More Shameless Self Promotion!

As you know, my mystery novel A MINT CONDITION CORPSE is now on sale as an e-book from Fahrenheit Press.

But today, Friday June 3, 2016, that e-book can be on your e-reader for less than a buck!

You literally have zero excuses to not buy it.

Now go buy it, come back, read the rest of this blog post, then go to this site, pick up the books by the other members of Fahrenheit's Rogues Gallery, then read my book and post a review.

You can get an entire summer's reading for less than $30.

That's a downright crazy bargain.

What do you think Captain America?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1263: Some Shilling Then It Gets Offensive...

FIRST SOME SHILLING!

Okay, if you're a regular reader of my blog, or my Twitter feed, you will know that I sold a novel to Fahrenheit Press of Los Angeles. Soon A MINT CONDITION CORPSE will be available. It's what I call a "nerd noir" a satirical whodunnit set at a comic book convention starring a brilliant geek detective named KIRBY BAXTER, and his Scooby gang of friends.

So I'm putting out a call to any and all people who are taste-makers in the geek community, or they know taste makers, for some help. We can arrange preview copies of the book, for perusal, and if you, or they, like it, please get the word out. 

I need all the help I can get to get people to read this book. Those who do seem to enjoy it, so the more the merrier.

If you have any leads, let me know, either by my e-mail or via Twitter, and I'll make arrangements with my publisher.

Thanks in advance.

Now onto…

SOMETHING OFFENSIVE PART ONE

For a brief period SNL alumni Will Ferrell considered and then dropped out of a gig playing the late actor/governor/president Ronald Reagan with a twist.

That twist was that it was going to be a comedy inspired by the conspiracy theory that the Alzheimer's disease that destroyed the last ten years of Reagan's life secretly happened at the beginning of his second term. The theory goes on to say that he only made it through because his staff, in the movie; a young intern, convinced Reagan that he was playing the president in a movie.

Already Republicans, Reagan relatives, and many others are saying this is an offensive idea spawned by deep seeded political malice. The outrage probably was what scared Ferrell off the project in the end.

I also have something to add.

It will be an enormous waste of money and time.

The financiers would be better off putting the budget in a pile and setting it on fire. At least that way they can maybe have a wiener roast.

An even better idea is that they could give the budget to me, and let me make something worth watching, or just to live a lush lifestyle.

That's because this film falls into the far edge of what I call the Offend/Bore Matrix. That's where a film dealing with a controversial subject, like politics and/or religion is so aggressively partisan that it can only offend the opposite side of the issue and bore those who agree with the filmmaker.

But when you get out to the far edge, like this idea, you slip into the realm of the Offend/Creep region. That means that its militant partisanship has gone too far, and has become toxic, making anyone who likes it look like a creep.

Why?

Let's say you are a partisan Democrat. You despised Ronald Reagan and think he was the spawn of hell.

That's fine, you have a right to have your opinion of a politician. But there's that little something extra to this script, and that's Alzheimer's Disease.

Do you want to be known as the person who laughs at someone with Alzheimer's Disease?

Bring in Alzheimer's disease and political affiliations tend to fall by the wayside, and it slips into the realm of intense personal suffering.

Very few would find that kind of soul-destroying suffering funny, even if it happened to a Republican, and even fewer would publicly admit to finding it funny solely because it happens to a Republican.

Imagine this conversation:

A: Did you see the new movie about Reagan. It's the funniest thing ever made. 

B: Isn't that about him having Alzheimer's? 

A: Yeah, and it's hilarious. I laughed so much at his inability to remember things like friends and family. 

B: We didn't find it funny when that happened to my Grandpa. 

A: But this a Republican we're talking about. 

B: So?

A: That makes laughing at Alzheimer's okay! 

B: I can't even look at the trailers or commercials without remembering how bad things got for my Grandfather before he died. 

A: You have no sense of humour.

That might put a damper on the word of mouth.

SOMETHING OFFENSIVE PART TWO

Actress Scarlett Johansson has been cast in the lead role of an American movie version of the Japanese anime Ghost In The Shell.

This led to cries of outrage that the originally Japanese role hadn't gone to a Japanese actor. Most of the cries of "whitewashing" came from Asian-American organizations, and a lot of angry white people.

But do you know who wasn't offended by the casting?

The Japanese.

Most Japanese pundits and media outlets don't really care about Johansson's casting, and many are even enthusiastic about it.

The Japanese aren't freaking out over Johansson because they assume that an American version of a Japanese story would have an "American" actor (translation "White"). Part of this is because the Japanese have no qualms doing a Japanese version of a Euro-American story with Japanese versions of those once white characters. Kurosawa adapted several works of Shakespeare and the tropes of the American Western movie into many of his samurai films.

Then there's the other part: Even when it's not a Japanese version of a Euro-American story, but a Japanese story featuring caucasian European or American characters they will still use Japanese actors.

Case in point...

However, cast a Chinese, or Korean actor to play a Japanese character, or vice-versa, and then they get offended.

To explain that would involve explaining centuries of Asia's ethnic politics and prejudices, and I ain't going there.

Does this mean that "whitewashing" is not a problem?

No.

Whitewashing especially of Asian characters is a real problem, and it's part of the short shrift that Asian actors have been getting in Hollywood since the dawn of the medium.

White actors in bad make-up speaking pidgin English have been used to play Asian characters for over a century.  The most infamous being the popular Charlie Chan movies of the 1930s-1940s which managed to make the character of a brilliant detective shorthand for an insulting and offensive stereotype. 

But even when Asian-American actors break through in Hollywood they still got shafted. The first Asian-American movie star,  California born Anna May Wong* was beautiful, talented, and denied most of the plum roles she probably deserved.

Why?

There were actual laws on the books against the portrayal of interracial romance or "miscegenation."  That meant that she couldn't even kiss a white co-star on screen, even if he was playing an Asian character.

That meant that she was trapped playing stock or stereotyped characters for most of her career.

Those laws are gone, but the narrow casting of Asian actors in Hollywood continues. Also the recent demands for greater diversity in Hollywood also seem to leave them out.

That isn't right.

Hollywood does need to reflect the wider audience, and to ditch a lot of the stereotypes that hold back not only actors, but the art of storytelling.

But that will take effort, and Hollywood isn't known for spending effort, they just prefer to throw money at empty gestures and hope the problem goes away.

______________________________

*Anna May Wong was also the inspiration for this classic love song…

BOOK REPORT: TINSELTOWN

TINSELTOWN: MURDER, MORPHINE, & MADNESS AT THE DAWN OF HOLLYWOOD by William J. Mann, Harper Books, $16.99 US / $21 CAN

I don't normally do book reviews since I mostly write about the movie business, but there are these things called books, and some of them are about the movie business.

One such book is Tinseltown by William J. Mann which won the Edgar Award for Best True Crime book of 2014. It's a book that shows how intertwined the worlds of celebrity, business, and scandal really were, and how it goes all the way back to the very beginnings of the modern film industry that we know today.

Now the main crux of the book is a story of murder and scandal, but it goes quite a bit deeper than that, and presents a wider picture of a fledgling industry under siege. The best way to blurb it is to tell you a little bit about the main characters.

WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: He was one of the most commercially successful and prestigious film directors for the Famous Players-Lasky Company (later Paramount Pictures). He was a man with a reputation for being a man of excellent character and probity, but he had secrets that he desperately wanted kept, and it's his unsolved murder in 1922 that forms the central crux of the book.

MABEL NORMAND: Was Taylor's best friend and confidante. She was also one of the biggest comedy stars in Hollywood, and was desperately trying to put a past of bad relationships and cocaine abuse behind her. However, the trial of her former co-star Fatty Arbuckle on bogus rape and murder charges, and the murder of her best friend threatened to destroy her career and her life.

MARY MILES MINTER: A Famous Players child star growing up into an ingenue desperately trying to get out from under the control of her domineering mother Charlotte Shelby. She's romantically obsessed with Taylor, to the point of practically stalking a man she could never have.

MARGARET "GIBBY" GIBSON: A former co-star of Taylor's from his acting days who came close to big-time Hollywood stardom, only to have her shot ruined by her fondness for scuzzy men and easy money. She will do anything to get another shot at stardom, and isn't one to let the law or morality get in her way.

ADOLPH ZUKOR: Started life as a penniless orphan from Hungary, and rose to become the head of Famous Players-Lasky, which at the time was the biggest, most prestigious, and most powerful movie producer-distributor-exhibitor in America, and by extension the world. He's also a man under siege, who is desperate to hold onto the company and life he literally built from nothing.

WILL H. HAYS: A former postmaster-general and campaign manager for the Harding administration. He's hired to lead the organization that will become the modern MPAA, and his mission is to save Hollywood from threats both within and without, and boy-oh-boy were there threats.

A series of scandals had rocked Hollywood, involving sex, drug addiction, and even death. This sparked a movement to regulate, censor, or even shut down Hollywood that became downright hysterical when Fatty Arbuckle was unjustly tried for a murder that never happened. It got even worse when Taylor was gunned down in his apartment and the police investigation, hindered by interference by both the studio, and the press who had just realized that Hollywood scandal sold newspapers like nothing before. That takes the book on three tracks. There's the investigation into the murder itself, the effects it was having on three women in Taylor's life Mabel, Mary & Margaret, and the effect on the industry as a whole, as witnessed by Will Hays and Adolph Zukor.

One thing I found surprising was the amount of sympathy I felt, not only for the women caught up in the murder and scandal hysteria, but for Hays and Zukor.

Like many I viewed Hays as a censorious prig, and Zukor as a ruthless cold-fish only out for himself, but this book showed me that I was wrong. (Yes, that happens rarely) You see Hays was deep down a true believer in free speech and free markets. He thought that movies should be free to show whatever they wanted, because the audience was free to not pay money to see something they didn't like. However he was all too often forced into playing the censor by outside forces.

Those same forces also drove Zukor to do many of the seemingly ruthless and heartless things. Yes, he's shown doing many things driven by ego, but most of the stuff he does is driven by inadequacy and a fear that he might lose everything he's struggled build.

Zukor's fears were not unfounded. We may look at the threats by the morality campaigners to have the government seize the entire movie industry, and move it to Washington where it would operate under the supervision of the US congress as ridiculous, but you have to remember that it was these exact same campaigners that got the Prohibition of alcohol written into the American constitution. Alcohol had been a part of the culture for millennia before the country had even been founded, and the movie industry had only been around a little more than twenty years at this point. When you look at it from that point of view those threats don't seem all that ridiculous.

But back to the book.

Mann does an excellent job presenting a very careful analysis of the crime, the evidence, and things that the investigators didn't see, and presents a pretty compelling theory as to what might have really happened.

He also presents where our modern obsessions with celebrity, scandal, and power begin, and is written with a fast paced style that manages to elegantly capture the complexities of this time and place

Now the story naturally has cinematic qualities. It has murder, sex, scandal, and the sort of big business shenanigans that audiences eat up these days. But it wouldn't work as a movie.

For this to be properly adapted, it has to be done as a TV series. While a relatively slim volume at a little over 400 pages, the story is just too damn big and broad to do justice to with a 2-3 hour feature film, or even a two or three episode miniseries. You could two  seasons of 10-13 one-hour episodes each, with season one dealing with events leading up to Taylor's murder, and season 2 with the investigation & aftermath, and then you might get the story right.

But back to the book.

I would suggest picking this up if you're into movies, murder, and history. William J. Mann manages to capture not just the story, but the era, and presents it with great energy and style.

The Book Report: What's In A Head?

The people behind the World Fantasy Awards have lost their head.

Well, technically it's not THEIR head, but they have lost the head of long dead author H.P. Lovecraft, whose bust, designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, was used as their trophy for many years.

The reason for dropping the head of Lovecraft was that he was a racist person from a racist time and that sparked the usual online screaming match with terms like "racist," and "social justice warrior," being tossed around like grenades full of manure.

Some are campaigning to replace Lovecraft's head with the head of author Octavia Butler, who was a multi-award winning and groundbreaking fantasy and science-fiction author in her own right.

I disagree.

Now before you type out "you're a racist" in the comments, just let me make my case.

I don't think the award should be a bust of any one particular author.

Being a fantasy award, the temptation is to make it a bust of J.R.R. Tolkien who has been one of the most influential authors, but I disagree with even that.

Why?

Because if you use a human head, the award will end up being about that person, and if the award is about that person it will be about something about that person that offends one group or another.

Let's use Lovecraft as an example.

Yes, he was racist, maybe even more racist than the normal standards of the early 20th century. But even if he spent his short life campaigning for racial equality and love between all people, I still would oppose the use of his visage for the award.

He represented a very narrow sub-genre of fantasy, namely a specific brand of phantasmagoric cosmic-horror that we now know as "Lovecraftian." He doesn't truly represent the breadth and depth of the genre. No one author does.

Not even Octavia Butler, who despite the quality  or variety of her work, only represents a tiny corner of a very big tent, because she is only one author, with one author's interests and abilities. Plus, there will always be a nagging doubt hanging over her metallic head that she was chosen as some sort of token gesture of white-liberal-guilt atonement by those who allowed Lovecraft to linger for so long.

Plus, we don't know what some future biographer is going to discover about her. She might have secretly hunted the homeless for sport, for all we know.

Which brings me to what the trophy should be.

It should not be a person, it should be a symbol.

The fantasy genre is born from tales of adventure from mythology. So I suggest a classic fantasy symbol: the sword in the stone from Arthurian legend.

Now before you yell "you're not being inclusive" or that I'm being "Eurocentric" at your monitor, let me finish explaining my design idea.

Every culture has a sword.

That means that there can be a range of designs for the trophy, which can alternate. A classic European medieval sword one year, a katana the next, a scimitar after that, then maybe a jian sword, or an Ethiopian shotel, or an Indian Tulwar. You can pretty easily make a line of different trophies and rotate them among the various awards categories each year.

And to include the horror genre, maybe have the stone be carved in the shape of a sinister looking skull, marked with nonsensical arcane symbols.

Then you have a trophy that symbolizes the roots of the genre without really leaving anything out, and free from the baggage of any one person from the genre's history.

The Book Report: When Is A Contest Not A Contest?

Mysterious Press is a long running publishing imprint which is part of the Grove Atlantic Group. It specializes, naturally, in mystery and crime fiction, and is very selective about who it even considers publishing. To be looked at your novel must be submitted by an accredited literary agent, and I'm pretty sure that agent being someone they know and do business with regularly, and author having a publishing track record, probably doesn't hurt either.

That's why it surprised me to see them announce that they were having a contest. Writers could submit their novels to them and the winner gets published and a cash prize of about $25,000.

Sounds like a great contest, doesn't it?

Maybe, but it doesn't look like much of a contest to me. I'll get to that in a second, but first I need to give a bit of an explanation:

You see, to get published a writer needs to win the lottery, multiple times.

First you have to get someone at an agency or a publisher to read your work and like it enough to pass it along up the industry's food chain.

Second, you have to have someone higher up the publishing food chain like it and give it the green-light to be published, and not get what happened to me.  One time a novel of mine went right up to the publisher's desk, but he died suddenly, the replacement management lost it for 2+ years. Then an assistant editor found it and asked me to give them a second chance, I agreed, and I didn't hear from them again until 6 years and 11 months after I had originally submitted my novel. Then a bottom rung volunteer slush pile reader sent me a terse rejection letter that pretty much said that all my previous dealings with the company meant nothing, and those that had been promised to look at it, had never looked at it during all those years. And this was by a company that bragged about how respectfully it treated writers in their allegedly open submission policy.

Then your book has to be deemed good enough for them to market aggressively in the hope that it will find an audience. And let's hope that management or ownership doesn't change during this period, because the new regime might just dump your book for reasons that have nothing to do with quality or sales potential.

Then the book has to find that audience and sell well enough to open the door wide enough for the author to get another book published.

At each step a writer is basically buying a lottery ticket with their blood, sweat, and tears, and each ticket has about 1,000,000 to 1 odds against it.

Which is why when a publisher announces a contest looking for new novels the hearts of writers who haven't won any of these lotteries brightens a little bit.

Then they looked at the rules and wondered why they were calling it a contest at all.

You see writers, both new or established, cannot enter their novels into Mysterious Press' contest. The novels must be entered, both electronically, and in print, by the writer's accredited literary agent.

Basically, the contest is them operating as usual, looking only at the people they would normally be looking at who already won at least one of publishing's lotteries, and would probably give more attention to someone who won two or more. And the prize, when you look at from that way, looks like a pretty standard publishing advance.

Why call it a contest if the company isn't changing any of its procedures and only pre-existing winners need apply?

Contests for writers are supposed to be about beating the odds, and selling the myth that quality is all a book needs to be discovered, not pre-existing connections to the publishing world. This "contest" totally flops in that respect.

It reminds me of an institution in Canada that was started in the late 1980s by some up and coming Canadian film and television companies. It's mission statement was to foster NEW Canadian writers to write NEW Canadian films.

I called them and asked them what it took to qualify for the programs. Their answer was that to qualify as a NEW Canadian writer you had to have had 2 feature films produced in Canada by a company they recognized, and at least on screenplay under option with a Canadian company they recognized.

At the time there were about 2 writers in Canada under forty who might have qualified as "NEW" but even that chance was slim.

I asked an employee what they expected to accomplish with these guidelines and they just shrugged and said they didn't know. It did make the companies sponsoring this foundation look like they were doing something about the image that Canada's film industry was a closed shop run by a bunch of middle aged bureaucrats and near-bureaucrats who didn't give a toss about new people or even audiences.

This looks like that mindset has spread to American publishing.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1230: Knowing When To NOT Take A Stand

DOWNEY WALKS

By now you've seen the video of Robert Downey Jr. walking out of an Avengers press junket interview because a British "journalist" ambushed him with questions about his past battle with addiction and his personal politics.

Good for RDJ.

It's not like he was trying to keep his past a secret. He's done multiple interviews about getting clean, most of them very frank and revealing. There was nothing new to be learned from bringing it up now, being a subject more fit for history over news.

Then there's the reporter's insistence that RDJ take some sort of public political stance, which RDJ refused, rightly.

Why was RDJ right to refuse to take a stance?

Because there is no good that can come out of him making some sort of partisan political stand. All he would succeed in doing is risk alienating a big chunk of the audience either way, and if he comes out as politically "conservative" he runs the risk of alienating Hollywood and possibly losing work.

Which is why I think it was right of him to walk out of that ambush. That reporter was just looking for attention for himself as "hard-hitting" which is why I deliberately left his name out of this post.

THE PEN IS NOT MIGHTIER THAN OFFENDING SOMEONE

Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose (fitting name) and four other writers are boycotting the PEN America gala's tribute to Charlie Hebdo.

You may recall that Charlie Hebdo is the often off-colour French satirical magazine whose staff and contributors were massacred by radical Islamist terrorists out to avenge offensive cartoons. PEN America is a literary journal published by the PEN American Centre, a group dedicated to the promotion of free speech and free expression.

This means that Ondaatje/Prose and company are missing one of the fundamental points of PEN's mission. That in order for freedom of speech to exist, it must accept speech that some might find offensive or even enraging. The onus of responsibility for acts of violence perpetrated by the "offended" rests not on the offender, but on the perpetrator of the violence.

This boycott is an unwitting endorsement of violence as a means of imposing censorship by people who should know better. It's telling terrorists and wannabes that violence will get them what they want. 

That ain't right.

Then there's the whiff of hypocrisy that clings to this boycott like the pong of a rotting whale carcass. How would these same sensitive souls have reacted if Charlie Hebdo had been attacked by a gang of Christians who had been enraged by the magazine's more common attacks on their beliefs? I'd bet dollars to dirt-clods that these same people would be waving "Je Suis Charlie" flags and demanding that the magazine get the Nobel Peace Prize.

If the boycotters really believe in free speech then they will have to hold their nose and accept that non-PC speech has to be free too.

The Book Report: Why Not Just Admit It?

British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro has a new novel coming out and the critics and literary prize juries are wetting themselves in eagerness to heap him with praise.

The novel The Buried Giant, is set in an alternative medieval Earth with magic, heroes, and at least one dragon. 

Sounds like a big fantasy novel, but Ishiguro says that you don't dare call it fantasy, it's "literary."

Ursula K. LeGuin, who has been writing award winning science fiction and fantasy fiction for decades, takes him to task over this and wonders why he won't take that leap and say it's fantasy.

I'll say why he won't call it fantasy: SNOBBERY.

He's been getting critical praise and winning big and important literary awards for over 30 years. His books are the books that people in the book business use as a standard to show the ignorant what is "important" and "literary."

For him to stoop to something as low as "genre" fiction is seen as a crime against "art." He's better than that he's IMPORTANT.

Stinking blinking ignorance.

It's not the first time he's done this. His novel Never Let Me Go was basically a science fiction novel that he denied was science-fiction, even though it was about clones being harvested for their organs. (If he was a science-fiction writer he would have realized he had used the same hackneyed premise as Michael Bay's The Island and Parts: The Clonus Horror)

I wish, I dream, that someday this snobbery over genre and literary would end. There are no such things as a "good/bad" genres and just because something is deemed "literary" doesn't mean that it's important. There are just good stories and bad stories.

But some people never learn.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1197: Big Brother Is Watching You

Paul Greengrass, best known for shaking the camera a lot in the Bourne movies, has been tapped to adapt George Orwell's classic novel 1984 for Sony Pictures to be produced by Scott Rudin.

In case you've lived in a cave Orwell's 1984 is the story of Winston Smith. Smith lives in Oceania, a state in perpetual war and under the regime of IngSoc, or English Socialism, led by the enigmatic Big Brother.

Surveillance is everywhere, with devices called "telescreens" monitoring your every move while bombarding you with propaganda about loving Big Brother, hating Emmanuel Goldstein, who both might not exist, and if you stray from the ruling party's line, whichever that might be, you will be taken to Room 101 by the Thought Police, and "corrected" until you loved Big Brother.

Smith works for the Ministry of Truth and it's his job to rewrite old newspaper articles so any future history will reflect the party line. He's chafing under the repressive regime that dictates his every thought and action and rebels, by falling in love with a girl named Julia.

The book had been adapted several times, but only two films were ever released to theatres. The one people remember was the fairly faithful adaption directed by Michael Radford with John Hurt as Smith, that was released, fittingly in 1984. Artists Shephard Fairey tried to make his own version in 2012, but the project fizzled out in development.

When I heard Greengrass was directing, the first thing I thought of was of Big Brother complaining that all the telescreens were shaking in all directions. But my misgivings go deeper than that.

1984 is a book that is still relevant even 30 years after it's science fiction date, but it's very easy to misinterpret.

Orwell was a socialist, which means that he desired a system where everyone was equal in all things,   and worked solely for the betterment of mankind instead of personal greed.

However, Orwell was also an intellectually honest realist, he could see what was being done in the name of socialism all over the world. Pogroms, purges, massacres, and the casual mutilation of truth, which Orwell viewed as sacred, to fit the whims and factional schemes of the rulers. Orwell recognized that the fundamental flaw in any political system was that no matter what, ruthless people would constantly try to wrest control, and many times succeed. If ultimate and even intimate power was to be had, then the most ruthless people would claw their way to the top. That's why a die-hard socialist was able to write two of the most critical novels about socialism, 1984 and Animal Farm. 

Which brings us to heart of the problem.

Hollywood's idea of a political scientist and philosopher is Russell Brand.

When it comes to political/economic/social issues, Hollywood is a blend of ignorance, hypocrisy, political correctness, and self righteousness. They seem to believe that saying the correct things counts more than doing the right things. In Hollywood it's perfectly okay to have a personal carbon footprint equal to a mid-sized European country, or a business operation as ethnically & gender diverse as a KKK meeting, as long as you give money to the correct causes, campaign for the correct politicians, and get your picture taken at the correct protests and fundraisers.

In Hollywood, it's all about image, and nothing to do with substance or accomplishment.

Which is why I'm pretty damn sure that Hollywood will butcher any adaptation of 1984. They'll probably turn Oceania in Oceania Inc., Big Brother into a CEO, and drain any true relevance from the work, because they lack the intellectual depth and honesty to admit that a non-capitalist system can possibly be evil and oppressive.

That and the camera will jerk around so much it'll make me motion sick.

So just let it rest Hollywood.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1194: Random Bits of Nonsense

AMAZON WON'T BURY THE HACHETTE

Mega-retailer Amazon and Mega-publisher Hachette have inked a multi-year deal, calling a truce on their war over e-book pricing.

To sum up the feud Amazon was racking up big losses in their quest to undercut and monopolize the book retailing business. They thought that they could use their bulk to get the big publishers to start eating some of Amazon's losses. Well, Hachette was the first one to say: "Ah hell no!" and thus the war began.

Now it's over. Probably because Amazon's shareholders took a look at the money they were haemorrhaging in the CEO's war of supremacy, and told Bezos, to make some kind of deal.

I still stand by my previous statement that if the big publishers don't want this to happen again, and again, and again, then they need a plan.

1. IMPROVE DISTRIBUTION: A few years ago I tried to order a book, a newly released novel from a popular author, through my local bookstore, which is now out of business. I had Amazon as an option, but I was willing to pay a little more to help support my local indie. They told me that the distributor took 6 to 8 weeks for those kinds of orders. Well that put the kibosh on that plan, since I was hoping to give it as a Xmas gift. There is no reason for that in this day and age. If Amazon can do it, the big publishers can do it for retailers. Or they can...

2. EXPLOIT PRINT ON DEMAND: The machinery to manufacture books on site exist, it's just not being used. There should be a machine in every bookstore in the world, right by the cashier, and under a sign that says: "If it's not on our shelves, it's in this machine." The customer gives the cashier their order, and they're told to feel free to browse the shelves while they wait the 10 minutes it takes to print and bind the books. You can also use this to screw Amazon by making their publishing arm's titles available via these machines. Thus they can't complain about being shut out, and the combine behind them will make a little off of every order.

Anyway, what else is in the news…

WONDER WOMAN BY A WOMAN

I'm not normally one to jump on rumours of who is doing what until things are signed, sealed, and delivered, but I just can't resist this one.

DC/Warner Bros. are reportedly interested in getting a female director for Wonder Woman, and at the time of this writing Canadian TV director/producer Michelle Maclaren is in the front of the pack.  Maclaren certainly has the right CV, starting her directing career on the X-Files and working on such big name and acclaimed shows as Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Also, as a female director the studio only has to pay her 77¢ for every dollar they would pay a male director. (Now that's good satire!) 

But seriously, her record shows an ability to do quality drama, action, and suspense, while working within the tightly controlled budgets and schedules inherent in TV production. Plus, TV is where all the interesting storytelling is being done these days, and she's in the thick of it. Which makes her more than qualified for the job regardless of gender.

All I ask is that they work in getting some colour on Wonder Woman's outfit. Brown is not a super-heroic  colour scheme.