Lawrence Block's Blog, page 16

Listen up!

No, I'm not accusing you of inattention. It's just my lame way of introducing the topic du jour, which, as you may have inferred, is the wide world of audiobooks.

Some of us call it reading with your ears.

Call it what you will, it's a rapid-growth segment of the book market, and I don't see it quieting down any time soon. When I set about publishing my expanded and updated book for writers, Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, I knew I wanted to bring it out in audio as well, and thought I probably ought to narrate it myself.

I've narrated several of my own books over the years, and have been happy with both the process itself and the results. But the last time I did it, with The Night and the Music, I found the whole business exhausting, and my voice was falling apart toward the end of each day's recording session. And so with a heavy heart—but with a light larynx—I decided to pick a voice artist.

That part was easy. I'd worked with Mike Dennis before, when I chose him to narrate Borderline, and neither I nor the audio audience could have been happier with the results.

So how'd he do with P2P2P?

Brilliantly, I'd have to say. And I'm not alone in this; here's what Peter Ackerman tells us all in his incisive Audible review:

"Mike Dennis is an excellent narrator for this...If I ever meet author Lawrence Block, I think my biggest disappointment will be that his voice is not Mike Dennis's—because I really felt like the author was speaking to me via the writer's first person voice in the text."

P2P2P's also available as an eBook and a trade paperback, and has been getting a heartening reception all three forms. Readers have said they like having it handy on their Kindles, that they want the easy repeat access of a printed copy on their desk or bookshelf, and that listening to the book is less effortful than reading with one's eyes, and allows the material to penetrate on a different level. Well, your mileage may vary, but if you enjoy audiobooks and have an interest in writing novels, you might want to give Mike a listen.

You mentioned that he narrated Borderline. What other audio have you self-published?

Defender of the Innocent, the collection of all 12 Ehrengraf stories, was narrated superbly by the late Don Sobczak. It continues to sell well. Don also voiced one of my John Warren Wells books, Wide Open: New Modes in Marriage, and did a wonderful job with it.

Emily Beresford is the voice of Jill Emerson in three novels: Warm and Willing, Enough of Sorrow, and Thirty. Her narration is a treat, but sales have been slow—because, I've since been told, there's not much of an audio market for lesbian fiction. If you're willing to swim against the tide, give her a listen. The first two titles, I should point out, are sensitive novels of the lesbian experience; Thirty, a more candidly erotic work than the others, is the diary of a housewife reinventing herself as her 30th birthday approaches.

(And there may be another explanation for the slower Jill Emerson sales; I've just discovered that the audiobooks don't show up on Amazon searches, and Thirty doesn't seem to be listed there at all. The links for the first two books will get you to the right Amazon page, while Thirty is linked to its listing on Audible. And yes, I'll have to get them to straighten all of this out...)

Any more audio planned?

Planned, but not yet scheduled. I'm hoping Mike will once again become the Voice of Lawrence Block and narrate The Crime of our Lives, my collection of reviews, personal reminiscences, and critical essays on the crime fiction genre and some of its notable practitioners. I can't think of anyone better suited to the material, or more of a pleasure to work with, so it's largely a matter of his finding time in his schedule.

Speaking of TCOOL (pronounced T-Cool around here, notwithstanding that it sounds like the name of a second-tier rap artist), it's readily available as an ebook or paperback. But your best move by far is to snap it up in hardcover as an Amazon close-out, where it can still be had for $9.99 with free shipping to Amazon Prime members. (The ebook is $4.99, the paperback $14.99, and the hardcover in LB's eBay Bookstore is $24.99. If you want the book, you really ought to jump on the Amazon deal while it's still there.)

What about that Sunlight/Shadow deal? With the Edward Hopper pictures?

That would be In Sunlight or in Shadow, known around here as ISOIS. Coming this fall from Pegasus Books, with 17 stories by 17 stellar writers, and illustrated with 18 of Hopper's magnificent paintings. (No, that's not a typo. 17 stories and 18 paintings. What, it bothers you to get a bonus?) You can pre-order it now, and soon you'll have a chance to get your order in for the deluxe limited edition from the renowned small press Cemetery Dance.

And that's all for now, except for a couple of schedule items. This coming Wednesday, May 11, I'll be at the Mysterious Bookshop to help my friend Tony Bellotto launch his new book from Akashic, Rio Noir. Tony's a writer and musician based in, duh, Rio de Janeiro, and this volume is the first in Akashic's iconic series to venture into Latin America. I don't think I'll have much to do besides sit there and smile, but it should be an enjoyable evening.

And on the month's last day, Tuesday, May 31, I'll be at World Stamp Show at the Javits Center at 4pm. My talk's entitled "A Hit Man and his Stamps," and you can probably figure out that the chap in question is our good friend Keller. Admission's free to all, and I'll most likely bring some books to sell and sign.

And that, dear friends, is it for now. I wish you all pleasant reading, whether with your eyes or ears.

Cheers,

PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter-GR in the subject line will get the job done.

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Some news, all of it good...

...and the first is that it's spring, although you wouldn't know it by the newsletter template, would you? I seem to find it all too simple to choose this particular Falling Leaves template over and over again, irrespective of the date on the calendar, and it's true that it's seasonally appropriate for our subscribers in the Southern Hemisphere, and I quite like the looks of it, so there we are. But I do have a few bits of news to impart, so let me Get On With It.

1. LB's eBay Bookstore is open again. You may never have noticed it was closed, but we shut it down before my first train ride to Florida, and just unfastened the virtual gates yesterday. I'm not sure what the future holds for the Bookstore. It sometimes strikes me as more trouble than it's worth, and yet I hate to pull the plug on it. What on earth would I do with the books? For now, we're open—and filling orders as soon as they're received. Just a few minutes ago David reported an order for a signed first edition of Random Walk . (I didn't even know we owned any, but he tells me we still have four copies left. Who knew?)

There's one new price I ought to tell you about. The leatherbound Collector's Edition of The Burglar who Counted the Spoons , published at $79.99 and reduced some months ago to $29.99, is now lower still—just $24.99 with free shipping to US addresses. (And we're able to ship out of the country on eBay Bookstore orders, but apologize in advance for the shipping costs, which are onerous.)

2. If you want a hardcover of TCOOL, don't buy it from our bookstore. We've got The Crime of Our Lives on the virtual shelf there, but it's priced—fairly enough, really—at $24.99. But if you order it from Amazon , where we've got overstock copies we're trying to unload, you can scoop it up for the giveaway price of $9.99, and if you're an Amazon Prime member they'll ship it to you for free. Consider this: We only printed 1000 of these beauties, and over 800 of them went straight from the printer to Amazon. They've got more than 700 left, and sometime in May whatever's still unsold goes to a landfill, because we've tired of paying the storage costs. Thus the bargain-basement price. If you already cherish the book, you might want to buy extra copies for friends. If you don't think much of the book, then buy it for people you hate.

3. Coming May 10—a new Keller novella! I've mentioned it before, but now the schedule's in place: Keller's Fedora, a brand-new 24,000-word novella, will be available exclusively at Amazon as a Kindle Single, with an on-sale date of May 10 . Amazon's Kindle Singles service includes preparing a cover, and their artist is at work on it now. Soon as the cover art's set, I'll show it to you; for now, we'll have to make do with their iconic cover for Resume Speed, which debuted as a Kindle Single in mid-February and continues to sell strongly.

(Later this year Resume Speed 's coming in hardcover trade and limited editions from Subterranean Press. Their cover's amazing; click for a look at it, and while you're there you might want to place a pre-order; that's particularly advisable if you want the limited edition. And did I mention that we've arranged with Subterranean to bring out Keller's Fedora in hardcover trade and limited? Well, we have—and I couldn't be happier, and can't wait to see what their cover artist comes up with. But that's a ways down the line.)

4. Just scheduled—a deluxe limited edition of In Sunlight or in Shadow: 17 stories inspired by paintings of Edward Hopper. As you'll recall, late this year Pegasus Books will publish this anthology, with an all-star lineup of authors and each painting reproduced in color; how Pegasus can do it at this price is beyond me .

And now Pegasus has arranged for those excellent small-press publishers, Cemetery Dance , to bring out a deluxe limited edition of the anthology. If you're familiar with the publisher, you know what fine work they do. They're not taking pre-orders yet—we just made the deal this week—but you might want to bookmark the page and check in from time to time. (Note that copies won't be signed by all the contributors, just by Your Humble Anthologist.)

5. The Collection of Classic Erotica—is there no end to it? Apparently not. I've republished 15 titles so far, with several more in the works, most of them previously unavailable outside of a used-book store ever since their initial publication in 1960-61. I've used all the original cover art, and I'll show two of my favorites here, both painted by the great Paul Rader.

It's taken me quite a few years to become comfortable with these books. They were a wonderful training ground for me, allowing a very young writer to make a living while working in a very forgiving medium; I could write anything I wanted, so long as the sexual content was there and the story moved along. The sex scenes were remarkably mild by today's standards—none of the words on George Carlin's list of words you can't say in TV (although everybody seems to say them now, at least on cable), and descriptions that were more implicit than explicit. But I guess they did the job in their day; one fellow, an ex-Air Force buddy of Don Westlake's, told me their first child was almost named Carla , her conception having been facilitated by my first book for Harry Shorten at Midwood.

At the moment, the CCE titles are available only as Kindle ebooks—which means, of course, that you can read our forthcoming title High School Sex Club in public, and nobody will know. But very shortly we'll be bringing them all out in paperback editions with the same glorious covers, and I expect they'll look spectacular—so much so that you won't mind a bit if people know what you're reading. As soon as they're ready, I'll let you know. Count on it.

6. And there's more coming, so much more. Over the course of the summer, we expect to be publishing all the Jill Emerson titles, all three erotic novels written in collaboration with Donald E. Westlake, another written in collaboration with the legendary Hal Dresner, a pair of books for writers (The Liar's Bible and The Liar's Companion), and Crossroads , a brand-new addition to the Classic Crime Library originally published under a pen name over half a century ago.

And, of course, let's not forget that Hard Case Crime has Sinner Man , my long-lost first mystery scheduled for November release, and available for pre-order now. The story of how it got lost and how it finally came to be found is an interesting one, and I've had the opportunity to recount it in detail in the book's afterword.

And that's it for now. You'll have to excuse me, as it's now my assigned task to read the aforementioned High School Sex Club for the first time since I wrote it. How else will I be able to write the book description for the Amazon product page? You see what I put myself through, just so y'all will have something amazing to read? But hey, that's okay. You can thank me later.

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter-GR in the subject line will get the job done.
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Guess who's back? (Hint—he's on Amtrak #58 to Chicago...

...but while he's relaxing, we've got ground of our own to cover. There's a lot to tell you, so let me Hop To It.1. Those books at ridiculous prices. Earlier this month David, my Indispensable Assistant, tipped you off about a close-out offering of three books we'd stocked at Amazon—the hardcover edition of The Crime of Our Lives, the limited collector's edition of The Burglar who Counted the Spoons, and Jerrold Mundis's Break Writer's Block Now!—all at giveaway prices while they lasted.

Well, they didn't last—not the latter two. In a matter of hours, the entire Amazon supply of SPOONS and BWBN sold out. I think we could have moved five or ten times as many of each, and at those prices ($10 and $5 respectively) it's not hard to see why.

It's not as though we don't have copies in our storeroom. What we sold were the ones at Amazon, which we'd otherwise have had to remove. And I'd like to make them available to you—not at those rock-bottom prices, but as close as we can come, in what you might call our Friends and Family Sale. It's limited—but if you're reading this, and if you have a US shipping address, you're a friend, possibly even a cousin. At any rate, kith or kin, you qualify.

First, The Burglar who Counted the Spoons, #11 in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, and published in a limited hardcover edition, and bound in leather. Orig. $79.95, and we sold plenty at that price, but we printed too many, and a while ago dropped the price in LB's eBay Bookstore to $29.99. That's still the price in the store, but our price to newsletter recipients is just $19.99 with free shipping within the US. To get it at this price, all you have to do is remit $19.99 per book by PayPal to lawbloc@gmail.com. You'll have the opportunity to add a note to us, and in it be sure to include both the shipping address and your own email address. And designate your payment as "payment to friends and family" to avoid having to pay a commission.

Second, BREAK WRITER'S BLOCK NOW. This slim hardcover book by Jerrold Mundis is the last word on the subject, and belongs on every writer's bookshelf. We've sold it at various prices over the years, and our special price to y'all is $7.99 with free shipping in the US. Again, pay by PayPal to lawbloc@gmail.com, list it as payment to friends and family, and be sure to provide your shipping address.

As for The Crime of Our Lives, Amazon still has an abundant supply. These are hardcover books, from a total edition of 1000 copies, and they're priced at $9.99, with free shipping to Amazon Prime members. (As the paperback sells for $14.99, this is, duh, a pretty good deal.) Click the link and order from Amazon, because the same book would cost you $24.99 in our eBay bookstore.

Can you fill overseas orders?

Not on this deal. I'm afraid this has to be for our US friends and family only. When the bookstore re-opens in May, we'll be able to accept international orders.

2. Our translation program. Well, it continues apace. Stefan Mommertz's Matthew Scudder translations of Die Sünden der Väter and Aus dem Fenster will shortly be joined by Mit leichtem Gepäck, which you may know as Resume Speed; in English it's still enjoying a bestselling run as a Kindle Single, and we're hoping for a similar reception from German-speakers. Next on Stefan's list is the second Scudder novel, Time to Murder and Create, and the second short story, A Candle for the Bag Lady. (I'm not sure what they'll be called, but Stefan prmises each title will contain at least one umlaut.) Die Sünden der Väter, I should probably add, has been moving nicely in both ebook and paperback; Aus dem Fenster, a short story, is only available as an ebook. Note that the links are to amazon.de; the titles, however, are available on all Amazon sites. And meanwhile, if you read German, check out my answers to a string of unexpected Bloody Questions for Krimi-Welt.

Ana and Enriqueta Carrington's El hombre peligroso is now also available as both ebook and paperback, with a cover placing it securely in the Biblioteca clásica del crimen—i.e., the Classic Crime Library. (The link is to amazon.es, the Spanish site, but all Amazon sites have it. The original Englsh title, as you may have figured out, is Such Men Are Dangerous.) And what's next for las hermanas Carrington? All the Matthew Scudder stories in The Night and the Music, none of them previously translated into Spanish. Coming soon—and I'll keep you posted.

And now the question raised at the very top of this newsletter—

3. Who's back? Keller's back, that's who's back!

Last day of February I holed up in an Undisclosed Location —which I can now tell you was an Airbnb apartment in the Riverside neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. I started a book, wrote a chunk of it, and decided it ought to spend some time on a shelf. I then started a novella and wrote a decent chunk of it, too, only to have it stall out. You know how one thing leads to another? Well, sometimes it doesn't, and that's when it's time to come home—and I did, figuring I'd just wasted three weeks.

Shows what I know. I decided to give the novella a week or so to sit, and then look at it again. It sat, and I looked, and I liked what I saw. I took a few days to think about it, and worked out how to wrap it up, and did so.

The title is Keller's Fedora.

And yes, it's about our favorite assassin for hire, and he's Chicago-bound on Amtrak's City of New Orleans, ready to do what he does best. Once I wrapped it up, things happened quickly. Amazon wants to bring it out as a Kindle Single, which worked so well with Resume Speed, and Subterranean Press had the same reaction and signed on to publish a hardcover trade and limited edition of Keller's latest adventure.

And when does all of this happen? Hard to say, but my guess is you'll be able to download Keller's Fedora to your Kindle sometime in late May or early June. Rest assured that I'll let you know the minute it's eVailable. As for the Subterranean Press hardcover, I've no idea when they'll schedule it, but you should be able to pre-order it a few months from now, and I'll keep you posted.

4. Speaking of Subterranean Press and pre-orders... their hardcover trade and limited editions of Resume Speed are available for pre-order right now, in advance of publication in late 2016. It's early days, but not too early at all if you're gonna grab one of the $40 leatherbound limiteds before they're all gone, and the $25 trade edition may well be fully subscribed as well by the time the book's published. Have I shown you the stunning cover by Ken Laager? I can't remember, but I'm delighted to show it again.

Of course you don't have to wait to read Resume Speed. Click here for the Kindle edition, just $2.99 to buy or a free borrow for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

I have the nagging feeling that there's more I wanted to tell you, but it'll have to wait. May I close with a word about an organization my Frequent Companion and I have just joined? Lately I've been taking more trains than Keller—two trips to Florida and back, one on the Silver Meteor and the other on the Silver Star, plus upcoming excursions on the Crescent and the Adirondack. And it took me until now to find out about the National Association of Railroad Passengers. "Passenger trains create a better world," their literature proclaims, and I couldn't agree more. If you're an enthusiast of Amtrak and wish they went more often to more destinations, you may want to check out NARP.

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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Word count: 1398
Last edited by LB on April 16, 2016 at 12:53 pm

Special CLose-out Sale at Ridiculous Prices!

Hi—David Trevor here, with what the headline says. LB says write it myself, so that's what I'm doing.

A while back we listed three titles with Amazon as third-party sellers. This seemed like a good idea, but sales have been slow, and they have to charge us for storage on stock that doesn't move, or charge us for shipping it back to us. So LB made an executive decision, and as of April 30 , we're instructing them to destroy the books on hand. Goodbye, warehouse. Hello, landfill.

First, though, we dropped the prices through the floor. These prices include free shipping, and they're genuinely ridiculous. The only catch is you have to scoop them up before the end of the month.

1. THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES. LB's collection of critical articles and reminiscences of crime writers. We sell this as an ebook for $4.99, or as a trade paperback for $14.99. Well, between now and April 30 , you can buy the hardcover for $9.99 with free shipping. (Orig. list price: $24.99.) Great gift item, esp. at this price. Buy as many as you want, they've got a slew of them, and what you don't buy gets pulped.

2. THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS. Bernie Rhodenbarr #11, the signed-and-limited leatherbound collector's edition. Orig. $79.99, but we reduced the price recently to $29.99 because we had too many copies on hand. We also shipped some to Amazon, and they still have (last I looked) 38 copies left. We don't want to pay storage or shipping on these, so either you buy them by the end of the month or they go in a landfill. The price to you is $9.99, and that includes shipping. I told LB this is a steal. Fine, he said. So let them steal 'em.

3. BREAK WRITER'S BLOCK NOW! by Jerrold Mundis. The primer on unblocking that LB has been recommending for years. And we've been selling the book ever since LB bought out the publisher's remainder stock. We sent Amazon 50 copies, and they've got 32 left, and the boss says sell 'em or pulp 'em. So you can now buy this helpful book for $4.99 with free shipping —unless someone else beats you to it, or the clock runs out at the end of the month.

Hey, that's all I got. LB's been publishing backlist titles left and right, in the Classic Crime Library and the Collection of Classic Erotica, but he'll tell you all about it in the next newsletter. I'm not sure why I picked this template for the newsletter, it's pretty lame, but the books are anything but, and the prices are...well, you know. Ridiculous.

Oh, right. LB's eBay Bookstore has been closed since he went off to write something. He's back, but the store's not scheduled to reopen for another couple of weeks. When it does, we'll have an Important Announcement...

David Trevor for LB

PS: As he always says, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter-GR in the subject line will get the job done.
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Around the World with LB...

...and isn't it a fine old world? I've had the great good fortune to have seen a fair amount of it over the years, and so have my books. Some of the world's leading publishers have done a stellar job of making my work available in a vast array of languages.

But I've written so many books over so many years that it would be unrealistic to expect any publisher to keep all of my work in print. Here at home, in the English language, I've turned to self-publishing as a way to make my backlist accessible. It's served me superbly, and recently I've begun exploring my options in other languages. As you'll see, there's a fair amount going on.

GERMAN—

For years, both my Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr novels were successfully published in Germany. Then some years ago that stopped, and aside from the film tie-in edition of A Walk Among the Tombstones, my books have been, um, in der Nacht und Nebel verloren. Now, in partnership with Stefan Mommertz, I'm doing what I can to change that. We've recently brought out Aus dem Fenster, the first Matthew Scudder short story, and Die Sünden der Väter, the first Scudder novel. Both are available exclusively for Kindle, and are priced at 99¢ (or €0,99) and $2.99 (or €2,99) respectively. Die Sünden der Väter is also available in paperback (€10,69) and the paperback edition is outselling the ebook.

Stefan is back at work on the second Scudder novel, after an interval of translating my bestselling novella, Resume Speed. As Mit leichtem Gepäck, it should be available as soon as it wends its way through the Kindle Single publication process. (I'll let you know of its availability as soon as I conveniently can; those on the German newsletter list will get immediate word, and you can add your name to that list by sending a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with the header NEWSLETTER—DE.)

SPANISH—

Aside from five of the Matthew Scudder titles, I'm hard to find in Spanish. But that's beginning to change, and I'm delighted to announce the first two titles in the Biblioteca clásica del crimen. My novel Such Men Are Dangerous, transformed into El hombre peligroso by Ana and Enriqueta Carrington, has just become available on all Amazon sites, including amazon.es and amazon.com.mx. It's #7 in the BCC, and Eduardo Hojman's translation of Killing Castro, Matando a Castro, is #10.

Um...

I know what you're going to say, but the answer's not that elusive. As you'll recall, I've published 16 of my non-series crime novels in the Classic Crime Library—and we'll be doing the same thing with the same books in the Biblioteca clásica del crimen. So doesn't it make sense to keep the same numbers? And, I'm pleased to report, we're keeping the same low prices as well. They're all priced at USD $2.99, €2,99, or MEX $49.99.

Ebook only, right?

Wrong. Matando a Castro is already available in paperback, and El hombre peligroso should join it very shortly. The English-language titles in the Classic Crime Library have been moving very nicely in paperback, and readers seem inclined to collect a complete set. I hope the Biblioteca clásica del crimen gets a similar reception.

Meanwhile, Jordi Garcia's translation of Getting Off, entitled Excitación, is widely available, though only as an ebook. And Jordi's at work on a book in the Burglar series, even as other Spanish translators are preparing translations of Hit Man and Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. And the Carrington sisters are keeping very busy, with a few different projects on their plate. I'll let you know as more books and stories become available; the best way to get these announcements early on, and in full detail, is to get on the Spanish newsletter list by sending a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with the header NEWSLETTER—ES. (Though if you head it BOLETIN, we'll figure it out.)

CHINESE—

No, I'm not self-publishing my work in Chinese. I'd find the prospect daunting—and there's no need, because I'm very effectively published in both Taiwan and Mainland China. But this seems like a good time to let readers in Taiwan know that I'm contributing a monthly column to Unitas , the Taiwanese literary magazine. My first three columns were extracted from writing books that haven't been published in Taiwan, the fourth was a previously untranslated short story, and columns five and six are new material on self-publishing, drawn from the just-published and not-yet-translated Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel. My arrangement with Unitas is for one year, so I've got six more columns go, and expect they'll be a mix of fiction and non-fiction. (And, if they ever want to sign me up for a second year, I'll say yes in a heartbeat!)

Again, I've set up a mailing list segment for Taiwan; you get on it via an email to lawbloc@gmail.com headed, duh, NEWSLETTER — TAIWAN.

JAPANESE—

Self-publishing in Japanese isn't a great deal less daunting that in Chinese, but at least Amazon makes it possible, and a young woman in Japan is having a go at Defender of the Innocent, the book-length collection of Ehrengraf stories. If we can solve the formatting problem, perhaps the dapper little lawyer can work his magic in Japanese. I'll keep you posted.

FRENCH—

I've always been well-published in France, but my backlist is a little overwhelming, and I've ventured into self-publishing with Des Hommes Dangereux, Sara Sugihara's fine translation of Such Men Are Dangerous. The company that brought us together published the book to Amazon and other platforms, and that not only took the pricing out of our hands but made it impossible for us to change certain things. Like, for example, the book description on Amazon; it's in English, and the book's in French. If I'd published it myself, it would take ten minutes to fix this. Instead it seems to be impossible. Never mind. It's an excellent translation, and if you'd like to read the novel in French, well, have at it.

This is all interesting, LB. But a lot of us are pretty much limited to English. Anything for us?

Quite a bit, actually. I've dug up another entry for the Classic Crime Library, a novel called Crossroads that has never been published since its pseudonymous appearance in the early 1960s. Not sure when we'll bring it out, but soon—and in both ebook and paperback. And I've launched a companion series, the Collection of Classic Erotica; as of today we've got 9 of the books eVailable— 21 Gay Street, Candy, Gigolo Johnny Wells, April North, Carla, A Strange Kind of Love, Campus Tramp, Community of Women, and Born to Be Bad. There are another 8 or 9 waiting in the wings—and, as soon as we can make it happen, they'll all be available in paperback editions as well.

And Resume Speed continues to sell well, and to garner 5-star reviews. The novella, long a commercially awkward length, seems to have come into its own in the ebook universe, and I'd love to publish more of them. In fact I'm hoping to strike Kindle Singles gold with another that's in the works now, starring a familiar character—but I won't say more about it until I know if it's going to work out.

So there's a lot going on, and the most exciting news of all is that In Sunlight or in Shadow: stories inspired by paintings of Edward Hopper is Pegasus Books' lead title for the fall season. I've seen page proofs, and it's going to be the most beautiful book with which I've ever been associated.

Who's in the book?

Oh, nobody special. Just Megan Abbott, Jill D. Block, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Child, Nicholas Christopher, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Craig Ferguson, Stephen King, Joe R.Lansdale, Gail Levin, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Kris Nelscott, Jonathan Santlofer, Justin Scott...and, um, me.

Last but least.

Exactly. It'll be out in December, but they're already accepting advance orders, and if you order now you can lock in a very favorable price. Or you can wait—you'll certainly hear more about this one.

I guess that's plenty. You know, you've spoiled me, LB. I've become so used to getting something for free, but I guess those days are over, huh?

Think so, do you?

You mean...

How about a Classic Crime Library title? Ariel , set in Charleston South of Broad, is the story of an adoption that didn't work out, of a spooky little girl. It's sort of horror, sort of psychological suspense, but I always saw it as a portrait of two appealingly geeky kids, Ariel and her friend Erskine.

But y'all can make of it what you will. It's free right now on all Amazon platforms worldwide, and will so remain until the witching hour: Monday, April 4 , at 2:59am Eastern time.

And that's all, folks. I always invite you to forward the newsletter to anyone who might enjoy it, but I'll particularly stress that this time, as the most difficult thing with publishing in other languages is to get word out to the appropriate readers. So if you know someone who reads German or Spanish or Chinese or Japanese or French—or, come to think of it, English—well, send this newsletter their way. They may thank you for it. I know I will.

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter-GR in the subject line will get the job done.
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No Drums, No Bugles...

I should probably explain the header.

When I undertake to get out a newsletter, the first order of business is to enter a title for it. I can make the header something different, but Vertical Response is going to show the original title when they send it out, so consistency is to be desired.

But how do I know what to call something before I've written it?

So in this instance I was reminded of the Young Novelist who'd written a book and went to his friend, the Old Pro, explaining he was stuck for a title. The Old Pro thought for a moment. "Call it Drums and Bugles," he said. "Stirring, provocative, has a nice cadence to it. Yes, that's what you should call it."

Is there more to the story?

We'll get to it. First I want to say something about Resume Speed . It's had a wonderful run as a Kindle Single , topping their fiction chart for a solid week, and continues to sell well. But right now I want to let you know about the hardcover edition coming in a few months from Subterranean Press .

I wish I could show you Ken Laager's cover, but I haven't yet seen it myself. (The cover shown above is for the Kindle ebook.) I'd planned to hold this announcement until the Subterranean cover becomes available, but by then the book may be sold out—especially the 200-copy limtied edition, signed and bound in leather, and priced at $40. It won't be around for long, and the $25 clothbound trade edition may also sell out before publication. I don't want to hard-sell these books, there's no need, but if you want copies for your own collection or to give as gifts, I'll urge you to act sooner rather than later.

Gee, LB, what's it like when you hard-sell something?

That's easy. I manage to appear modest by quoting other people. Ed Gorman , for instance, says A Diet of Treacle "...has the feel of first-hand observation. Set in Greenwich Village in 1960, peopled by faux-beat losers of various kind and a cop out of Malcolm Braly, the drug scene, the crime scene and the scene of hardscrabble drifting life in the big bad city crackle with authenticity...Of all the hardboiled writers working today, Block for me remains the most believable in dealing with crime and criminals. He's able to write about them and their milieu without tricking them up or romaniticising them. And, as he demonstrates here, he was doing it as far back as 1961."

A Diet of Treacle is eVailable as a Classic Crime Library title for Kindle Nook Kobo and Apple —but that may change, as I've been finding it advantageous to make these CCL ebooks exclusive to Kindle. If you want to pick up any of the following from non-Amazon sources, I can guarantee their availability on all platforms through the end of March: Coward's Kiss, Grifter's Game, Killing Castro, Lucky at Cards, Such Men Are Dangerous, The Triumph of Evil.

I've had a couple of interviews published recently, but I won't quote them, as one's in German and the other's in Hungarian . And, while I'm passing out links, here's one to Lynn Munroe's website , where he discusses in fascinating detail the work of Paul Rader, whose magnificent cover paintings enhanced most of my early Midwood novels.

The ones in the Collection of Classic Erotica?

Yes, remarkably enough. In thrall to ego and avarice, I've been republishing those early books. They're all Kindle Exclusives, all priced at $2.99, and all available to be borrowed by Kindle Unlimited subscribers. And, eventually, I'm planning to publish them as paperbacks, as I've done when possible with the Classic Crime Library titles.

Here's what's available so far:

21 Gay Street

Candy

Gigolo Johnny Wells

April North

Carla

A Strange Kind of Love

And the following are scheduled for publication over the next few months:

Campus Tramp

Community of Women

Born to Be Bad

College for Sinners

Of Shame and Joy

A Woman Must Love

The Adulterers

Kept

The Twisted Ones

And that's all, LB?

Don't you think it's more than enough? Not that there aren't more I could add to the shelf, if there's enough demand to warrant it. You know, I can't pretend that the world of American letters woud be much the poorer if all of these titles went the way of the non-acid-free paper they were printed on. They're not my best writing—they wouldn't be anybody's best writing—and by today's standards they're not particularly erotic, either. And yet they're how I learned the business, and reading through them now (as I've had to do in order to write the book descriptions) I almost always find something I'm not ashamed of having written.

I think that's it for now, and—

What about the header?

Huh?

The header. No Drums, No Bugles. You said there was more to the story?

Oh, so I did. Well, you see, the young novelist was taken aback. "But it's not a war story," he protested. "There's nothing military about it, and nothing musical, either. It's a fine title, but I can't see how it fits the book."

"Ah," said the old pro. "You're quite right, of course. Call it No Drums, No Bugles."

As for me, I'm going to call it a day.

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with GR-Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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What's that, LB?More free stuff?? Wow!!

Believe me, you're no more surprised than I am.

I thought you were in Seclusion.

I am.

At an Undisclosed Location.

Where else? And it's not going to be disclosed here, either. I'm holed up writing something, and at this stage I'm not even sure what it is, so don't ask. But two factors combine to prompt me to give y'all something for nothing.

One's the remarkable success of Resume Speed , the novella that's doing so well as a Kindle Single. I had great expectations for it, and they've been more than fulfilled. Many of you have snapped it up for $2.99, while a good number have borrowed it via Kindle Unlimited, and how could I fail to find all of this extremely gratifying? It makes me want to do something nice in return.

You said two factors.

So I did. The other's the fact that The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes , which I reduced to $4.99 for a week, has now pumpkined back up to its original price of $9.99. I hope you were able to take advantage the special price, but if you weren't, and now you're stuck with paying $9.99, well, perhaps a couple of freebies will take the sting out of it.

So what's free?

Four items, coming up one right after the other. Let's take them in turn:

1. Cinderella Sims. This is a very early crime novel that wound up with an erotica house, and for years I didn't want it reprinted, and then Ed Gorman and Bill Schafer teamed up to talk sense into me. It's now a proud title in the Classic Crime Library, available as both ebook and paperback, and I can but wonder at my earlier reluctance to have it Out There. It'll be free to all comers on all Amazon sites worldwide, from the time this email goes out at 3:01am Eastern time Tuesday, March 8, until 2:59am Eastern Thursday, March 10 .

2. Keller on the Spot. This story about our favorite assassin appeared in Playboy, was included in Hit Man, and won an Edgar award from Mystery Writers of America. So why am I giving it away? Because I'm a warm and generous person, that's why. You can take advantage of me—and Keller—for 24 hours, starting at 3:01am Eastern on Thursday, March 10 .

3. Like a Thief in the Night. From your favorite killer to you favorite burglar, here's a Bernie Rhodenbarr short story that's not told in the first person, and has a savvy young woman sharing the pencil-beam spotlight. It's free for 24 hours, from 3:01am Friday, March 11 , until 2:59am Saturday, March 12 .

4. Different Strokes. Finally, a very different offering from the irrepressible John Warren Wells. This one consists of the screenplay and production diary from a pornographic film of the early 1970s, all recounted in hilarious and occasionally shocking detail. But don't try to find the film to see it for yourself, because, um, none of this ever happened. The script is real, but the project never quite got off the ground. So what did JWW and his editors at Dell Books decide? Why, to write and publish the book anyway, of course. And now you get to read it for free—so long as you snap it up between 3:01am Eastern on Saturday, March 12 , and 2:59am Monday, March 14 .

They're all free? You must want something in return.

Well, if you like what you read, it would be nice if you were to share your enthusiasm via an Amazon or Goodreads review. And, if you haven't already done so, you might consider scooping up Resume Speed . But all of that is entirely optional. There's no quid inextricably liked to this particular pro quo. Free is free.

One further request—note the times that the various items will be free. Whenever I do this, someone hastens to tell me a particular book's not free—because he went there at the wrong time. This is admittedly an easy mistake to make, and somebody will surely make it. Let it be somebody else, though. Not you, okay?

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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This week only—The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes—50% off!

See, that's what happens when I'm in a rush. Instead of Deep Blue Eyes, I come up with Deep Blue Skies. But I'm gonna leave it, because it's a particularly fortuitous view from my window, and it'll be weeks before I get to see anything from that vantage point.

You're going away, aren't you?

I am, as I've mentioned before. In two days I board a train for an Undisclosed Location, where I'll hole up and try to Get Something Written. And please don't ask me what I'm going to write.

What are you going to write?

Ah, why do I bother? Look, I don't know what I'm gonna write. And if I did know I wouldn't tell you. And no suggestions, okay? I see a lot of hands waving furiously, but I'm going to pretend I don't. I'm pressed for time, I've got packing to do, and I've already had David shut down LB's eBay Bookstore, closed from now until mid-April. So could we please cue the right graphic this time, so I can tell you about a deal you won't want to miss?

This what you want?

Thanks. There we go, and isn't she pretty? Hard Case Crime published the book in September, and the story of Doak Miller and Lisa Otterbein, a pair of noir-crossed lovers in small-town Central Florida, has been winning hearts and minds and online reviews ever since. (And it's done so, I might add, without any attention whatsoever from traditional print media, aside from early raves in trade publications like Publishers Weekly and Booklist. We're not sure how to explain this, because nobody ever tells you why they're not reviewing your book, but my guess is it's the intense level of eroticism. My Hollywood agent pitched the book as "James M.Cain on Viagra," and that should give you a clue.)

The book's moving well in hardcover, with a paperback due from Hard Case in July. And my ebook edition has been selling strongly at $9.99.

But forget about $9.99. For the next week, all it'll cost you is $4.99.

If it's such a hot ticket, why are you dropping the price?

Because I want as many of you as possible to read it. Hard Case will soon be bringing out a long-lost book of mine, actually the very first crime novel I ever wrote. It's called Sinner Man, and it's coming in November, and once you've read The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, how are you gonna keep from pre-ordering Sinner Man ?

And also because that Hollywood agent I mentioned got lucky. The story of Doak and Lisa is in development for a TV series. Whether it'll make the cut is anybody's guess, but the odds of a cable channel greenlighting the project improve with every reader who buys the book.

Besides, I'm not exactly giving Our Girl away. $4.99 is a substantial amount of money. I mean, for that price you could get a skinny mocha latte.

I suppose this is one of those Amazon-only deals, right?

Wrong.

Honestly?

You bet. The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, formerly $9.99, is now on sale for $4.99 at Amazon Nook Kobo and Apple

I already own the hardcover. But at that price I wouldn't mind picking up the ebook, too. Is that crazy?

Well, I don't think so, but I might be biased here. You should know, though, that if you bought that hardcover at Amazon, you can pick up the ebook through Kindle's MatchBook program for the giveaway price of $1.99. Just go to the Amazon page , and if they have you down as a buyer of the printed book, they'll quote you the MatchBook price.

Uh, how do they know?

All those internet companies know everything about you. But don't be paranoid. The good news is they all have your best interests at heart.

That's a load off my mind.

I'm glad I could help. And that's about all I have to tell you this time around. (Well, almost all. I should add that Mike Dennis, whose audio renditions of Borderline and The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes are the perfect embodiment of noir, turns out to be every bit as adept with nonfiction; he's just completed the narration for Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel , and it should be on sale at Audible and Amazon in a matter of days.)

There you go. Take advantage of the half-price offer on The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes before I come to my senses, and by all means tell your friends about it.

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with GR-Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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For Readers Outside North America...

Wake Up—It's Evan Tanner!

I don't mean to shout. But I'd hate for you to miss the latest news about my very first series character, Evan Tanner. As you may recall, he's the perpetual insomniac who first appeared in the mid-1960s in The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep, starred in six more books over the next several years, and was next heard from in 1998 in Tanner on Ice, after having spent a quarter of a century in a frozen-food locker in the sub-basement of a house in Union City, New Jersey. (They thawed him out, and it was the same old Tanner, all right. He hadn't aged a day.)HarperCollins controls North American rights to the Tanner series, and offers Tanner ebooks and paperbacks to US and Canadian residents. I've been able to ePublish the books myself for the rest of the world, with eye-catching cover art by Jaye W. Manus. They've been selling reasonably well in the UK and Australia, and a bit less robustly to Anglophone readers elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Um, why are you telling us this now?

Because, having noticed that it's only on Amazon sites that the Tanner books have been selling, I've just taken the step of making them Kindle Select titles, exclusively available on Amazon platforms, pegged at $2.99 US and the equivalent in other currencies. And, to sweeten the deal, I've priced the first book in the series, The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep at Amazon's minimum: $0.99 US, £0.99 UK, €0,99 Eurozone, $0.99 Australia, etc. I'll keep the price at that level for at least the next two months, and possibly forever.

I'd be happier if you made it free.

Oh yeah? Well, too bad. But what I will do, just for the next couple of days, is make the second book in the series free. That's The Canceled Czech, in which our intrepid sleepless knight liberates a Slovak Nazi from a castle in Prague, smuggles him across borders in a coffin, and brings things to a satisfyingly Tanneresque conclusion.

Starting at 12:01 am Pacific Time, Tuesday 23 February, the book will be free on all Amazon sites worldwide for the next 72 hours. (When it's 12:01 am in Seattle, where Amazon does its scheduling, it's 10:01 am in London. I think.)



Pretty, aren't they? Now that I'm looking at them all at once, it seems a shame not to offer them in paperback—and that's a future possibility, depending on the reception the ebooks get. Time will tell.

Links for The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep: UK Germany France Spain Italy Netherlands Japan India Brazil Mexico Australia

Links for The Canceled Czech: UK Germany France Spain Italy Netherlands Japan India Brazil Mexico Australia

I should point out that this newsletter is only going to subscribers whom I have logged in my records as living outside of the US and Canada. A great many such persons, who'd be able to take advantage of this offer, won't receive this mailing because they're just on my general master list. Thus I'd perticularly appreciate it if you'd forward this to anyone you know who might find it of interest.

Note, too, that all of the Tanner titles are available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, who can borrow them at no cost. I know Amazon doesn't offer KU everywhere, but perhaps it's an option for you.

And that'll do it. Thanks for your attention, and if you haven't met Evan Tanner yet, I hope you enjoy his company.

You can go back to sleep now...

Cheers,



PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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Put the pedal to the metal—and RESUME SPEED!

I know, you just heard from me a few days ago, right? Last thing I want to do is clutter your mailbox. But I don't want y'all to miss this.

You may recall I've mentioned a novella I wrote immediately after finishing work on the updated edition of Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel. I sat down to write a short story, and damned if it didn't Topsy its way to 21,000 words.

It's just been released as a Kindle Single. That means it's about to get a major Amazon push, as always happens for the titles selected for their Kindle Singles program. So you may hear about it from Amazon—but I wanted you to hear it from me first.

So what's it about, LB?

Didn't I say? It's about 21,000 words long, and—oh, that's not what you meant, is it?

Not exactly, no.

It's about a fellow in North Dakota who gets on a bus headed for Spokane. A sign in a restaurant window leads him to hop off in Cross Creek, Montana, and within an hour he's got a job and a room and a start on a new life. He decides to pick up a library card, and next thing you know he's got a girlfriend. And one thing keeps leading to another, and the life that's shaping up for him is everything he ever wanted.

And then what happens?

You'll find out when you read it. The few friends I've shown it to say it's one of the best things I've ever done, and that there's something special about the story and the narrative voice. That's not a judgment for me to make, but I'm more than happy to take their word for it.

You can judge for yourselves. It's on sale right now for $2.99. If you're a Kindle Unlimited member, you can read it for free. Here are links to all Amazon platforms: Amazon USA Amazon UK Germany France Spain Italy Netherlands India Japan Canada Brazil Mexico Australia

And will there ever be a print version?

There will, and it should be absolutely beautiful. Subterranean Press will be bring it out in both trade and limited hardcover editions, and as soon as they're taking orders, I'll let y'all know—because I wouldn't be surprised if they sell out in a hurry.

No worries, though, with the ebook. They won't run out. It's what you might call a renewable resource...

And that's all I've got. The real promotion starts tomorrow or the next day, so this is your chance to jump the line. I do hope you enjoy it.

Cheers,


PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you've received the newsletter in that fashion from a friend and would like your own subscription, that's easily arranged; a blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with GR—Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
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