A Writer's Life

Mitzvah for Tod

My brother Tod's story "Mitzvah" in Akashic's anthology LAS VEGAS NOIR got a shout-out in a positive Publishers Weekly review today:

Columnist Tod Goldberg’s “Mitzvah” makes good use of the Las Vegas myth that people come to the city to bury their past identities and reinvent themselves. His antihero, mobster Sal Cuperine, has for years posed as Rabbi David Cohen, managing to handle the demands of the pulpit until the strain of his charade becomes too much to bear. 

Tod in the Times

My brother Tod's review of two new novels set in Las Vegas, both by first-time authors, appears on the front page of today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section.

What "Beautiful Children" and "The Delivery Man" share -- apart from the obvious thematic portrayal of Las Vegas as "Caligula" -- is, surprisingly, hope. Both Bock and McGinniss flash across the page with firm style, compelling voices and the desire to go deeper than their subject matter. Although neither of their novels has defined literary Las Vegas, both carry the imprint of burgeoning talent, and that is always worth gambling on.

Brotherly Love

My brother Tod has posted a list of five people who hate me -- and the reasons why they do. I was relieved he capped the list at only five and left out Tono Rondone.

UPDATE: My cousin Danny muses over why I'm so hated and reviews my book MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE along the way...

My Brother Gets BURNED

Today, my brother Tod talks about his new, three-book deal to write original novels based on the USA Network series BURN NOTICE:

How this came about is how many things come about when you're not expecting them -- your brother calls you from a scratchy phone in Germany and says, "Hey, do you like the show Burn Notice?" You reply, "Yeah, I love it. It's like an Elmore Leonard novel crossed with Steven Soderbergh's direction and a dash of Albert Brooks' mother issues for good measure. Why?" And then twenty minutes later you're on the phone with your agent, 36 hours later you're making demands of the publisher, 72 hours later you're sitting down with Matt Nix [...]and you're discussing the show he created, Burn Notice, and then, about 100 hours later, you're figuring out just how on Earth you're going to meet your first deadline -- February -- without getting hooked on crank (again)

Book Burning

I've been so caught up doing  my movie, that I have fallen way behind on everything...and missed  my brother Tod's Jewcy column in late May on the Kansas City bookstore that burned it's entire stock of books as, the store owner  says, a "a funeral pyre for thought in America today" and as "a wakeup call to all who value books and ideas." My brother wrote:

If [the bookstore owners] don’t see the hypocrisy in their actions, perhaps they need only to look down the road a few miles at the Blue Valley School District, where debates raged over appropriate titles being offered to students, prompting the formation of the PABBIS-like ClassKC.org (Citizen for Literary Standards in Schools), a group with their own stringent ideas about literacy. If burning 20,000 books for the cause of literacy is an act of art, how does that art change if the belief system of the group changes? I have no doubt that [the bookstore owners] love books, just as I have no doubt that many of the parents who comprise ClassKC.org love books (or at least the Book), and thus I wonder: If the action is the same, does it matter what the cause is?  If ClassKC.org hosted a book burning in the name of literacy awareness in the schools of Blue Valley, too, the same books would burn.

The bigger question is... what the hell is going on in Kansas City?

Vicious Lies...and more than a little truth

I just stumbled on this old Las Vegas Mercury column my brother Tod wrote about the time I dragged him and my sister Linda to a science fiction convention in a horribly misguided attempt to sell copies of my book .357 VIGILANTE. A lot of his column is, um, fictionalized...but it doesn't matter because it's very funny:

  "It takes place in a futuristic L.A.," I said to the man in the "V" uniform who'd stopped to handle the book.

  "Yeah? Are there aliens?"

  "Only illegal ones," I said. When I was 14, I thought this was a pretty funny thing to say.

  "I only read books with real aliens in them," he said, setting the book down.

  "You're an idiot," my sister said from behind her magazine. It was the first time Linda had spoken for at least an hour.

  "Pardon me?" the man said.

  "You said you only read books with `real aliens' in them and I said that you're an idiot," Linda said, still not looking up.

  "You're very rude," he said.

  "'V'  was canceled," Linda said, "just FYI."

He forgot to mention in the column that both he and Linda contracted chicken pox at the convention. I came out unscathed. My brother and sister, sadly, were emotionally scarred for life.

"Oh, my naughty love, Tod thought. Where could you be?"

My Brother Tod is having lots of fun messing with the fanfic crowd over at Fandom Wank:

Just wanted to pop in to say that, no matter how much you hate Lee or me, I've enjoyed reading all of this and several other posts beneath this one. You guys are exceptionally funny. That you point out the general fucktardery of your particular world is something I can get behind. I'm hooked. Now, will someone write something about me where I'm involved with Dave Navarro, Carmen Elektra and a dagget from the original BSG? Seriously. You write it, I'll put it on my blog. Just make me skinnier and more handsome than I am.

And they've done it.  Tod is brilliant.

They Hate Me, They Really Really Hate Me

My brother Tod stumbled on a seething horde of  people who really, really hate me and he couldn't be happier about it.

They are fucking hysterical. I mean this. I laughed my ass off reading about their hatred of Lee, their dubious thoughts on me (they are particularly upset with my poor grammar and word choice and misogyny, which is basically what Wendy is upset with me about on a fairly regular basis, but someone liked "Simplify" which thrilled me, as that is, and always has been, my favorite story)  and then their rants on other topics happening in and around fandom. I spent about thirty minutes reading this website and I about pissed myself. I've actually bookmarked it.

UPDATE (2-19-2007): Tod only scraped the surface. There's much more Lee-hating to enjoy.

Links A-Go-Go

I've been away in New York for a few days at the Mystery Writers  of America board meeting and am just now catching up on my favorite blogs. Ordinarily, I'd build whole posts around some of the stuff I've found...but I'm too lazy. So you will have to see for yourself what Emmy Award-winning writer Ken Levine has to say about Aaron Sorkin's dig that he wasn't a "real" comedy writer.  And you'll have to experience for yourself the utterly bizarre "Galactica-A Team-V" crossover fanfic that my brother Tod stumbled upon.

32 Flavors of Awesome

Some yahooer sent me this link to a Live Journal blog post that mentions yours truly. I don't know about you, but I think it was my brother Tod who sent it to me:

Also, totally love Tod Goldberg. He's the brother of Lee Goldberg, known for throwing periodic hissy fits over the existence of fanfic. But while Lee is an asshat, Tod is a brilliant writer. His blog is wonderful, and his short-story collection "Simplify" is . . . umm, lots of good things that I am not qualified to elaborate on. I am usually not a fan of straight fiction, because I hate reading about normal people doing normal things, but Tod Goldberg is 32 flavours of awesome.

She's right... I am an asshat and Tod is a brilliant writer. But I'm thinner and have a lot less body hair.