Double the Thrills: Goldberg Brothers Take Over the Thriller Zone!
On today's 239th episode of The Thriller Zone, host Dave Temple dives into the thrilling world of writing with two of the brightest stars in the thriller genre, Lee & Tod Goldberg.
We kick things off with a hearty laugh as they chat about their writing journeys, the joy of storytelling, and a sprinkle of hilarious personal anecdotes—who knew that a chat about books could feel like a stand-up comedy routine?
The main highlight of the episode is the exciting news about their upcoming projects, including Lee’s Eve Ronin series being developed for television plus Tod’s latest book making waves in the literary community.
We also explore the importance of conflict in storytelling and how each scene should reveal character or drive the plot, all while keeping it light and fun.
So grab your favorite drink, kick back, and join us for an hour of laughter, insights, and a touch of sibling rivalry that keeps the conversation lively!
Takeaways:
- Lee and Tod Goldberg, two stars of the thriller world, join us for an entertaining chat.
- Writing is a journey, and both Goldbergs share their experiences and successes in the industry.
- We learn about the importance of conflict and character motivation in writing compelling stories.
- The conversation touches on how different approaches to writing can lead to unique storytelling styles.
Keywords: thriller podcast, Lee Goldberg interview, Tod Goldberg podcast, writing advice for authors, crime fiction tips, thriller writing techniques, character development in thrillers, dialogue writing in fiction, screenwriting tips, TV series adaptations, Amazon Publishing authors, mystery genre insights, creative writing advice, storytelling techniques, suspense building in novels, humor in writing, author interviews, publishing industry insights, thriller book recommendations, writing community support
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Thriller Zone.
Speaker B:I'm your host, David Temple.
Speaker B:Welcome to September.
Speaker B:When you, when you get to see this or hear this show, I will be vacationing with my lovely wife out of the country.
Speaker B:So, yeah, as you'll mention, as you'll hear about in September, we're taking a much needed break.
Speaker B:But today's show, it's a.
Speaker B:It's a doozy.
Speaker B:It's a double doozy.
Speaker B:We have for you two of the brightest shining stars in the Thriller world.
Speaker B:Todd and Lee Goldberg.
Speaker B:Or I probably should say Lee and Todd Goldberg.
Speaker B:They're always fighting for top billing.
Speaker B:Anyway, without any further ado, how about you and I get together and Enjoy an hour plus of the Goldberg's right here on the Thriller Zone.
Speaker B:Mr. Goldberg, hello.
Speaker B:So good to see you.
Speaker A:Good to see you too.
Speaker B:And too long.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:You've gotten younger and better looking.
Speaker A:I've gotten older and fatter, which my brother will confirm, I'm sure.
Speaker B:By the way, I saw a photograph of you and I want to save all the juice for the squeeze or whatever the fuck that line is.
Speaker B:Doing an unboxing.
Speaker B:You look like you've lost some weight.
Speaker B:You're looking really pretty dapper.
Speaker A:Well, thank you.
Speaker A:Into it.
Speaker A:It's the affair I've been having.
Speaker A:You know, the 22 year old stripper I've been dating demands so much more of me than my wife does.
Speaker A:She, she.
Speaker A:My wife will settle for the fat old Lee, but the, the young women now want so much.
Speaker A:I just don't have the energy.
Speaker A:My back is sore.
Speaker B:Oh, nicely done.
Speaker B:Nicely plates her.
Speaker A:And the Viagra has created some embarrassing situations socially.
Speaker B:Yeah, because it, it's longer lasting than you expected.
Speaker A:Yes, yes, I. I go to Ralph's and people are screaming.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker B:So how long has it been since we've spoken?
Speaker A:I think about a year.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:God, can you believe that?
Speaker B:That's ridiculous.
Speaker B:Your brother is.
Speaker B:Well, you're early, everybody.
Speaker A:I'm always early.
Speaker A:Yeah, I would rather be 10 minutes early than 10 seconds late.
Speaker A:That's a big conflict in my marriage.
Speaker B:I think my dad used to say, son, if you're not 15 minutes early, you're automatically late.
Speaker B:Something like that.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:I believe that.
Speaker A:I'm one of these people who like, I want to be at the airport early, so if anything goes wrong, I can take care of it.
Speaker A:And I don't like being rushed.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:So like if I have meetings in la, if I get there early, that's okay, you know, I'll listen to a book on audio or I'll do something else.
Speaker A:But I just hate the rush of being late.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I'm one of those weird guys, too, who when I have a meeting, I have a spare shirt in my car just in case I spill Diet Coke all over myself or I'm sweating like crazy because I had a bad situation years ago where I spilled a Diet Coke on myself on the way to a meeting and I.
Speaker A:And I had to stop at a Banana Republic just to buy a shirt real quick before going into the meeting.
Speaker A:I looked terrible.
Speaker B:That is so smart.
Speaker B:So smart.
Speaker A:My hair looks weird, though.
Speaker B:Oh, well, did you just get out of the shower?
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:Did you just get out of bed with the stripper?
Speaker A:That's what it is.
Speaker A:That's what it is.
Speaker A:Do I have any tassels in my hair?
Speaker B:Yeah, you do have a little sparkle.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, what a summer this has been.
Speaker B:It's August the first week.
Speaker A:And let me remind Todd that he's supposed to be online.
Speaker A:Todd waiting.
Speaker B:That's a pretty.
Speaker C:Is that.
Speaker C:That's pretty fast.
Speaker B:Typing with one finger.
Speaker A:One finger.
Speaker B:Dude, we have so much good news to share.
Speaker B:You especially.
Speaker B:I don't want to.
Speaker A:I do have good news to share.
Speaker B:I don't want to give out all the candy in the lobby.
Speaker C:I have.
Speaker A:I have news I can't share.
Speaker A:That's good, too.
Speaker B:So you, like, last time we talked, you said, oh, I can't tell you about this, but I can, oh, no, I can't tell you about that.
Speaker A:You know, the problem is now these studios and networks have you sign non disclosure agreements where you basically can't reveal anything until they tell you you can't.
Speaker A:So I have to sit on some stuff.
Speaker A:It's frustrating.
Speaker B:So that bothers you?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Todd's finally getting here.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I do notice that if I've got a big release coming and I want it to be secret so that all the oomph is at the right place, I would ask, hey, by the way, don't say anything about this yet, but have you found that the general rule is you can't actually quite fully trust people?
Speaker A:You want to.
Speaker B:The best intentions are there, but sometimes you're at a cocktail party, they're not thinking and they just go, well, we're going to talk about your stuff.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker B:We're rolling.
Speaker B:This show has already started.
Speaker C:You.
Speaker B:When you can start me off with a belly laugh.
Speaker B:And we're only.
Speaker B:We're less than five minutes in.
Speaker B:High five.
Speaker C:That's good.
Speaker B:Bow to you and you hear me.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Even though my fancy microphone is not in front of my face, it's off to the side here.
Speaker B:You know, actually, I can hear you pretty good.
Speaker B:Oh, and there's Todd, the dueling hands.
Speaker C:Hello, gentlemen.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker A:You've got some, like, J.J. abrams lens flash up at the top here from a light.
Speaker A:You have like, a glare, like an Apple Store kind of glare there.
Speaker C:Oh, I do?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:There's some light at the top of your head that's actually hitting your face.
Speaker B:That's God saying, that's godly.
Speaker B:Todd, I've got you.
Speaker A:That's weird.
Speaker C:Oh, I see it.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:No one move.
Speaker A:Thank God Todd's wearing pants today.
Speaker A:Unlike Jeffrey Toobin.
Speaker A:Oh, it's still there.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:It's the sun.
Speaker C:I'll just look at enlightened.
Speaker B:Yeah, doesn't bother me.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's actually.
Speaker C:It's coming from outside.
Speaker B:Interesting.
Speaker A:Okay, well, they'll just think it's cinematic.
Speaker A:Lens flare.
Speaker A:Lens flare.
Speaker C:I look good.
Speaker B:You do look good.
Speaker C:I look like I've been benighted by celestial beings.
Speaker A:But seeing you makes me realize, Todd, I've got to get a beard to hide my old man neck.
Speaker A:You know, I got news.
Speaker C:Really?
Speaker A:Ain't gonna hide it.
Speaker A:I'm sorry?
Speaker C:I said, ain't gonna hide it.
Speaker A:It won't.
Speaker C:No, I mean, it will destroy it.
Speaker C:It'll distract.
Speaker A:Well, that'll work.
Speaker A:That'll work.
Speaker C:But, Lee.
Speaker C:So this is the interesting thing, David, is that I. I don't know if Lee can grow a beard.
Speaker A:I can grow a beard.
Speaker A:Have I ever sent you the photo of me with a beard?
Speaker A:One time, when Valerie went up to France, I decided to grow a beard while she was away.
Speaker A:And this was 10 years ago.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was so gray.
Speaker A:I mean, I aged 30 years with that beard.
Speaker A:So I shaved it off.
Speaker A:Madison found.
Speaker A:My daughter found it frightening.
Speaker A:I'll send you photos.
Speaker A:I've got him somewhere.
Speaker C:See, the thing is like this.
Speaker C:I shaved this morning.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:That's how virile I am.
Speaker C:Is my facial hair just green grows immediately.
Speaker C:That is so funny.
Speaker B:And since we're comparing, like, I can grow the goatee, but this is just like baby skin.
Speaker B:Nothing grows here.
Speaker B:It's so weird.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:The important thing, Lee, and this is something our wives has taught us, is that if you put something on top of the fat, the fat is hidden a little bit, but it still exists.
Speaker C:It just looks fashionable.
Speaker A:I have found that wearing a black shirt, it's a lot.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:I want to highlight my skin tone.
Speaker C:That's the difference.
Speaker C:Lee.
Speaker B:Do me a favor and tilt your camera down just a skosh so I.
Speaker A:Don'T have a. I'm glad to tilt it down just a skosh.
Speaker B:Yeah, you can even.
Speaker B:You can give me another skosh so I can.
Speaker A:Yeah, a little skosh.
Speaker B:A double skosh.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker B:We still get the Lee Goldberg director's chair in the shot.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:I can move over.
Speaker A:You get the bathroom in there, too.
Speaker C:And is that my new book over my shoulder?
Speaker C:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker C:How did it get there?
Speaker A:I should.
Speaker A:I should turn mine a little bit so we have a heroine for the ages revealed there.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, you got one.
Speaker A:Look at that.
Speaker A:Oh, look at this.
Speaker B:I've got dangling earrings.
Speaker A:They're called a galley.
Speaker A:I haven't gotten a galley.
Speaker A:I had to read mine digitally.
Speaker A:Of Todd's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I thought Open All Night was powerful fiction.
Speaker C:This.
Speaker A:Open.
Speaker A:I can never remember the title of Todd's book, so I just.
Speaker A:Actually, I can now, but now I do it just for laughs.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker A:I told Todd the title of my new book is Open All Night.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And then I had a mom joke for him, but then I realized we have the same mom.
Speaker C:Your mom's open.
Speaker C:Oh, wait, that's her.
Speaker C:That's my mom.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Oh.
Speaker B:Oh, that didn't quite work.
Speaker B:So, guys, welcome back to the Thriller Zone.
Speaker B:It's been way too long.
Speaker A:It has.
Speaker A:My life has been thrillers outside of the Thriller Zone.
Speaker A:Well, I come here for thrills.
Speaker C:Every morning I wake up and I think, will there be an email inviting me to the Thriller Zone?
Speaker C:And then it's like, I have a bagel.
Speaker C:I have some yogurt.
Speaker C:And the day just sort of progresses without any zones or any thrills.
Speaker C:But here we are.
Speaker C:Look, once you've got two Goldbergs together, God knows the thrills that might happen from this.
Speaker B:It's a double dose of Thrillage.
Speaker A:Thrillage.
Speaker A:Thrillage.
Speaker A:That's how people describe my weight.
Speaker A:It's thrillage.
Speaker C:In a world, leader's going to have a character almost immediately named Thrillage.
Speaker A:Nick.
Speaker A:Thrillage P.I.
Speaker A:that's my new series.
Speaker A:It'll be out in six months.
Speaker C:He's already.
Speaker A:Todd and I had to make dibs on some stuff.
Speaker A:Like he and I both actually Todd and I and Thief Sutton walked by a bar called Poor Decisions, and.
Speaker A:And all three of us raced to be the first one to get that into print.
Speaker C:True.
Speaker A:I think FIF beat us by putting it on television before we could put it into.
Speaker C:I've had this bar Poor Decisions in two Books.
Speaker C:He's had it in a TV show.
Speaker C:Lee's had it in two books.
Speaker C:It's the greatest name for a dive bar anywhere.
Speaker C:Decisions.
Speaker B:It really is.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I've already got one chapter written of Nick's frillage, Todd.
Speaker A:So you're way behind.
Speaker A:While you were talking, I started writing.
Speaker C:The Joyce Carol Oates of thrillers.
Speaker B:Legal on the next adventure of.
Speaker B:What was his first name?
Speaker A:Nick Thrillage.
Speaker A:Nick Thrillage.
Speaker C:I prefer Dane Thrillage.
Speaker C:You know Dane Thrillage?
Speaker A:How about Dirk?
Speaker A:Dirk Thrillage.
Speaker A:Dirk Thrillage.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Dirk Tussler's back.
Speaker A:Yeah, with a vengeance.
Speaker C:And his new character is Dirk Thrillage.
Speaker C:He also finds the Titanic and blows.
Speaker A:The let's pick her up Now.
Speaker A:He doesn't just find it, he blasts it.
Speaker A:Oh, well, my language, Todd, you can't hear.
Speaker A:Did you notice after reading Open All Night that you were saying fuck after every third word?
Speaker A:I mean, after reading that book, I was the foulest mouth person in Calabasas.
Speaker A:How are you today?
Speaker A:I'm fucking fine.
Speaker A:Except the cashier at Ralph's.
Speaker C:He's the only man who writes murders where everyone speaks politely.
Speaker C:May I kill you, please?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Pardon me while I insert a knife in your ribcage.
Speaker A:Only when I'm writing Canadian shows.
Speaker C:Oh, gosh, here comes a Mountie.
Speaker C:Yes, sorry, new to you now.
Speaker C:We'll let you do you.
Speaker C:We'll sit quietly while you think of a question.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Talk amongst yourselves.
Speaker C:Forget about it.
Speaker A:Oh, we're getting in the way.
Speaker A:He know Todd.
Speaker A:He's supposed to be.
Speaker A:He's supposed to be interviewing us.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker A:Nick Thrillage needs to be quiet now so Dave Temple can interview us.
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:Nick Thrillage is going to show up.
Speaker B:I know it.
Speaker B:Wait, what's his sidekick's name?
Speaker A:Ernie runs.
Speaker C:10 speed and thrillage.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, there's a flash.
Speaker A:Are you Thrillage or just glad to see me?
Speaker B:Todd, you missed the Viagra joke that opened the show.
Speaker C:God.
Speaker A:It wasn't a joke.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker B:You missed the tawdry.
Speaker C:Look, Dave, here's what I can tell you.
Speaker C:Having edited my brother's sex scenes in our book.
Speaker A:How many brothers get to say that?
Speaker C:Yeah, no doubt hearing him talk about Viagra would be a relief to me.
Speaker C:I'm sure we'll get to his pornographic.
Speaker A:I have had submission.
Speaker A:This is a terrible thing to say.
Speaker A:I've had an inordinate impact on Todd's love life and how he views women.
Speaker A:And so here we go.
Speaker A:The first sex scene he ever read was one I wrote in a book.
Speaker A:Well, that's his wife has been paying the price for decades.
Speaker C:Or asking for change.
Speaker A:My God.
Speaker B:Now, how did that come about?
Speaker B:I got to know that.
Speaker A:Well, you can ask us in the podcast.
Speaker A:Todd will tell the story.
Speaker A:He's very funny.
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker B:As we're.
Speaker A:We're.
Speaker A:We're on the air.
Speaker A:Hi, I'm Lee Goldberg.
Speaker C:So when I was.
Speaker C:When I was, I think Eleven, Lee's debut novel, 357 Vigilante came out.
Speaker C:And in that book, Lee has a sex scene.
Speaker C:Well, we'll use sex, you know, with quotes around it where a man slathers rocky road ice cream on a woman's genitalia.
Speaker A:Now, well, not just her genitalia.
Speaker A:It was all over the place.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:At the time, at 11, even then I was like, I don't know how the nuts and the dairy are gonna work here.
Speaker C:And now as a 54 year old man, I think Lee had never had sex before.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And here's the funny story about that.
Speaker A:And I think you've heard this story before, David.
Speaker A:But I wrote this book when I was in college.
Speaker A:357 Vigilantes by Ian Ludlow.
Speaker A:So I'd be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlow, and I had delusions of being a serious novelist.
Speaker A:So I wanted to write a literary men's action adventure story.
Speaker A:So my guy was a vigilante, and after shooting all these people all day, he couldn't get it up at night because every time he started to have sex, you know, he'd see all the people he blew apart.
Speaker A:You know, that'd be that.
Speaker C:Like that scene in Munich when the guy's having sex and seeing the terrorists.
Speaker A:Okay, so I think that's a Hallmark movie.
Speaker A:You're confusing.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:So I got this note from my publisher saying you can't have a men's action adventure novel where the hero can't get it up.
Speaker A:He has to be having lots of great sex.
Speaker A:So I was so mad that I wrote these sex scenes that defied gravity that were anatomically impossible.
Speaker A:You know, he'd glance at a woman and she'd faint from multiple orgasms.
Speaker A:I just had all this stuff.
Speaker A:And Tom was right.
Speaker A:I hadn't had sex.
Speaker A:I was just like, this is.
Speaker A:Actually, I had, but I didn't have the experience of my.
Speaker C:He hadn't made love, Dave.
Speaker B:It hadn't involved another person.
Speaker B:Go ahead.
Speaker A:That's why my partner was always satisfied.
Speaker C:So his editor said, could you make the masturbation scenes less violent.
Speaker A:And remove the Twinkies?
Speaker A:But I Sent this novel into my publisher and he wrote back and he said, lee, I've read the new manuscript.
Speaker A:And I knew what the next line was going to be, which is, you're fired.
Speaker A:And he went, not only are the scenes hot, they're real.
Speaker A:And I went, oh, my God, if this is what real lovemaking is like, I'm the biggest failure in the world.
Speaker A:And meanwhile, my brother was learning all about love from 357 vigilante.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker C:And here's the irony.
Speaker C:As it turns out, I'm lactose intolerant.
Speaker A:So he's been a virgin ever since he ran.
Speaker C:It's really been a tough time for me.
Speaker C:Slathering.
Speaker C:I mean, until oat milk became much more prevalent as a dairy substitute.
Speaker C:My entire romantic life was fraught and sickening.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:You know, you cannot get this kind of entertainment everywhere.
Speaker A:Come on.
Speaker A:Andrew and Lee Child are exactly the same.
Speaker C:Karen and Amy Bender, Right?
Speaker A:He doesn't know who Taryn and Amy Bender are.
Speaker A:Yeah, but the listeners don't write thrillers.
Speaker C:They're gonna.
Speaker C:The listeners will Google that.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:Though Karen did write a novella.
Speaker C:Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter in law.
Speaker A:I'm sorry?
Speaker C:Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter in law.
Speaker A:No, her daughter, Carol Higgins.
Speaker C:Is that her daughter?
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Sorry, Dave, your show.
Speaker C:No, it's okay.
Speaker B:I was just gonna.
Speaker B:We were waiting for you to show up and Lee, I was saying, hey, do you have good news to share?
Speaker B:Because last time Lee was talking about, hey, I said, oh, I can't talk about that news.
Speaker B:And then you, oh, well, I can't mention that news.
Speaker B:So I'm like, well, tell me what you can tell me.
Speaker B:And then I'm.
Speaker A:I have good news to share, folks.
Speaker B:Let me just tell you right here, Fallen Star is going to be one of a series that is being picked up.
Speaker B:But I'm going to let you drop the bomb because this is huge news.
Speaker B:I'm so proud of you, man.
Speaker A:Well, the big news is I can't get into too many details, but a major.
Speaker A:How do I put this?
Speaker A:Well, Eve Ronin is being developed as a TV series, right?
Speaker A:And Madison Lyntz, who played Matty Bosch on Bosch and Bosch Legacy, has been attached to star as Eve Ronan, be one of the executive producers.
Speaker A:And also my novel Calico has been picked up by a major studio for a streaming series.
Speaker A:And it's also well along the way, and I can't give you any more details about that.
Speaker A:And then finally, I am co executive producer of a new mystery series starring Brooke Shields called Ally and Andy, at least for the moment.
Speaker A:The title may be changing on AMC Acorn.
Speaker A: be preparing sometime in late: Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker B:Holy moly.
Speaker C:He's not sleeping anymore.
Speaker C:He just sort of wakes.
Speaker A:And I have a new book coming out next summer called Murder by Design, an Edison Bixby mystery, but I'm gonna change that to Nick Thrillage.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Not too late.
Speaker C:Find and replace.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm gonna do that now while we're on the podcast.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Now, Todd, I gotta know, and it feels kind of unfair to let him share all that big fat news.
Speaker B:And then I just want to know what big, delicious news you have.
Speaker C:Well, I've got big, delicious news that I can't say a single word about.
Speaker B:Okay, super.
Speaker A:Let me just say, though, that it's big and it's delicious.
Speaker C:It is big and it's delicious.
Speaker C:So what I can tell you.
Speaker C:So my new book, Only Way out, comes out in December, and there's big exciting news about that as well that you won't know until November.
Speaker C:And then Eight Very Bad Nights, the anthology that Lee and I did together, well, Lee was part of, and I was reading his Sex Scenes paperback of that comes out in October.
Speaker C:A major American streaming service with very few letters in the name owns my Gangsterland series, are developing it.
Speaker C:So that's nice.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:And then there's something else.
Speaker C:I'm doing that if I told you about it, I'd have to kill you, but okay, don't do that on a zoom about it, in fact.
Speaker C:So there you go.
Speaker C:That's where I was.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Well, can I ask the super obvious question that somebody somewhere is wondering along with myself, how do.
Speaker B:Now, granted, I don't want to take away from the fact that you guys have been at this for a long.
Speaker A:Time, but you have a.
Speaker C:No, but I mean.
Speaker B:Yeah, okay.
Speaker A:You didn't have to agree so damn fast.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:What happened?
Speaker A:The compliments.
Speaker A:Lee, you look so young.
Speaker A:Oh, Lee, I can't believe you're over 30 suddenly.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, you're old people looking at.
Speaker C:You on the screen right now, Lee, and counting your age like a tree from the wrinkles on your face and my neck.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Let me continue this podcast like this.
Speaker C:Oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker C:Oh, that's not.
Speaker A:Oh, that is good.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:I'll just do this.
Speaker A:That doesn't look odd, does it?
Speaker B:Well, now, can you just move it backwards a little bit so you can catch.
Speaker C:There you go.
Speaker C:There you go.
Speaker B:Now you Got the neck in there.
Speaker A:This looks totally natural.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That looks natural.
Speaker A:Do this and no one will notice.
Speaker A:No, people talk about my book.
Speaker A:You look like.
Speaker C:Like Shirley Temple if you do that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There's some people, some names I'd love to mention.
Speaker B:Who has.
Speaker B:Who has.
Speaker B:Let's just say that she has spent entirely too much time on the table.
Speaker B:I mean, every time I see her on a new series, I go, wait, how can you push that back any further?
Speaker C:What makes her probably more fun to dance with?
Speaker B:Well, because you got.
Speaker C:There's a lot more hanging off the back.
Speaker B:So anyway, my point.
Speaker B:I forgot what my point is.
Speaker A:Your question was how?
Speaker C:How?
Speaker A:I don't know what.
Speaker C:We've been doing this a long time.
Speaker A:How do we.
Speaker B:It was going to be something along the lines of, how do you get this much action into production simultaneously?
Speaker B:Or has it just been.
Speaker B:And I know this from talking to you several times, Lee, something will get into process.
Speaker B:It'll sit there and get hold.
Speaker B:It'll get held and turn around or some sort.
Speaker B:Then it'll get green and then it'll come back and then it'll get held or it'll be pushed off or be sold.
Speaker A:In the case of Eve Ronin, it's actually been optioned several times and developed several times over the years.
Speaker A:And then, you know, there's been strikes and pandemics, and then you.
Speaker A:You have showrunners who come and go and producers who come and the development process can be very, very long.
Speaker A:I mean, just ask Tom Perry how long the old man was in development before suddenly everything happened.
Speaker A:And for me, anyway, it's just.
Speaker A:It's weird.
Speaker A:All of a sudden, two of my books, Calico and Eve Ronin, are moving along very quickly at the same time, but there's a difference.
Speaker A:Whereas Eve Ronin, I'm very much involved in that show.
Speaker A:I'll be hands on in the writing and production of that series, along with the showrunner, Calico.
Speaker A:I'm not involved, really.
Speaker A:I mean, I selected the showrunners and they bounced some ideas off me, but I'm really.
Speaker A:I have not been invited in the same way.
Speaker A:And that's not a bad thing.
Speaker A:It's just every, every book and situation is different and I didn't plan on being co executive producer of a TV series at the same time.
Speaker A:It just kind of happened because a friend of mine created the show.
Speaker A:And it's a series about publishing.
Speaker A:It's about a very famous, successful mystery writer who's forced to team up with a very young, inexperienced upstart to write her next book.
Speaker A:And it's a, it's a, it's sort of like hacks with crime writers instead of comedians.
Speaker A:And so it's, it's about the world of writing mysteries and it's about mysteries.
Speaker A:And because I've co authored books and written lots of mysteries and I'm experienced tv, I was like perfect for that show.
Speaker A:And it just came together really fast.
Speaker A:And it's amazing how quickly we've written the scripts and how quickly we're going into production.
Speaker A:And it's just, you don't know.
Speaker A:I mean, I've had periods where I'm like, have no time at all because I'm working so hard.
Speaker A:And then I'll have periods where absolutely nothing's going on.
Speaker A:So it's a cliche to say strike when the iron's hot, but I do, I take the jobs when they come because I know what it's like when they aren't coming along.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And Todd, how are things out there in the desert?
Speaker B:Last time we chatted, you were leading, you were teaching, you were writing, you were enjoying the desert heat.
Speaker C:I'm like a Bedouin, I just enjoy the desert heat.
Speaker B:What, what, you know, how do you, how do you compare to.
Speaker B:And this is another question I thought of as I was coming up, competition.
Speaker B:My brother and I were competitive growing up and we're only separated by two years.
Speaker B:And so I was wondering, do you guys ever have that little.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker B:Do you?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:I'll answer the first question first, which is.
Speaker C:So the thing that actually Lee taught me is that you always got to have a second thing.
Speaker C:And I always knew that my second thing was that I wanted to teach.
Speaker C:I've always wanted to be a professor, but because I am defiant towards leadership, I had to have my own graduate school.
Speaker C:So I created the Graduate School in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside.
Speaker C:So I don't just teach.
Speaker C:I actually am running sort of an empire, a cabal of writers.
Speaker C:So, you know, I've got 100 grad students, I've got 13 faculty people, I've got staff, I've got all kinds of stuff.
Speaker C:So it's a real full time job.
Speaker C:But it's awesome.
Speaker C:You know, it's everything I ever wanted to do.
Speaker C:I get to have my own philosophy on writing passed down to other people.
Speaker C:And it's the philosophy that essentially, you know, Lee and I were raised with, which is, you know, be a professional, be a writer, not just an author.
Speaker C:Know how to do a lot of different stuff.
Speaker C:And to answer Your second question.
Speaker C:I think that sort of philosophy has been one of the things that has made Lee and I, but also our sisters, who are also artists.
Speaker C:Not competitive in the least, but supportive because we recognize this is a job.
Speaker C:You know, this is not.
Speaker C:It's precious in the sense that I think we both really care about the stuff that we do, but we're pragmatists.
Speaker C:Like, this is how we make a living.
Speaker C:This is how we eat, is.
Speaker C:We write, and we have a life in the arts, and we do these things.
Speaker A:We're also very different voices, although Ty has a very similar sense of humor.
Speaker A:We write very differently.
Speaker A:He's more literary, you might say, I'm more commercial.
Speaker A:He's Shakespeare on Gilligan's Island.
Speaker A:That's our joke.
Speaker C:But I don't know if.
Speaker A:We have a love of crime writing and we have a similar way of looking at the world, but we do write differently, so we're not really competing.
Speaker C:Yeah, very different kinds of books.
Speaker A:We now are published by the same publisher, so we have a lot of stuff in common.
Speaker A:But there's also sort of a different relationship.
Speaker A:And yes, Todd and I are brothers.
Speaker A:We're very close.
Speaker A:But also, I'm the oldest, and I can't help but think of my siblings in a way, like my children.
Speaker A:Like, I feel this responsibility for them to do well and to support them and to be there for them.
Speaker A:So I take enormous pride in all of Todd's successes.
Speaker A:You know, I want him to do well.
Speaker A:You know, I was furious when he became an overnight millionaire because it took me forever, but I mean, literally overnight.
Speaker A:I understand.
Speaker A:Lee, they just back up the Brinks truck to your house.
Speaker A:How come you worked so hard?
Speaker A:But, you know, I was proud of him and wanted to bury him in the backyard in a shallow grave.
Speaker C:Exactly like that.
Speaker A:But so, no, there's no competition.
Speaker A:And I know that if I have a problem in my writing, I can email Todd at 2 in the morning and get an immediate answer.
Speaker A:If I have a legal question, I can email my sister at two in the morning and get an immediate answer.
Speaker A:If I think about my own health, I can send my other sister, who's not a doctor but will give me a second opinion on all that.
Speaker C:You'll have a YouTube video.
Speaker C:You know, I think when you grow up in a family of writers, the notion that anything that we do is competitive seems silly.
Speaker C:You know, it's always a struggle.
Speaker C:But I'm Lee's number one fan.
Speaker C:I think he's my number one fan.
Speaker C:And I think the thing that surprises people like when they meet the both of us is that neither of us take each other very seriously, but we take each other's work very seriously and what the other person does.
Speaker A:That's not true.
Speaker A:I take you very seriously, Todd.
Speaker C:No, I mean other people don't take us very seriously as humans.
Speaker A:We aren't egomaniacs who are own work is what you're right.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But I think we always take what each other is doing as important and as notable stuff.
Speaker C:And even something like this.
Speaker C:I run this graduate school and Lee likes to come and see it.
Speaker C:You know, he wants to see like what we're out there doing.
Speaker C:And you know, I, I'm running around with my head cut off because I'm running a, you know, a 10 day conference with, you know, all these guests and stuff.
Speaker C:And Lee just gets to sort of watch and be like, I didn't know my 7 year old brother is capable of this.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Todd and I also get to share some wonderful experiences.
Speaker A:I can't count the number of times Todd and I have been talking to a writer we admire and just look at each other and, and the communication is.
Speaker A:Can you believe we're sitting here talking to this writer as equals, as friends, that we even know these people, you know, and so we, we have a lot of fun together because even though we're successful writers and we've both been on the New York Times bestseller list, in fact, the same week I was number one and he was number six, thank God it was the other way around.
Speaker A:I couldn't have lived with that.
Speaker C:He really could not live with that.
Speaker A:I think one reason we're successful is Todd and I have still not lost our wonder that we're in this business and we're still fanboys of all these writers and we get excited about being around them and hearing them and meeting them and we haven't gotten so full of our own work that, you know, we somehow believe we are above and beyond these other writers and new and upcoming writers we're huge fans of and we're very excited to meet.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:I find it.
Speaker A:So what's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker A:Todd can probably help with this.
Speaker A:There are some authors who are so full of themselves and they walk around in their own glow like, aren't I wonderful?
Speaker A:And it's like they're missing out on so much.
Speaker A:I mean, so much.
Speaker A:But as far as Todd and I will tell him, if I think he's written 10,000 words where 2,000 would suffice.
Speaker A:You know, and he'll tell me when I've written something that's so superficial that you can.
Speaker A:That it's like Saran Wrap, you know.
Speaker C:When you think about it, Serrano was a pretty great invention, you know.
Speaker B:Well, you know, it's funny, as I was reading both of these, Fallen Star and Only Way out, or as you said, what was it?
Speaker B:Other.
Speaker C:Open All Night.
Speaker A:Open All Night.
Speaker A:I couldn't remember the name.
Speaker B:I don't even know where you come up with that.
Speaker A:But anyway, I knew it was three words.
Speaker B:So Fallen Star feels like.
Speaker B:And most of your work does feel this way?
Speaker B:Lee, it feels like I'm watching a television show.
Speaker B:And I said this to you last time we spoke.
Speaker B:And to me personally, that's one of the greatest compliments I could think of.
Speaker B:Because when I write, I do the same.
Speaker B:When I read, I want to.
Speaker B:I want to feel like I'm watching a movie.
Speaker B:And sometimes people who get really just verbose or too descriptive or go down rabbit holes that I think they think probably fits the story, but they don't.
Speaker B:I just want to go get cut to the chase.
Speaker B:So it was always fun.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying this is a criticism of Todd, but here's one way he and I are different as writers, which is I want my authorial voice to be not noticeable.
Speaker A:I mean, you'll hear my voice in the first paragraph or two of a book, but then I want my writing to disappear.
Speaker A:For you to get so caught up in what you're reading, you forget you're reading a book.
Speaker A:And I am afraid if I write something too clever or descriptive or funny in the description, it'll pull you out.
Speaker A:And I'm reading.
Speaker A:It'll feel written.
Speaker A:So my goal is to do what you just described.
Speaker A:I want people to read my books and get so caught up in it that it's like a TV show.
Speaker A:They're forgetting their reading and suddenly have to be reminded, oh, I'm holding a book in my hand or a Kindle in my hand.
Speaker A:And I want the pacing to be like television or a film.
Speaker A:So most of my books are dialogue and action driven.
Speaker A:Very little is moved by what a character is thinking or a ton of exposition.
Speaker A:If I have a clever phrase or observation and I can't put it in a character's mouth, I usually lose it.
Speaker A:And it's taken me a long time to develop that style.
Speaker A:And I credit Janet Ivanovich for helping me find that voice.
Speaker A:It's allowed me to write a people talk about my books moving very fast.
Speaker A:Even if they're 100,000 words, they think, oh, it moves so fast because I want it to have that energy.
Speaker A:And I can't dance and I can't sing, but I can feel the rhythm and pace of a book.
Speaker A:And every book I write has its own beat.
Speaker A:And I can't describe why, but I can tell when a piece of writing is not moving at that beat.
Speaker A:And once I know that beat, I can move.
Speaker A:I can write very fast, and I can't really articulate.
Speaker A:I can't point out a sentence why it has the beat or doesn't.
Speaker A:It's just something I feel internally.
Speaker A:And that comes from television because television has a beat and conflict and act breaks and, And I do structure my books like movies and TV shows.
Speaker A:I do write them in, in four acts or three acts with plot turns, everything that we as viewers have internalized over the years.
Speaker A:So it's not accidental.
Speaker A:And I do take it as a compliment that my books read as if they're movies or TV shows.
Speaker B:I think it was Ashes Never Lie.
Speaker B:Could that have been the last time we spoke?
Speaker B:It had to have been because we didn't speak over hidden in smoke.
Speaker B:I believe so.
Speaker B:My point being, I remember when I was reading Ashes Never Lie, and when you were describing it, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker B:All the work of reading disappeared.
Speaker B:And it was really weird.
Speaker B:Very few people can do that to where I'm, or I'm instantly 10 chapters in, and I kind of look up, I'm like, and I've lost track of time.
Speaker B:And I'm like, wow, that is, that's such a gift to be able to craft it that way.
Speaker B:And I think the secret comes back to.
Speaker B:And you just said it.
Speaker B:And it's one of the things I love the most about reading.
Speaker B:And Todd, you nailed this with such, such color is dialogue, just tons of dialogue.
Speaker B:Because when you think about it, what are we watching tv?
Speaker B:What are we watching movies for?
Speaker B:It's for the dialogue is to hear the characters interact with each other.
Speaker B:I don't need to, you know, I, I.
Speaker B:You don't have to paint the entire environment for me.
Speaker B:Just tell me.
Speaker B:We're in a hot car driving through the desert.
Speaker C:Got it right.
Speaker C:You know, though, I, you know, I, I think.
Speaker C:And Lee's right.
Speaker C:Like, where we tend to be a little different is I tend to be a bit more narrative than he is.
Speaker C:Lee's writing dialogue, action, dialogue, action, dialogue, action.
Speaker C:And I tend to because of the kinds of characters I write, which are a little bit different than Lee's.
Speaker C:I tend to want to explore the logic of why people do the things that they do.
Speaker C:And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that Lee sort of writes heroes and I write bad guys.
Speaker C:I write villains that are trying to be good.
Speaker C:Lee writes about good people trying to stop the kinds of characters that I.
Speaker A:Write about, except for my Ray Boyd stories.
Speaker C:Except for his Ray Boyd stories.
Speaker C:And so I think, you know, when I was writing the gangsterland books about the hitman who hides out as a rabbi, a lot of the joy readers got from that is understanding how this guy who's not a rabbi is teaching himself to think like a rabbi.
Speaker C:And there's no easy way to do that just in dialogue.
Speaker C:You know, some of it has to be.
Speaker C:He is thinking about the Talmud or the midrash or whatever in the new book, An Only Way out, you know, it's an intentionally faster style.
Speaker C:You know, I really wanted to write a straight up black comic noir, right?
Speaker C:And so it's a lot less interior.
Speaker C:But I still think that because I'm writing about bad people doing bad things to worse people, short of everyone seeming like a sociopath, I have to get into their heads a little bit more.
Speaker C:It's less than I have in previous books, but I still like.
Speaker C:My joy as a novelist is books are the only form where you actually get to go into someone else's head.
Speaker C:You can always hear someone else's dialogue in whatever form you're writing in.
Speaker C:But only fiction allows you to understand someone's logic.
Speaker C:And so to larger or lesser extents, in all the books I've written, there's been a larger interior element to it.
Speaker C:And some might call that literary.
Speaker C:Some might just say that I'm just a very thoughtful, considerate, empathetic man.
Speaker A:The pleasure of reading your books, Todd, is that it's written.
Speaker A:I mean, you take.
Speaker A:I take pleasure in the.
Speaker A:The construction of what you're saying.
Speaker A:And the most fun in Only Way out is the descriptions and the backstory.
Speaker A:And, you know, the way you're at the voice of the.
Speaker A:Of the narrator is so engaging.
Speaker A:Where the pleasure of that book is that I'm reading a book and it's really good.
Speaker A:You're.
Speaker A:I'm intentionally going for a different experience than you are, and there's great pleasures to be had in both.
Speaker C:And I think the other important thing is, you know, Lee writes mysteries.
Speaker C:I don't write mysteries.
Speaker C:I write crime novels.
Speaker C:You know, I write.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker C:You always know who's done everything in my books.
Speaker C:And it's about invariably the cat and mouse between, you know, different elements.
Speaker C:Lee's solving a crime, I'm doing a crime.
Speaker B:Right, right, right.
Speaker A:That's true.
Speaker B:I should know this.
Speaker B:Had you guys collaborated on a story together?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:The closest is Eight Very Bad Nights, the anthology that came out last year, I don't know if you've heard of it.
Speaker C:It's a nominee for the Anthony Award, one of the most prestigious awards given out at Bouchercon.
Speaker A:How many stories in that anthology, Todd, have won awards now or been nominated for awards?
Speaker C:So there's 11 stories in this anthology.
Speaker C:Three of them are in Best American Mystery and Suspense.
Speaker C:Two were up for the International Thriller Award.
Speaker C:So these stories got picked up by the.
Speaker A:Wasn't there two up for the Edgar?
Speaker C:No, none were up for the Edgar.
Speaker C:Oh, no, one.
Speaker C:One was up for the Edgar.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:I forgot about.
Speaker C:One was up for the Edgar.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:And one was up for a Thriller award, too.
Speaker C:Yeah, one was up for the Thriller award.
Speaker A:Which one got the Nobel Peace Prize?
Speaker C:You know, I said no to it because I wanted to be on the COVID of Time for my own work, right.
Speaker C:Not for everyone else's.
Speaker C:But in this case, I had sold this book to Soho Press.
Speaker C:Part of it was because I said, oh, look, you're going to have both Goldbergs in a book at the same time.
Speaker C:And they were very excited about it.
Speaker C:And then they said yes.
Speaker A:Then they read my story.
Speaker A:They weren't so excited.
Speaker C:Then I had to tell Lee, oh, by the way, I just sold a book and you're in it.
Speaker A:That's not how I found out Todd's.
Speaker A:Change the story a little bit.
Speaker A:I was at a conference and ran into his publisher who said how pleased she was that she was publishing me.
Speaker A:I went, you are.
Speaker A:She said, oh, yeah, you're in Todd's anthology.
Speaker A:I went, oh, right.
Speaker A:I forgot about that.
Speaker A:And I called Todd.
Speaker A:I go, what anthology?
Speaker A:He says, hanukkah stories.
Speaker A:I said, I don't have a Hanukkah story.
Speaker A:He said, I'll just write another Ray Boyd.
Speaker A:I said, he's a horrible individual.
Speaker A:It's full of sex and violence.
Speaker A:Well, that's the meaning of Hanukkah.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's true.
Speaker C:It's true.
Speaker C:But, you know, so Eight Very Bad Nights is the first time we, you know, really sort of collaborated creatively because I was his.
Speaker C:I was his editor, so I edited the story.
Speaker C:But to go back to something Lee had said earlier about sort of the, you know, the childhood ambitions that we get to share, I remember One night, very vividly, we were having dinner with Lauren's Block.
Speaker C:And I mean, this was a couple years ago, and Lee and Larry are good friends, and I've gotten to know.
Speaker A:More than a decade ago.
Speaker A:Todd.
Speaker C:Yeah, it was a while ago, but then, you know, Lawrence asked me to be in these anthologies, and he's asked Lee to be in these anthologies.
Speaker C:And what I've always admired about the anthologies that he's put together is he really sort of curates it.
Speaker C:Like he says, oh, I'm going to get these writers into this anthology.
Speaker C:And because of these writers, this book is really going to work in a way that they don't even know.
Speaker C:And so when I was putting together eight very bad nights and selecting the 10 writers that were going to be in it, I really was thinking about how Laurence Block would approach an anthology.
Speaker C:Oh, I want someone that does this.
Speaker C:I want someone that does this.
Speaker C:I want funny, I want weird, I want sad.
Speaker C:And so I was using this thing that I had learned from Lawrence Block, asking me to be in his anthologies and understanding how he did stuff.
Speaker C:And that just goes back to, like, us sitting in a restaurant talking to Lawrence Block and him talking about his life.
Speaker C:And I was aware of that moment as I was putting that book together.
Speaker C:What I wasn't aware of was that I'd have to edit three hardcore sex scenes out of my brother's short story.
Speaker A:Todd and I grew up reading and loving Lawrence Block.
Speaker A:So A, we'd be friends with him, or B, he'd ask us to contribute to, like, I don't write short stories.
Speaker A:That's Todd's thing.
Speaker A:I'm not a short story writer.
Speaker A:Lawrence Block asked me to contribute a short story to Anthology, and I don't write short stories.
Speaker A:I told him that.
Speaker A:He says, well, you'll write one for me.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:I called Todd and Todd said, bleep.
Speaker A:If Lawrence Block asks you to write a short story, you write a short story.
Speaker A:Write a short story.
Speaker A:So I wrote a short story, which he loved and that got mentioned in reviews of the book, is a great short story.
Speaker A:So I actually had a short story in my drawer that written years earlier and didn't know what to do with.
Speaker A:And it was called Ray Boyd Isn't Stupid.
Speaker A:It was sort of my attempt to, like, play with the trope of Postman Always Drinks Twice in Body Heat, about these idiot guys who only think below the waist and get into idiotic trouble.
Speaker A:And I sent it to Lawrence Block, and he said, this is fantastic.
Speaker A:I love this.
Speaker A:You have to write a sequel I said, yeah, what do I do with this story?
Speaker A:He said, I don't know, but you have to write a sequel.
Speaker A:So I write a sequel.
Speaker A:And he reads the sequel and he says, this is great.
Speaker A:You need to write another one.
Speaker A:I said, what am I gonna do with these?
Speaker A:I don't care.
Speaker A:Just write them for me.
Speaker A:I'm not gonna write them for you.
Speaker A:He said, well, if you keep writing them, you have a book someday.
Speaker A:I said, I've got books.
Speaker A:And it was Todd who pulled me out to write a third one of these Ray Boyd stories for Eight Very Bad Nights.
Speaker A:And I've been surprised by how readers have embraced this character.
Speaker A:I'm now actually talking to my agent about doing a collection of linked novellas with this character.
Speaker A:But it goes.
Speaker A:It's so different than anything I've ever done.
Speaker A:And I have Lawrence Block to thank for it.
Speaker A:I mean, Lawrence Block encouraged me and.
Speaker C:Then to pull it all together.
Speaker C:Dave to the Family is.
Speaker C:I then received Lee's short story.
Speaker C:And so I told Lee, Hey, 25 pages, 7,000 words, really?
Speaker C:No more than that.
Speaker C:He sends me a 45 page, 14,000 word short story with not one, not two, but three at the time.
Speaker C:Sex scenes that violated both the laws of Utah.
Speaker A:Physics.
Speaker A:Physics, morality.
Speaker C:And my desires as his brother to know that he knew these things.
Speaker C:What I then did almost immediately was call my sisters and be like, listen to what Lee just wrote.
Speaker C:And then read them this.
Speaker A:You read them aloud to my sisters?
Speaker C:I read them aloud and my wife was on the other side of the house and she's like, what the fuck are you reading?
Speaker C:And I was like, oh, let me send it to you.
Speaker C:It's the.
Speaker C:It's the erotic styling of Lee Goldberg.
Speaker A:She goes, I cannot believe she's French.
Speaker A:I cannot believe you're the men are married.
Speaker A:You're a sickening pervert.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:How can you have these evil thoughts?
Speaker A:You know, what's wrong with you?
Speaker C:And the wonderful thing, though, is when the reviews came out, like, you know, I'd go on Goodreads to see what people were saying about the book, and they wouldn't even mention all the stories.
Speaker C:They'd be like, you know, a lot.
Speaker A:Of this was good.
Speaker C:Some of this was straight up pornography.
Speaker C:And I'd be like, well, let me clip that and send that to Lee.
Speaker A:And yet the LA Times singled the book.
Speaker A:They loved it out.
Speaker A:Several critics actually singled out that short story as a great one.
Speaker C:It's a great short story.
Speaker C:I think the thing that's amusing is because Lee has all these Ardent fans.
Speaker C:He's written all these very, very popular books.
Speaker C:They don't understand like the dimensions of the work that he does.
Speaker C:And so when he writes these short stories that fit right into sort of standard contemporary.
Speaker C:Scott Phillips, like noir, Jim Thompson noir.
Speaker C:It is a classic noir story.
Speaker C:They're expecting at some point sort of a more cozy turn or a more law abiding turn.
Speaker C:And Lee's like, no, these people are going to have anal sex until they pay.
Speaker A:My hero's not my protagonist.
Speaker A:Not going to rescue the woman in trouble.
Speaker A:He's going to let her get carved into pieces.
Speaker B:Oh my God.
Speaker C:And like.
Speaker C:And that's what I like to read.
Speaker B:Well, I just want to go back and say, for the record, Lawrence Block.
Speaker B:I was reading Lawrence Block when I guess I was in college.
Speaker B:Something about his style captivated my brain.
Speaker B:Bernie Rodenbar, the way that he could write the mystery of the break in of the burglary but still have so much humor.
Speaker B:I'm like, I don't know who this guy.
Speaker B:I mean I was.
Speaker A:But he also, while he was doing that, he was writing hardcore porn under a different name.
Speaker A:He was, he is, I'm not joking, he is one of the most successful lesbian writers in American literary history.
Speaker A:What reveal when that one of the most influential lesbian writers was actually Lawrence Block writing under a woman's name in the 50s and early 60s.
Speaker A:And the lesbian community is okay with that because the books were like really good.
Speaker A:I mean, he has a really dark side and he published, no, not long ago, about a serial killer who's very tempted to murder his own family.
Speaker A:He has a.
Speaker A:But he still has the humor that you associate with Lawrence Block.
Speaker A:I mean, it's interesting people.
Speaker A:Ellery Queen, for some reason, Ellery Queen Mystery magazine gave me a five star review for the short stories that we're talking about now.
Speaker A:They're so hard edged, but they say it's still Lee, which is, you know, my voice still comes through, even though it's a different, different genre.
Speaker A:I think a lot of authors that Todd and I admire are the ones who can shift between genres and still tell stories in their unique voice.
Speaker A:I mean, right now I'm really enjoying Stephen King's police procedurals.
Speaker A:He can write a really good police procedural.
Speaker B:Wow, give me the name of that one.
Speaker A:Well, there's the outsider, there's Holly Mercedes, Holly Gibney are essentially police procedurals.
Speaker A:He did a book called Billy Summers about a hitman.
Speaker A:Has nothing supernatural in it at all.
Speaker C:Really good book.
Speaker A:Holly has nothing supernatural in it at all it's just a straightforward police procedural and it's excellent.
Speaker C:Lost the Hammett Prize to Stephen King one year, and I was like, well, what are you gonna do?
Speaker C:Yeah, you lose to Stephen King's.
Speaker B:It's fine.
Speaker C:It's fine.
Speaker B:Hey, give me the title of that really sick one from block.
Speaker B:The last one who.
Speaker A:I'll have to look it up.
Speaker C:The name of the really sick one.
Speaker A:I will do something I don't usually do on podcasts.
Speaker A:I will.
Speaker A:You talk among yourselves.
Speaker A:I'll go online and Lee and do.
Speaker C:Some research while we talk.
Speaker C:This is my chance to reveal secrets about Lee.
Speaker B:Well, Todd, tell me this.
Speaker B:Is there anything.
Speaker B:And we may have touched this before, and you're living a lot of your dream.
Speaker B:Not to be cliche, but I'm absolutely living my dreams.
Speaker B:Are there things, Todd, that you go, you in your quiet moments when you're just in between classes or writing, where you go, you know what?
Speaker B:Before I leave this place, I want to do blank for sure.
Speaker C:For sure.
Speaker C:I mean, outside of, you know, playing quarterback for the Raiders or first base for the Oakland Days, who now live in Sacramento or Las Vegas, and that those don't seem tangible.
Speaker C:But, you know, I think anyone that's creative always has a carrot dangling in front of them, you know, so the easiest thing to say is, oh, I just want to get better.
Speaker C:You know, I want to continue to get better, but, you know, I'd like to see, you know, I haven't spent a lot of my career focusing on TV and creating TV shows like Lee did.
Speaker C:I knew that I wanted to write like I did.
Speaker A:I still do it like he does.
Speaker C:I'm not finished early in his career, like, that was his goal.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And that wasn't my goal.
Speaker C:But as I've gotten older and TV has sort of morphed into the kind of things that I write, specifically the desire to have a TV show that I create or that I play a big role in that that's become a larger thing.
Speaker C:I've had the champagne problem of time, which is, you know, I write a new book that comes out every 18 months and where Lee is putting out, you know, more books because that's his full time job.
Speaker C:Like, for me, that's the perfect sort of timeline for me to do the other things that I do, to run an MFA program, to write nonfiction, things like that.
Speaker C:But now that my pace has maybe slowed a little bit because I've been working on some TV stuff that didn't show up on screens, you know, all these things Seem more possible.
Speaker C:But, you know, I think the dream that we both had as young people and that we.
Speaker C:The reason we get up in the morning every day is like, I. I just want to go out there and tell great stories and have people enjoy them on a.
Speaker C:On a daily basis.
Speaker C:I remember this was a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago.
Speaker C:I was moping around my backyard, upset about some perceived injustice, and my wife came out and she was like, what do you.
Speaker C:What are you pissed off about?
Speaker C:I don't remember what it was I was angry about.
Speaker C:And she was like, let me ask you a question.
Speaker C:I said, okay.
Speaker C:And she's like, have you achieved every dream you've ever had?
Speaker C:And I was like, yes.
Speaker C:She's like, you haven't received a bad review of one of your books since when?
Speaker C: And it was like,: Speaker C:She's like, you have a graduate school that you created in your own image, right?
Speaker C:And they compensate you for it.
Speaker C:I was like, yes.
Speaker C:And she was like, what else?
Speaker C:What more do you want with your career than what you have?
Speaker C:And it was so, like, it's such a simple conversation to have, right?
Speaker C:But it's that.
Speaker C:Get beyond your own ego and your own shit and realize, like, oh, my God, I've been.
Speaker C:I've done it.
Speaker C:And, like, find more joy in the things that I do.
Speaker C:And that was that moment where I really was like, I am going to take joy in every creative experience, that what I'm feeling is not anxiety.
Speaker C:What I'm feeling is excitement.
Speaker C:And to sort of shift that paradigm in my mind of, oh, I'm nervous about this.
Speaker C:No, no, I'm not nervous.
Speaker C:I'm excited.
Speaker C:And to grasp all these opportunities as like, hey, this is a great fucking thing.
Speaker C:Like, if I stopped doing this right now, I would have had one of the great careers in novel writing.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C:Fantastic.
Speaker C:I could stop and be content.
Speaker C:I do it because I love it.
Speaker C:I do it because I want to do it.
Speaker C:And to come from that position of joy stops me from striving for things out of ego.
Speaker C:And instead of striving for things out.
Speaker A:Of creative fulfillment, I mean, I'm literally doing what I was doing when I was 10 years old.
Speaker A:I am sitting here writing stories while listening to movie and TV soundtracks.
Speaker A:I'm doing exactly what I dreamed of when I was a kid.
Speaker A:Literally what Todd said.
Speaker A:Every single one of my dreams has come true.
Speaker A:I have my health.
Speaker A:I have a wonderful family, been married for 35 years.
Speaker A:I write books.
Speaker A:I have TV shows.
Speaker A:I mean, I have nothing to complain about.
Speaker A:But I'm also, like Todd, one of the rare people who knew from childhood exactly what I wanted to do and what I wanted to achieve.
Speaker A:And I did it.
Speaker A:And I don't know how I did it, but I did it.
Speaker A:And I'm so lucky to be able to be writing books and TV shows.
Speaker A:But if I had to stop tomorrow, like Todd, I could look back and say, Well, I wrote 50 books and produced thousands of hours of television.
Speaker A:I've created my own TV series.
Speaker A:I've.
Speaker A:I've met almost everybody that I've admired, everyone I wished I could work with or wished I could meet.
Speaker A:I mean, I wanted to meet everyone who played James Bond.
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker A:I wanted to meet the people who wrote the James Bond movies.
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker A:You know, I wanted to someday meet Steve Cannell.
Speaker A:Not only did I meet him, I worked for him and I hired him.
Speaker A:You know, these things.
Speaker A:There was a moment when Todd and I were sitting at the LA Times Festival of Books and we went up very nervously to Donald Westlake just to say how much we admired him.
Speaker A:He said, sit down.
Speaker A:And we spent three hours talking to Donald Westlake about.
Speaker A:And he talked to us like we were colleagues.
Speaker A:And he talked about writing and books and Hollywood.
Speaker A:It was wonderful.
Speaker A:And I've had that experience so many times.
Speaker A:So, yes, Todd and I have absolutely nothing to.
Speaker A:I think one reason we're so good humored is we've been so fortunate.
Speaker A:Yeah, We've achieved everything we want to achieve.
Speaker A:We don't envy somebody else's success.
Speaker A:So we can help people come up.
Speaker A:I never look at giving advice to somebody else or helping somebody else means it's going to take away from my own work.
Speaker A:Oh, if I help this person sell a book, then my book's not going to sell.
Speaker A:It's the opposite of way things are in tv, where it's dog eat dog and showrunners don't associate with staff writers.
Speaker A:And there's none of that in the book world, at least not in the crime genre.
Speaker A:I don't know about literary fiction.
Speaker C:Well, I mean, this is such a.
Speaker A:Dead Girl Blues was the name of that long ago.
Speaker C:Yes, Dead Girl Blues.
Speaker C:The thing about the crime writing community is surely, you know, Dave, from talking to all of us on such a regular basis, is all of us were picked last to kickball.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And so there is, you know, all of us had ripe fantasy lives of how we were going to crush the people that held us down as young people.
Speaker C:And what it does, particularly in the community in Southern California, is literally every crime Writer knows each other, we all know each other, and we all do events with each other, and we all help each other out.
Speaker C:You know, you could pick up the phone at any time and call, you know, some of the biggest names in crime writing in Southern California, and they're going to pick up and they're going to talk to you.
Speaker C:And it's not like that in the literary fiction world, because when I was younger, I was in that world, too.
Speaker C:And in that world, everyone is striving for the one thing.
Speaker C:Like, oh, there's one thing.
Speaker C:I will kill another person for that one thing.
Speaker C:Whatever that one thing may be, whatever it is, the tenured job, the one literary book that they're gonna pay six figures for.
Speaker C:But that's not the way it is in crime fiction.
Speaker C:We will all talk shit about each other on an equal basis at any given time.
Speaker C:Yeah, Ivy Pakota and I were just texting mere moments before the show about someone we both hate.
Speaker A:Oh, that's.
Speaker A:You just talk about how warm and open and camaraderie filled the community is.
Speaker A:And now you.
Speaker A:You just torpedoed it, Todd.
Speaker C:Well, it doesn't mean we don't.
Speaker C:We don't.
Speaker C:We don't have petty.
Speaker A:We all talk about who we hate and who we want to see fail.
Speaker A:You just want them with everything.
Speaker C:We don't want them to fail.
Speaker A:We just.
Speaker C:We just don't want them to succeed.
Speaker A:You are excommunicated from the mystery industrial complex.
Speaker A:There's a couple things I want to.
Speaker B:Say because you guys went on a long tangent.
Speaker B:I just want to say.
Speaker B:Scoot these in.
Speaker B:And Todd, I hope that I'm going to hear some of your good news.
Speaker B:I think that Gangsterland series has to be a television streaming series that's just from me to you.
Speaker C:I believe it will be.
Speaker C:So that's good.
Speaker C:I've got a great.
Speaker C: years ago, January of: Speaker C: to start casting in March of: Speaker C: n't know if you guys remember: Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah, we'd like to forget it.
Speaker C:The people that were running that show with me all ran Bosch.
Speaker C:And what Amazon did is they re upped Bosch instead of making that show.
Speaker C:But where the Gangsterland series is now.
Speaker C:Great team at a great streaming platform and network that I'm very excited about and I'll be as involved as I possibly can with that.
Speaker A:Interesting how our lives keep co mingling with Michael Connelly and his universe.
Speaker A:I've got Madison Lynch.
Speaker A:Michael gave me that wonderful blurb for Lost Hills.
Speaker A:It's so weird how.
Speaker A:But I guess also because the fiction community, crime fiction community is so intertwined as well.
Speaker B:Well, if you guys, either one of you, could do me a favor, it would be a real solid.
Speaker B:And that is, I would love to get Michael Conley on the show.
Speaker B:There's very few people I have yet to get that I really want on the show.
Speaker B:And I've been a Bosch fan since day one.
Speaker B:And I'm so excited to see what your new cohort does with Eve Ronan.
Speaker B:I think Madison is.
Speaker C:She's gonna be great.
Speaker B:She's a hidden little.
Speaker C:She's born for it.
Speaker B:The fact that she can EP on it as well is super sorry to find out.
Speaker A:She was a fan of the books and was aware of them and.
Speaker A:And in a way, it was like she was hoping for that call.
Speaker A:Would you be interested in Eve Ronin?
Speaker A:Are you kidding?
Speaker A:I've read every book.
Speaker A:I mean, she.
Speaker A:She already seen herself as Eve Ronin.
Speaker C:The amazing thing too is she is a doppelganger for Lee's daughter.
Speaker A:She is.
Speaker A:Who's also named Madison, by the way.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Which is very strange.
Speaker B:God, that is.
Speaker A:And Michael Connelly's daughter is also named Maddie, so there's a lot of Maddie's out there.
Speaker B:All right, well, a congratulations to both of you, Todd.
Speaker B:I'd love to see gangster land happen.
Speaker B:I can't wait to see Madison and Eve Ronan, I want to say.
Speaker B:Also great praise.
Speaker B:I was reading some praise for you, Todd.
Speaker B:Stephen Graham Jones calling.
Speaker B:Likening you to an inheritor of Elmore Leonard.
Speaker B:I mean, one of my favorite authors of all time.
Speaker C:Mine too.
Speaker B:Ivy Pakota again, since you mentioned.
Speaker B:Praises its sharp, strange and unexpectedly moving mix of crime and human longing.
Speaker B:And then Stephen Khan Coley.
Speaker B:Am I saying that right?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Applauds the characters that exquisitely drawn tragic.
Speaker B:Calling it a reinvention of the noir gen folks.
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker B:That is.
Speaker C:I just.
Speaker C:I'm basically sort of the Einstein of.
Speaker C:Of crime fiction.
Speaker C:I just.
Speaker B:Einstein formulas.
Speaker B:Hadn't really thought of it that way, but I can see where you're going.
Speaker C:Jewish.
Speaker B:Jewish.
Speaker A:Sure, sure.
Speaker B:Lee, that would make you what?
Speaker B:Of mystery.
Speaker C:Oppenheimer.
Speaker C:Of mystery.
Speaker B:Oppenheimer.
Speaker B:Oppenheimer.
Speaker A:Excellent.
Speaker A:I think myself as the Brad Pitt of mystery.
Speaker A:Huh.
Speaker B:I don't see that.
Speaker B:But I'm way.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:First you call me old and fat.
Speaker A:Now you don't see me as the Brad Pitt of mystery.
Speaker A:Do just come on this show to.
Speaker C:Be Brad Dorf of mystery fiction.
Speaker B:Which give me real quick before we scoot out of here.
Speaker B:Give me a movie that either one of you have seen a favorite this summertime that you're like, you know, I.
Speaker A:Just watched that weird sort of John.
Speaker C:Le Carre type film that Steven Soderbergh did.
Speaker A:Oh, yes, yes, I. I agree with that one.
Speaker A:The bag.
Speaker A:The black bag.
Speaker A:Brown bag.
Speaker A:Brown bag.
Speaker B:It was a brown bag or black bag?
Speaker A:Black bag.
Speaker A:I think it's terrific.
Speaker A:It's like a really good play about espionage.
Speaker A:It's excellent.
Speaker C:It's really.
Speaker C:It's like a two hander, basically, with several other hands.
Speaker C:But it's really good.
Speaker C:It's shot beautifully, well acted.
Speaker C:Michael Fassbender.
Speaker B:And he's the hitman who is off his mark, right?
Speaker A:Who's tasked with finding a mole in the agency that's likely his wife.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And then a larger mystery unfolds.
Speaker C:But it's.
Speaker A:And as unlikable and cold as Michael Fassbender usually is, it works for him in this movie as opposed to the Agency, which is a terrible adaptation of a brilliant French spy show called the Bureau.
Speaker C:What I love about all Michael Fassbender films and TV shows is the scene where they have him jogging through an empty city street.
Speaker C:Everything he's ever made, including the Alien movies.
Speaker C:There's a scene where he runs at night through a city street.
Speaker B:Oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker C:I'm gonna do a super cut of it, put it on YouTube, make a million.
Speaker B:Nice, nice.
Speaker C:You know what I've been watching lately, though?
Speaker C:That's good.
Speaker C:I don't know if either of you are familiar with it.
Speaker C:It's a show called Revival.
Speaker C:Oh, about the dead people?
Speaker C:Yeah, A town.
Speaker C:It's basically a parable of the pandemic where on one day everyone who died comes back to life that died on a certain date.
Speaker C:And so an entire little city is quarantined from the revivals.
Speaker C:That's what they call the dead people.
Speaker C:And it is funny and weird and smart.
Speaker C:And unfortunately, they release new episodes every week as though it's like a real TV show and you can't watch 13 hours at one time.
Speaker C:And so tonight, in fact, I'm popping the corn and watching episode eight of Revivals.
Speaker B:There's so much good stuff to look up here, kids.
Speaker B:This is great.
Speaker B:I got a front row seat to all this stuff.
Speaker B:Stuff TV series.
Speaker B:Since we're on this topic and.
Speaker B:And this made me think of you, Todd.
Speaker B:Was it?
Speaker B:And it was.
Speaker B:We so enjoyed it.
Speaker B:We turned right around and watched it again.
Speaker B:Two more times in a row.
Speaker B:And that's Mobland with Pierce Brosnan for some reason.
Speaker B:I think it's a combination of the way it's shot.
Speaker B:Feels kind of David Fincher esque.
Speaker B:And then it has the soundtrack that's just.
Speaker B:I wake up every morning singing that opening song.
Speaker B:And then you got Helen Mirren, who is just delicious in this particular role, and Tom Hardy.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:But Tom Hardy is my favorite.
Speaker B:What he can do with nothing.
Speaker B:I've never seen anybody do more with nothing than I think him in this series.
Speaker C:So, interestingly enough, many, many years ago, after the first Gangsterland book came out, the makers of Peaky Blinders optioned it with the idea of Tom Hardy, who played a Jewish guy in Peaky Blinders, possibly being the rabbi David Cohen.
Speaker C:But as all things fell apart.
Speaker C:But I was like, he'd be great, except he does not look at all like someone that could play a Jewish person convincingly.
Speaker A:That's the thing about Mobland, you know, it began as a spin off of Ray Donovan.
Speaker A:It was going to be set in the uk and then it evolved away from Ray Donovan.
Speaker A:They must have paid money because it's.
Speaker A:Everyone knows it was Ray Donovan.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:So, like, the Pit began as a continuation of ER until they couldn't make a deal with the Crichton estate and suddenly became something else.
Speaker C:They're going to be making it again, though, I assure you.
Speaker A:By the way, there's another great show, the Pit.
Speaker A:Absolutely love it.
Speaker B:Absolutely it.
Speaker B:You can't.
Speaker B:You can't look away.
Speaker A:Love that show.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:And it feels exactly like er.
Speaker A:I don't know how this happened, but I stumbled down the Ben Casey rabbit hole on YouTube.
Speaker C:He's great.
Speaker A: This is a medical show from: Speaker B:Oh, yeah, right.
Speaker A:Over 60 years old with Vince Edwards playing a doctor that makes Dr. House seem lovable.
Speaker A:He is the most unlikable asshole doctor.
Speaker A:And it's great.
Speaker A:It's the first two seasons and it's all written and directed by future Oscar award winning screenwriters and directors and all the big actors.
Speaker A:Like, of course, now they're all escaping my head.
Speaker A:But all the big feature movie stars were doing parts in Ben Casey, you know, James Caan and Gene Hackman and all these people that you'd never expect to see in a TV show.
Speaker A:It's brilliant.
Speaker A:Absolutely brilliant and as edgy and well written today.
Speaker A:I mean, it's very contemporary.
Speaker A:Even though the medical procedures are all, you know, archaic and scary.
Speaker C:That should do it.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Leeches.
Speaker A:Let's bring out the leeches, smoke and have a cocktail.
Speaker C:We should trap pan you if you want to feel better.
Speaker B:As we wrap.
Speaker B:I always ask what's best writing advice, but I'm going to switch that up on its head a little bit.
Speaker B:And I want to go, I want to say it this way, and I want this from both of you.
Speaker B:What is the best advice anyone has ever given you?
Speaker B:And let's.
Speaker B:Let's tailor it specifically to this world of writing, whether it's tv, film, very simple.
Speaker A:The best advice I got.
Speaker A:And it's super simple.
Speaker A:It almost seems like, breathe.
Speaker A:Writers write.
Speaker A:You write.
Speaker A:Even if it's crap, you write because you can always rewrite what you've written.
Speaker A:You can't rewrite a blank page.
Speaker A:You write, writers write.
Speaker A:And also writers read.
Speaker A:If you want to write, you need to read.
Speaker A:You need to.
Speaker A:You can learn as much from a good book as you can from a bad book.
Speaker A:And same for tv.
Speaker A:If you want to write for tv, you have to watch TV at that point.
Speaker B:I think some of the best way to learn how to write, for instance, which is both of Yalls specialty, is to just watch really great television.
Speaker B:Like we're watching Diplomat for the third time in a row.
Speaker A:Fantastic show.
Speaker B:Because the writing is so good.
Speaker B:I'm just like, every time I watch it, I go, how does she do this?
Speaker B:And I'd love to pull up.
Speaker A:But also, what's great about this show is it's not.
Speaker A:You think it's a drama, then it becomes a wild comedy, then it's a drama, then it's tonally, it's all over, and yet it somehow works.
Speaker A:It's brilliant.
Speaker A:But you can.
Speaker A:You talk about dialogue.
Speaker A:One lesson I was taught by Richard Walter when I was taking a screenwriting course at ucla, is that your goal is not to write the way people talk.
Speaker A:Because the way people talk is boring and it's ungrammatical and sentences don't finish and all that.
Speaker A:You need to write elevated dialogue.
Speaker A:You need to write dialogue that will entertain and reveal things about the human condition and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:But it has to be special.
Speaker A:It has to be worth reading or worth seeing.
Speaker A:And so you can't just write the way people talk because it's going to be really boring and it's not going to engage.
Speaker A:So what you're talking about is great dialogue.
Speaker A:It's actually just great entertainment.
Speaker A:It doesn't have.
Speaker A:People don't talk the way Aaron Sorkin writes.
Speaker A:They don't talk the way Taylor Sheridan writes.
Speaker A:They don't talk the way people Todd And I write, you have to develop your own voice.
Speaker C:For me, I always think that dialogue really is about an expression of logic, like understanding how a person thinks.
Speaker C:Because dialogue for me is always the subtext.
Speaker C:You're revealing something by saying the opposite of it or whatever.
Speaker C:But in terms of the best advice I ever got, it actually came from Donald Wesley on the day that Lee and I spent with him at the LA Times Festival Books.
Speaker C:I had interviewed him in front of a big audience and we were walking out and we were talking and I was having a bad year.
Speaker C:I had written a book I couldn't sell.
Speaker C:I mean, this was over 20 years ago.
Speaker C:I'd written a book I couldn't sell.
Speaker C:I didn't sort of know who I was as a writer.
Speaker C:I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker C:And he had said, oh, you know, what are you working on?
Speaker C:What's going on with you?
Speaker C:And I was like, yeah, I wrote something that didn't work and I could never get around it, just.
Speaker C:And I was like, you know, I'm having a real hard time with endings.
Speaker C:And I was like, how do you know when a story is over?
Speaker C:A scene is over?
Speaker C:And he said, I know a story is over, a scene is over, a book is over, a script is over when the reader could write the next page.
Speaker C:And it's really simple sounding advice, but when you apply it practically to your work, it's like, oh, right, you have to do something strange and something beautiful on every single page to keep the reader off center or else they're always going to be able to predict what you do.
Speaker C:And for me, that really taught me to not write to the point of exhaustion.
Speaker C:It taught me to leave scenes when I'm hot because the reader is not going to know what's going to happen next.
Speaker C:And that really was sort of like a profound piece of advice that he gave me that changed the way I write and changed the way I approach writing on sort of a day to day basis.
Speaker C:But then also, like, I have a little note on a corkboard over here.
Speaker C:It's a Stephen Sondheim quote.
Speaker C:And I don't know if you're expecting me to quote Sondheim today, but Stephen Sondheim said content dictates form.
Speaker C:And the reason I have that posted up on my cork board is it stops me from being a pretentious literary writer sometimes.
Speaker C:And it reminds me of the content that I'm writing deserves a certain kind of form.
Speaker C:And that form is X, Y or Z, whatever it might be.
Speaker C:And it's Just a simple reminder to get out of my head, be with the story.
Speaker C:You know, understand that what I'm doing is about the content itself.
Speaker C:And those are just like.
Speaker C:They're simple little things, but on applied on a day to day basis as a writer, really provide strong benchmarks for you to get through the day.
Speaker A:I just thought of two other key pieces of advice I got.
Speaker A:Steve Cannell told me, every scene has to reveal character or move the story forward.
Speaker A:Every saint, everything.
Speaker A:Move the story forward has to go.
Speaker A:The other key piece of advice I got from Michael Gleason, who created Remington Steele.
Speaker A:Whether you're writing a comedy or a drama, every scene has to have conflict.
Speaker A:If there is no conflict in the scene, it's not a scene.
Speaker A:And Steve Cannell kind of added to that.
Speaker A:He said, when you're in a scene, you have to assume that every character has a different goal and they had a different idea of what was going to happen in that moment.
Speaker A:Like, he had to write Adam 12 when he first started out.
Speaker A:And the way into it was he had to establish a character right away in the first two lines of dialogue.
Speaker A:It's only a half hour show.
Speaker A:So when Reed and Malloy would go to the door, Ken always asked himself, what is the person behind the door planning to do today?
Speaker A:What were they in middle of?
Speaker A:What is their attitude?
Speaker A:Because the last thing they expected was two uniformed police officers to show up at their door.
Speaker A:So how is this messing up their day or messing up their own goals?
Speaker A:And that creates a natural conflict.
Speaker A:But the other one that he had is never think of a bad guy as a bad guy.
Speaker A:Always look at your story, flip it and say, what if the bad guy is the hero of the story?
Speaker C:Because he's how I write.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And no one wakes up in the morning going, I will go take over the world and do evil.
Speaker C:Stephen Miller.
Speaker A:Stephen Miller, he does.
Speaker A:He is evil.
Speaker A:But not to get political on a show based in Orange county, but.
Speaker A:Or San Diego County.
Speaker A:You threw me right off, Todd.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Villains and shows.
Speaker C:Villains think they're the hero of their own story.
Speaker A:You have to think of what do they want.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:They aren't always thinking about the detective or the crime they've committed.
Speaker A:They're thinking about their.
Speaker A:I mean, this is why the Sopranos are so good.
Speaker A:They're thinking about their mortgage, their wives, what they're gonna eat, why do I have gas, you know, all this stuff.
Speaker A:They're human beings.
Speaker A:So if you think of them that way, when you go into each scene, what is the bad guy?
Speaker A:Don't even think of the bad guy.
Speaker A:What is the this guy want?
Speaker A:And what does the protagonist want?
Speaker A:And how will those sparks create either humor or conflict?
Speaker A:And if they don't do that, if they don't reveal character and they don't move the story forward, you cut it.
Speaker A:And too many new writers, and I see it because I have a publishing company and I get a dozen submissions a day, don't understand that simple rule that there should be a purpose to the scene.
Speaker A:You don't front load with exposition.
Speaker A:You don't do info dumps.
Speaker A:You let but exposition come out organically through action and dialogue.
Speaker C:The way I always think about it is contested territory.
Speaker C:That in every single scene There is about 10 square feet of contested territory, and someone is going to kill the other person to get the majority of those 10ft.
Speaker C:And when I talk to young writers or my students, I always talk about that with them.
Speaker C:It's like, and this is something that I probably learned from Lee about, like, hey, there's gotta be motivation in every single scene.
Speaker C:But it's like, what are you willing to do for those 10ft?
Speaker C:What is your character willing to do for that territory that they want?
Speaker C:That every story is a little war, you know?
Speaker C:And oftentimes just saying those things to a writer who's having problems with their work crystallizes it in a way that they can understand.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:There's something that each person wants and something each person needs.
Speaker C:What are they going to do to get that?
Speaker A:You can point to a scene and ask a writer, tell me what the conflict is in this scene.
Speaker A:What does each person want?
Speaker A:How does this scene reveal character or move the story forward?
Speaker A:If they can't tell you, then that's it.
Speaker A:You know who does brilliantly?
Speaker A:The thing you said about a contested space, whether you like him or not, Taylor Sheridan is brilliant at having every scene rippling with conflict.
Speaker A:Now, sometimes he has to get ridiculous to do it, but he's brilliant at that.
Speaker A:You sense immediately what each person is willing to do for their contested piece of land, literally his land in many of his shows.
Speaker A:But still the conflict in every single one of his scenes is palpable.
Speaker C:And he was never better doing this than in Hell or High Water.
Speaker C:Like that is.
Speaker C:Oh my God, that movie.
Speaker C:I can watch that over and over and over again just to get to that last scene, which I know what's going to happen in it.
Speaker C:And here's a great example of if the reader can write the next page, you're done.
Speaker C:Well, the reader can write the Next page.
Speaker C:At the end of that story, they can imagine what might happen next.
Speaker C:But you're still left wondering.
Speaker C:I love that movie.
Speaker C:And it's also.
Speaker C:It does that thing that he has become more ham fisted about, which is it's talking about a cultural issue, it's talking about a social issue, and it's bringing it down, boiling us down to the character level, which is another sort of big thing that I think we do as crime writers is we.
Speaker C:We sort of examine bad things in.
Speaker C:In the world and look at them on a personal level.
Speaker C:But he does essentially the mortgage crisis and the banking crisis and the end of, you know, ranching in America and boils it down to three people.
Speaker C:And it's such a.
Speaker C:It's such a wonderful, tight script and great movie.
Speaker C:And Jeff Bridges was never better than he was in that role.
Speaker B:I was gonna say that the two of my favorite things Jeff Bridges was going through my head was that one.
Speaker B:And, and, and Lee, you mentioned this earlier.
Speaker B:You referenced old.
Speaker B:The old man.
Speaker B:I just thought that particular role for him was.
Speaker B:I, I did not want that show to stop.
Speaker A:I wasn't a fan of season two, but season one had some of the best fight scenes I have ever seen on film.
Speaker A:And I would argue that Taylor Sheridan in Wind river had one of the best shootout.
Speaker C:Shootout, yeah.
Speaker A:Ever captured on film.
Speaker A:He had a couple in Yellowstone that were pretty amazing as well.
Speaker C:The one one river, when they're in a circle shooting each other.
Speaker C:It's one of the greatest shootouts ever.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:Love that scene.
Speaker B:I got plenty of homework to do, thanks to.
Speaker A:There's the scene that if I were teaching screenwriting.
Speaker A:There's a scene when I was teaching screenwriting, used all the time was a brilliant scene from the Wire where two guys are at an old crime scene going through a cold case and the only word they use is the F word.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's all communicated through action.
Speaker A:And it's a brilliant scene.
Speaker A:And there's a scene like that in Wind in Hell or High Water where Jeff Bridges and the Indian cop go to a restaurant and they have to order lunch from this waitress.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:And it's so simple and yet it reveals so much about her character, about them, about the place.
Speaker A:It's perfection and it's funny.
Speaker A:I would use that scene as a example.
Speaker C:Yeah, they order steaks.
Speaker A:What are you not gonna have?
Speaker A:Excuse me?
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:What are you not gonna have?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Well, guys, I have a feeling we could probably go for another hour, but we have other things to Do.
Speaker B:But thank you so much for this.
Speaker B:I mean, it's always so much fun.
Speaker B:It's like I just kick back.
Speaker B:It's like the only thing missing is big old bucket of popcorn.
Speaker C:I could go for some chicken, frankly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so we know that we have TV series in the making.
Speaker B:We've got books in the making.
Speaker B:Now, Todd, you mentioned something.
Speaker B:Your book has gotten bounced to December.
Speaker B:So it's not November, which is on the galley.
Speaker C:That's correct.
Speaker C:It's not.
Speaker C:Well, it's not November for everybody.
Speaker C:It's in December for everybody.
Speaker A:He's being sly.
Speaker B:Yeah, I always know.
Speaker B:I know the expression of his sly when he gets to doing it.
Speaker A:My book comes out in October.
Speaker A:I think It's Tuesday the 14th or something.
Speaker B:14 14th.
Speaker A:I was close.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:The cool thing is that Lee and I will have books out at the same time, essentially, which only happens once every five years or so that we end up on the same publishing schedule.
Speaker A:Oh, we had a lot of fun.
Speaker A:Well, I had Calico out at the same time.
Speaker A:You had.
Speaker C:One of your pictures, don't die.
Speaker A:Yeah, we were able to.
Speaker A:A bunch of events together.
Speaker A:So I have Fallen star coming out October 14th, 12th, which you.
Speaker A:I can't remember.
Speaker B: Now you've confused: Speaker A:Another book coming out, I believe in June called Murder by Design.
Speaker A:And then I don't know what's coming after that.
Speaker A:I have to figure out what I'm writing next.
Speaker C:Oh, right.
Speaker C: that will come out in either: Speaker C:You already know the title.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, I already know the title.
Speaker A:I didn't know the title of my book till two days ago.
Speaker A:Open All Night and Murder by Design.
Speaker C:This has always been the title.
Speaker C: about organized crime in the: Speaker B:Got it.
Speaker B:Real quick question, both of you guys.
Speaker B:Are you now permanently with Amazon Publishing or is this just happens to be these two books in my case, just.
Speaker C:Happens to be these two books.
Speaker C:My next book after this one will come out with Counterpoint.
Speaker C:Who published all my gangster books for me.
Speaker A:I've been published by Amazon Publishing for, God, at least a decade, maybe long.
Speaker C:Maybe at least forever.
Speaker A:They could drop me tomorrow.
Speaker A:They could drop me after seeing this interview and decide we don't want to be associated with it.
Speaker C:There's a good chance.
Speaker A:But this sounds like I'm kissing up.
Speaker A:I'm in a terrible negotiating position every time my contracts are up at Amazon because they know how much I love being published by them.
Speaker A:I've never had a better publishing experience than I've had with Amazon.
Speaker A:I have a wonderful relationship with my editors.
Speaker A:They've been grooming Todd for years now to get him to do this book.
Speaker C:That is actually true.
Speaker A:No, they're great.
Speaker A:I mean, how could I be upset?
Speaker A:I've got how many series now with Amazon?
Speaker A:I've got the Ian Lewis spy series.
Speaker A:I've got the Sharp and Walker arson Detectives.
Speaker A:I've got the Eve Ronin books.
Speaker A:I'm starting a new series with Edison Bixby.
Speaker A:Quite a few.
Speaker B:I mean, when I just go to the front of your book, Lee, I mean, you've got.
Speaker B:Yeah, you've got your other titles.
Speaker B:Sharp, Walker, Ronan Ludlow.
Speaker B:I mean, you take.
Speaker B:You take five, six pages just to do what you have done in the past.
Speaker B:That's just.
Speaker A:And there's stuff left out of that.
Speaker C:All of that comes from the initial thought of, what if I slathered Rocky Road ice cream on a woman?
Speaker B:And scene.
Speaker A:You know, that's the scene, though, Todd, that got me my deal to write for Hallmark.
Speaker A:There'd be no mystery 101 TV series if an executive at Hallmark hadn't read that and said, that's Christmas to me.
Speaker C:That's a man who knows small town crime on the holidays.
Speaker A:No one more perfect to write wholesome family entertainment than legal.
Speaker C:Put that guy in a zip sweater in a small town and put Christmas Town up for sale.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:Happy holiday.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If you told me the one TV series I created would be on Hallmark, I never would have believed it.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker B:Well, guys, enjoy your weekend.
Speaker B:Thank you for spending time with the Thriller Zone.
Speaker C:Thanks for having us.
Speaker A:Anytime.
Speaker C:I can get.
Speaker A:The Thriller Zone is great.
Speaker A:Your number one podcast for stories that.
Speaker C:Thrill the Thriller Zone.
