Category Archives: John Gilstrap

First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Writers

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap
Yesterday, an otherwise unknown writer named Phillip R. Greaves II became way more famous than he deserved after publishing an ebook no one would ever have read but for spasms of media apoplexy. The work in question is The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child Lover’s Code of Conduct.

Disgusting concept, eh? In case you’re on the fence, read the author’s summary of the book, as reported by The Los Angeles Times (the grammar and spelling are all Mr. Greaves’s): “This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught.”

Oh, my goodness. Where to start? Let’s first agree for the sake of argument that “pedosexual” is a word. Next we need to accept that child rapists aren’t all bad. I confess that I haven’t read this code of conduct, but sight unseen, it’s tough to imagine a set of social rules that would make child rape somehow less worthy of hatred or more worthy of “liter” sentences. If I’m elected king, these monsters will spend long months dangling from the anatomical tools through which they perpetrated their crimes and fulfilled their fantasies.

I think I read that Greaves’s book first appeared on Amazon.com on October 28, and instantly climbed the list to #1.3 bazillion in paid Kindle sales. Then someone noticed it and tweeted discontent. The presence of a pedophile manual went viral faster than Bieber and the fat kid with the light saber combined. Soon pressure was building for Amazon.com to take the book down. Amazon refused initially, but as the Mad Morality Police Force built momentum to boycott all Amazon.com products if the book remained, the company caved and pulled it down. We have lost forever our opportunity to learn Mr. Greaves’s child rapist code of conduct.

Unless, of course, he decides to put it up on a website of his own. If he does that, I wonder if the MMPF will demand a boycott of computers and cyberspace.

The world is no doubt a better place without a pedophile’s guide in circulation, but man oh man, I am not comfortable with this kind of de facto censorship. Book burning is scarier than any idea I can imagine, even if the burned books are printed in electrons instead of ink. It’s not as if someone was proposing to mentor wannabe kid-touchers.

If this is the precedent, where do we stop? In these days of self-publishing, cyberspace teems with poorly-written, ill-conceived screeds on all kinds of topics. Is The Anarchist’s Cookbook next on the list? How about Tom Clancy’s early books where he gives excellent instruction on how to build a nuclear warhead? (A side note to terrorists: Please follow all of the instructions in The Anarchist’s Cookbook to the letter. The only people you blow up will be those who are gathered in your terror lab. And maybe your next door neighbor if your house is small.)

A pivotal moment in Prince of Tides involves the rape of a child. When do we boycott Pat Conroy? What about Alice Sebold? The Lovely Bones is all about a child’s murder, for God’s sake. That’s even worse than pedophilia. Golly, when I really put my mind to it, I can draw up a huge list of story lines that might offend.

Make no mistake, there’s no Constitutional issue here. The First Amendment does not guarantee a right to have one’s words stocked in a bookstore, and to my knowledge, no one’s threatening to prosecute Mr. Greaves for writing his book. (I wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a peek at his research materials, however.) What bothers me is the tyranny of the outraged majority dictating what’s available for purchase.

Help me out here, Killzoners. Are there thoughts that are so distasteful and upsetting that they should be banned?

Page One . . . Again

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap
Threat Warning is in the can now (look for it next July), and now it’s time to get on with the next book in the Jonathan Grave series. I’m calling it Untitled Grave 4 for the time being, but I’m reasonably certain that I’ll come up with something more compelling before the pub date rolls around in 2012.

I know the basic bones of the story, and I’ve already mapped out the kick-ass final sequence in my head. Having spent all of July and August in a panicked writing frenzy (the price of procrastination), I harbor a dream of digging right into the story and hammering it out right away, delivering a finished manuscript a few months early, thus buying time to take a more leisurely pace on the book to follow that one. Recognizing that I wrote the last 300 pages of Threat Warning in about seven weeks, I should be able to have this next book finished by April and not even be out of breath.

I should be able to do that. So, why can’t I do that?

I think it’s because I don’t like me very much during the frenzied times. Every waking hour that I’m not dedicating to my Big Boy job is dedicated to the book. I’m not much of a husband or a friend during those times, and when the pressure is finally lifted, the pleasure of not writing—the pleasure of dinner table conversations and occasional nights out—is so overwhelming that I find it difficult to sit down and write again.

Thus far, I figure I’ve written about 200 words of the next opus. Soon enough, I’ll be pulled away to respond to the inevitable editorial letter for Threat Warning, and when that’s done it’ll be the Holidays, and shortly after that, two nights per week will be consumed by American Idol (yes, I’m a rabid fan), and then, come May, if this year mimics previous years, I’ll be about 200 pages behind the power curve, and the race to catch up will begin.

Come July and ThrillerFest and the release of Threat Warning, I’ll become impossibly distracted, and then the panic will begin again. I’m beginning to think that maybe I need the crippling pressure to be motivated. Is it really procrastination if you know it’s going to happen?

As I write this, I really hope that I’ll find a way to pace myself and write consistently and regularly, so that when summer rolls around next year, I’ll be able to enjoy it. In fact, that’s the plan.

I wonder if I’ll be able to make it happen . . .

Stupid People Bug Me

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap
I don’t often mix the duties of my Big Boy job as the director of safety for a trade association in Washington with the writing side of my life, but every now and then, the two converge.  More often than not, when they do, it has something to do with some stupid thing I’ve heard on television.

Every morning as I shower and brush my teeth, I watch/listen to the cheerful, well-coiffed network newscasters as they present what passes for news these days. A few weeks ago, wedged between reports of the latest celebrity marriage and the reasons why diets fail, my network of choice presented an in depth interview with a “courageous” young man—a “hero” no less—who had to cut off his own arm because he reached into his furnace to retrieve a tool, and he couldn’t pull the arm out again through the louvers.

Actually, he only partially cut it off. After three days of sawing and gnawing, a coworker came by to check up on him and called the fire department. The guy survived, the arm did not.

Not once during this gushing report (pardon the pun) did anyone state the obvious: That you’ve got to be a special breed of idiot to stick your arm through louvers and get it stuck. I don’t mean to pile on here, but are you kidding me?

During his interview, the victim confided to the news guy that he realized that he needed to take the drastic step of self-amputation when he thought about his family. His mother and father were coming to visit him, and he didn’t want them to find him that way. The news played it as altruism; I think it was humiliation. Who would want their parents to think they were that stupid?

I’m being harsh here because there’s a point to be made. We need to start calling stupid stupid, and we need to stop making excuses for people who make ridiculous choices in their lives.

Take, for example, a safety guy I know who brags to anyone who will listen that he gets his prized exotic sports car up to 150 miles an hour as often as he can on under-populated “back roads.” That’s 220 feet per second. Assuming perfect reflexes, he will travel 330 feet—more than the length of a football field—in the time it takes him to recognize a hazard (say, a deer in the road, or a child) and move his foot from the gas to the brake. No one would survive that accident. Or if they did, they’d likely wish they hadn’t.

What level of hubris—what kind of total disregard for others—would make someone think he has the right to put the rest of the community in danger so that he can play with his mega-horsepower toy? I don’t get it.

Coincidentally, this safety guy has problems getting management and employees to buy into the safety program. Gee, I wonder if there’s a correlation.

While we’re on the topic of stupidity, let’s talk about motorcycle helmets. (Actually, we could discuss motorcycles themselves, but I fear I’m alienating enough people as it is.) A friend of mine opposes laws requiring motorcycle helmets because he thinks they dilute the gene pool by giving people who are otherwise too stupid to live an artificial extension on life.

Come on, think about it. A moving vehicle, a shock-sensitive brain, and a world populated almost exclusively with stuff that is harder than your skull. Can you think of anything that might go wrong?

Look, I’m as moved by human tragedy as the next guy, but outside a victim’s circle of family and friends, doesn’t there come a point when self-inflicted tragedy is just plain sinful? Doesn’t there come a point where it’s okay to show anger when people show such disregard to those who love them and depend upon them for companionship and support and income?

I always feel sorry for people who get into accidents because someone else who was too reckless to go the correct speed goes crashing into them. Thee people should definitely get help from an auto accident attorney to get compensation for what happened. But I find it hard to find sympathy for people who crash while going 40mph over the speed limit when they are driving.

I’m there. In the fantasy world where I’m elected king, we’re going to create a colony for the chronically stupid.  Hey, we all make mistakes, but it seems to me that the village idiots should be so labeled, and we should hold them accountable for the havoc they wreak.

Or, I could be wrong.  Am I?

Greetings From San Francisco

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap

Generally, I love my Friday slot at the Killzone. Friday is a happy day overall, and, perhaps more importantly, Thursday night is typically a convenient night to jot these missives. There are exceptions to every generality, of course, and for me the exceptions all deal with the big conferences. Bouchercon, ThrillerFest, Magna Cum Murder—you name the conference—always span Friday to Sunday, so I either get to write about a conference that hasn’t happened yet, or about one that is old news by the time my slot comes up again.


So, here I sit at noon (California time), having arrived yesterday afternoon, and having awakened at 5:30 this morning (8:30 bio-clock time), biding my time till the festivities kick off for real this evening. The intervening hours have mostly been taken up with work for my Big Boy Job. (I am forever amazed by how much more productive I am on the road or at home than I am in the office.)


Last night, I met Jeff Deaver at the lobby bar, and then we went out to dinner at the Fog Diner (that’s not really the name, but it’s close). It’s a kitschy place at Battery and Embarcadero that serves an eclectic menu, and has a great wine list. I ended up having a wedge salad and half of a Reuben sandwich. Given the bio-hour of 10 pm (7 pm local time), it was a perfect meal. We went back to the bar, but I could only manage one drink before I had to call it a night. I was in bed and asleep by ten. Really, ten. It’s embarrassing.


Tonight, I’m meeting my friend Ruth Dudley Edwards for dinner, after which the smart money says I’ll be in the bar till later than ten.


Tomorrow, I’m on a panel at 11 called “Deadline: Where do you get your ideas?” moderated by Don Bruns, with Gayle Lynds, Bill Moody, Mary Stanton and Debbie Atkinson. As I understand the premise, someone in the audience is going to choose a headline from the newspaper, and then we’re going to construct a story on the spot. It sounds simultaneously terrifying and fun. Can you say improv?


After the panel, I’ll be off to lunch with my editor and agent, and then I’ll be attending the Kensington Kocktail reception (their spelling, not mine), followed, presumably, by dinner and the evening in the bar. Are you catching a theme here?


To any Killzoners who are here at the conference, please make your presence known. Say hi. Chances are reasonably good that after, say, 9:00 pm, you’ll find me in the . . . well, you know.

A Word of Caution

Posted on by

James Scott Bell

John’s post on Friday sparked a healthy combox on the subject of self publishing in this new age. We all know it’s now possible to send an entire novel out to the e-osphere without having to pony up for printing or warehousing. Dreams of making a good sum of money this way, a la Joe Konrath, are dancing in many heads, like visions of sugarplums. Since it isn’t Christmas yet, I feel the need to offer a word of caution.

If you upload your self published novel before it’s ready, you’re more likely to turn off future readers than gain them. If someone plunks down even 99¢ to take a chance on your book, and is disappointed, they are not going to plunk down that money again. If you want to have a career as a novelist, you have to reverse that dynamic. You have to offer books that readers love and leave them wanting more.

Now, this is America. We have free speech and free enterprise. You can put your novel out if you want to. But before you do, I would urge you to consider the following:

It takes a long time to learn how to write narrative fiction. I would guess that 98% of traditionally published authors paid years of dues learning their craft. That same 98% would probably look with horror at their first attempt at a novel. That novel likely sits in a drawer, or on a disk, and will stay there—as it should. Many of these writers have multiple efforts that never saw the light of day.

But let’s say you’ve written and studied and been critique-grouped to the point of psychosis. You have determined you are ready. Hold the iPhone. Before you publish, do the following:

1. Get your manuscript to five “beta” readers. These should be people who are not just going to gush over your work, but people you can trust to give you direct comments on likes and dislikes. Make sure 4 out of 5 give it high marks, and the fifth is pretty close.

Note: this is not your critique group (if you’re in one). Such groups have their own peculiar dynamics. What you want are people who will experience the book as the average reader would. Be prepared to make substantial changes based on the feedback.

2. Hire a freelance editor. It’s well worth it to find somebody who can go over the manuscript, catch glaring errors, and offer fixes. Do your research, though, and make sure you get what you pay for.

3. Pay for a good cover design. Nothing looks cheesier than a typical, self-pubbed, self-designed cover. I recently went browsing at the Kindle store, looking at self-published works. The covers were, by and large, terrible. Unless you have strong graphic and artistic ability, find someone who can design you a great cover.

4. Even after your upload, do not get overconfident. The odds are stacked against you making walk-away-from-your-day-job money this way. If you want to be a real writer, and not just somebody who has made an e-book available, keep growing and working at the craft. Every single day. Then maybe your efforts will start to pay off, down the line.

The modern self-publishing movement, which began with Bill Henderson’s The Publish-it-Yourself Handbook (1973) has just taken a quantum leap forward with e-publishing. But the same caveat that applied then applies now: just because you wrote it doesn’t mean it’s ready.

Be patient. Take some time. And don’t go it completely alone.

Then, if you want to play, you’re free to try your hand at this. As Henderson wrote back in ’73: “Publishing-it-yourself is in the individualistic tradition of the American dream.”

Just do your dreaming with your eyes wide open.

Any other words of advice or warning for those who are itching to jump into self-publishing?

The Liar’s Club

Posted on by

by Michelle Gagnon

Pinocchio_3ak

No really, you shouldn’t have. I mean, sure, it is our…

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

What do you mean, you forgot? Yes, it was just a year ago today that I wrote the inaugural post for The Kill Zone. And to celebrate a year of rants, raves, and other miscellany, my fellow bloggers and I decided to do what we do best- make stuff up. Below is a series of questions. One of the answers to each question is an outright, baldfaced lie. Your job is to guess who’s fibbing.

For each correct guess, your name will be entered in a drawing for signed editions of each of our latest releases (including my coffee table book on macrame. It’s not just about macrame, it’s MADE of macrame. Patent pending).

Because after all, what anniversary would be complete without fabulous gifts?

Note: despite the outrageous nature of some of these responses, there is only one liar per question. Hard to believe, but true. The winner will be announced in my post next Thursday.

So good luck, and thanks for making this an amazing year!

1. What’s the most “outrageous truth” about yourself, one few people would ever guess?shootist

Kathryn: I once hid in the bushes outside Ted Kennedy’s home, spying on him for a Boston TV station.

John Gilstrap: I was featured in John Wayne’s last filmed performance.

Clare: I was runner up in the 1989 “Miss Melbourne” beauty pageant.

James: I’m a descendant of the Duke of Wellington

Michelle: I was a featured guest on the Maury Pauvich show.


2. What’s the strangest interaction you’ve ever had with a fan or reader?

James: A man approached me at a conference and said God told him I was chosen to write his story. I told him I didn’t get the memo.

Clare: During an radio interview for Consequences of Sin, the host claimed he had predicted 9/11.

Michelle: At a conference, a Ted Kaczynski look-alike handed me a manila envelope filled with xeroxed diary pages outlining ominous apocalyptic predictions.

John Gilstrap: After giving 20 minutes of advice to a young writer at a signing, he walked away saying, “Huh. Well, I don’t read shit like you write.”

John Ramsey Miller: In 1997 I had a stalker who followed me on a book tour to 5 cities out of 11. She changed her appearance each time and asked me to sign a book to whatever name she was disguised as.

Kathryn: During a radio interview for DYING TO BE THIN, one caller claimed there is a conspiracy to keep America fat. I said thank goodness for that, otherwise I’d have to blame my sweet tooth.


3. What’s the craziest/most dangerous thing you’ve ever done in the name of research?


John Gilstrap: I intentionally leaned against a prison fence and walked around the perimeter to see how long it would take for a guard to respond.

John Ramsey Miller: In the mid to late eighties I set up a formal portrait studio at a series of KKK rallies across the south and at the Annual Celebration of the Founding of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski Tennessee.

chuck norrisKathryn: I logged onto wild and wooly web sites that gave my computer a nasty virus.

Michelle: I volunteered to be tased to see what it felt like.

James: I asked Chuck Norris to show me his Total Gym workout

Clare: I navigated piranha infested waters in a dugout canoe.

4. What’s the worst line you’ve ever read in a review or rejection of your work?

John Gilstrap: An agent offered to represent NATHAN’S RUN if I would change the protagonist from a 12-year-old boy to a divorced woman.

Joe Moore: “Weak and simple plot, unbelievable and boring characters, and poor writing make this book difficult to finish.”

James: Dear Mr. Bell: Enclosed are two rejection letters; one for this book, and one for your next book.

Kathryn: Agent rejection: “I really wanted to like your story. But I just didn’t like the voice. Or the main character. I just didn’t like anything about it at all.”

Clare: “It’s painful to read more than one or two pages at a time.”

I have to say, I was impressed with my fellow bloggers’ ability to lie with aplomb. Since I could only choose one lie per question, I was forced to omit some real humdingers. Next week I’ll include outtakes/elaborations in the post.

On a side note, Clare just officially became a US citizen (and that’s the truth). Welcome and congratulations!

The All Important Final Clause

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com

As an author, I believe that I make a silent contract with my readers to provide them with a complete entertainment experience. The suspense is a given (I hope) but there are also the light moments, the warm moments, and even the occasional tear-jerking moment. If I do my job right, I’ll hook ’em with the first line, run them through a roller coaster through all the middle chapters, and then, at the end, leave them feeling . . .

Well, it depends. More times than not, I want that last moment we have together to be one of those where you gently close the book, maybe squeezer it a little, and then say, “Jeeze, I wish it wasn’t over already.”

Think about all the ink we’ve spilled here in the Killzone talking about kick-ass beginnings. I think that endings are even more important. It’s not just about tying up loose ends, either, although obviously that’s important. I’m talking about that final note in the literary symphony. Is it a cymbal crash or a sweet pianissimo? Maybe we want them to have trouble reading through their tears.

Whatever our plan, it’s up to us and us alone to make it happen. That last scene—the last moment my readers and I have together—mean a lot to me. I agonize over it. I look at those last sentences as the final clause in the contract that I make with the people who choose to read my work.

I’m a student of last lines. Here are some of my favorites:

“And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” — William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.” – Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” –Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.” –A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“. . . together they cried like babies on national television.” – John Gilstrap, Nathan’s Run

Come on, you must have a favorite finale to share. Let’s have it.

Sunday Writing School

Posted on by

We’re having another one of our periodic Sunday Writing Schools today at the Kill Zone (See the link to our inaugural school).

Here’s how it works: We post a couple of writing-oriented questions that we’ve collected over the weeks, and do our best to answer them. Readers can post more questions in the comments. Feel free to chime in with your own opinions, including snarky ripostes to our advice. This is basically intended to be a free-for-all exchange of ideas about writing, not a serious-minded Fount of Wisdom.

We’ll just have some fun.

The first question in the mail bag is from Win Scott:

Q: I know some writing books say not to use prologues, but I need to open my story with an event that precedes the main story. This event is also much more dramatic than my first chapter, and it lays the groundwork for everything that comes next. Can I use a prologue in this case?

A. [From Kathryn]: I’ll admit my bias here–I don’t like prologues. I think they’re old fashioned, and you risk turning off screeners if you use them. Readers don’t care when you start your story, so why not make your Prologue your “Chapter One,” and then turn what was your first chapter into a “forward flash” in time? You can add a date-anchor at the beginning of the chapter to orient the reader in time. I’ve seen many thrillers use this technique, and the effect is much more immediate and dynamic than if you use a prologue.

But that’s just my two cents. I’ll let the other Killers chime in.

Here’s a question from Joy F.

Q. What are some methods of getting over writer’s block?

A. [From Joe] Getting the juices flowing can be tough sometimes. We all experience it. Here are a few tips that might help. Try writing the ending first. Consider changing the gender of your character or the point of view. Tell the story or scene from another character’s POV. Just for grins, switch from third person to first or vice versa.

You don’t have to keep the results of these exercises but they might boost your imagination and get you going again.

(If you would like to ask other questions today, feel free to add them in the Comments. We’ll answer them there.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, James Scott Bell, Alexandra Sokoloff, and more.

John Gilstrap’s on the road–will be back next week

Posted on by

Our intrepid co-blogger John Gilstrap called in from his Blackberry to report that he is on the road this week, traveling. He’ll return with a killer blog next Friday. See you next week, John!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Oline Cogdill, James Scott Bell, Alexandra Sokoloff, and more.

Been There, Been That

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

I’ll be honest: This is not the blog entry I’d intended to write, but given the posts over the last two days, inspiration struck while I wasn’t looking.

I think Ol’ Cap’n Sully is worth every dime of the $3.2 mill his agent was able to squeeze out of William Morrow. He’s worth twice that if that’s what Morrow was willing to pay. That’s how the game works. Agents pitch books, publishers make offers and authors accept or decline. I know for a fact that if Pinnacle, my current publisher, had offered ten thousand dollars more than they did for my next book, I would have accepted it. Ditto a hundred thousand or a million or even five million. I’d be out of my mind not to. I’d expect nothing less (more?) from someone as sharp as Sully.

I think Mark Combes had it right in his reply to Michelle’s post yesterday. Publishing is not a zero sum game. The fact that Sully got big bucks does not mean that someone else won’t. I heard on the news yesterday that Crown is paying $7 million for President Bush (43)’s book on his most important decisions. That’s $10.3 million in a single day from two different publishers. Will they earn out? I’m betting they come close, but I’m sure that from the authors’ perspectives it doesn’t matter.

I’m equally sure that as authors competing for shelf space in the same stores, it’s none of our business. I find the sniping about such things off-putting.

Fourteen years ago, I had the honor to be one of the seven-figure first-novel news items. After decades of writing for my desk drawer, I’d achieved my lifelong dream–in spades. I think I’ve written in this space before about the thrill I feel being in the company of writers, of calling myself a member of the club that I’ve always dreamed of joining.

Unfortunately, my newsmaking advance barred my immediate entry to the club because I was assumed by some of my “colleagues” at the time to be a talentless hack who happened to bamboozle gullible publishers (23 of them worldwide) out of money that they could never earn back. Because I hadn’t paid my dues, some of the authors I admired most wouldn’t even speak to me.

Most notably, I was in New York attending an event when a well-respected midlist mystery writer introduced me to one of the Great Names as “John Gilstrap, the guy who made X on his first novel.” The Great Name glanced at my outstretched hand and walked away.

Even though all of these authors understood how the game is played, their prejudice (jealousy is too loaded a word, and is too self-elevating) was focused on me—not on my agent and not on the publisher, but on me. I guess no one wants to burn bridges with agents or publishers. I have it on good authority that my advance in and of itself made NATHAN’S RUN dead on arrival as a possible nominee for a first-novel Edgar Award. (I’m not saying that I would have won, or even should have; only that I was told that the fix was in from the beginning.) That’s tough stuff.

As for there being no zero sum game, I think it’s interesting to note that one of the popular and woefully underpaid writers at the time—and one who always treated me very well, in fact took me under his wing—recently signed a reported $10 million book contract. Good for him.

Every year brings a new crop of newsmaking advances. Some of the recipients are celebrities, some of them are short-term headline darlings cashing in, and some of them are real authors beginning what they hope will be a long career. Each of these newly-anointed rich folks triggers a new round of behind-the-back sniping. I understand where it comes from, but I can’t bring myself to participate. Been there, been that.