Attention Bookies--L.A. Times Festival of Books this weekend!

The annual festival takes place this weekend, April 20-21. As always, admission is free. And as always, "books are just the beginning."  This year the festival is located on the USC Campus. Writers and others who'll be attending/performing include Paul Anka, Margaret Atwood, Philip Kerr (The Berlin Noir trilogy), Elinor Lipman, and Eric Van Lustbader. See all the details here.

Could you pass a US Citizenship Test?

That's a question the Christian Science Monitor is asking today and they've posted the test here.  Considering the heat of rhetoric surrounding the issue of immigration reform, it's a nice reality check.

Atomic Noir--

Somehow it seems like the time is right to pick up a copy of Atomic Noir, a collection of crime stories set in a time steeped in paranoia and suspicion when school kids practiced duck and cover drills and new homes came with fall-out shelters. Presented by Out of the Gutter books and Lou Boxer of Noir Con and featuring a roster of names you know, Atomic Noir features stories short enough to read by the battery-powered flashlight you keep in your emergency kit.(You do have an emergency kid don't you?)

Charlotte E. English wants to give you books!

charlotte E. English, one of my co-conspirators in the Drifting Isle Chronicles, is celebrating spring with discounts and giveaways of her books. Check it out here.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words

If you're not the predator, you're the prey!

There are a lot of people who dream of selling a script for big money and seeing their work turned into a movie starring Ryan Gosling, Angelina Jolie or Seth Rogen. There are even more people who dream of exploiting these people, trashing their dreams by lying to them and misdirecting them and charging a lot of money for their services. I often cross paths with these predators and they make me angry. I also often cross paths with their victims and that makes me sad. Because people who trample on other people's dreams and take their money under false pretenses are scum.  This morning I ran into a writer on Craig's List who was looking for someone to format his script properly.He didn't know what he needed was someone with access to Final Draft software.  He'd been told " If it was in the correct script format for submitting to the "Writer's Guild he'd have a script that was a movie."
I don't know who this "reputable script advisor" (the writer's words) was, but I'd like to shake her until her teeth rattle.  the writer also admitted that he wasn't a professional writer in the ad, which raises even more warning flags for me. I breifly worked for a service that provided notes for would-be screenwriters and while I saw several promising scripts, I never saw one that simply needed re-formatting to "be a movie."
It's an insanely competitive business.  Being told all you need to do is reformat your work and you're good to go would be like an agent telling me all I need to do is change the margins on my novel manuscript and I'm on my way to a seven figure sale at Simon & Schuster. JUST. NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN.

Recommended Viewing Luther

I'd heard good things about this Grit-Brit cop show from the BBC starring Idris Elba (The Wire, The Big C), so when it popped up on Netflix, I couldn't wait to check it out. It's terrific. Dark. Psychologically complex. Layered. Saskia Reeves plays his boss as tough, smart and savvy. Others warn her character against betting too heavily on Elba's character, a damaged cop named John Luther, but her attitude is that he's an investment. The show premiered in 2010 and is still in production, so people just discovering the show have new episodes to look forward to.