hear you making a grunting noise or something? What was that? Who?
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Me? I made a little happy squealing noise. Yeah, happy squeeling
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nise. I'm sorry I couldn't see your face. Let's start this over,
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okay. Okay. Also, also, Bustafer was climbing all over me and
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I was trying to get him down. Sorry, we can start over.
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My second news story has to do with the fairy lute phenomenon, and that's
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Loot l Oot. Just in case you're looking for their website. I have
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to thank our daughter Katie for tipping me off to this story. During Ryder
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Coon, which I probably mentioned was just a week ago, we had a
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silent auction and by far the item which eventually sold for the most amount of
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money was one of these beautiful fairy loot editions of a recent fantasy novel In
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case you're not aware, these are a lot like if you're my age,
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the Folio Society from England or Easton Press books. People taking books and making
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very fancy editions, in this case with gorgeous covers and scalloped edges that have
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art drawn across them. They're just beautiful, beautiful books. But Fairy Loot
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is not doing the classics. I mean, some of them might become classics,
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but they're doing new or contemporary books, usually books that have targeted young
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people, most of them in fantasy. But I noticed the most recent one
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comes from Jennifer Barnes, which some of you will remember was one of the
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first ever guests on this podcast, a tremendously successful young adult author. And
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these books are really, you know, not only of course bringing people to
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reading, but being bringing people to an appreciation of how beautiful books can be.
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Laura, I know you're all over this story. Why are these things
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so popular and expensive? Well, I think the very loop concept of that
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subscription box that shows up when you subscribe to it is a real winner.
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I think subscription boxes are very popular right now. But as far as the
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books themselves, you nailed it. They've got those beautiful sprayed edges that have
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the designs on the side, some of them have guilt on the front.
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They're gorgeous collectible books, and I think if they're targeting the younger crowd,
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because there's a real resurgence in print books among young people. We keep hearing
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that young people don't want to read. Everything's going digital. But right now
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we've got a big push for retro with the younger rip. You know,
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they're bringing back vinyl. They like things that are retro and this will make
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you feel old, but they're starting to feel like print books give them that
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retro vibe. And when something this beautiful shows up that you can put on
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your shelf, it's collectible, it's elegant, it's something that. Yeah.
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I got to hold that book that we had up for auction, and I'll
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agree I was. It cast its spell on me. I could not get
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over the beautiful designs on the edges. I'm pretty smitten myself. Yeah.
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At one point, my niece Barbularns pointed to it and said, do you
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know what that is like? She couldn't believe we had one Yes given away
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to somebody. Absolutely it only because Katie is on top of things and snapped
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one up before the real fervor. Yeah, did we even have one?
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They're hard to get, I was, yeah, I was just on their
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website. You have to join a waitlist for both the y A version and
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the adult version right now. So wow, that's but you're I think you're
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totally right about this retro thing. And you remember on the cruise the Rhyderk
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on cruise, Amy talking about how she talked to somebody and who was all
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over retro and was like, look at this, I'm reading a book made
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of paper. Yes, I know. I mean we should point out like
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it wasn't authors or book readers that decided we had to have ugly looking books.
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That was. That was capitalism that was trying to make books as efficient
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as possible. Used. Yeah, books used to be gorgeous all the time,
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all of them were. And then you know, I mean like I
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can't I can't read like a the you know, the commercial paperback type books
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because like, one, the fonts too small, and two it doesn't feel
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comfortable to read. I mean that compact like books used to be big and
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beautiful and pretty. And I'm glad, I'm glad this is coming back as
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listeners in this podcast. No, I read all my Kindle, but I
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still buy nice copies of the books I love because I like to hold them
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and smell them. Yeah, but did you see anything that you'd buy?
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I mean, it looks to me like maybe I'm wrong, but it looks
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to me like most of these books are targeting young female readers. I mean,
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I wouldn't something I could give a lot of fantasy books, yet a
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lot of fantay books. Yeah, it was kind of hard. I was
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looking at some of the adult fantasy options and they weren't necessarily books I was
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familiar with, but they didn't seem overly famine. I guess the website's branding
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is more towards women than as men, but I don't think it's turning men
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away. And as far as technology goes, they have an unboxing video on
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their homepage. So that's very very mixing of the two, the two aspects
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of this, the realness of it, but then also for a younger audience
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who likes to make videos of them opening packages, which is still an amazing
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thing that exists that I'm like, I could have been doing this fifteen years
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ago, and it knows a thing. Yeah, all right, Jesse,
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you up the music. Let's talk to Lee Goldenberg. Welcome to the podcast.
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It's great to be here. Glad you've dropped through a straining order.
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It was a quick broke quote, so you know, okay. Traditional first
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question, if you could offer writers one piece of advice, what would it
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be? Read lots of books, good ones and bad ones. If you
15:39
read a book and it excites you, it scares you, it throws you,
15:43
it arouses you, go back and look and see how they did it.
15:46
How did they use words and pacing and plotting to evoked up emotional reaction.
15:52
If you read a book and it sucks, if it loses you,
15:54
you don't believe the characters, if the dialogue is flat, go back and
15:58
analyze why what mistakes did they made. One of the great things about writing
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is all of the greatest writers ever have shared their secrets with you. They're
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right there in black and white on the page for you to look at.
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If there's a book that just absolutely love, deconstruct it. Look take every
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scene and put up on the wall with index cards and try to understand how
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the plot worked and how it moved, and how the key information was revealed,
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and how the jokes were staged. You can learn so much from good
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books and bad books just by reading them. That's really a terrific answer.
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That would be a great idea for like a writer concession, to have somebody
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deconstruct pride and prejudice or whatever something I did that. I did that all
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the time I saw a TV show I liked, or read a book that
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I liked, I would take it apart and try to understand how it worked.
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And even the bad ones, especially the bad ones, why did they
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fail? Mistakes did that writer make? Why did they lose? Me?
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And I think it's important and there's so few other industries or forms of art
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where you can do that, where you can do an autopsy on something and
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learn from it. Talking about what let's talk about what you're publishing now,
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Malibu Burning. Now you've been doing those Eve Ronan books right for a while.
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But this is a standalone thriller, right, No, it's actually a
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series. Now. When I wrote it, we're a standalone thriller. But
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the pre orders were so huge for the book that before it was even released
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by publisher said you've got to write a sequel, and it has to be
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ready for us to have for pre sales when your book comes out. So
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the sequel, Ashes Never Lie is already finished. It's coming out in a
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year from now, and that book has had so many pre orders. I'm
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about to start on a third one. So it's been it's been an interesting
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ride for me. What a Fand that's the first time I've heard that answer.
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That's terrific. So this book came out what like a weeks ago as
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we record this, and it's already a hit. It's already a hit.
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I'm retiring. I'm gonna move on to a yacht with my mistress, Siena
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Klaas all day. You're living the dream. That really, that really is
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kind of a best case scenario there. I was going to ask you,
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why did you move away from the Eve books? Well, I haven't haven't
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actually done that. I mean, the Malibu Burning is set in Los Angeles
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County with two arson investigators, and the fire in Malibu Burning is the same
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fire at the end of Lost Hills, the first Roman novel, so there
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an oblique reference is made to even in the book. But the sequel,
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coming up in September twenty twenty four, Ashes Never Lie is a crossover with
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the ev Ronan series. She's in it as well. So I haven't given
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up. And I have a book coming out in January, Dreamtown, which
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is the next ev Ronan novel. That's fantastic. So you've got you didn't
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let it go. I was really curious why, and then you kind of
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answered my question that this was very successful. But no, you're going to
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keep going with both. I love that. Congratulations, Well, thank you.
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So tell us about Malibu Burning. What's it about? I mean Burning
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is both a big, over the top, action packed heist CONMT novel and
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it's a police procedural. I wanted to go back to doing those kind of
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big stage sort of a picture, you know, popcorn movie novels that I
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did with my Ian Ludlow series and as I did it with the books I
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do with Jenet Ivanovich. But at the same time, I have this big
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new audience that expects police procedurals for me. So I decided to marry the
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two a police procedural with a big heist and to do a different kind of
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police procedurals I mentioned earlier. These are not traditional homicide investigators. There arson
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investigators, which we haven't seen much of, if at all, in crime
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fiction. So at the beginning of the book, there's a dual track.
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There's creating the highst building the heist, you're with the bad guys as they
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do it. And then there's the other track of the arson investigators looking into
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the biggest wildfire in California history and realizing, wait a minute, there's more
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going on here than it appears. We think there's a heist. And then
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the two timelines collide to what I hope is a hybrid sort of crime novel
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thriller. Sounds terrific. It's exhausting, but not to read, right,
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maybe to write not to read. I had no gray hair before I wrote
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that book. I was also fifteen years younger and did not have this chin.
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Oh that was a tough book, man. Yeah, all right,
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Speaking of things few have accomplished, like being both a successful screenplay writer and
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book writer and having your book turned into a huge series launching hit before it's
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even released. You've also this is the one that really irritates me, Lee,
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You've also received two Edgar Awards. What does that feel like. I'm
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going to ease your irritation. I have not received two Edgar Awards. What
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I've been nominated tonight the hotter I deserve, the claim I deserve. Okay,
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now I feel I'm a hard drinker. This is vodka. I'm gonna
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take a swig now that you reminded me of my crushing failure to win,
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I damn Edgar. Sorry nominated. I'll never live that there. But being
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nominated is still pretty good. No, it's not. I have to win.
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I have to have that gold plated State hero myst to remind me that
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I'm not the fraud that I know I am. People always talk about your
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characters and how unique and Okay, maybe not always, but frequently they talk
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about your characters, and You've got a unique one in this book. Do
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you have a process how do you get inside the minds of the characters you
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create. I always start with character. I have to be intrigued by them.
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I have to know what their conflicts are so I can bring out the
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drama and the humor. This book is a little bit different in it that
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I think I started with the plot and not character. But usually I start
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with characters and the plot comes from that, and then I have to spend
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much with these characters on the page in my head, I better enjoy spending
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time with them, and or my reader won't. So that's yeah. These
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are just characters have to interest me, and I assume of thel if they
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do that, they'll interest you. That's a good rule of thumb. So
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this time around, your protagonist is a thief, though granted he has a
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conscience and a particularly a depth move. I thought you've given a motivation for
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wanting to commit this crime that you know has an emotional or a personal basis.
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Why'd you do that? Because bad guys are the heroes of their own
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story. They don't think of themselves as bad guys. They think of themselves
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as really great guys just maybe doing something that's unconventional, or maybe a little
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bit against the law, or are a little bit violent. Whatever. Bad
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guys don't wake up every morning go more. I want to think over the
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world. Right, women and kill livers and babies. Now, they have
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lives, they go to the bathroom, they have people they love, they
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have goals, they have dreams, they have disappointments, they have mothers and
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fathers and family. They're fully rounded people. So I always ask myself who
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are they and why are they doing? What? They're doing, and what
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is their own self image. It's not always just about money. That's that's
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part of it when you're a thief, but there are things going on in
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your life that make you a thief, a background and pressures on you,
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and expectations you've placed on yourself. So I always think about what are they
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doing all the time? What are their goals? They are just sitting around
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waiting for the detective to show up. Their life isn't all about the detective
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solving the crime when someone comes to interview them. They're in the middle of
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something else. They have plans for the day that didn't include this guy growing
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up at their house, So what's going on in their mind? Who are
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they even have to see us? From the point of view of my detective
23:52
or other protagonists, I keep the bad guy. I put that in quotation,
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what he's doing and what his day is about in my mind, and
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what his point of view is, because that colors the dialogue and the interaction.
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I think it's a huge mistake when writers create one dimensional characters who exist
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to serve a purpose rather than being characters with an emotional life of their own.
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That's also how I deal with violence. To me, characters are not
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just targets. I mean, these people have people who love them, people
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who depend on them, people they are responsible for. So these deaths have
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meaning and have repercussions. So that's how I approach characters. And the other
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key to my approach to characters is humor. I don't believe these unremittingly dark
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books that have no humor because it's not real. I don't know about the
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two of you, but in my own life and some of the saddest,
24:45
most tragic moments, there's always been some kind of humor. And I'm not
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talking about stand up comedy and making jokes, but the humor that arises from
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conflict, from putting different people together an unusual and unexpected situation. Humor arises.
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It's it's natural, it's unnatural not to have it. And I think
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having humor, especially with the quote unquote bad guys, humanizes them and draws
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the reader in. It allows them to invest emotionally in what I'm writing about.
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I absolutely love that. I have given a talk a couple of times
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about character motivation, and I talk about that very thing, about really thinking
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about what drives that character and what's going on outside of that and avoiding that
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that one note mustache twirling, evil bad guy, and you just you really
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expended on that nicely. I really appreciate that advice. You did a lot
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of research for this book. Is that correct? And you were even interviewing
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some Arson crews, a ton of Arson investigators. Yeah, is this a
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family audience or am I allowed to use profanity here? How bad is it?
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The only difference is whether I have to check the box campus. I
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interviewed a lot of Arson investigators and I came up with an approach that I
26:07
want to share in this podcast to committing this arson. And I ran it
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past this one guy at the ATF and he cursed me. Why are you
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cursing me? He said, because that could actually work and we wouldn't know.
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You want to change it in my book? He said, no,
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damn you. Now I gotta go do it. We can go do it.
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I gotta go set some fires using your approach and then analyze them forensically
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and otherwise to see if we could detect them. So he went out and
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did it. He would fires using my method, not you know in the
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in the community, but you know in their testing area. They're the parking
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lot of the ATF or whatever. You know. He tested all these different
26:49
variations on the way I committed Arson and my characters rather, and how it
26:56
might be detected, what's left behind? And he sent me the videos and
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he also to me about the test results, and he told me that's why
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he likes talking to creative people, authors and screenwriters, because they're bureaucrats.
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They don't have imaginations, you know, not bureaucrats, but they're they're scientists
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or investigators, and they by talking to writers, we give them ideas they
27:18
wouldn't otherwise have different ways of looking at a crime. So they walk about
27:22
what I call with my stupid questions. Wow, that is fantastic. And
27:29
I hear you learned something about convict fire crews. Yes, what is that?
27:34
Well, there's actually not a TV series about it. I think it's
27:37
called fire Country or something on CBS. But I wrote this book well over
27:42
a year and a half, two years ago. Who hadn't been a TV
27:45
series yet. But the state of California and a lot of other states uses
27:51
convicts to fight fires, sort of like a modern variation of a chain game,
27:55
And in return for fighting fires, these convicts get to live out in
27:59
the country and very low security camps, and they eat good food, and
28:03
they're spelling mountain there, and they're risking their lives for nothing. And they're
28:07
also promised, you know, when you get out your years you spend as
28:10
a convict firefighter will help you get a job as a real firefighter, which
28:14
is a complete lie. Oh oh, doesn't happen. But the state of
28:21
California would have to spend a billion more dollars a year on firefighting if they
28:26
did not have these convict firefighters essentially working for free doing everything a fireman does
28:30
when not getting paid for it or having a health plan or a pension or
28:34
any of that. The only difference is they're wearing orange suits and the other
28:37
firefighters are wearing yellow or something like that. But there have been efforts to
28:41
end the convict firefighter program, but the state of California just can't afford it,
28:45
especially now, and we're dry as a bone here and just sneezing creates
28:48
a wildfire. Wow, let's go back to that. An interesting tidbit that
28:59
you were taught king about that you came up with a whole new way of
29:04
I won't give anything away, but you mentioned it already setting setting of fire,
29:10
and then you talked about how it sparked the investigators to actually go and
29:14
do this. What did they send back to you? You mentioned that you
29:17
got to see. Well, I don't want to go in too much detail
29:18
so give away how I'm my bad guy setting these fires. But they showed
29:23
the method, They showed that it worked, and they showed what it left
29:26
behind. And in many cases it left nothing behind. You want to let
29:30
something behind in certain situations, and even then you have to know what to
29:33
look for. So they set me They scraped the ashes on rocks and concrete
29:38
and stuff and told me what the chemical tests came back with. But that
29:41
could take weeks. By the time you get that information, the fire is
29:45
long since over. My book, they're trying to resolve this in the heat
29:49
of the ongoing wildfire. They don't have time to wait for the lab results
29:52
they send stuff in, but instead they go with their gut. They say,
29:56
we think this is what's happening. We can't prove it yet. And
30:00
right now, you know, the resources of the fire department in the LAPD
30:04
are all marshaled against saving people's lives and saving structures and fighting this wildfire not
30:10
about hunting down the possible, especially when it doesn't look like an arson was
30:14
involved. It looks like a wind driven wildfire created by fallen power lines.
30:18
So all right, my two guys are basically looking into this without any of
30:23
the resources they need put in their lives on the line. That's how my
30:29
dad used to talk. My dad was a television anchorman. All was cool
30:34
today, all the time. He talked like this, even in casual conversation,
30:40
which is funny for about thirty seconds when it's your entire freaking life a
30:45
little irritating. Yes, well, I'm glad you amused us for a minute
30:49
there, just a minute, stop down. No, that's very intriguing.
30:55
Thank you for sharing that about your book. What does your typical writing day
31:00
look like? We get We get asked that a lot, so I'm going
31:03
to ask you. Well, I start by lighting up the crack pipe.
31:07
I'm watching some fay. A typical day for me, A typical day,
31:14
I do my best writing between eight pm and two in the morning, so
31:18
you know, I'll go to bed at like we wake up on a normal
31:25
day about ten, have breakfast, answer emails, and basically spend the day
31:30
doing the business of writing while rewriting the crap I wrote the night before.
31:34
Then I have dinner and I start writing fresh again, and I do that
31:38
until the book is done. But you know, I have so many other
31:41
things going on my life. I'm not just writing books. I also have
31:45
a small publishing company. I also when there isn't a writers strike, I'm
31:48
usually writing a script or two on contract each year. And I also have
31:53
to do things like this sorry, do interviews, and I do book signings
31:56
and speaking engagements. So the day gets full of distractions, which means it's
32:00
easier for me to rewrite during the day than to write from scratch, so
32:06
to speak. Well, you've got a series now at Hallmark, right,
32:08
the Mystery? Okay, Laura, you just take it from here. Okay,
32:19
for his drink again? How many movies did you get out of that?
32:22
Seven? Oh? Well, okay, I'm feeling less sorry now,
32:28
But tell us about that experience. What's it like working for Hallmark? What's
32:32
it like working for Hallmark? Well, it exists in a world where there's
32:37
very few minorities, no profanity, no adultery, no alcohol, no sex.
32:44
It's hard to create conflict in a world like that. It's very wholesome.
32:49
It's it's a the Hallmark world, it's a it's a whole different planet.
32:52
I've done a number of Hallmark movies, a couple which, because of
32:55
the pandemic, we're shot. I wrote a couple Darrow and Darrow's with my
33:01
good friends. You've Sutton to create that show. It's it's it's wholesome entertainment,
33:07
and that's fine, but it's a it's a difficult to write a crime
33:13
drama without the sort of vices to create murder and uh and the sorts of
33:19
things that motivate crimes. And it's it's it's I mean, it's changed a
33:22
bit, but it's too much of a lily white, conflictless world. It's
33:25
almost like uh, Mayberry R and D. You know, it's Is it
33:32
hard to construct a mystery when there can be any conflict? Yes, when
33:39
you have romance or even a kiss is considered pornographic. But oops, it's
33:45
a corpse. Someone should do something about that. So I remember I once
33:51
was talking to a hallmarking executive about future movies in the series, and I
33:55
pitched an idea and she looked at me, she's are you out of your
33:58
mind? Do you think this is showtime? We can't do that story on
34:02
Palmark. I said, it's funny you did today at noon? Went what
34:07
I just pitched you in nineteen fifty seven episode of Perry Mason. So why
34:12
is it okay at noon on Hallmark? But not okay Hallmark Mysteries and movies?
34:16
And that's not a dear me to my friends at Hallmark. Oh god,
34:20
not oh wow? Okay. Well, it is clear that you have
34:24
had some varied and exciting experiences on your writers journal journey. Are there any
34:32
survival tips you've picked up along the way or anything you can offer our listeners.
34:37
Have a sense of humor, stay grounded in reality, because television is
34:40
not reality on screen or behind it. You have to keep your wits about
34:45
you. I'm My greatest achievement as a television writer producer is that I've been
34:50
married thirty five years. And I'm not no no adultery or anything. And
34:53
I'm not addicted to anything. I'm you know, I'm not well, that's
34:58
not true. I drink a lot of diet coke and you put a box
35:00
of Oreos in front of me to last about ten seconds. But otherwise,
35:05
and I've seen my Hollywood career. Way too many marriages fall apart, see
35:08
way too many writers who have alcohol and drug and other addiction problems. There's
35:15
so much pressure and so much phoniness, and there's so much that's wrong with
35:21
Hollywood. But that's true of any industry. So you just have to stay
35:25
grounded. You have to remember what's really important to you. It's more important
35:29
than I be at home for my daughter's first school play than it is I
35:34
stay late at the office writing dialogue for a talking dolphin on sequest. Thank
35:39
you for that. One of the great life really really a breath of fresh
35:45
air. I appreciate that. I also appreciate hearing from a fellow night owl.
35:50
So many people want to tell us we have to get up early to
35:52
write, and I'm not alone. If I have a question at one thirty
35:58
in the morning, a legal question or a writing question, I can send
36:00
a note to my sister who's a lawyer, and show answer right back or
36:05
question. My brother Todd, me and my siblings are all on the same
36:08
bio clock. We all do our best work late at night, which is
36:13
which is fine, all right. One last question. You kind of touched
36:16
on this earlier, but what's next from you? God, I've got so
36:21
much. I have a book coming out in November called Calico. Also another
36:24
dual timeline thriller, a police procedural in present day and a eighteen eighty three
36:30
western that share the same dead body that's in November. And then I have
36:36
the is It the fifth E've wrote in novel Dreamtown, coming out in January,
36:40
and then the second Sharp and Walker book, Ash Does Never Lie,
36:44
coming out in September twenty twenty four. I've also got a whole bunch of
36:47
book tour events coming up between now and January. If you go to my
36:51
website Legoldberg dot com you can find all the places I'm going to be signing
36:55
books and telling lies. That's what fiction writers do right professionally. Yes,
37:04
Hey, Lee, this has been a blast. Plank so much for being
37:07
on the podcast Live Pleasure. Hey, since try Con just happened, I'll
37:12
give you at least a week off trun But may I remind you that the
37:19
writer kon Facebook group is still going strong, and if you haven't joined,
37:23
come join. It doesn't cost anything, and then you'll see what's going on
37:27
in the writer world every day and maybe connect with some other writers in a
37:34
situation similar to yours. You can also subscribe to the completely free writer con
37:38
E newsletter. The information will be in the show notes, but basically,
37:44
just go to my website and send me an email and you're on. And
37:47
for that matter, if you're enjoying this podcast, hey subscribe and then rate
37:52
it if you have good things to say, and review it wherever you get
37:57
podcasts. That helps get the word out and makes it easier for new listeners
38:01
to discover us. All right, until next time, keep writing and remember
38:08
you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See you next time.