Lawrence Block's Blog, page 10

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #3—Ed Park

[image error]From Publishers Weekly: “Ed Park’s warm and winning fiction debut, Personal Days, is narrated by a collective we of youngish Manhattan office grunts who watch in helpless horror as their company keeps shrinking, taking their private world of in-jokes and nicknames along with it. Park may have written the first cubicle cozy.” 

From The New Yorker: “This comic and creepy début novel takes place in a Manhattan office depopulated by “the Firings,” where one can “wander vast tracts of lunar workscape before seeing a window.” The downsized staff huddle like the crew of a doomed spaceship, picked off one by one by an invisible predator. Crippled by computer crashes (one worker suggests that the machines are “trying to tell us about the limits of the human”), the survivors eddy in a spiritual inertia; when one of them is banished to “Siberia”—a lone desk on another floor—no one can muster the energy even to reply to her increasingly anguished e-mails, until, one day, she is simply no longer there. Park transforms the banal into the eerie, rendering ominous the familiar request “Does anyone want anything from the outside world?”

Here’s a taste of Ed’s short story for At Home in the Dark:

THE THINGS I’D DO by Ed Park

1.

When I moved to the city, half a lifetime ago, I was excited, scared, confused—everything anyone is when they get here from somewhere else. Still, nothing else would do. What did I know, out in the sticks? My parents hated that I had to move so far away from them to become a cartoonist—at least that was their line. Every day I would sit in their basement, read the sleepy local paper, drive down the same dumb streets, thinking: Get me out of here. I made it into the police blotter a few times, my claim to fame, though no one fingered me as the artist sketching wieners on dirty windshields in the drugstore parking lot.

My dreams were about escape. I was trapped on a submarine, deep under the Atlantic. I was in a library, afterhours. I was in a library in a submarine in the belly of a whale.

I craved the city, or my idea of the city, which turned out to be the same thing: the dense mobs and vertical insanities, skins and tongues unlike my own, mountains of riches and canyons of depravity, the only place where you might be fêted and fetid in the course of a few hours. You can always count on a doodler for a fancy prose style.

2.

The day after I dreamt of a boulder sliding over the mouth of a cave, I called my buddy, Sal, who had moved to the city the winter before. We had known each other basically from birth.

It’s great out here, man,” Sal drawled. “Gray skies, broken windows, the works.”

“I was thinking of coming out.”

You totally should.”

“Can I stay with you?”

“I’d like nothing more.” Sal paused. “But the situation has its complexities. Seven living, breathing complexities.”

Sal meant roommates. “I thought you lived in a one bedroom.”

“Here’s an idea. We kind of look alike, right? So it has been said.”

“True.”

“All we need to do is not be in the same part of the apartment at the same time.”

“How would that work?”

“Don’t sweat it, kid. We’ll improvise.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I owe you one.”

“That’s the other thing. I’m a little short lately.”

“Aren’t we the same height?”

“I mean that you’d have to cover my rent. Playwrights don’t tend to rake it in until they’re in the game for a while.”

“How’s that going?”

“I’ve been workshopping it with a bunch of longshoremen. That’s not a euphemism.” Sal had a gig at the maritime museum. “Are we good on the rental front?”

What did I have to lose, except money I didn’t have? So I made a move. I stuffed a small suitcase, borrowed my father’s flask. There was a shoebox behind the safe, where the bulk of the cash was actually kept. The emergency fund, my mother called it. Wasn’t this an emergency, a crisis of the soul? I put the big bills in the lining of my hat, and stuck smaller denominations at random between the pages of the book I was bringing, Hypnos Wakens, a manual of mind control. I took some other things as well.

When the house was quiet, I slipped out and caught a bus to the city. I tossed and turned. Was there a patron saint of cartoonists? Would he or she accept my prayer? The fumes were getting to me. There in the darkness I switched my allegiance to Nyx, goddess of night, mother of Nemesis, Hypnos, and a slew of other deities. I scrawled my manifesto on the flyleaf of the book.

Twelve hours, a million stops, and I was there.

3.

Chez Sal was industrial space divided by bedsheets hung from clotheslines, with narrow “corridors” and a huge water stain on the ceiling like a map of ancient China. Light came in at weird angles, in different colors. It was the middle of summer, and we were on the top floor, but the place stayed weirdly cool. A breeze off the water? We were so far west we could probably jump from the roof into the river if we had to. There was an arcade game, a ripoff of Centipede called Crawlspace. There was a parrot named Crackerjack that belonged to nobody. Maybe it held the lease on the place.

[image error]Living in a state of indifference, hostility, and occasional outright anarchy were the seven complexities: Rodney (French but from Montana), Epp (East Texas), Cora (Florida), Yosh (from Germany, of Turkish ancestry), Vince (California by way of Canada), and Lol (Hong Kong, Lima, Pest). It was like a little United Nations in that room. Sal made seven. I was the phantom eighth, the one who wasn’t officially there. Put another way: I was Sal.

Sal and I didn’t look as similar as we did when we were kids, but close enough. I trimmed my hair in the same style, distorted my gait in imitation. Fortunately, Sal had a girlfriend, and spent weeks at a stretch with her. We didn’t see much of Sal.

No one really talked to me, except Crackerjack.

“The things I’d do to that ass,” it said, sounding like Groucho Marx.

It was funny, coming from a parrot. “What things? Whose ass?”

“The things I’d do to that ass.”

Later I wondered what kind of trauma the bird had been through. Crackerjack slept with its eyes open, claws gripping the fire escape. Now and then it would belt out a medley of “Copacabana,” “We Are the Champions,” “Happy Birthday to You.” Yash thought it was the devil incarnate and suggested we poison its food, except there was no food. Nobody fed it, as far as I could tell…

THE THINGS I’D DO by Ed Park is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #2—Wallace Stroby

“Wallace Stroby’s ‘Nightbound,’ puts his series heroine Crissa Stone through an action-packed woodchopper when her robbery of a Dominican gang money drop goes south. Crime fiction fans will find plenty to like.”

From Publishers Weekly.

Here’s a taste of Wallace’s story:

NIGHTBOUND by Wallace Stroby

“Leave him,” Crissa said. “He’s dead.”

Adler was face down in the alley, not moving, Martinez kneeling beside him. She could see the entry wound in Adler’s back, the blood soaking through his field jacket. From the location of the wound, and the speed he was bleeding out, she knew he was gone already, or would be soon.

[image error]They had to keep moving. Back at the stash house, the Dominicans would be recovering from the flashbang she’d thrown on her way out the rear door. The three of them had been halfway down the alley when one of the Dominicans had stumbled out of the vacant brownstone, firing blindly. She’d snapped a shot at him with her Glock, chased him back inside. But Adler had caught a round, gone down hard.

Now Martinez looked up at her, panic in his eyes, all that was visible through the ski mask. She shifted the strap of the gear bag, heavy with money, to her left shoulder, grabbed him by the coat sleeve, pulled him up. “Move!”

Forty feet away was the mouth of the alley, the street beyond. To their left, more empty houses. To the right, a high chain-link fence that bordered a vacant lot. The only way out was ahead.

More shots behind them. She spun, saw two men run out into the alley, guns in their hands. She fired twice without aiming. One round ricocheted off blacktop, the other punched through a plywood-covered window. The men ducked back inside.

She fired another shot to keep them there, shoved Martinez forward. The street ahead was still empty. Where was Lopez? The Dominicans would be going out the front door as well, would try to circle around, block the alley. If they beat Lopez there, she and Martinez would be trapped.

Broken glass and crack vials crunched beneath her feet. She could hear Martinez panting behind her.

A screech of brakes, and the Buick pulled up at the end of the alley, Lopez at the wheel, the rear drivers-side door already open.

She tossed the gear bag into the back seat, threw herself in after it. A shot sounded. Martinez grunted and fell against her.

“Get in!” Lopez said.

She gripped Martinez’s field jacket, pulled him to her, and they fell back onto the bag. His legs were still hanging out of the car when Lopez hit the gas. As the Buick lurched forward, she heard rounds strike the left rear fender. She pulled Martinez all the way in just as the Buick made a hard right turn. The momentum swung the door shut.

Martinez moaned. She rolled him off her onto the floor, sat up. They were in a residential area, dark houses on both sides of the street. The transfer car was still a couple of miles away.

“What happened back there?” Lopez said.

She pulled off her ski mask, had to catch her breath before she could speak. “Too many of them. Seven, maybe. At least. More than we thought.”

Through the rear window, she saw headlights way back there, coming fast. No other cars around.

“They’re on us,” she said.

“Shit.” Lopez gunned the engine. The Buick swung a left, then another right onto a main thoroughfare, sped by darkened storefronts.

She pushed the mask into a jacket pocket. If she had to do a runner from the car, she didn’t want to leave it behind. There would be hair in the material, DNA. Evidence if the cops found it.

Martinez moaned again. She lay a gloved hand atop his. “Steady. You’re going to be all right.”

They’d scouted this area of East New York for weeks, timed the route, and she knew the chances of running into a squad car were slim. It was midnight shift change, the same reason the Dominicans chose that time for their weekly money pickup. Lopez was an ex-cop, knew the area, the players. Martinez was his brother-in-law. The two of them had found the stash house, gathered the intel, then reached out to her through a middleman. She was the one who’d brought in Adler.

Two blocks ahead was the business district, an intersection controlled at this hour by only a blinking yellow light. She looked back at the street behind. A pair of bright headlights swung out onto it, moving fast.

“They’re coming,” she said.

Martinez made a slow sign of the cross. His breath was ragged now, wheezing. Collapsed lung, she thought.

Lopez took the left at the yellow light, cut it too close, the drivers’ side tires bumping hard over the curb. A red light began to blink on the dash, in time with a soft beep.

“Fuck,” he said.

“What?”

“They must have hit the tank. We’re losing gas.”

Behind them, a dark SUV made the turn, staying on their tail. High-beams flashed on, lit the inside of the car. The Buick began to sputter and slow. The next turn was still a block ahead.

“Get down!” Lopez said.

The SUV swept into the left lane, came abreast of them. The front passenger side window slid down, and a shotgun barrel came through…

NIGHTBOUND by Wallace Stroby is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #2

“Wallace Stroby’s ‘Nightbound,’ puts his series heroine Crissa Stone through an action-packed woodchopper when her robbery of a Dominican gang money drop goes south. Crime fiction fans will find plenty to like.”

From Publishers Weekly.

Here’s a taste of Wallace’s story:

NIGHTBOUND by Wallace Stroby

“Leave him,” Crissa said. “He’s dead.”

Adler was face down in the alley, not moving, Martinez kneeling beside him. She could see the entry wound in Adler’s back, the blood soaking through his field jacket. From the location of the wound, and the speed he was bleeding out, she knew he was gone already, or would be soon.

[image error]They had to keep moving. Back at the stash house, the Dominicans would be recovering from the flashbang she’d thrown on her way out the rear door. The three of them had been halfway down the alley when one of the Dominicans had stumbled out of the vacant brownstone, firing blindly. She’d snapped a shot at him with her Glock, chased him back inside. But Adler had caught a round, gone down hard.

Now Martinez looked up at her, panic in his eyes, all that was visible through the ski mask. She shifted the strap of the gear bag, heavy with money, to her left shoulder, grabbed him by the coat sleeve, pulled him up. “Move!”

Forty feet away was the mouth of the alley, the street beyond. To their left, more empty houses. To the right, a high chain-link fence that bordered a vacant lot. The only way out was ahead.

More shots behind them. She spun, saw two men run out into the alley, guns in their hands. She fired twice without aiming. One round ricocheted off blacktop, the other punched through a plywood-covered window. The men ducked back inside.

She fired another shot to keep them there, shoved Martinez forward. The street ahead was still empty. Where was Lopez? The Dominicans would be going out the front door as well, would try to circle around, block the alley. If they beat Lopez there, she and Martinez would be trapped.

Broken glass and crack vials crunched beneath her feet. She could hear Martinez panting behind her.

A screech of brakes, and the Buick pulled up at the end of the alley, Lopez at the wheel, the rear drivers-side door already open.

She tossed the gear bag into the back seat, threw herself in after it. A shot sounded. Martinez grunted and fell against her.

“Get in!” Lopez said.

She gripped Martinez’s field jacket, pulled him to her, and they fell back onto the bag. His legs were still hanging out of the car when Lopez hit the gas. As the Buick lurched forward, she heard rounds strike the left rear fender. She pulled Martinez all the way in just as the Buick made a hard right turn. The momentum swung the door shut.

Martinez moaned. She rolled him off her onto the floor, sat up. They were in a residential area, dark houses on both sides of the street. The transfer car was still a couple of miles away.

“What happened back there?” Lopez said.

She pulled off her ski mask, had to catch her breath before she could speak. “Too many of them. Seven, maybe. At least. More than we thought.”

Through the rear window, she saw headlights way back there, coming fast. No other cars around.

“They’re on us,” she said.

“Shit.” Lopez gunned the engine. The Buick swung a left, then another right onto a main thoroughfare, sped by darkened storefronts.

She pushed the mask into a jacket pocket. If she had to do a runner from the car, she didn’t want to leave it behind. There would be hair in the material, DNA. Evidence if the cops found it.

Martinez moaned again. She lay a gloved hand atop his. “Steady. You’re going to be all right.”

They’d scouted this area of East New York for weeks, timed the route, and she knew the chances of running into a squad car were slim. It was midnight shift change, the same reason the Dominicans chose that time for their weekly money pickup. Lopez was an ex-cop, knew the area, the players. Martinez was his brother-in-law. The two of them had found the stash house, gathered the intel, then reached out to her through a middleman. She was the one who’d brought in Adler.

Two blocks ahead was the business district, an intersection controlled at this hour by only a blinking yellow light. She looked back at the street behind. A pair of bright headlights swung out onto it, moving fast.

“They’re coming,” she said.

Martinez made a slow sign of the cross. His breath was ragged now, wheezing. Collapsed lung, she thought.

Lopez took the left at the yellow light, cut it too close, the drivers’ side tires bumping hard over the curb. A red light began to blink on the dash, in time with a soft beep.

“Fuck,” he said.

“What?”

“They must have hit the tank. We’re losing gas.”

Behind them, a dark SUV made the turn, staying on their tail. High-beams flashed on, lit the inside of the car. The Buick began to sputter and slow. The next turn was still a block ahead.

“Get down!” Lopez said.

The SUV swept into the left lane, came abreast of them. The front passenger side window slid down, and a shotgun barrel came through…

NIGHTBOUND by Wallace Stroby is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK —Preview #1—Elaine Kagan

[image error]“Elaine Kagan’s ‘Hot Pants’ features a young woman caring for a father sliding into dementia (Is there anything darker than that?), while fending off harassment at work. The panic and hopelessness of her circumstances are as disquieting as it gets.”

~From Wes Lukowsky’s rave in Booklist. Here’s a taste of Elaine’s story:

 

HOT PANTS by Elaine Kagan  

“Dad?” Lucinda said.

Her father was snoring, relaxed and long in a faded chintz wing chair, legs out in front of him, ankles crossed, size 13 feet in thick white socks on a matching faded chintz ottoman. The chair was permanently placed in front of a large TV screen that was permanently tuned to Turner Classic Movies. The movie playing that morning was something in black-and-white with Jimmy Cagney or maybe it was Mickey Rooney, she wasn’t sure which, tapping around a giant movie set that was supposed to look like a street in downtown Manhattan. The guy could really dance.

People shuffled in and out of the long living room. The sound was turned way down on the TV and most of the people pushing their walkers across the ratty rug were silent and smiling. Some sat motionless, like kids playing dead – jaws dropped, heads thrown back, eyes closed – like zombies, Lucinda thought. Twelve white zombies being herded around a big rambling two-story house by two brown women, one brown man, one black woman and two black men rotating hours and days in blue scrubs in Newark, New Jersey.

Mrs. Ventimillia sat at the piano, her hands folded and quiet in her lap. She never played and it wasn’t clear if she was looking at the sheet music on the piano table or out the window. Her daughter said she’d been a really terrific jazz pianist – very Bill Evans, her daughter said. Lucinda had to look up Bill Evans. Mrs. Ventimillia had also been a reporter for the New York Post and it was ironic that Mr. Santangelo, who spent most of his time on the cracked leather sofa across from the fireplace that had no logs, was reading a yellowed copy of the New York Post that he carried around in his pocket. It didn’t seem to matter that the news wasn’t current. Lucinda didn’t know if Mrs. Ventimillia and Mr. Santangelo had ever even spoken. Mr. Santangelo was in pretty good shape except for every now and then when he had a screaming fit and threw things. No one so far had figured out what set him off. “He’s nuts,” her father said.

Lucinda leaned forward, her face closer to her father’s. “Daddy?”

His feet jumped a little and the snoring stopped with an abrupt intake of breath as if he’d stopped breathing altogether for maybe twenty seconds, and then started up again. Like a car engine. Not as loud, but still strong. He was still strong, her father. His mind was full of smoke, as he frequently pointed out with a wry laugh when he was “in”, as he put it, but his body betrayed his 68 years. He looked maybe 58 tops. He had a character actor face with dark red wavy hair and a solid muscular build. No gut above his belt. He had a splatter of freckles across ruddy cheeks, a thick neck and thick hands. He could probably still jump on and off a fire engine, pull a hose, climb a ladder, chainsaw through a roof, or run into flames looking like the picture poster of how a fire captain should look. Although he just might not be able to remember what a fire engine did – or a hose or a ladder or a chain saw. Or how to brush his teeth or cut his meat or recognize Chief Lang when he came to visit. “I know this guy, right?” he said to Lucinda, tilting his head towards the Fire Chief. Chief Archie Lang and her father had gone through the Academy together, had been best men at each other’s weddings and were godfather’s to each other’s kids. “I’m losing me,” her father said in a gruff whisper to Archie Lang, leaning in close and secret. “Don’t tell the kid. Okay?” “Okay,” Chief Lang said, giving a brave nod to Lucinda and an affectionate punch to her dad’s upper arm. Lucinda made a concerted effort to not die right there or throw up. He was “in and out” now, this stalwart father of hers, slipping down the ladder of dementia….

Hot Pants by Elaine Kagan is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK —Preview #1

[image error]“Elaine Kagan’s ‘Hot Pants’ features a young woman caring for a father sliding into dementia (Is there anything darker than that?), while fending off harassment at work. The panic and hopelessness of her circumstances are as disquieting as it gets.”

~From Wes Lukowsky’s rave in Booklist. Here’s a taste of Elaine’s story:

 

HOT PANTS by Elaine Kagan  

“Dad?” Lucinda said.

Her father was snoring, relaxed and long in a faded chintz wing chair, legs out in front of him, ankles crossed, size 13 feet in thick white socks on a matching faded chintz ottoman. The chair was permanently placed in front of a large TV screen that was permanently tuned to Turner Classic Movies. The movie playing that morning was something in black-and-white with Jimmy Cagney or maybe it was Mickey Rooney, she wasn’t sure which, tapping around a giant movie set that was supposed to look like a street in downtown Manhattan. The guy could really dance.

People shuffled in and out of the long living room. The sound was turned way down on the TV and most of the people pushing their walkers across the ratty rug were silent and smiling. Some sat motionless, like kids playing dead – jaws dropped, heads thrown back, eyes closed – like zombies, Lucinda thought. Twelve white zombies being herded around a big rambling two-story house by two brown women, one brown man, one black woman and two black men rotating hours and days in blue scrubs in Newark, New Jersey.

Mrs. Ventimillia sat at the piano, her hands folded and quiet in her lap. She never played and it wasn’t clear if she was looking at the sheet music on the piano table or out the window. Her daughter said she’d been a really terrific jazz pianist – very Bill Evans, her daughter said. Lucinda had to look up Bill Evans. Mrs. Ventimillia had also been a reporter for the New York Post and it was ironic that Mr. Santangelo, who spent most of his time on the cracked leather sofa across from the fireplace that had no logs, was reading a yellowed copy of the New York Post that he carried around in his pocket. It didn’t seem to matter that the news wasn’t current. Lucinda didn’t know if Mrs. Ventimillia and Mr. Santangelo had ever even spoken. Mr. Santangelo was in pretty good shape except for every now and then when he had a screaming fit and threw things. No one so far had figured out what set him off. “He’s nuts,” her father said.

Lucinda leaned forward, her face closer to her father’s. “Daddy?”

His feet jumped a little and the snoring stopped with an abrupt intake of breath as if he’d stopped breathing altogether for maybe twenty seconds, and then started up again. Like a car engine. Not as loud, but still strong. He was still strong, her father. His mind was full of smoke, as he frequently pointed out with a wry laugh when he was “in”, as he put it, but his body betrayed his 68 years. He looked maybe 58 tops. He had a character actor face with dark red wavy hair and a solid muscular build. No gut above his belt. He had a splatter of freckles across ruddy cheeks, a thick neck and thick hands. He could probably still jump on and off a fire engine, pull a hose, climb a ladder, chainsaw through a roof, or run into flames looking like the picture poster of how a fire captain should look. Although he just might not be able to remember what a fire engine did – or a hose or a ladder or a chain saw. Or how to brush his teeth or cut his meat or recognize Chief Lang when he came to visit. “I know this guy, right?” he said to Lucinda, tilting his head towards the Fire Chief. Chief Archie Lang and her father had gone through the Academy together, had been best men at each other’s weddings and were godfather’s to each other’s kids. “I’m losing me,” her father said in a gruff whisper to Archie Lang, leaning in close and secret. “Don’t tell the kid. Okay?” “Okay,” Chief Lang said, giving a brave nod to Lucinda and an affectionate punch to her dad’s upper arm. Lucinda made a concerted effort to not die right there or throw up. He was “in and out” now, this stalwart father of hers, slipping down the ladder of dementia….

Hot Pants by Elaine Kagan is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

It’s me again…

You’ve got to be kidding. Three newsletters in three weeks?

What can I say?

Far too much, evidently. Months go by without word from you, and then you turn up in our mailboxes every seven days. 

Um—

You’re like a college student who’s running out of money.  Or like a crosstown bus. We wait for an hour in the cold, and then three show up, one after the other.

I know, I know. But I’ve got some news to share, and I don’t want y’all to have to wait for it. First off, do you remember a few months ago when I said I’d kind of like a position as writer-in-residence at a college?

I remember how nervy I thought it was. You dropped out of college without so much as a bachelor’s degree, and you think you can elbow your way into the halls of academia. How’d that work for you, dude?

In the first place, I didn’t drop out. The school asked me to leave.

But never mind. It all worked out better than either of us would have guessed. This fall I’ll be writer-in-residence at Newberry College in (duh) Newberry, South Carolina. I’ll be teaching about six hours a week, divided between a limited-enrollment writing workshop and a survey course of American crime fiction.

Seriously? How’d you con them into it?

I had some help from my friend, Warren Moore. When he’s not playing drums in a garage band or writing stellar fiction (outstanding stories for several anthologies of mine, and a powerful novel), Warren’s a distinguished professor in Newberry’s English department. I guess he’s a persuasive lad, because the upshot is that I got the gig.

And, best news of all, I’ll be on the job during all of football season. Go Wolves!

Well, I can see why you wouldn’t want to keep all that to yourself. Think you’ll enjoy teaching? Or that you’ll be any good at it?

Beats me, but I guess we’ll all find out. I’ll probably use a lot of the material I developed for Write For Your Life in the workshop, and for the survey course I’ll assign some of my favorite books by favorite authors; it’ll give me an excuse to read them again.

But that’s not all.

Oh, r@s. There’s more?

I’ll say. I’ve been telling all of y’all about At Home in the Dark, the cross-genre anthology of dark stories coming in April as a leather-bound signed-and-numbered limited edition from Subterranean Press.

And you’ll be doing it in paperback and ebook, and we can pre-order the Subterranean limited and/or the ebook right now, di dah di dah di dah. So?

So just a few days ago Netflix acquired the rights to Joe Hill‘s dark fantasy novelette, “Faun,” after a spirited bidding war. Joe’s story is quite wonderful, and richly visual, so it’s no surprise that people in the business were quick to recognize its dramatic potential. I can’t wait to see what they do with it.

Meanwhile, the news hasn’t hurt the book a bit. Subterranean’s edition was a pretty sure bet all along to sell out in advance of publication, but this news truly ices the cupcake. If you want the book’s only hardcover edition, you’re best advised to pre-order it now.

And, if you want to be the first on your block to have “Faun” on your eReader, pre-order it for Kindle Nook Kobo Apple 

Why pre-order an ebook? You’re not going to run out of copies, are you?

I wouldn’t think so. But pre-ordering does two things. It means you’ll have one less thing to have to remember—or, if you’re my age, one less thing to forget. And it locks in the $9.99 price. I don’t anticipate hiking the price, but it’s something I have the option of doing after the book’s published.

Well, I can see why you felt you had to inflict yet another newsletter on us. And now I suppose you’re going to plug some of your other books, right? 

Not exactly. All I’ll do is throw some links at y’all, some books of mine you might enjoy readg, and that I’d certainly enjoy selling. No pictures, no sales talk. Just some titles. (The links are to Amazon, but you can probably hunt the titles down on other platforms as well.)

A Time to Scatter Stones. Small Town. The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes. The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Keller’s Fedora.Resume Speed and Other Stories. The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. 

I guess that’s all.

I’d say it’s more than enough. So we’re done, are we? Until next week?

Or next month. Or next summer. Who’s to say, really?

3 to Get Ready…

Well, hello there. We’re just a few days back from St. Petersburg. I liked the town so much during Bouchercon that we booked an airbnb apartment for two weeks, and had the great good fortune to be there when the Polar Vortex struck.

And now it’s really good to be back, right?

I have to say I wouldn’t have minded another week or so of sunshine. But never mind. I have things to report, and let me get to it.

[image error]First of all, A Time to Scatter Stones is now available in ebook, paperback, and audio form. (Subterranean Press’s deluxe signed limited edition is long-gone, I’m afraid, and their $25 hardcover trade edition is thin on the ground, although you can still find copies at Amazon.)

Reviews have been good, and ebook and paperback sales are brisk. I feel honor-bound to report, though, that a significant number of Amazon reviewers were disappointed. I didn’t check out all the negative reviews—I don’t even read the positive ones—but a quick scan pointed up two sources of discontent:

#1—the book’s not the full-length novel the reader would have preferred.  #2—A Time to Scatter Stones has a prominent sexual element.

True enough on both counts. It’s a novella, and Scudder’s client (and Elaine’s friend) is a call girl trying to get out of the game. I’m not inclined to apologize for either the length or the theme, and in fact rejoice in having been able to produce exactly the book I set out to write. (How often does that happen?) But if either of those aspects is likely to ruin things for you, you may want to find something else to read.

You sound a wee bit bitter.

More bemused than bitter. But never mind.

Let’s move on to At Home in the Dark. As you may recall, this cross-genre anthology is coming in April from Subterranean in a 500-copy deluxe limited edition. (I’ve no idea how long copies will be available, but it’d be my guess they’ll all be spoken for in advance of publication. Several of the contributors are eagerly collected—Joe Hill, Joe R. Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates—and there’s a Crissa Stone story by Wallace Stroby, a lengthy shocker by Duane Swierczynski, and not a bad story in the bunch.)

This will be AHITD’s only hardcover version. I’ll be self-publishing ebook and paperback editions, and while I was in St. Pete I made the ebook available for pre-order. (I tried to do the same for the paperback, but setting up pre-orders proved to be Amazonically impossible, so you won’t be able to order the paperback until its end-of-April release.)

This is one of two anthologies of mine scheduled for 2019. (The other, From Sea to Stormy Sea, is an art-based collection similar in form to In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color; all the paintings are by American artists, all the stories are by brilliantly accomplished fictioneers, and Pegasus will bring out the book in the fall. When I know more, so will you.)

And now, speaking of Italy—

Italy? Did I miss something? When were we speaking of Italy?

We weren’t, if you want to get all technical about it, but who’s to say we can’t speak of it now? As you may recall, I’ve been teaming up with translators to self-publish my books in various languages. One title, Godimento, is the work of Annalisa Passone; it’s her rendition of Getting Off, the sex-and-violence saga of Kit Tolliver. (And if the sexual aspect of A Time to Scatter Stones puts you off, you really don’t want to go near Godimento/Getting Off in any language.) Annalisa, I’m pleased to report, is now at work on an Italian translation of another of my Hard Case originals, The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes.

Luigi Garlaschelli has translated many of my books, including several of the Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, and he came up with the idea of putting together a small Italian ebook of the four Bernie Rhodenbarr short stories. That struck me as way too slender a volume, and then I remembered some Burglar book excerpts that would fit in nicely, and an essay on the filming of Burglar that I wrote not long ago for Hollywood vs. the Author, and a whole batch of newspaper op-ed pieces written over a whole batch of years, and before I knew it I had a book. [image error]I wrote a foreword for it in which I discussed the birth and evolution of Bernie as a character, and an afterword in which Bernie himself gets to address the question of whether there will ever be any more books about him.

And Luigi performed his linguistic alchemy, transmuting English into the language of Dante and Boccaccio, and Jaye Manus cobbled up a cover. She even put Raffles on it, and outfitted the little chap with a burglar mask and a tail. (What better disguise for a Manx?) And Il Ladro in Poche Parole is available now on all major ebook platforms; there’ll be a paperback edition on offer in a couple of weeks.

It sounds like a book every Bernie Rhodenbarr fan will want to own.

I can only hope you’re right.

But there’s just one problem. I can’t read Italian.

You could take a course.

Uh—

Or take a flat in Rome for a year or so. Pick up a gig teaching English as a second language, that’ll cover your expenses, and next thing you know you’ll be fluent in Italian.

Um—

Or you could wait  until January of 2020, when the wonderful people at Subterranean Press bring out a deluxe limited edition ofThe Burglar in Short Order. Once they do, I’ll be publishing the ebook and paperback.

So what began as your translator’s idea for a book for the Italian market has turned into a twelfth volume for the Burglar series. That’s what happened, isn’t it?

Pretty much, yeah.

And did Luigi have to translate everything back into English? No, don’t bother answering that. You’re getting pretty good at making something out of nothing, aren’t you?

You want to make something out of that? Never mind. It keeps me out of trouble. Well, most of the time, anyway…

93 words from Matthew Scudder:

[image error]The four of us—Kristin and Mick, Elaine and I—stood on the stoop of their brownstone for the ritual round of hugs. Mick and I settled for a manly handclasp.

 

“Safe home,” he said.

 

It was a crisp Sunday night late in September, the sky free of clouds, and if we’d been in the country we would have seen stars. But there’s always too much ambient light in the city for stargazing, and I suspect that’s also true metaphorically. Ambient light, softening the darkness even as it prevents our seeing the stars.

You’ve now read the opening paragraphs of A Time to Scatter Stones, the new Matthew Scudder novella, and if you’d like to keep going, well, that’s easily arranged. While the $45 deluxe limited edition has been fully subscribed for a while now, Subterranean Press has held back a handful of copies of the $25 hardcover trade edition for direct orders; click here and you may be able to get one on the January 31 release date.

Meanwhile, the ebook goes out to preorder customers on Tuesday, January 29. The preorder price of $6.99 will remain in effect until I get around to bumping it up a dollar or two. Pick it up at any of these platforms: Amazon  Barnes & Noble  Kobo  Apple Thalia

Will there be a paperback?

There will indeed. It should be on sale by sometime in April if not sooner. I’ll keep you posted.

What about audio?

I narrated the book for Brilliance Audio, and you don’t have to wait to order it. You can grab it now from Audible or Amazon.

Any signings planned?

February 26 I’ll be at the Mysterious Bookshop talking with my friend Michele W. Miller about her new thriller Widows-in-Law.

And any other news?

Probably, but it’ll have to wait for another newsletter. I’m out of town and presumably on vacation, and wanted to pop this announcement into the eMailstream without further delay.

Shameful? Joyous? Brand new in audio!

November 17, 2018—I’m delighted to announce our audiobook of Of Shame and Joy. This entry in our Collection of Classic Erotica has never been available in audio, and now Barbara Nevins Taylor has brought the book magically. to life. The book is more romance than erotica, with a strong lesbian component, and is set mostly in Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the eastern end of Cape Cod. The time is the late 1950s. This is the first chance we’ve had to work with Barbara, and hope we can lure her into a long list of future projects…

We’ve just updated our Audiobooks page with the new listing and illustration!

Publishers Weekly on A TIME TO SCATTER STONES

If brevity keeps all the usual supporting characters from returning, some nice nostalgic mentions will reassure fans that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s good to see Matt back in action.

Click here to read the review