I read the new Psych book last week. It was even better than the first one! I really enjoyed it. You stayed very true to the characters as they are represented on the show. I’m looking forward to the next one. Do you mind talking a little shop? Do you map out the plot completely before you write or are you like Stephen King and don’t know how it ends til you get to it? I love mysteries and I am writing one as a hobby (not for publication, just for something to do. I have a lot of free time on the road and this keeps me out of bars.) I guess my question is, what’s your process?

I can’t say I’m like Stephen King, especially when it comes to book sales and bank balances. But I will confess that I don’t outline these books the way I do when working on a TV show.  I spent decades writing detailed outlines for everything I did — both because TV demands that and because working with a partner demands it.  So when I started writing the first Psych book I decided I’d trust my story sense and jump off from a brief narrative outline. I do have a pretty good idea of where I’m going to end up, I generally know who did it and why, but how Shawn and Gus are going to get there I’m jumping out of the plane without a parachute. And the sheer panic that brings gives me the adrenaline rush I need to finish the book in the short amount of time I’m given.

Now if I may give my fan a little unsolicited advice — do as I say, not as I do. You should be outlining like crazy. Figure out your crimes and your clues. Otherwise you’ll end up rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.  I can get away with this because I’ve been plotting mysteries for decades, and by now I think I have a pretty good feel for what needs to come where.  But there was a lot of learning along the way to this point…

It’s such a good deal I couldn’t refuse it — even though I’d managed to come up with a foolproof way to keep myself from buying books. I invested in a hardcover copy of The Kindly Ones, and then every time I thought of acquiring something new, I felt so guilty that I had hardly made it past the third set of atrocities, I  wouldn’t let  myself pay for a new hardcover until I finished Littel’s little holocaust house of horrors. (Because there are bored children in India who would love a thousand-page catalog of sex, death, and Nazi perversions…) I can’t say I wasn’t tempted by the new releases from China Mieville and Sarah Waters I saw when I was signing yesterday at the delightful Mysteries to Die For, but one quick thought of Nazi sex torture kept my credit card in my wallet.  (I’m sure they were also available at the equally delightful Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, where I had signed earlier, but there I was so overwhelmed by the enormous stack of Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop hardcovers I couldn’t see anything else…)

But when the English edition of The Week rounded up reviews of A. S. Byatt’s new novel The Children’s Book, all of which compared it favorably to her masterpiece Possession, I could hold myself back no longer. Possession is not only one of my favorite novels, but one of three that I find myself rereading every couple of years. (The other two are The Magus and, for reasons I can’t even explain to myself, Narcissus and Goldmund. I’d throw Franny and Zooey in there, too, but I’m too embarassed to admit that.) I checked Amazon and discovered that the new book wouldn’t be out until October, and they were taken pre-orders for something north of $26.

So I checked Amazon UK — and found the book available new for eight and a half pounds. Even with seven pounds for international shipping, that’s still cheaper than waiting three months for an American edition.

Which is a lot of words to say: Go to Amazon UK and buy this book now. I did, and I’m a happier person already.

If you’re not concerned about bargains, you can still get a new copy for only $6.99 at bookstores everywhere — but you won’t be getting a deal like this!

At eleven am, I’ll be at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, 1036-C Broxton Avenue.

And at three pm, I’m be at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks, 2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd.

This may be the extent of my global book tour, so stop on by!

But if you’re looking for a special way to demonstrate just how much Psych means to you, one of Amazon’s affiliated sellers, TSCbooks, is selling a used copy for $999.99. I’ve got to give them credit for coming up with a used copy the very day the book is released, but I’m not sure why this particular copy is worth 143 times cover price. And I’m kind of stunned that with that mark-up, they’re still charging $3.99 for shipping. If you were to pay me a thousand dollars for one of these books, I’d ship it to you for free. Hell, I’ll bring it over to your house and read it to you, if that’s what you’d like…

The television world is shrinking, and with it any chance of you – or me – working in it. It’s no secret that slots allotted to dramas were vanishing even before NBC’s decision to essentially go dark at 10 pm. Those dramas that do make it on the air have smaller and smaller staffs. Plus, even if there are open positions here and there, each canceled series tosses five to ten experienced pros back into the talent pool. Which means that there’s almost no reason for showrunners to take a chance on an untested writer – not when there are so many proven pros out there willing to work for minimum as long as they’re credited as “consultants.”

So how can an untested writer get a chance at one of these few jobs. Read the rest and find out…

In the rarefied world of fine dining, the 42-year-old Ramsay is a very big deal. His eponymous restaurant at the London West Hollywood hotel is part of a mini-empire that has vaulted him into the ranks of celebrity chefs. His restaurants have earned a total of 13 of the elusive Michelin stars, a measure of critical acclaim that places Ramsay in the company of Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon. His Gordon Ramsay Holdings controls multiple outlets in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Britain’s Sunday Times in 2007 estimated his personal fortune at more than $100 million.

Now I will say I’m a huge fan of Ramsay’s shows — particularly the British ones where he’s two thirds chef and only one third cartoon character.  And everything Collins wrote is or at least once was true… technically. But Ramsay’s restaurant empire has been in serious trouble lately. And on top of the financial, legal, and tax issues, there were British press reports that he’d had an affair for seven years, jeopardizing his image as the loving father to an adorable family. He’s even fallen out of favor with Posh and Becks. And that “eponymous restaurant at the London West Hollywood?” Well, it’s still eponymous… but it’s not his anymore. He sold it months ago. And I happen to know this piece of information that Scott Collins was unable to unearth — because I read it in the Los Angeles Times.

Even if this fluff had run in the food or Calendar section, it would have been appropriate to have a little actual information about the man being fluffed. But to put this on the front page and then ignore a year’s worth of news about its subject is the equivalent of printing press releases. I realize the LA Times doesn’t actually believe in the importance of either writing or reporting these days — if they did, they’d never publish Jonah Goldberg. But is it asking too much that they learn how to use Google?

I don’t suppose James Roday and Dule Hill are going to be losing a lot of sleep over their Playskool-esque replacements…

And then my boss Tod Goldberg was  kind enough to suggest in a phone call that if we had indeed done the cross-over, it would have been the “worst fucking thing in the history of television” and that Lee and I would have been on the front page of the New York Times under the headline “the men who killed TV.” I think he’s just bitter because he was planning on bringing Scrappy Doo into his next Burn Notice book and now he can’t.