Lawrence Block's Blog, page 12

If you read with your ears, you want this…

May 29, 2018—Maybe you know this, but maybe not. An Audible membership is a virtual must-have for you if you listen to a lot of audiobooks. It’s $14.95 a month, and will very quickly pay for itself in savings. It’s only a bad deal if you don’t use it, so how do you know if you’ll really get your money’s worth out of it?

Well, see, what you want to do is sign up for Audible’s free trial membership. They give you something—two free books, I think it is—just for signing up. At the end of thirty days, you can cancel and owe them nothing. Obviously, they’re betting you’ll use your membership enough so that you’ll be glad to continue it. But if not, no problem.

No, that’s quite all right, no need for you to thank me. But if you want to express your gratitude, just go on over to my Audiobooks page and make your first free selection one of my books.

A Time to Bury a Lede

Huh? I don’t even know what that means.

In journalism, the lede is what you start off with, because it’s the most important part of the story. Thus you are well advised to lead off with it—and when you don’t, you’re burying the lede.

So what’s the lede?

It’ll have to wait, because I suddenly find myself neck-deep in items I need to tell you. And the first is a new paperback I’ve just published, and isn’t it pretty?

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Some of you have read the title novella on your Kindle; it’s won wide readership as a Kindle Single. And some of you may have had the good fortune to pick up the Subterranean Press hardcover edition before it sold out. But Resume Speed has never appeared in paperback.

You may recall that Keller’s Fedora had a similar history. A Kindle Single, a Subterranean hardcover—and no paperback for all of y’all who prefer a physical book. A few months ago I brought out Keller’s Fedora in paperback, and it’s been our top seller ever since.

So why not do likewise with Resume Speed? And, while I was at it, couldn’t I sweeten the pot a bit? It seemed to me that I had a few stories I’d never included in collections, so why not round them up in, um, Resume Speed and Other Stories?

I found half a dozen of them, from a Craig Rice story I ghosted in 1960 to my Edgar-winning “Autumn at the Automat.” There’s one story that disappeared from view after I published it under a pen name in 1963, another I lost track of years before it was published. Six in all, plus the novella, and I’ve dusted them off, packed them up, introduced them with a 3000-word foreword, and published them with that gorgeous wrap-around cover.

That’s pretty big news. I guess you decided against burying the lede, huh?

Guess again. I’m holding it back, at least until after I’ve told you about a pair of appearances I’ll be making early next month:

Thursday, June 7, 7pm. MWA Crime Fiction Reading Series, KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St, NY NY 10003.

Friday, June 8, 7pm. Noir at the Bar—Queens, Kew & Willow Books, 81-63 Lefferts Blvd., Kew Gardens NY 11415.

You don’t do a lot of readings.

No, what I generally do is stay home. Read, raid the fridge, watch a little TV…

And here you’ve got two readings on consecutive nights. How come?

Well, I could make up something, but the hell with it. I’ll be sharing the stage with a great lineup of writers, but on hand both nights is a fine writer with whom I also share DNA.

[image error]Jill D. Block, who made her debut in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and has since published three more short stories, has her first novel coming out June 4, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up at both readings with copies of The Truth About Parallel Lines—and, I can but hope, a pen with which to sign them. The ebook’s already available for pre-order, and if you click now on Amazon, Apple,Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Tolino, you can lock in the $6.99 pre-order price. (It’ll be a buck or two higher come June 4.)

I’ve never cared much for deferred gratification. Has she got anything I can read now?

How about the four short stories? In order to whet your appetite for the novel, she’s published them on Kindle for a giveaway price of  99¢ apiece. (And if you’re a Kindle Unlimitedsubscriber, you can read them for free.)

And you’re giving the girl a helping hand. What a guy!

I’m not sure she needs any help from me. Check out the blurbs on the Amazon page. I’d say she’s off and running.

The proud father speaks. But isn’t it time for that lede you buried? Are you about ready to break the big news?

Well, I suppose so, but—

Hang on, let me guess. You’ve scheduled a summit meeting in Singapore with Stephen King.

No, but—

Okay, how’s this? You’re gonna shut down your bookstore and sell all your books and manuscripts to Otto Penzler.

Already did that. His Mysterious Bookshop cleaned out my storeroom, after I’d spent a week signing everything. If you want anything of mine, that’s where to go for it.

I give up. Either you’ve discovered a cure for bibliomania or you’ve gone and written a new book about Matt Scudder, and one’s about as likely as the other, so—

Well, I can’t help you with the bibliomania. I’m afraid it’s incurable. But, as much to my surprise as yours, I’ve recently completed A Time to Scatter Stones, a 30,000-word novella starring the aforementioned Matthew Scudder.

[image error]Honestly?

Have I ever lied to you?

A Time to Scatter Stones. That’s a very Scudderian title.

I’d have said Scudderesque, but I take your point. It takes place in the present, with Matt and Elaine enjoying retirement. (It’s a couple of years after “One Last Night in Grogan’s,” the elegiac final story in The Night and the Music.) A little old for leaping tall buildings in a single bound, Matt figures his adventures are over. Then a new friend of Elaine’s turns up, and he has no choice but to get back in the game.

And this time around he can’t look for assistance to TJ or Mick Ballou. He’s got to do it all on his own.

How can I read it?

Probably a word at a time. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, you’ll have to wait a little while, but Subterranean Press will bring out the book in very early 2019. They’ll be doing it in hardcover, both a signed limited edition and a trade edition. At the same time, I’ll be releasing the ebook. And, somewhere down the line, there’ll be a paperback.

I don’t want to wait for the paperback. It’s bad enough I have to wait for the hardcover. Can I at least pre-order it? I know that Subterranean’s titles tend to sell out in a hurry.

You’ll be able to pre-order A Time to Scatter Stones, but not yet. The cover art’s in preparation, and once it’s ready Subterranean will start accepting pre-orders. I’ll try to let you know when that happens, but your best bet is to get on Subterranean’s mailing list. That way you’ll be the first to hear about this book—and others as well.

Wow. I’m impressed.

Are you? I could go on. I’ve got two new anthologies in the works, on the principle that the writing life is easier if you get other people to do the writing for you. And my partnerships with translators are moving right along, with only two books to go before the entire Scudder series is available in German. But all of that will have to wait for another announcement. See, I don’t want to unbury the lede.

So I’ll just remind you to secure your copy of Resume Speed and Other Stories, and pre-order The Truth About Parallel Lines, and clear your calendar for June 7/8.

Cheers,

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Lawrence Blocks Mai Newsletter

[image error]Guten Tag! Ich hoffe, dass es Ihnen gut geht und Sie die Frühlingsonne genießen. Hier in New York hat der Winter damit gedroht, niemals ein Ende zu nehmen, aber mittlerweile können wir endlich unsere Anoraks und Mäntel wegpacken und den Frühling begrüßen.

Die große Neuigkeit, mit der ich aufwarten kann, besteht darin, dass die Übersetzung der Matthew-Scudder-Reihe fast vollbracht ist. Stefan Mommertz, der – neben mehreren Romanen– die Scudder-Kurzgeschichten übersetzt hat, hat dieses Teilprojekt abgeschlossen. Neun der elf Geschichten sind jetzt einzeln in elektronischer Form erhältlich. (Die beiden anderen sind zu kurz, als dass es sich lohnen würde, sie allein anzubieten.)

Was ich Ihnen jedoch empfehlen möchte, ist Die Nacht und die Musik, ein Band, der alle elf Kurzgeschichten vereint und außerdem eine ebenso herzliche wie einsichtsvolle Würdigung der Scudder-Reihe durch den Drehbuchautor/Regisseur Brian Koppelman, zuletzt erfolgreich mit der Showtime TV-Serie Billions, enthält. Der Sammelband ist für einen Bruchteil dessen erhältlich, was es Sie kosten würde, wenn Sie die Kurzgeschichten einzeln kaufen würden.

[image error]Und darf ich Ihnen noch eine kleine Scudder-Neuigkeit zuflüstern, die hier bei uns noch nicht verraten wurde? Ich habe gerade A Time to Scatter Stonesabgeschlossen, einen Scudder-Kurzroman mit einem Umfang von 30.000 Wörtern. Die Handlung spielt in der Gegenwart: Matt muss einen Mann in die Schranken weisen, der eine Freundin Elaines bedroht. Die Erstveröffentlichung wird auf Englisch erfolgen, in Form gebundener Ausgaben – als limitierte Luxusausgabe und als handelsübliches Hardcover – bei Subterrean Press, wahrscheinlich im Januar oder Februar 2019. (Ich werde den Kurzroman zur selben Zeit als E-Book veröffentlichen, eine Taschenbuchausgabe wird ein paar Monate später folgen.)

Zu gegebener Zeit – ich hoffe, dass es nicht zu lange dauern wird – wird A Time to Scatter Stones auch ins Deutsche übersetzt werden.

Ich bin darüber sehr erfreut, da ich wirklich gedacht hatte, mit dem Schreiben über Matthew Scudder abgeschlossen zu haben. Denn die Figur ist in Echtzeit gealtert und Scudder ist jetzt fast achtzig Jahre alt, ein bisschen zu alt für die Art von Abenteuer, die er im Laufe der Jahre erlebt hat. (Und weil ich auch den Fehler begangen habe, in Echtzeit zu altern, hatte ich eigentlich gedacht, ein wenig zu alt für den weniger anstrengenden Job geworden zu sein, seine Geschichte zu erzählen.) Aber es hat mir viel Spaß bereitet, den neuen Kurzroman zu schreiben; ich bin sehr zufrieden damit und hoffe, dass auch Sie Gefallen daran finden werden.

Hier ist eine vollständige Liste meiner jetzt auf Deutsch erhältlichen Bücher. Die Initialen SM oder SL geben an, ob sie von Stefan Mommertz oder Sepp Leeb übersetzt wurden.

Die Romane:

1. Die Sünden der Väter [SM]

2. Drei am Haken [SM]

3. Mitten im Tod [SM]

4. Tief bei den ersten Toten [SM]

5. Acht Millionen Wege zu sterben [SL]

6.  Nach der Sperrstunde [SL]

7.  Am Rand des Abgrunds [SL]

8. Ein Ticket für den Friedhof [SL]

9. Tanz im Schlachthof [SL]

10. Ruhet in Frieden [SL]

11. In Teufels Küche [SL]

12. Der Club der Toten [SL]

13.  [SL]

14. Alle sterben [SM]

15. Der zweite Tod [SL]

16. All the Flowers are Dying [Übersetzung in Arbeit]

17. A Drop of the Hard Stuff [Übersetzung in Arbeit]

18. Die Nacht und die Musik [SM]

Hier ist, als Serviceleistung, eine Liste der neun einzeln erhältlichen Kurzgeschichten. Ich würde Ihnen jedoch empfehlen, sie im Sammelband Die Nacht und die Musik für € 6,99 zu kaufen, anstatt einzeln jeweils € 2,99 zu bezahlen.

1. Aus dem Fenster

2. Eine Kerze für die Stadtsteicherin

3. Im frühen Licht des Tages

4. Batmans Gehilfen

5.  Der barmherzige Engel von Todes

7. Auf der Suche nach David

8. Verloren und gefunden

9. Ein Moment faschen Denkens

11. Ein letzter Abend im Grogans

Nicht verschweigen möchte ich diese längere Geschichte über einen Mann, der in einer Kleinstadt auftaucht und einen Job als Koch in einem Diner annimmt. Sie ist von einer gewissen düsteren Stimmung geprägt, die Fans von Matt Scudder ansprechen sollte.

Mit leichtem Gepäck [SM]

Jetzt, wo sich die Liste der auf Deutsch erhältlichen Matthew-Scudder-Romane dem Abschluss nähert, möchte ich mich bei Ihnen dafür bedanken, dass Sie mitgeholfen haben, die Kunde davon zu verbreiten. Durch das Wachsen unseres Publikums fühle ich mich ermutigt, das Projekt mit anderen Reihen und Einzelromanen, die bislang nicht auf Deutsch erhältlich sind, zu erweitern. Wenn es so weit ist, werde ich Sie auf jeden Fall darüber informieren.

Spring is sprung! The grass is riz! I wonder where the birdies is…

…even as all of y’all may be wondering why the falling leaves template is here to announce the long-awaited vernal season. I was going to try passing it off as a nod to my readers in Australia and New Zealand, whom I do in fact cherish, but the actual reason is that I just like the way it looks. And, at least metaphorically, it needn’t be autumn for one to be aware of falling leaves.

Hey, thanks for sharing.

[image error]Sorry about that. It’s spring, and I’m delighted, and I have plenty to report. And the first item on my agenda is a brand-new book that I had nothing to do with, and yet I’m eager to commend it to your attention. It’s The Truth About Parallel Lines, by Jill D. Block, and the author’s surname is not entirely coincidental. Jill’s my daughter, and this is her first novel.

I assume it’s a mystery.

No, it’s mainstream fiction, a coming-of-age novel that follows three young women over a span of thirty years. Jill sold her first story to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and one of her three other published stories is also crime fiction, but this is not.

One writer, not easily impressed, had this to say: “The Group andThe Best of Everything were the two books that made me want to be a writer. And here’s Jill D. Block, clearly the long-lost bastard daughter of Mary McCarthy and Rona Jaffe, with The Truth About Parallel Lines. The story covers something like thirty years, and—just sayin’— I read it in one sitting.”

All right, I’m sold. Where do I get it? What’s it cost?

Well, let’s just see. You can get The Truth About Parallel Linesfrom Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Tolino.

Publication day is June 4, but if you act now you can lock in the pre-order price of $6.99 for ebook or $14.99 for paperback. (The ebook is already available for pre-order. You’ll be able to pre-order the paperback in a few days. And for those of you who read with your ears, there’ll be an audiobook before too long.)

And what about Lawrence Block? How’s his health? And has he written anything lately?

Oh dear. So many questions.

First of all, I’m very pleased to report that I’m continuing to improve rapidly after a hip replacement and bypass surgery. I traded the walker for a cane a few weeks ago, and sometimes forget to take the cane with me, which either suggests that I’m able to get along without it, or that my memory’s no better than the rest of me. But I’m capable of walking long distances, and—since I can climb stairs now—I’m once again getting around by subway. And for two weeks now I’ve been to the gym every day, raising and lowering heavy objects to no apparent purpose. So it looks as though I have a decent chance of remaining on the right side of the grass, at least for a while.

And, to my surprise, I’ve resumed writing. In my longstanding tradition of biting off more than I can chew, and chewing it anyway, I’ve got two anthologies in the works. One’s a sequel of sorts to In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, the other a collection of noir stories not unlike Dark City Lights). Some superb writers have signed on for each of these projects, and I already have two stories in hand—and they are gems.

And I myself have written almost 20,000 words of a new something-or-other. I don’t know if it wants to be a novella or a full-length novel, and I’m letting it rest until it speaks to me. While I wait, I’ve started a very dark, very nasty short story, and it’s coming along nicely. (Better make that at a brisk pace, as there’s nothing nice about it.) The title is “A Man Walks Into a Bar,” and I’m not sure whether I’ll tuck it into one of the anthologies or find some other home for it. But I like the way it’s shaping up, and I think y’all may like it, except for those of you who hate it. We’ll see, and sooner rather than later.

Crikey, when do you sleep?

In the winter.

Recently I realized that my novella, Keller’s Fedora, while a brisk seller as an ebook, had gone out-pf-print in its Subterranean Press hardcover edition, and was listed at ridiculously high prices in the aftermarket. So I issued it as a paperback, and it’s been my leading seller for the past two months.

[image error]Well, I’m not too handy at leaving well enough alone. I looked at another 20,000-word novella, Resume Speed, also published in hardcover by Subterranean Press, and also no longer in print. Would people want to buy it as a paperback? And could I slip in anything to sweeten the mix?

Turns out I could. There’s Gym Rat, a 10,000-word novelette packaged by Crime Fiction Academy with Matt Plass’s fine short story,”The Murder Club.” Gym Rat’s only eVailable, so why not tuck it in with Resume Speed? And what about “I Know How to Pick ‘Em,” a 7000-word story I wrote for an anthology (Dangerous Women); a holdback clause in the contract kept me from incorporating it in Catch & Release, but that was some years ago, so why not add it to the new paperback?

And omigod what about Hard Sell? I ghost-wrote the thing in 1960 for Craig Rice, who’d recently died but whose agent didn’t want to acknowledge the fact; it was written for the inaugural issue of Ed McBain’s Mystery Magazine, only to pop up decades later in Murder, Mystery and Malone, Jeffrey Marks’ great Crippen & Landru collection of Craig’s stories. And it’s listed in various reference books as my work, which means the cat has long since been out of the bag, so why not make it available to my readers? It may be almost sixty years old, but why let that stop it? I think it stands up, and may even be able to get around without a cane.

So you’ve got enough stories for a book.

It does look that way, doesn’t it? Not sure what I’ll call it but I suspect I’ll think of something, and I’ll be sure to tell y’all about it. Is that enough?

More than enough.

Right, and…oh, one more thing.

Huh?

Sorry about that. The incomparable William Link got the MWA Grand Master award Thursday night, so I’ve got Columbo on my mind.

So what’s the one more thing, and what happened to your raincoat?

The one more thing is that the Hindi edition of The Sins of the Fathers (Scudder #1) , translated by Ishan and Alka Shrivedi, has broken through at last to sell a grand total of three copies.

And you’re excited about that?

Indeed I am. For a couple of years it didn’t sell a single copy.

[image error]Let me explain. Ishan and Alka are fans of the Scudder books residing in India, and Alka has been a Facebook friend of mine, and when I mentioned self-publishing translations in German and Spanish and Italian, she suggested I tap the huge South Asian market with translations into Hindi. I enlisted Alka and her husband Ishan to do all the heavy lifting, and I don’t think any of us knew what we were getting into.

For one thing, while Amazon offers plenty of books in Hindi, their self-publishing ebook platform doesn’t support books in that alphabet. That was a blow, esp. after my Goddess of Design and Production had managed the Herculean task of formatting a book of which she could not read a word.

Undaunted, we somehow managed to publish a POD paperback through CreateSpace. And, after several years of no sales whatsoever, three people have recently managed to find their way to it and purchase a copy.

Now I’ve thought all along that an audience for the book exists. New York City has a substantial South Asian population, and the opportunity to read in one’s first language a book set in one’s place of residence has to hold some appeal. But how to bring the book to the attention of its potential readers?

I’ve never been able to answer that question, and that’s why we’ve only managed to peddle three copies. But there are other potential buyers for the book. You, for instance.

Me? Why would I buy a book I couldn’t read???

For openers it would add some much-needed class to your To Be Read pile. But do you have a favorite Indian restaurant? And don’t you think such a thoughtful gift to a waiter or owner would win you Favored Customer status?

Gee. I never thought of that.

Alas, neither did anybody else. But it’s not too late. You can order a copy via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You can order a whole batch of copies, and make friends all over Jackson Heights and Jersey City.

The possibilities are endless, aren’t they?

So it would appear.

While you consider them, could there ever be a better time  to support an exciting first novelist and make a proud father happy by preordering The Truth About Parallel Lines? You’ll be glad you did, and so will I.

Cheers,

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It might as well be spring…

…but for the fact that an overgrown rodent in Punxutawney saw his shadow and blessed us all with six more weeks of winter. Which still makes it hard to explain the falling-autumn-leaves motif of this newsletter, but it’s my favorite template and I keep going back to it. And note if you will the green text, at once an homage to St. Patrick and a wistful hope for warmer weather.

Are you ever going to get to the point?

Oh, right. And there are, I’m pleased to report, several points to be reached. I’ll lead off with the first-ever adaptation of a book of mine as a graphic novel.

[image error]When the deal began to come together, I was by no means certain I’d enjoy seeing the pivotal book in the Matthew Scudder series presented in this fashion. But if Eight Million Ways to Die could survive its film version, I figured it wouldn’t be too much the worse for being illustrated.

Well, the publisher (IDW) sent me a PDF of the book last week, in the hope that I’d write a hundred words or so of introduction—and I was genuinely delighted beyond my wildest dreams. John K. Snyder III turns out to be not only a richly talented artist but a positive genius at fitting all of the essence and most of the incident of my book into this very different medium. It’s all there, and Matt Scudder’s 1982 New York City looks just as I remember it, and just as Scudder portrayed it.

The book’s on-sale date is June 26, but you’d be well-advised to pre-order now and lock in a favorable price. It’s available as both a hardcover volume and an ebook; the price is almost the same, and I would think you’d enjoy this book more in paper than in electronic form. For convenience, here are links to Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Did you ever write that introduction?

I did, and I may have gotten carried away. Instead of 100 words I came up with 1400. JKS3 sent me staggering down Memory Lane, and I found myself nattering on about the experience of writing the book all those years ago. But, you know, you can always skip the introduction.

Yeah, right. You’re always telling people to skip your introductions.

Well, it seems only fair. But don’t skip this. A couple of times over the years I’ve hooked up with StoryBundle, joining other writers to offer a combined ten ebooks at a near-giveaway price. This time the theme is Femme Fatale, and my contribution is  Candy , a very early venture into erotic noir. But look what else you get:
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You’ll probably know some but not all of these writers—and that’s why you can get four of the books for $5, or all ten for $15. StoryBundle is a promotional vehicle for participating authors, and we hope that having been introduced to our work you’ll want more of it.

Five bucks for four books, fifteen for the whole package. (You can pay more if you’re so inclined, which makes about as much sense to me as tipping at toll booths. But what do I know?) Meanwhile, go to the StoryBundle page, where you can click on individual cover art to read a description of each book, along with a passage selected to hook you and reel you in.

StoryBundle’s packages run for a predetermined length of time, so once again I’d advise you to act now. It won’t be a pre-order; as soon as you place it, you’ll be able to download the books on the eReader of your choice. How’s that for Instant Gratification?

It’s okay. How are you feeling these days? Back to running marathons yet?

You know, I’m afraid I’ve aged out of the marathon game. The good news is I’ve put my walker in mothballs and am now getting around with a cane—or, around the house, with nothing but my own two feet. (This came of setting down the cane, walking away from it, and being unable to remember where I left it. It would seem I’ve aged out of the memory game, too.)

Still, I’m getting better, and that pleases me enormously. One thing I realized during the whole health crisis was just how much I wanted to hang around for a while.

Still, didn’t you write a book called Nobody Lives Forever?

You may be thinking of Nobody Runs Forever, a Parker novel written by the late Donald E. Westlake under his Richard Stark pen name. A fine book, and that’s no surprise because the fellow never wrote a bad one. The dandy University of Chicago Press edition sports an introduction by Duane Swierczynski, and—

No, wasn’t there a Scudder book about nobody living forever?

That would be Everybody Dies, and. . .you know, I often find your interruptions annoying, but this time I have to thank you.

Oh? For what?

[image error]For jogging my aging memory. Alle sterben.

Huh?

As you may know, I’ve been teaming up with two translators to render the Matthew Scudder series in the German language. We’ve just published Stefan Mommertz’s fine translation of the fourteenth Scudder novel, Everybody Dies, which in German is Alle sterben. That link is for the ebook; it’s also available as a handsome trade paperback, and sooner or later Amazon will list them both on the same page. The ebook, like all of our German ventures, is also available on most platforms internationally: Tolino/Thalia, Apple,Kobo, B&N, etc.

So you’re up to #14.

[image error]Not exactly. #15 is already available for the first time ever in German, newly translated by Sepp Leeb. The English title is Hope to Die; the German is Der zweite Tod. It’s one of two books in the series with a different structural twist. Most of the book is narrated by Scudder…

What’s so different about that?

. . .but some sections are seen through the eyes of the bad guy. And he’s one of the nastiest bad guys either I or Scudder ever met. All platforms worldwide, and once again Amazon has the paperback and ebook editions on different pages.

So the first fifteen Scudder novels are now available in German, and…

Um, not quite. Book #10 is A Walk Among the Tombstones, which you may recall was filmed by Scott Frank a couple of years ago, with Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder. A German publisher bought the rights to publish a film tie-in edition, and then the rights reverted to me, and we’ll be publishing Sepp’s excellent translation any day now, and certainly by the end of the week. The title is Ruhet in Frieden, and while we’re doing it as both ebook and paperback, I can’t give you any links yet.

[image error]Why not?

Because it’s not on sale yet, so there’s nothing to link to. But I can show you the cover. Isn’t it a nice one? Pretty and peaceful, even though it is a little disconcerting to see Matt’s name carved in a block of granite. The cover, like the three others shown here, is the work of my Goddess of Design and Production.

What three others? Alle sterben, Der zweite Tod, and what else? Ruhet in Frieden looks very nice, but aren’t you counting it twice?

Nope. I’m counting Candy. The Goddess of D & P did all the covers for my Collection of Classic Erotica. And see how we’ve come all the way back to the StoryBundle bargain? Just scroll up from there, pre-order the graphic novel, and I’ll leave you alone.

High time. I was beginning to feel like Bud Abbott.

Who’s on first, anyway? I’ve been meaning to ask you. Oh, never mind. I suppose I could Google it.

And thanks to all of y’all for putting up with such a barrage of whimsy. Join me, if you will, in the hope that spring will eventually get here. And thank the groundhog for the opportunity to stay inside or the time being—and read.

It’s been a while. . .

. . .and for those of you who subscribed within the past ninety days, I trust I’ve laid to rest any worries you may have had that I’d fill your mailbox to overflowing. Quite the reverse, and I apologize for the long silence. I can but hope you had a better time than I did; I spent many of those days in hospital, where I followed a hip replacement with bypass surgery. I’m fine now, and back to buying green bananas, so not to worry.

[image error]And there’s a lot going on. Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man, which Isaac Asimov proclaimed “Either the funniest dirty book or the dirtiest funny book I’ve ever read,” is newly available in ebook and paperback form, and some of you have found it on your own—perhaps with an assist from blogger Andrew Monge, who chose it as one of his five favorite reads of 2017, and raised my spirits with these uplifting words: “In all my years of reading I have never – and I mean never — read a book that made me laugh out loud as much as Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man.”

Some of you have been asking for more about Keller, the wistful hitman and philatelist who, as a five-star review on Amazon observed, does tend to overthink things. I initially published his most recent appearance, Keller’s Fedora, as a Kindle Single; then Subterranean Press brought it out in a superb hardcover edition, which sold out in a heartbeat and won’t be reprinted. (Used copies are listed from $91 on up, with one overly optimistic bookseller offering the book for $3214.79. I think that might be a little high.) I narrated the audiobook, and it’s still available, as is the ebook. But anyone who wanted the physical book has been out of luck.

[image error]Until now. I’m happy to announce that Keller’s Fedora is newly available as a handsome paperback volume. Note that it’s a novella, not a full-length novel, runnng to a mere 116 pages. The price is $9.99, and if that strikes you as excessively upscale, consider that you’re saving over $3200 by buying it instead of that high-ticket hardcover. $3200! Just think how many books you can buy with the money you’ll have saved!

There’s more. Luigi Garlaschelli translated the Scudder short stories, then turned his attention to the light-fingered and light-hearted Bernie Rhodenbarr. The Burglar who Counted the Spoons, at #11 the most recent book in the series, is now available for the first time in Italian as Il Ladro che Contava i Cucchiai. (A tip: to find all of Luigi’s skillful translations of my books, just do an Amazon search for “Luigi Garlaschelli Lawrence Block”.)

There’s more on the way in other languages, too. Stefan Mommertz and Sepp Leeb are nearing the end of the Matthew Scudder series, and before the week’s out expect to be publishing Der zweite Tod, Sepp’s translation of Hope to Die. It’ll be the book’s first appearance in the German language. And my thanks to Maria Carmen de Bernardo Martinez, whose Spanish translation of the first Keller book, Hit Man, continues to move nicely as El Sicario. Maca’s at work on the second book in the series, Hit List, and while its Spanish title is as yet undetermined, El Sicario #2 will appear prominently on the cover.

[image error]I was still home in early December, when Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired hit bookstore shelves—and, to a large degree, flew right off of them. The timing didn’t hurt a bit, as no end of free-lance Santa Clauses saw it as the perfect holiday gift book. (The same thing happened a year earlier with In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper. You can still get hardcover editions of both of these books at a sharply discounted price—which may go up at any time, though probably not all the way to $3214.79.)

And that’ll do for now, don’t you think? One unlikely effect of the surgery was that I lost much of my ability to type. It’s come back, but I still make more typos than I used to, and can only hope I will have caught them before sending this to you. And if I’ve missed some, well, sotwldoih gezor#g enpl97uatz.

Cheers,

LB

A Random Walk in 1987…

It was thirty years ago, and I was stuck for something to write. I’d already booked my first stay in an artists colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I wasn’t sure what it would be like, and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do when I got there. I’d published five books about Bernie Rhodenbarr, and a sixth would make sense, but I didn’t have one in mind. Another series, featuring Matthew Scudder, had apparently ended forever with When the Sacred Ginmill Closes.

I was in Florida—we lived there at the time, in Fort Myers Beach—and I was sitting and gazing off into the middle distance, of which we had a good supply. And I had this inner vision of a guy in Oregon walking away from his job and heading east on foot. And other people, total strangers, were joining him, and what the hell was that all about?

More bits kept feeding in. A middle-aged woman, in some sort of descent into blindness, responding to an inner call to join the procession. Story elements kept coming into my consciousness, and blinking them away wsn’t enough to get rid of them. I didn’t know where the book was going, if it even was a book, but I wanted to find out.

But I was due at VCCA in a week, and I wouldn’t be ready to start this thing for months. I decided maybe I could work on an outline. Clearly,I couldn’t work on anything else, because I couldn’t get this new book out of my head.

I took it easy, spent three days driving there, and sat down at the desk they gave me. I didn’t even try to write an outline. I went straight to work on the text, and I wrote twenty pages a day for three weeks and a day, and then I got back in my car and drove home. It was the most extraordinary writing experience I had ever had, and nothing since has ever come close to it. Each day I somehow knew what to write that day, and it was indeed like driving at night; you can see as far as the headlights reach, as someone (it may have been E. L. Doctorow) once said, but you can follow those beams all the way across the country.

Even as the characters walked over the Cascades and on across America, with the group generating its own energy that led to remarkable events, so did the book I was writing do much the same thing. It surprised me a bit when, way the hell over in Kansas, a fellow named Mark began killing women one right after another. Who was he, and what was he doing in my book? But I went on, trusting he belonged in the story and that eventually it would all come together.And eventually it did. It was not, I should point out, a simple matter of taking down celestial dictation. I was the one doing the driving, pumping the stuff out of some inner reservoir, and it was the hardest work I’d ever done. I came home with a novel that clearly insisted upon being written.

However, it didn’t seem to insist upon being read.

Tor Books published it in 1988, put a lame science-fictiony cover on it, tagged it “a new novel for a New Age,” and sent it off to make its own way. Which it didn’t. Reviewers didn’t like it, sales reps barely got it into stores, and readers found it resistible. I lived through the experience, and some months later I was at work on the 7th Matthew Scudder novel, Out on the Cutting Edge.

Over the years, I’ve noticed something about Random Walk. Now and then someone will approach me at a signing and say something along these lines: “You know, I’ve read end enjoyed just about everything you’ve written, but there was one book of yours I couldn’t make head or tails out of, and I still can’t figure out why you wrote it in the first place, and—”

And then someone else will come up and say, “You know, I admire your work in general, but there was one book of yours I’ve read seventeen times, and I get something new out of it each and every time, and it’s changed my life, and—”

And it’s always the same book. Random Walk.

It’s been in and out of print over the years. Tor did a mass-market paperback with a cover that wasn’t much better than the hardcover. A few years later iUniverse offered me the opportunity to reprint it, and that made the book available again, and netted me a cool $20 a year, as I recall. Then Open Road broiught out an ebook, and when all rights reverted to me I put it on my list of Things to Do.

And now it’s done! My Goddess of Design and Production came up with a cover I genuinely like. (In fact I like it enough to show it to you a second time, to spare you the arduous task of scrolling up for another look at it.) We’ve published it in both ebook and trade paperback form, and you can pick it up on any Amazon platform, or from Apple, Nook, Kobo, or Thalia.

So there you have it—or you will, should you choose to click on one of the links and spend a couple of bucks. I don’t know that it’ll change your life; I’m by no means sure it changed mine. I followed it with a string of Matthew Scudder novels—Out on the Cutting Edge, A Ticket to the Boneyard, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and The Devil Knows You’re Dead—and it wasn’t until 1994 that I finally wrote the sixth Bernie Rhodenbarr book, The Burglar who Traded Ted Williams. I wrote that last one in San Francisco, at the Gaylord Hotel in the Tenderloin. But that’s another story, and it’ll have to wait.

Meanwhile, we’re two days away from Thanksgiving. Eat some turkey, watch some football, and try to come up with something for which you’re actually grateful.

Easy for me. I’m grateful for all of y’all.

Cheers,

Spring forward. Fall apart.

How did it get to be November already? Time flies, it would appear, whether or not you’re having fun.

But you knew that, right? So let me trot out some items that might actually be news to you.May I suggest you take a moment to pre-order Alive in Shape and Color ? 17 works of arts and the 17 stories they’ve inspired. Publication by Pegasus is less than a month away, and it’s not too early to guarantee a first edition copy for yourself (and for the truly treasured people on your Christmas list). Booklist and PW have already said very nice things about this sequel to In Sunlight or in Shadow , and it’ll be featured soon in the New York Times Book Review. The authors are listed on the cover, and the artists include Dali, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, O’Keeffe, Rodin, Magritte, Michelangelo, Bosch, Balthus, Gerome, Hokusai, Norman Rockwell, Clyfford Still, Lilias Torrance Newton, Art Frahm, and the Cave Painter at Lascaux—with a bonus no-story-attached painting by Raphael Soyer.

Will there be a public signing?

Just one, and mark your calendar: Thursday, December 7, The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York NY 10007. At least half a dozen of the contributors will be on hand to sign your books, talk about their stories, and—one can but hope—say nice things about the anthologist. You should probably show up by 6:30 to be sure of a seat. And, if you can’t get there yourself, call the bookstore (800-352-2840) ahead of time to order a copy signed by all the attendees.

Now look who’s in the comics!

Yes, remarkably enough, it’s Matthew Scudder in Eight Million Ways to Die, a full-length graphic novel coming in June from IDW. This is the fifth book in the series, and the pivotal one in which staying alive and solving a string of murders is the least of Scudder’s problems. The 1986 film, despite fine performances by Jeff Bridges and Andy Garcia, was only so-so, but John K. Snyder III’s version looks like a winner.

The book’s been a long time coming; we made a deal with IDW back 2011, and I’m happy to report that they took the time to do it right. In the past few days, the project’s been getting a lot of ink in trade publications, and IDW has even posted a 60-second video preview which should give you an idea of Snyder’s approach; if you like what you see, go ahead and pre-order it.

Will IDW be doing the rest of the series?

That’s the hope. It depends, of course, on what kind of reception Eight Million Ways to Die gets. As you may recall, IDW brought out the Darwyn Cooke graphic novel renditions of Richard Stark’s Parker novels, so it’s pretty clear that our Mr. Scudder is in good hands.

The novel’s available in other formats as well—paperback, ebook, and an unabridged audio version narrated by its author. I quit doing audio in recent years, my voice just doesn’t hold up the way it used to, although I made an exception for Keller’s Fedora. [image error]More recently I’ve been teaming up with voice artists to publish backlist titles in audio, and Theo Holland has been working his way through the adventures of Evan Michael Tanner. He’s done a marvelous job with Tanner #4, The Scoreless Thai, and I commend it to your attention. And click here for the web page with all 94 of my titles presently available in audio.

94 audiobooks? Really?

I know. Some would call it wretched excess, but they’re just jealous.

And all 94 of them in English. What’s new in translation?

For starters, here’s Nighthawks, just published by Droemer in a beautiful hardover edition. It’s Frauke Cwikla’s German translation of In Sunlight or in Shadow, and it’s been getting a heartening reception from readers and reviewers alike. Early on, when my agent and I were trying to make ISOIS come together, Droemer was the first overseas publisher to come on board—so it’s gratifying to see their support rewarded by this splendid volume.

And it’s a brisk shot in the arm for the Matthew Scudder novels I’ve been publishing in German, in partnership with translators Stefan Mommertz and Sepp Leeb. Self-publishing across international borders is a tricky enterprise, but Scudder—in both ebook and paperback form—is beginning to get a foothold in the German market. In addition to all Amazon platforms, the titles are readily available from Thalia.

Luigi Garlaschelli began with La Notte e la Musica, the complete Matthew Scudder short stories, then switched from detective work to burglary for Il Ladro nella Bibliotecca and Il Ladro in Caccia. They’re #8 and #10 in Bernie Rhodenbarr series, and Luigi has now filled in superbly with #9, Il Ladro che Beveva Rye. It’s just out in ebook form, with a paperback soon to follow. Next up for Italian readers will be #11, The Burglar who Counted the Spoons—but that may take a while. I’ll keep you posted.

Please do. That’s the Burglar in the Rye, isn’t it? I must say I like the cover.[image error]

Me too. It’s Jaye Manus’s work. And how’s this for a striking cover? Over in France, the contemplative assassin Keller has moved to Gallimard’s Serie Noire with his fifth book, Tue-Moi; I’m not qualified to rate Sébastien Razier’s translation, and far too humble to tell you how wonderful it was in English as Hit Me, but there’s nothing to prevent my saying how much I like the looks of this edition. And, all modesty aside, may I quote a recent review? “Bref, il est très difficile de ne pas fondre devant ce tueur iconoclaste, repoussant mais néanmoins très attachant avec des côtés très dandy créé par un Lawrence Block qui a su donner des lettres de noblesse à la littérature de gare.”

And isn’t that a nice note to end on?

Cheers,

[image error]

LB’s Long-Overdue Summer Newsletter

Back in mid-May, my list of Things To Do sported the word Newsletter at or near the top. And I’d have been on it like brown on rice but for another Thing To Do:

Fall down. Break hip.

And that’s about as much as I care to share about How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Recovery’s a slow process, and no more interesting to read and write about than it is to undergo. So let’s move on, shall we? Here’s what I’ve got:

[image error] 1. Great news for liars!

Or fictioneers, should you prefer a gentler term. As many of you know, I’ve been writing about writing for almost as long as I’ve been writing about anything. (And that’s literally true; while my Writers Digest column on fiction didn’t get underway until late 1976, I had the temerity to publish an article on dialogue in Author & Journalist way back in 1958.)

The WD column led to two books, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and Spider, Spin Me a Web, each composed of collected columns and both still in print. Which is better? Well, I’d probably give Spider the nod���but from a commercial standpoint it’s not even close. Year in and year out, Telling Lies is the sales leader by a considerable margin…and it’s pretty obvious that what makes the difference is the title. Leaving aside the subtle effects of arachnophobia on potential buyers, I feel safe in concluding that the prospect of profitable [image error]prevarication is a strong incentive.

A few years ago, it dawned on me that I had sufficient post-Spider columns to fill two more books. I had the good sense to call them The Liar’s Bible and The Liar’s Companion, concocted for each an appropriate subtitle, and brought them out via Open Road Integrated Media. After five years my arrangement with Open Road had run its course, and I reclaimed my titles, and have just now brought out Bible and Companion in ebook and trade paperback form, all tricked out with splendid new covers, and don’t they look fine?

They do. But those aren’t your only books for writers, are they?

[image error]Well, no. My very first book for writers is also my most recent. It’s��Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, and its original version had only the first seven words of the title, as the universe had not yet become pixelated. A year and a half ago I tacked on those final two words, and while I was at it I added around 30,000 words of new material, and published the book in an expanded and updated edition that’s been very favorably received. While writing itself hasn’t changed all that much over the years, the writer’s world is very different than it was four decades ago, and I’m glad to have been able to bring the book into the present century.

And while I’m at it, I really ought to say something about��Write For Your Life. My first venture in self-publishing back in 1986, it grew directly out of an interactional seminar with roots in the Human Potential movement. My wife and I toured the country [image error]presenting it, and I wrote the book to make the seminar available to writers who couldn’t attend in person. I printed 5000 copies���this was before anybody had thought up Print-on-Demand���and we sold them all, and that was that. We came out a few dollars ahead, which is more than I can say about the seminar business.

You sound bitter.

No, it was fun, and money wasn’t really the point. Anyway, a couple of years ago I reissued the book as a trade paperback, and ever since it’s been a consistent lead title for us, without any real promotional effort. I guess I can thank word of mouth���or word of blog, or word of social media. The book addresses the Inner Game of Writing, focusing on the writer within, and you may or may not be receptive to it, but it might be worth a look. It’s available as an ebook as well, but in this instance I’m particularly inclined to recommend the��paperback, as it’s easier to work your way through the various processes with a physical book in hand.

Republishing��Bible��and��Companion��has claimed some of my attention during this tedious business of Recovery, though most of the actual work has fallen on my Goddess of Design and Production. Similarly, other deltoids than mine have shouldered much of the burden of the summer’s other business, which comes under the heading of…

2. LB in translation.

[image error]

It’s been just over two years since I teamed up with Stefan Mommertz to publish his German translations of the first Matthew Scudder short story,��Aus dem Fenster��(Out the Window) and the first novel,��Die S��nden der V��ter��(The Sins of the Fathers). Since then I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Stefan and Sepp Leeb, and at this point more than half of the Scudder novels are now available in German, in both ebook and paperback form. (Several of the short stories are available, but only as ebooks.)

[image error]In the past month, we’ve brought out the fourth novel,��Tief bei den ersten Toten���and the title deserves a word of explanation. The English title is��A Stab in the Dark, and that works fine in English, but Stefan felt it missed the mark in German. I thought about it, and recalled that the first title I’d proposed to Arbor House was��Deep with the First Dead, a line from Dylan Thomas’s poem, “A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London.” (Scudder encounters the poem in an East Village bookshop, [image error]and it nudges him toward a solution to the case, and the quoted line very much fit the book’s storyline.)

My editor at Arbor House, Jared Kieling, loved the book but not the title, and the alternative I came up with was��A Stab in the Dark; Jared found it a much stronger title, and he was probably right. My only regret at the change was that I’d written a book some years earlier called��After the First Death,and had drawn the title from that very poem, and I’d have liked to get a second title from Mr. Thomas.

And now, with��Tief bei den ersten Toten, I’ve done just that.

[image error]Sepp’s latest translation also required a new title;��A Long Line of Dead Men��doesn’t seem to work as a German title. (Same thing happened in French.) We settled on��Der Club der Toten, and the Goddess in Colorado came through with the cover, and as they say on the Ku’damm, “Bob ist Dein Onkel.”

They don’t say any such thing? Well, never mind. Here’s a current list of our German titles. The posted links are to Amazon’s US platform, but you’ll find the books on all Amazon platforms worldwide, and on most other platforms���Kobo,��Nook,��Thalia, Apple, etc.



Drei am Haken

Mitten im Tod

[image error]Tief bei dem ersten Toten

Acht Millionen Wege zu sterben

Nach der Sperrstunde

Am Rand des Abgrunds

Ein Ticket f��r den Friedhof

Tanz im Schlachthof

Ruhet in Frieden

In Teufels K��che

Der Club der Toten

3. Meanwhile, in Spain…

[image error]…a stab is still a stab. which is to say that the fourth Scudder novel,��A Stab in the Dark, is now available in a splendid new translation by Ana and Enriqueta Carrington, who previously rendered all the Scudder stories into Spanish in��La noche y la m��sica. (El hombre peligroso��is their good work as well.)

[image error]Is there something vaguely familiar about the cover of��Cuchillada en la oscuridad? Indeed there is, and if you scroll up you’ll find the same noir attitude and the same artful typography gracing the cover of the same novel’s German edition. Neat, innit? LikeTief bei dem ersten Toten,��Cuchillada‘s available in both ebook and paperback form.

I should also mention��El sicario, the new translation of Keller’s debut,��Hit Man, by��M�� Carmen de Bernardo Mart��nez. The book’s selling at a remarkable pace, and I’m not sure why. Neither Maca nor I have been making much promotional fuss, so I can only credit word of mouth���or some 21st Century equivalent thereof like blogs and social media. We’re delighted, I must say, and Maca’s moving along with the second Keller novel,��Hit List. (La lista del sicario? We’ll see…)

[image error]4. What else?

Well, a little of this and a little of that. Theo Holland, voice artist extraordinaire, has followed up��The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleepwith��Tanner’s Twelve Swingers, and is already at work on��The Scoreless Thai.��

[image error]Alive in Shape and Color, the sequel to In Sunlight or in Shadow, is scheduled by Pegasus for early December. ISOIS featured stories based on paintings of Edward Hopper; AISAC’s fiction roams the museum coridors, with masterpieces by Gauguin, Magritte, Van Gogh, Rodin, Balthus, Renoir, Dali, Bosch, and Rockwell among those inspiring�� the 17 entries. You might want to pre-order it now to lock in the best price���and to assure you a stack of first edition copies for holiday giving.

[image error]I’ll be sticking close to home for what’s left of the summer, and don’t expect to budge much before��Bouchercon in October, where it will fall to me to interview Guest of Honor Megan Abbott. Aside from that, I see the weekend as a likely occasion for disappointment. This has been a year for award nominations, and it began for me with an entirely unexpected Edgar Allan Poe award for my ISOIS short story, “Autumn at the Automat.” Well, that story has since been shortlisted for two more awards, the Anthony and the Macavity, and I’m reasonably certain it won’t win either one. The book in which it appeared,��In Sunlight or in Shadow, has itself been shortlisted for an Anthony award as Best Anthology���and it won’t win, either.

[image error]Finally, The Private Eye Writers of America have nominated��“Keller’s Fedora“��for a Shamus award for Best Short Story. PWA normally presents the Shamuses (Shami? Never mind) at a dinner held during Bouchercon, but not this year; instead they’ll announce the winners via newsletter in September and mail the awards.

So that particular disappointment will come a month early, with the other three following in October.

How you do carry on. When you read the��Pooh��books, who was your favorite character?

What difference does that make?

Just answer the question.

Well, I guess it was Eeyore, but…

There’s a surprise. Have fun at Bouchercon.

Yeah, right. Don’t cry for me, Toronto…

Cheers,

LB’s German Newsletter

Lawrence Blocks Newsletter







Guten Tag zusammen! Es ist schon eine Weile her seit meinem letzten deutschen Newsletter und beim Thema ��bersetzungen hat sich ziemlich viel getan ��� weshalb ich viel zu berichten habe.

Zun��chst freue ich mich, verk��nden zu d��rfen, dass In Sunlight or in Shadow, die von mir zusammengestellte Anthologie mit Kurzgeschichten, die von Gem��lden Edward Hoppers inspiriert sind, am 2. November in deutscher Sprache unter dem Titel Nighthawks erscheinen wird (und bei Amazon bereits vorbestellbar ist).

Die Anthologie konnte in den USA und in Gro��britannien ein sehr positives Echo hervorrufen, was sich sowohl in guten Verkaufszahlen als auch in lobenden Rezensionen niederschlug. Drei der enthaltenen Stories wurden au��erdem schon mit zus��tzlicher Aufmerksamkeit bedacht: Jeffery Deavers ��The Incident of 10 November�� wurde f��r den Jahresband Best American Mystery Stories ausgew��hlt, w��hrend Stephen Kings ��The Music Room�� und mein ��Autumn at the Automat�� unter den Nominierten f��r den Edgar Allan Poe Award der Mystery Writers of America waren. (Zu meiner gro��en ��berraschung durfte ich als Gewinner des Awards nach Hause gehen.)

Unter den in der Anthologie vertretenen Autoren befinden sich au��erdem Megan Abbott, Jill D. Block, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Child, Nicholas Christopher, Michael Connelly, Craig Ferguson, Joe R. Lansdale, Gail Levin, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Kris Nelscott, Jonathan Santlofer und Justin Scott, und jede Geschichte ist mit dem Hopper-Gem��lde illustriert, durch das sie inspiriert wurde.

Frauke Czwikla hat den Band ��bersetzt, der Verlag ist Droemer ��� ich freue mich, dass Nighthawks bald erscheinen wird, und hoffe, Sie werden Gefallen daran finden.

Und jetzt zu Matthew Scudder, von dem immer mehr Heldentaten auch auf Deutsch nachzulesen sind. Vor Kurzem haben wir Sepp Leebs ��bersetzungen der B��nde 8 und 9, Ein Ticket f��r den Friedhof und Tanz im Schlachthof ver��ffentlicht. Sepps bei Heyne erschienene ��bersetzung von #10, Ruhet in Frieden, ist seit der Verfilmung mit Liam Neeson wieder im Handel, und unsere Ver��ffentlichung von #11, In Teufels K��che, steht kurz bevor.

Au��erdem freue ich mich, Ihnen mitteilen zu k��nnen, dass Stefan Mommertz seine ��bersetzung von Matthew Scudder #4, Tief bei den ersten Toten (A Stab in the Dark), abgeschlossen hat. Wir werden den Roman ver��ffentlichen, sobald er korrekturgelesen ist. In der Zwischenzeit hat sich Stefan auch einer weiteren Matthew-Scudder-Kurzgeschichte gewidmet: ��Batmans Gehilfen��, die vierte Story, ist nun f��r den Kindle erh��ltlich. (Sobald alle elf Kurzgeschichten ��bersetzt sind, werden wir sie in einem Band sowohl als E-Book als auch als Taschenbuch anbieten.)

Hier ist eine Liste aller meiner zurzeit erh��ltlichen deutschen Titel. Die Links f��hren auf Amazons deutsche Homepage, amazon.de, aber alle Titel sind auch weltweit auf den anderen Amazon-Seiten zu finden.

Die Romane als E-Books und Taschenb��cher:

Die S��nden der V��ter

Drei am Haken

Mitten im Tod

Acht Millionen Wege zu sterben

Nach der Sperrstunde

Am Rand des Abgrunds

Ein Ticket f��r den Friedhof

Tanz im Schlachthof

Ruhet in Frieden

Die Kurzgeschichten:

Aus dem Fenster

Eine Kerze f��r die Stadtstreicherin

Im fr��hen Licht des Tages

Batmans Gehilfen

Eine Novelle ohne Scudder:

Mit leichtem Gep��ck

Und die Anthologie:

Nighthawks

Ich m��chte Sie darauf aufmerksam machen, dass die folgenden B��cher auch bei anderen Online-Buchh��ndlern (u.a. Thalia) erh��ltlich sind: Die S��nden der V��ter, Mitten im Tod, Acht Millionen Wege zu sterben, Nach der Sperrstunde, Am Rand des Abgrunds, Ein Ticket f��r den Friedhof und Tanz im Schlachthof. Scudder #2, Drei am Haken, wird noch f��r ein paar Wochen exklusiv f��r den Kindle angeboten werden, aber gegen Ende dieses Monats sollte der Roman auch bei Thalia zu finden sein.

Alles Gute,

Eine unserer Schwierigkeiten besteht darin, potentielle Leser auf die Romane und Kurzgeschichten aufmerksam zu machen. Dabei k��nnen Sie uns helfen ��� indem Sie Besprechungen auf Amazon und anderswo posten, indem Sie auf Blogs und in den sozialen Medien Mundpropaganda betreiben und, am wichtigsten, indem Sie Ihre Freunde aufmerksam machen. Lassen Sie sie dabei auch wissen, dass sie sich auf dieser Mailingliste zu Ihnen gesellen k��nnen, indem sie einfach eine Mail mit dem Betreff NEWSLETTER-DE an lawbloc@gmail.com schicken. Vielen Dank!