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In his first public conversation since making comments at an October 24th protest that has sparked a national police boycott of his films, including the upcoming HATEFUL EIGHT, Quentin Tarantino takes aim at his critics.

On Monday, actor and poet Charlie Sheen posted a job ad seeking a paid social media intern–generating 95,333 clicks in an hour and more than 74,000 applications.

Here’s more about the job: “The #TigerBloodIntern is expected to be proactive, monitor the day-to-day activities on the major social media platforms, prepare for exciting online projects and increase Charlie’s base of followers. You will learn how to promote and develop the social media network of Hollywood’s most trending celebrity.”

What does this mean for writers? As the recession continues, book advances dwindle, and paying writing jobs fade away, these social media jobs might become bizarre careers for writers–churning out thousands of tweets and Facebook posts for famous people. Novelist Cornell Woolrich described a similar lifestyle as a Depression-era pulp fiction writer in his story “Penny-A-Worder.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

That's a video of thriller novelist Jason Pinter reading from his new book, The Stolen. Pinter has three suspenseful novels under his belt, following the hardboiled adventures his fictional journalist, Henry Parker.

Today, for the conclusion of his exclusive visit to The Publishing Spot, he explains how to write crackling dialogue--one of the toughest tasks facing any thriller writer.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:

Jason Pinter:
When I'm revising my novels, I actually read the dialogue out loud to myself. Continue reading...

Old time radio drama is the future.

In my novel, I'm working with the hardboiled, over-dramatic, and image-driven narration style that old time radio dramas evoked. If you listen to these shows on your iPod, it's intimate as a little kid leaning against a radio receiver. It's a style that all fledgling writers should learn for web writing.

If you want to experiment, the time has never been better. Ed Champion is working on A Grand Radio Project.  Today LitPark interviews Chuck Collins, author of The Radio Murders--a podcast set of novels about a grim radio station. Collins took his dayjob as a radio broadcaster and turned it into mysterious gold.

Finally, over the last two years I've written about countless pulp fiction productions from The Great Hardboiled Radio List to my I Was A Communist for the FBI essay to this this videoblogged interview with pulp fiction lover Paul Malmont. Read your work out-loud, let's go back to the gripping, stylish days of radio drama.

Okay, it's just a story, but... 

Earlier this year I blogged about the new literary magazine, Please Don't. The first issue is on the web, and includes "a collaborative serialized novel," written by Pete Coco, Scott Stealey, and other writers. The first chapter cliffhanger ends with the question, "Did you just kill Axl Rose?" I still dig this pulp fiction strategy.

In real news, the Virginia Quarterly Review just revealed a new problem for fledgling writers in the digital age. They can respond to your submission at the speed of light. These figures are amazing...

"At least a few people each week are upset because they heard back from us too quickly ... we’ve received nineteen submission this morning, 232 submissions are recommended for declination by readers, eight are recommended for acceptance, 1,469 submissions are currently in the hopper and readers have made six recommendations today. September submissions required an average of 18.89 days for a final decision to be made, October averaged 14.84 days, and November is at 10.5 days."

Finally, if you are looking to build your journalism toolkit, check out Multimedia Shooter--a group blog with some practical, high-class advice that hopes to "reveal the ways hardware and software can improve our multimedia/storytelling skills." Dig it here...

Will popular fiction outlast our literary writers?

Otto Penzler (owner of the fabulous Mysterious Bookshop) thinks so, writing a review of Nostalgia Ventures republication of classic Shadow novels by Walter B. Gibson--the man who turned out a million words a year.

Penzler argues that Gibson's heroic, suspenseful novels stuck in readers' minds for much longer than the writers who won National Book Awards in the 1930's.

I gotta disagree a little bit, especially since because nominees Jim Shepard and Denis Johnson are students of pulp fiction. Like many of my favorite literary writers, they mined currents of popular fiction for pacing, vivid imagery, and inspiration. Check it out:

"None of these favorites of the literary establishment have approached the staying power of their contemporary pulp fiction writers — an eloquent negation of the significance of the academics and critics who relentlessly chastise the American reading public for preferring the storytelling qualities of their inferiors."

Nevertheless, we share Penzler's love for pulp fiction--just look back at our Paul Malmont archives for some web video-ized writing advice about popular and literary fiction. Then check out the new paperback edition of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril--in that book, you actually meet Gibson as a literary fiction hero.

Too many people expect the job of "writer" to mean one thing--sitting around quietly working on your novel. Those people will get very hungry. 

Author Allen Rucker's writing career reads like a vocational manual for writers: he's written a comical television book (The Sopranos Family Cookbook), co-written non-fiction books for celebrities (Hollywood Causes Cancer), and most recently, a personal memoir about paralysis (The Best Seat in the House (in hardcover now, look for the trade paperback in January 2008)).

Today, this television and film writer explains the books and writers who influence him, giving us a big long reading list for the weekend.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You have a deep love for crime fiction. Do you have a reading list for aspiring crime writers? Who are the writers, generally, who inspire you? Which websites, magazines do you read for material?

Allen Rucker:
I’m not a crime-fiction writer, just a crime-fiction reader. I read the literary stuff, too, and a lot of the current entries – like Ian McEwan’s Saturday, for instance – has its share of criminal activity. Continue reading...

Tonight I'm headed out to Film Forum to watch a 60-year-old movie (Phantom Lady) written by my favorite pulp fiction novelist. Seeing this film will do more to help my writing than an entire semester of literary theory. 

Reading pulp fiction as a novelist is like reading Shakespeare to write a better contemporary play. Writers should always know and emulate the early masters of their form. 

Cornell Woolrich was the godfather of the noir fiction, and his paranoid, twisty prose inspired masterpieces like Hitchcock’s Rear Window. While his hardboiled characters lived out adventures, Woolrich lived in hotel suites with his mother for 30 years.

Over the course of a rocky career, this guy wrote the template for the modern thriller--a road map for all writers on writing suspenseful, gripping plots. If you need more help, Sarah Weinman has a beautiful collection of film noir dialogue, all of it handpicked by contemporary crime writers--earn your Ph.D in pulp fiction.

Sorry for the lax posting the last two days, I've been swamped with work at my various writing jobs. Which brings me to today's point.

Are we heroes or victims of the online revolution? 

I constantly fret that online publishing will shackle writers to pulp fiction production schedules. I'm scared that ten years from now, thousands of frenzied writers writing millions of disposable blog posts, all of us earning Depression-era salaries. 

But you know what cheers me up? Reading people like Orante Churm, who are cheering on our new generation of web-based writers, telling us to keep on writing. Dig his essay for Inside Higher Ed, a bit of encouragement for all us bloggers, journalists, writers, or whatever you want to call us, toiling in the the digital trenches.

Check it out: 

"Bérubé added, however, that he felt blogging was not a form of publishing (at least not one worthy for the c.v.), that it was 'marginal in the best sense of the word.' My writing here is not academic, nor was meant to be, and often it’s not even about the academy, but it’s of publishable quality and worthy of my c.v. That’s why I took an interest in the recent Ithaka Report, which says 'the boundaries between formal and informal publication will blur.' (Also, I always do what IHE resident intellectual Scott McLemee says to do.)"

(Thanks, Maud!) 

These are gloomy days, between the war, the struggling economy, and our country's attempts to reckon with its place (and responsibilities) in this troubled world. Times like these call for hardboiled prose and hardboiled narrators. 

Last night I had a long talk with a guy who liked private detective novels as much as me. I think these dark, crazy-metaphor-laden, and kinetic writers had the single biggest influence on my style, and I think they can help you write about our gloomy world.

Here are my Top Five Hardboiled Links at The Publishing Spot to help you explore this crazy genre and figure out how it can help you write:

1- The great hardboiled private detective radio and YouTube list.

2- My interview with pulp fiction loving novelist Paul Malmont 

3- My interview with Vikram Chandra about his Indian detective in a hardboiled world.

4- My interview with Charlie Huston about his vampire private detective books.

5- My interview with Christa Faust about her hardboiled wrestling novels. 

What if a writer actually celebrated his fan's efforts to imagine new installments of his work?

Karl Schroeder is urging his fans to share their role-playing game versions of his science fiction books. Check it out:

"I'm consumed with curiosity and want to know what your versions of Virga look like. So if you've been running a Virga campaign tell me all about it! If you've got maps, post 'em! ... I'm not going to sue anybody for stealing my 'intellectual property." Years of hanging around with Cory have cured me of any worries I might once have had on that subject." (Thanks Galleycat)

Why not use the software counterpart to these shared, open-source writing schemes?

Edward Champion recently rebuilt his laptop after a near-disaster that could have cost him years of work. In this post, he explains how he's using a slew of open source programs (including OpenOffice, GIIMPShop, Inkscape, and Audacity) instead of the major processing programs installed on his computer before the crash. Give these programs a try.

Finally, check out this bruising open-source debate raging between crime writers--arguing about the pros and cons of neo-noir (the writers who follow in the bloody footsteps of pulp fiction novelists). It starts with hardboiled web hero Kevin Burton Smith's essay and Sarah Weinman summed up the dramatic debate.

As everybody, and I mean everybody, is talking about this morning, The Sopranos ended last night. America's most critically-acclaimed television show ended in the middle of an uneventful supper at a greasy spoon diner in New Jersey.

The Washington Post declared that the show's unfinished ending was "a classic now, and one that will live on for years." Salon.com asks, "Is Chase brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or... is he just an asshole?"

I don't have cable, so I missed the show. But I love, love, love talking about unexpected endings in pulp fiction novels. Readers come to the end of any book with a huge pile of expectations, and pulp fiction writers came up with some genius methods for subverting those expectations.

Off the top of my head, here are my five favorite endings--narrative tricks and riffs that every writer should study. Don't worry, no spoilers...

1. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. The master of the private detective novel ended his career on a sad, lonesome note, letting the title come back and haunt the reader.

2. The Pick Up by Charles Willeford. A last minute twist takes this alcohol-fueled tragedy into the dark heart of race relations.

3. The Getaway by Jim Thompson. This book begins like thousands of other pulp fiction novels, with a daring bank robbery. The twisty plot will take you straight to hell, a hell you've never seen before in any kind of book.

4. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. The first private detective I ever read. The ending taught me volumes about darkness, existential despair, and private detective narration.

5- I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane. The most despicable ending in this list, this crazy writer took revenge and dragged it out to its most ugly forms. Instead of feeling vindicated, you feel like you need a shower.

Where did the pulp fiction writers find the narrative engines that propelled their books? In the case of David Goodis--one of my favorite hardboiled writers-- he was inspired by the personal urge to escape! Sarah Weinman explains in her new LA Times column...

You think you have a hard time balancing your job and writing career? Nick Antosca, author of Fires, works at a hedge fund by day and writes novels by nights. Check out his insightful interview over at New York Brain Terrain and figure out how to balance your own life too.

Plenty of people are arguing about the state of book reviews and literary criticism in the digital age. Bill Marx is actually doing something about it by teaching a new course at Boston University about the evolution of 21st Century criticism: Arts Criticism: From the Old Media to the New. Go visit Chekhov's Mistress for more details.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

The whole book blogging community is buzzing about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's decision to downsize their book review staff in an effort to cut costs at the newspaper.

Some bloggers cheer that this event marks the death of the paper-review and the rise of the lit-blog army. Others, like mystery novelist (one of my favorite contemporary pulp fiction writers, incidentally) Michael Connelly, feel that we will cripple the book writing business by removing newspaper reviews.

Better minds than me can debate what this means for the industry. I don't think anybody knows, truthfully. I think it's a rocky, thrilling time to be a novelist, and more than ever, you need to connect with your reading community on the web. No matter what happens to the book-reviewing business, these dedicated readers can sustain you.

But don't take my word for it, Sarah Weinman has a much better essay about the whole mess over at her blog. Check it out:

"I elaborate a fair bit in the comments section at Critical Mass, bringing up Connelly's support by independent mystery booksellers and how word of mouth led to increased readership ... in some ways genre fiction, especially crime fiction, gets off fairly easy in the critical coverage game. There are dedicated reviewers (and from the sounds of it, one extra fresh face, which is welcome news.) There is a strong, active community of fans, booksellers and knowledgeable people who want nothing more than to spread the love about books at signings, conventions and other events and get-togethers."

Be sure to read all her readers' comments below the fold. There are some passionate, insightful thoughts floating around...

Whenever I'm suffering from writer's block, I always pick up a battered private detective novel for inspiration. Now, I can do it on a video browser.

Over at the web video blog Reel Pop, Steve Bryant has brought pulp fiction into the YouTube era. He lists, complete with trailers, clips, and links, his five favorite television private detectives. Take a trip down memory lane with him. 

Last year while researching my Paul Malmont interview, I put together a list of the best hardboiled radio shows with the help of the Rara-Avis mailing list. Check it out for your audio pleasure.

1- The outrageous, jumbled metaphors and pulpy soundtrack of Pat Novak, For Hire.

2- The impeccable cool of Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator.

3- The cynical insurance P.I. who always gets mixed up in murder, Jeff Regan, Investigator.

4- The violent, dark adventures on Gunsmoke.

Finally, list member Dick Lochte mailed in a much longer list, full of great shows to check out: "Richard Diamond, Private Detective was pretty hardboiled. The Third Man: The Lives of Harry Lime, with Orson Welles in adventures that took place before the character was bumped off by his pal, is arguably hardboiled. As are shows with Alan Ladd (Box 13), Bogart and Bacall (Bold Venture), Edward G. Robinson (Big Town), Jeff Chandler (Michael Shayne)."

Are you sick of snobby critics making fun of your favorite science fiction or pulp fiction novelists? Don't despair! The genre book-reviewing world just got a whole lot better.

The Los Angeles Times Books section just contracted two of my favorite literary book reviewers to write about mystery and science fiction. Ed Park, the Believer editor and Philip K. Dick fan, will be writing a science fiction column. 

Then, Sarah Weinman, our buddy from Galleycat and Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, will be writing the paper's crime fiction column.

These writers should be injecting some enthusiasm and deep thoughts to a breed of literary criticism that usually skims the the surface of these wonderful genres. Weinman already opened the whole show over the weekend, these are solid, well-crafted essays. Look for Park next week. 

Check it out...

"I will be penning a monthly column on crime fiction, "Dark Passages," for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. It's part of a rotating cycle of web-only columns that include Ed Park on science fiction, Richard Rayner on paperbacks and Sonja Bolle on children's lit. Column number one debuts this weekend along with the revamped book section, and in it I muse on what happens when ghostwriters go solo - and when the reverse takes place."

Oh my goodness. I've been waiting a whole year for this to happen, and it happened.

The world of Alternate-Reality Games--the Internet-spawned genre where readers get to play out a fictional story in the real world--has finally found a private detective story!

I just discovered a fictional, New York-based murder mystery that uses real world pay phones and subway platforms to tell the story. Players call a number from the Canal Street subway station, and find themselves wrapped up in riddle maze and scavenger hunt inside the tunnel.

I can't wait to play this game, created by artist Ryan Holsopple. I think more writers need to be working on this kind of project--using the Internet, social networking, and other digital doo-dads to make your story come to life. Dig it:

"Set in the maze of tiles that make up the station, the Canal Street Station game puts participants in the shoes of a private investigator, as he searches the depths of Canal Street Station for a young French woman that may have committed a murder, or may be a figment of his own imagination.

"The game uses a Trixbox server, a phone application platform based on Asterisk™, to collect caller ID from payphones in the Canal Street Subway, and pinpoint where the player is located."

Thanks to Steve Bryant for the link... 

(Photograph by Christina Latimer) 

Sarah Weinman, one of our favorite book reviewers, just wrapped up a roundtable discussion about the thriller, sort of like Oprah's book club for the hardboiled set.

The talk revolved around The Triumph of the Thriller, a new scholarly book by Patrick Anderson.

I especially appreciated some comments from Jerome Weeks, a book critic who already reviewed Anderson's book: "But for anyone looking to understand how hard-boiled detective stories or spy novels really work, what they reveal about our culture, I'd direct them to John G. Cawelti's three genre studies: Adventure, Mystery and Romance, The Spy Story and Mystery, Violence and Popular Culture."

These scholarly books are amazing resources for fledgling writers: outlining the history of an art form, expanding your sense of plot development, and exposing you to new writers. Check out the roundtable, and then start reading.

Also, Sarah is recovering from a household accident and can't blog for a few days. Notice how her loving fans all jump in to support their favorite book reviewer in these heartwarming comments...

Time Inc. took some devastating lay-offs today, and scores of writers are now out of work. Gawker has provided the best coverage of the damage so far.

When these publishing disasters occur, I like to re-read a quote from the story, "Penny-A-Worder" by Cornell Woolrich--a reflection on the self-destructive joy of writing for the vicious pulp fiction industry in the 1930's.

"The story flowed like a torrent.  The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet.  The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower.  The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thing gray ghosts, in good cause; the mortality rate was terrible."

What if we emerge from the wreckage of the print economy with an army of underpaid writers handcuffed to pulp fiction production schedules? I'm scared that ten years down the new media road, thousands of frenzied writers will be publishing millions of disposable blog posts, all of us earning Depression-era salaries.

This is not a moment to crow about new media beating old media. These industry cuts will eventually affect us all, from the Times reporters all the way down to fledgling web writers. We're all in this together now...