Lawrence Block's Blog, page 17

The Magic Word is FREE...

...and free is what we're all about today. Not for the first time, I've somehow managed to convince myself that it's good business to give away an ebook a day for the next 5 days. Whether it is or not, one thing's clear—opportunity's knocking, and you can open the door with a simple click of your mouse.

So what's up for grabs?

After the First Death's leading off, and that seems appropriate; it's #1 in the new Classic Crime Library, and its theme makes it a clear forerunner of the Matthew Scudder series. I've just made it exclusive to Kindle, so you can't get it anywhere else ( boo! ), but I'm now able to run special deals for it, and even give it away ( yay! ). It's regularly $2.99, but Saturday morning, as of 12:01 am Pacific time (aka Amazon Standard Time), it becomes free on all Amazon platforms world wide for 24 hours. That's amazon.com , amazon.co.uk , amazon.de —and all the others.

The minute it ends its run, John Warren Wells gets a turn—with The Sex Therapists: What They Can Do and How They Do It. Interviews and case histories, which you can read for entertainment or information—though who's to say the two need be mutually exclusive? Not I, and certainly not JWW. It's free for 24 hours from 12:01 am Amazon time Sunday .

Early Monday morning, it's Keller's turn on the free list with Keller in Dallas. This short story, first published as an ebook, became a few years later the opening episode in the fifth Keller novel, Hit Me . But all along it's been eVailable by itself, and it now cocks a snook at the conventional wisdom that indie offerings online are doomed without great cover art. Look at this cover, will you? A generic background that has nothing to do with the story or character, and type that's too small and looks as though it was chosen and laid out by the writer himself. (I wonder why.) And yet the creature has gone on selling year in and year out. Well, now it's free —for 24 hours, commencing a minute after midnight on Monday, February 15 .

What can possibly follow Keller?

I know, I know. I can only hope another Classic Crime Library title, Not Comin'Home to You , is up to the challenge. It's a fictional examination of the Charles Starkweather-Caryl Fugate murder spree in 1950s Nebraska, re-imagined in the early 1970s. It appeared originally under the Paul Kavanagh pen name I'd used on two other novels, Such Men Are Dangerous and The Triumph of Evil . They're both in the Classic Crime Library as well, but only Not Comin Home to You is free—for 24 hours, starting on Tuesday , one minute after midnight .

And finally...

And finally, let's round things out with another forerunner, A Bad Night for Burglars. This short story was my first sale to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, just 40 years ago this year. Fred Dannay, who never met a title he didn't want to change, published it as "Gentlemen's Agreement," which had already won renown as Laura Z. Hobson's fine novel and the movie based on it. Never mind. It's got its own title back now, and you may see its hapless protagonist as Bernie Rhodenbarr in the making; in fact, it wasn't long after I wrote this story that I began work on Burglars Can't Be Choosers . It takes its place on the free list on Wednesday, February 17 , one minute after midnight in Seattle.

That's a lot to remember, LB.

You could take notes. Or, if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can jump the line and download all these titles—and more—at your leisure.

And that's it for today. Short and sweet, 5 days, 5 free books. Nothing to it.

...Oh, before I forget. David urges me to announce that LB's eBay Bookstore will be closed for all of March and the first part of April. I'll be holing up somewhere, in the earnest hope of Getting Something Written, and I don't know what he'll be doing, but I can guarantee you it won't be packing books for shipment. There's nothing new in the store and there won't be until we get our scanner repaired, but there are still a lot of choice items on the shelves, and you've got a little over two weeks to pick them clean.

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

The Classic Crime Library—updated!

As some of you know, I've been making many of my early books eVailable, starting with a collection of 16 crime novels. These were all with Open Road through the end of last year, and they're now reformatted and all gussied up with new uniform covers—and gathered together as the Classic Crime Library.

They look so nice and have been getting such a good response that I decided to bring them out as paperbacks, in uniform 5x8 editions at the lowest possible retail price. You know how publishing anything has always taken forever and a day? Well, times have changed, as I'm probably not the first person to tell you, and now you can drop the word forever from that sentence. The process is surprisingly quick and easy, and I'm pleased to report that 11 of the CCL titles are now there to be collected and cherished and, yes, read—in handsome paperback form.

What about the other 5 titles?

They're already in paperback, published by Hard Case Crime. Sometime down the line I might publish Classic Crime Library editions of them—if Hard Case agrees, and if the demand seems to warrant it. But the others, the Elegant Eleven, have not been available in paperback for ages, and I'm delighted to be able to put them out there.

I suppose they're expensive. I mean, they look expensive.

Well, I'm glad to hear they look it, but they're not. Three of the books are a little longer than the others, and the higher production costs dictated a price of $11.99 for Ariel and $10.99 for Not Comin' Home to You and Passport to Peril. All the rest are pegged at $9.99. That's more than the Kindle ebooks, which are just $2.99 across the board. But we kept prices as low as we could, and I think they're a good value.

So where do I find them?

They're still so new that they can be hard to find. Once the Amazon algorithms get things sorted out, there'll be a single page for each title, with both the ebook and the paperback listed thereon. But it takes time, and right now many of the editions are still on separate pages, and it can be a hassle ferreting them out.

So let me make your lives a little easier. I've gotten in touch with my Inner Ferret, and here are all 16 titles, in numerical order, with Amazon links to each edition:

1. After the First Death. Paperback Kindle

2. Deadly Honeymoon. Paperback Kindle

3. Grifter's Game. Hard Case paperback Kindle

4. The Girl with the Long Green Heart. Hard Case paperback Kindle

5. The Specialists. Paperback Kindle

6. The Triumph of Evil. Paperback Kindle

7. Such Men Are Dangerous. Paperback Kindle.

8. Not Comin' Home to You. Paperback Kindle

9. Lucky at Cards. Hard Case paperback Kindle

10. Killing Castro. Hard Case paperback Kindle

11. A Diet of Treacle. Hard Case paperback Kindle

12. You Could Call It Murder. Paperback Kindle

13. Coward's Kiss. Paperback Kindle

14. Cinderella Sims. Paperback Kindle

15. Passport to Peril. Paperback Kindle

16. Ariel. Paperback Kindle

Whew! Quite a list. And that's the complete Classic Crime Library, right?

For now. There'll be a few more titles, but not for several months.

The links are all for Amazon. Is that the only place I can find these books?

As far as the ebook editions are concerned, at the moment these six titles are Kindle exclusives: Ariel, Cinderella Sims, Deadly Honeymoon, Passport to Peril, The Specialists, and You Could Call It Murder. The bad news is you can no longer get them for Nook or Kobo or iBooks; the good news is I can run special promotions for them, like the recent Passport to Peril giveaway. And, if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read as many of them as you like at no cost whatsoever.

But I'd feel guilty doing that. Wouldn't I be cheating the author? Wouldn't you get mad at me if you found out?

Um, think this through, okay? If I didn't want you to borrow the book via Kindle Unlimited, would I sign on for the program? I'm delighted to have y'all read the books this way. Just because it doesn't cost you anything doesn't mean I don't get compensated. I do, and whilecan't deny it's a very slow way to get rich, I've never found a fast way. So if you read a lot, a Kindle Unlimited subscription is a genuine bargain—and I'm all for it.

Let me get this straight. You're saying everybody wins.

I know, it's hard to get your mind around the concept, isn't it? As I said, six of the CCL titles are Kindle Select, yours to borrow as a KU member. I suspect that'll be true of all of them before too long. Whether or not we like it, Amazon is where business is being done these days, and while I'll likely keep some titles on all platforms, most of my ebooks are destined to be Amazon exclusives.

And there are more books coming, as ebooks and paperbacks as well. Look for uniform editions in future months of all the Jill Emerson titles. Look for another library of Classic Erotica—and the covers of these are gonna be gorgeous. Many were formerly available from Open Road, but some are titles I've never reprinted, books that haven't been available in any form since their original editions half a century ago.

I get out of breath just telling you about it.

With excitement? Or exhaustion?

A little of each. I'll wrap this up now, and either get back to work or go lie down. While I work it out, it's your turn. Look over the list, click on some links, and see what looks good to you.

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

So what's free today, LB?

Free? You expect to get something for free?

Well, you've been giving us an ebook a day and...

And you've grown used to it? You know, I probably should have expected as much. I made 7 of my Kindle ebooks available for free download in January, 5 of them in the last 5 days of the month, and y'all responded with commendable enthusiasm, snapping them up as quickly as I put them on the table.

It was quite a list...

Death of the Mallory Queen, a Chip Harrison/Leo Haig story never before eVailable. The first three Kit Tolliver Stories— If You Can't Stand the Heat , Rude Awakening , and You Can Call Me Lucky . A complete novel, Passport to Peril , new in the Classic Crime Library. The 12th Ehrengraf story, The Ehrengraf Fandango , finally released as an ebook. And a John Warren Wells book about 3somes, 3 is Not a Crowd . They were free, every last one of them, mostly for 24 hours only.

You're very generous, LB.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I very likely had a motive, and it's a good bet to have been ulterior. But never mind. Right now you're asking yourself how you can possibly repay my generosity.

Just what I was wondering!

Let me say first that no quid pro quo is required or expected. Y'all don't owe me a thing. But if you like the stories and novels you've downloaded, I'd greatly appreciate your sharing your enthusiasm—with a review at Amazon or Goodreads or both. A few sentences and a sprinkling of stars would be more than welcome.

Well, I can do that easily enough. The links will take me to the right page, and posting a review isn't exactly brain surgery. Hey, I'm glad to do it. I'm just sorry more people can't read the books for free.

Don't be so sure they can't. All seven titles are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which means KU subscribers can borrow them free for as long as they like. So if you missed out on any or all of them, and If you're a Kindle Unlimited member, you're in luck.

That's neat. But I read those 7 titles, and my question is what do I read next?

Ah, I get it. Let me give this some thought. If you enjoyed the 3 Kit Tolliver stories...

Loved 'em! Kit's my kind of girl.

Then you'll be happy to know there are 9 more of them. They're all free to KU subscribers, and $2.99 apiece to everybody else. But don't buy them. It's way too expensive that way. Buy the whole ebook— Getting Off —for $4.36, or get an autographed copy of the Hard Case paperback for $9.99 postpaid—while they last.

Cool! Have to admit I got a kick out of 3 is Not a Crowd.

Then you'll be glad to know John Warren Wells was a writing fool. There are 17 titles of his in the Kindle store , each of them priced at $2.99, and 11 of them free to KU subscribers. Pick whatever looks good to you; I'll say, though, that Tricks of the Trade has been especially popular ever since it was first published. And if you'd like something outrageous, try Different Strokes .

All my lawyer friends are crazy about The Ehrengraf Fandango.

All my lawyer friends are crazy. But they're mostly Ehrengraf fans as well. Same deal here as with Kit: KU members can borrow all the stories, but if you want to buy them, you're way better off going for the whole book, Defender of the Innocent .—the ebook, the paperback, the audiobook, or the Subterranean Press hardcover.

Could you say something about the Classic Crime Library? I really enjoyed Passport to Peril, and I'd like to read something else along those lines.

There are now 16 titles in the Classic Crime Library , with a uniform cover design that makes one long to collect them all. A majority of them are available on all platforms, including Nook and Kobo and Apple, but 6 are Kindle Select titles, available nowhere else. (That means I can run promotions for them, and that KU subscribers can read them for free.) The 6 titles include Ariel , Cinderella Sims , Deadly Honeymoon , The Specialists , and You Could Call It Murder —and, of course, Passport to Peril .

As far as what you might like if you enjoyed Passport to Peril, well, that's hard to say. But why don't you have a go at Ariel ? (In fact, the first chapter's included at the end of the Passport to Peril ebook, so you can test drive it before you buy...or borrow.)

I'm probably gonna buy them all. I love those covers. I just wish I could see them on my bookshelf and not just on the screen of my Kindle.

Before you know it, they'll be available in paperback—with those covers, too.

Really? All 16 of them?

That's the plan. They'll be priced higher than the $2.99 ebooks, but the price will be as low as we can make it. $9.99, if we can make the numbers work.

There's more to tell you, but it'll have to wait for another newsletter. Die Sünden der Väter , which you may know as The Sins of the Fathers, just got its first review on amazon.de, and it's off to a good start. But the whole Scudder German Translation project needs a newsletter all its own. And David, my Indispensable Assistant, wants to tell you all about what we've got in the bookstore, and threatens to put together an auction of rare stuff.

So stay tuned. And remember, tomorrow's Groundhog Day. As a character in The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart points out, it's the most useful holiday, providing a long-term weather report. Irrespective of your belief in the prognosticative abilities of rodents, I wish you all clear skies and happy days.

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

FREE—today only!

On Monday I sent out a newsletter announcing that the first Kit Tolliver story, "If You Can't Stand the Heat," was free on all Amazon platforms worldwide. A comforting number of you hastened to download it, and today—that would be Friday, January 22—is your last chance. Click the link, click the Buy button, and you've got a date with the ultimate femme fatale.

And then what?

Well, "If You Can't Stand the Heat" is the first of a dozen stories, which together comprise the Hard Case Crime novel Getting Off . After you've read your free download of IYCSTH, there are several ways for you to go on keeping company with Kit.

1. If you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read your way through the entire series at no cost. They're all Kindle Select titles, and thus enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, and you can borrow them free of charge, starting with #2, "Rude Awakening."2. If you're not a KU subscriber, you can BUY the stories one at a time for $2.99 apiece—but that's not the way to go. You're way better off picking up the complete book ($4.36 for Kindle, $21.30 hardcover, $13.39 paperback, $20.26 audiobook).

3. If you'd prefer an autographed paperback of Getting Off, my Invaluable Assistant has copies in LB's eBay Bookstore. While they last, they're $9.99 with free shipping. (And at that price they may not last long.)

4. But first—and here's the reason for the hurry-up headline—we're making "Rude Awakening" free to all, worldwide, for one day only. And that's today. Not a Kindle Unlimited subscriber? Not an Amazon Prime Member? Makes no never mind. Click the link, click the Buy button, and it's yours.

I've got a Nook. I guess I'm out of luck, right?

If your eReader of choice is Apple or Kobo or Nook, I'm afraid this offer won't work for you. You might want to download a free Kindle app that will enable you to read Kindle ebooks on your phone or iPad or computer. Or, of course, you can snap up the Hard Case ebook of Getting Off on your preferred platform.

Which reminds me. We're up to 16 titles in the Classic Crime Library and the response has been heartening. After the First Death is selling particularly well, which suggests that this Scudder forerunner ought to have been in print all along, but all of the books are getting a good reception. One of them, Passport to Peril, a romantic espionage thriller set in Ireland, is a Kindle exclusive, which means KU subscribers can read it for free.

If Kindle doesn't work for you, this seems a good time to let you know that we may be moving more of the CCL titles to Kindle Select. It gives us flexibility to arrange giveaways and otherwise sweeten the pot for you. But it keeps books out of the hands and eReaders of you Nooksters and KoBohemians and Apple Polishers, and for that I apologize. I can assure you that we won't be moving any Classic Crime Library titles to Kindle Select until February 1 at the earliest, so you might want to stock up now on the ones that most appeal to you. The links above may prove helpful in seeing what's available.

And yes, we'll be bringing out Classic Crime Library titles as paperback books, with that uniform cover design you've said such nice things about. I'll keep you posted.

There's more, but it'll have to wait for the next newsletter. (And yes, I know, they're like buses. You wait and wait and wait, and then three of them come along, one right after the other.) That's it for now, so grab your free copy of "If You Can't Stand the Heat" if you haven't already done so, and snag the equally free "Rude Awakening" while you're at it, and let it snow all it wants. Kit'll keep you warm.

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

FREE TODAY—a hot date with Kit Tolliver!

Kit Tolliver is a beautiful and personable young woman with an unusual lifestyle. She picks up men, goes home with them, has mutually enjoyable sex with them—and then kills them. (And, when she can, robs them while she's at it. I mean, a girl's got to make a living.)

Kit's the protagonist of Getting Off , published by Hard Case Crime. Because the novel is episodic in structure, I made it available exclusively for Kindle as twelve individual stories. (Indeed, many of the episodes were originally published as short stories.)

I've made the first episode, " If You Can't Stand the Heat ," free on every Amazon site throughout the world for the next five days. Nothing to it—click on the link,click on the Buy button, and it's yours.

If you don't enjoy Kit's company, well, you never have to see her again. Think of it as one of those speed-dating trysts that just didn't work out. Hey, it's only a cup of coffee, and you didn't even have to pay for the coffee, so what's your problem?

If the two of you hit it off, you have options.

I'll bet you're going to tell us what they are.

Ah, you know me so well. First option won't cost you a dime, if you're a Kindle Unlimited member. You can simply download #2, "Rude Awakening," and work your way through the entire dozen stories. KU members can only retain ten items at a time, so you'll be reading the stories and then returning them, but it's a way to read the whole book for free.

And Option 2?

Well, you could buy "Rude Awakening," and "You Can Call Me Lucky," and "Clean Slate," and so on, all the way through to the end. But that's really not a great idea. You'd be paying $2.99 apiece for eleven stories, and you'd be way better off buying the complete book. Getting Off is just $4.36 for Kindle, for the complete book, and you'd spend more that for two episodes.

Seems like a no-brainer. So I should buy the ebook, right?

Well, you could. But the cover's pretty spectacular, and Hard Case Crime volumes do spruce up a bookshelf, in addition to proclaiming their owner to be a person of taste and discernment. You can still buy the hardcover at Amazon, or the trade paperback .

You know what would be great? I mean, really great? A woman's voice in my ear, recounting Kit Tolliver's story...

You're in luck. The audiobook is by Recorded Books, and the voice is Lily Bask's, and she certainly brings Our Girl to life.

And all this begins with a free download of "If You Can't Stand the Heat." Where's the title come from, anyway?

The first episode's set in a Manhattan neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen. "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Get it?

Got it. So the book's set in New York?

And Arizona and North Carolina and Washington State and other places along the way. Kit's a peripatetic creature. She gets around.

Spreading joy wherever she goes. The subtitle says it's a novel of sex and violence.

It's that, all right. It's also a love story, but you'll find that out for yourself. Look, let's not overthink this, okay? Like that proverbial first shot of smack, and for more or less the same reason, "If You Can't Stand the Heat" is free. Boot up your Kindle and grab it.

And if you're a Nookster, or a Kobohemian, or an ApplePolisher, just cut to the chase and buy Getting Off. Hey, you know you want to...

And here's something I left out of the email newsletter: David reminds me that we have signed copies of the Hard Case Crime hardcover and paperback editions of Getting Off in LB's eBay Bookstore. Probably just as well, as we don't have too many left, so act now if you want one...

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

Baby, it's cold outside—time to curl up with a classic!

Global warming notwithstanding, it's definitely winter around here. We hopped over to Reykjavik for the solstice, where they celebrate Christmas in the most civilized way imaginable. On Christmas Eve, people get together and give each other gifts, and the gifts are almost invariably new books. And then everybody goes home and gets into bed to read the new books. Oh, another thing—it's considered perfectly acceptable to read the book before you give it. (I mean, we all do that, don't we? But Icelanders get to do it without feeling guilty about it.) What a wonderful country!

We got home just in time for New York to stop being unseasonably warm. But that's okay, because I've been too busy these days to leave the house anyway. The year started with the publication of Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, and a surge of early reviews and strong sales suggest I was well-advised to adapt the book for the 21st Century and to publish it myself. The paperback is a particularly handsome volume, and I'm not hugely surprised that so many buyers want a printed copy of this title; reference books are good to have available on an eReader, but most of us find them easier to use in physical form. For now, the only sources of the paperback are Amazon and the CreateSpace store , though it should be at Barnes & Noble soon. The ebook's comfortingly ubiquitous, now at Kindle and Nook and Kobo and Apple , and probably a few other sites as well.

And is this the classic we're supposed to curl up with?

I was getting to that. No, I was referring to a whole new venture, LB's Classic Crime Library. As you may recall, I recently opted out of my deal with Open Road, so that I could have a more hands-on relationship with my backlist. Years ago a friend, the late British author Peter Chambers, told me what an older writer once told him: "Son, take care of your backlist, and it will take care of you." Since I've got a backlist that stretches halfway from here to Winnipeg, I have every intention of taking the best possible care of it, and can but hope it will return the favor.

Among the titles that reverted to me were around 20 crime novels, and in the course of re-formatting them, my heroic Production Goddess came up with the idea of providing them with uniform covers, which she then promptly designed. Antique gold stamping on a leather background—I mean, if that doesn't whisper "Classic," I don't know what does.

The series is a work in progress, and at last count ten titles are eVailable: After the First Death, Deadly Honeymoon, Grifter's Game, The Girl with the Long Green Heart, The Specialists, The Triumph of Evil, Such Men Are Dangerous, Not Comin' Home to You, Lucky at Cards, and Killing Castro. If you type "Lawrence Block Classic Crime Library" into the search engine at Kindle or Nook or Apple or Kobo, you'll get the whole lot to sift through, and the list will get longer on a daily basis as I do my part in uploading more titles.

Um, this could wind up costing me a fortune...

Oh, you'll be all right. The ebooks are only $2.99 apiece.

That's all??? How come so cheap?

Well, it's certainly not altruism on my part. My aim is to charge as little as possible in order to maximize unit sales. The Production Goddess has enhanced each book with the first chapter of the next book in the series, to make it as user-friendly as possible for the binge-readers among you.

So if I wanted to start at the beginning...

You'd begin with #1, After the First Death, a book which has been described as a precursor or forerunner to the Matthew Scudder series. And it would lead you to #2, Deadly Honeymoon, and...

And I'd be hooked.

Yes, isn't it wonderful?

You know, the covers are so tasteful and appealing, it's a shame I can't buy them in paperback.

You'll be able to soon enough. Not all of them, because several are currently in print from Hard Case Crime. But a majority are not, and I'll be bringing them out in paperback, with these fine-looking covers, as soon as I can.

Wow. But, um, not for $2.99, right?

No, but once again they'll be as inexpensive as possible. The four Chip Harrison books—No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out With Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper—are all in paperback, and we managed to keep the price down to $9.99. I'm not sure we can do the same with the Classic Crime Library titles, but that's the goal.

The Chips are nice looking. I love the sketch on the back cover.

It's by Arnold Lee, a friend of mine in Taipei. If you click here you can flip the cover and see what the actual back cover looks like. They'll eventually get wider distribution, but for now you can find them easily in the CreateSpace store; they're at Amazon as well, but a little harder to sort out there. I know some Taiwanese fans of mine—and of Arnold's—are interested in the set, and hope to be able to offer signed copies in LB's eBay Bookstore before too long.

I guess you're enjoying your retirement.

Did you have to bring that up? I'm busier these days than I've ever been, and the only thing that makes it bearable is the fact that I seem to be having a wonderful time.

So may I wish all of y'all the same?

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

Guaranteed—LB's last 2015 newsletter!

Well, hello there, and Happy New Year! Whether you're reading this before or after one year turns into another, know that I wish you nothing but joy in the Year of the Monkey, 2016.

We're kicking it off with Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel (known affectionately around here as P2P2P). This expanded (half again as large)and updated (with new material on ebooks and self-publishing) version of my 1978 volume has a release date of January 4 , but you can pre-order the ebook now for Kindle , Nook , Apple , or Kobo . It's priced at $9.99.

Because it's the sort of book one wants to be able to return to and skip around in, many of you will probably prefer a printed copy. The handsome trade paperback runs to 300 pages, and should be available from online booksellers by the release date or shortly thereafter. But you don't have to wait—you can order it right now for immediate delivery from the CreateSpace Store . The price is $16.99.

As the year winds down, so has my five-year relationship with Open Road, who did such a splendid job of making over forty of my backlist titles eVailable. I've decided it's time for me to take a hands-on role in packaging and marketing those books, and that's going to keep me and my Production Goddess busy for months to come. First up will be the four-volume Chip Harrison series, a tricky marketing proposition in that the first two titles, No Score and Chip Harrison Scores Again, are lighthearted romps with an erotic element, while the later books, Make Out With Murder and The Topless Tulip Caper, are classic-style puzzle mysteries with an erotic element. (Chip, a sort of Lecher in the Wry, goes to work for Leo Haig, a sort of road company Nero Wolfe. Oh, you'll see. For a taste of the characters, "As Dark as Christmas Gets" is a Chip Harrison/Leo Haig story set in Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop.) We'll be bringing out all four Chips as ebooks and trade paperbacks, and this illustration of No Score is one of the four covers created by the ever-resourceful Production Goddess.

Upwards of 35 years ago, I heard a man recount a personal experience, and it resonated strongly for me, then tucked itself away in that rag-and-bone shop I call a mind. (Secreted itself in a nook, or maybe it was a cranny. Never mind.) Back in October, coming home from Bouchercon in Raleigh on Amtrak's Carolinian, it bubbled up—and I decided it could be the beginning of a short story. So I had a go at it after I finished work on P2P2P, and what was supposed to be a short story grew into a 20,000-word novella. The title is "Resume Speed," and it'll be eVailable sometime within the next month or so, and you can look forward to hardcover publication (both trade and limited) by a favorite small press publisher a bit later in 2016. And no, it's not part of a series, and neither is it going to be expanded into a novel. It is what it is, and I'll cast modesty to the winds and say I'm well pleased with it, and can but hope you share my enthusiasm.

We spent Christmas week in Reykjavik, where cloud cover kept us from seeing the Northern Lights and ice underfoot kept us from getting around as much as we'd have liked, but we had a wonderful time anyway. And it's good to be back, and back at work. And that's as much as you need to hear from me in 2015.

Talk to you next year!



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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

Stop me before I write more!

Back in October, on the train heading home to New York from Raleigh Bouchercon, I got an idea for a short story. Now it had probably been percolating for a long time, because I can trace its origins to a personal experience I'd heard a man recount perhaps thirty-five years ago. But now for the first time I saw how it could be a story, and one I seemed interested in writing.

So I let it percolate a bit more. And when it didn't subside, as most ideas do, or waste away of Failure to Thrive syndrome, I knew I wanted to write it. But I couldn't, not right away, because my first priority was the expanded and updated edition of Writing the Novel from Plot to Print.

So I got on that, as I'm sure I've told you, and it went well, so much so that I'll be publishing the book, larger by half than the original and now cleverly retitled Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, sometime after the first of the year.

Now I can relax, I told myself, but Myself wasn't having any. Now you can write the short story, the swine replied.

So I set out to do that, figuring it would make a nice compact story of 3500 to 5000 words.

Shows what I know. I seemed to have a longer story to tell than I'd realized, and watched it grow from short story to novelette. I've just now reached the end, and since the end seems to be 20,000 words away from the beginning, I guess we can call the thing a novella. Not that these distinctions mean anything much. It's a story, is what it is. A long one. My novels lately have been running around 80-90,000 words, so it's perhaps a quarter the length of a book. (My early novels were more like 50-60,000 words. Just so you know.)

It's not part of a series, nor is it the start of one. It is what it is, and its title is Resume Speed.

And how can y'all get to read it? Good question. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with it, but we live in fast times. My guess is it'll be eVailable within the next couple of months.

Cheers,

A news flash from LB's Invaluable Assistant

Um, that would be me. I just helped proofread Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, which we'll be publishing next month, and that's how he referred to me. "David Trevor, my Invaluable Assistant." Neat!

I'll rush this because it has to get out today to do any good. One of the things I assist with is the bookstore, and we're closing down the shipping department for two weeks starting December 21. Get your order to us by the 20th and we'll fill it right away; after that and, while our eBay store will accept the order, we'll hold off on shipping until after the first of January.

So if you want something by Christmas, order ASAP.

Let me suggest some items, okay?

1. The Collector's Edition of The Burglar who Counted the Spoons. We've been plugging this ever since we slashed the price from $79.99 to $29.99 postpaid, and we're holding the new low price through the end of the year. (Even better, this time of year—a wholesale 5-copy lot at an amazing price.)

2. Break Writer's Block Now! by Jerrold Mundis. A short hardcover book LB thinks every writer should own. Got a writers group? A lot of writer friends? How about a 10-copy wholesale lot at an amazing price?

3. 8 new unread signed Matthew Scudder paperbacks for $49.99 postpaid. We're down to our last three lots of this item. Buy one and make eight friends happy—or one ecstatic. [Between the time the newsletter went out and I got around to posting it here on the blog, two of them sold. So we're down to one.]

4. 8 new unread Bernie Rhodenbarr paperbacks for $49.99. Same deal on Burglar books—and we've only got two lots left of this one.

5. Signed foreign-language editions, all under $10. A great gift for your friends and associates for whom English is a second language. You can browse/search our listings, or go straight to Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Korean, Japanese, or Italian. Very limited quantities of all of these.

I could go on, we've got 119 different items in LB's eBay Bookstore, ranging in price from $4.99 to $99.99. Except for the Mundis book, everything we sell is by the big guy, and they're all signed. Take a look, see what you like, and if you can place your order by Sunday, I'll fill it stat-pronto-ASAP. Otherwise it'll go out after the first of the year.

Meanwhile, LB and I wish you and yours all the joys of the season!

Invaluably yours,

David Trevor

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

Alert the media—It's Polychromatic Thursday!

And what, pray tell, could that possibly mean? All it means is I was looking for a colorful alternative to Black Friday and Orange Wednesday and didn't want to slight any of the little darlings in the Crayola box.

Never mind. I'm pleased to tell you that I've completed the expanded updated edition of WRITING THE NOVEL FROM PLOT TO PRINT TO PIXEL , bringing a book that was continually in print since 1978 into what my calendar tells me is the 21st Century. The new edition is half again as long as the original, and while I haven't cut anything (for how could I bare to prune any of my own imperishable words?) I've added a lot—about ebooks, self-publishing, and other phenomena undreamt of 37 years ago. The book's currently in the hands of my Production Goddess, and I'll be publishing it as an ebook and trade paperback early in 2016. I'm not sure of the price, that'll depend on my costs, but I'll keep it as low as I can, and will fill you in shortly after the first of the year.

So that's it for 2016?

Uh, not quite. In July, Hard Case Crime will bring out The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes in paperback. While I know most of you will already have the novel in hardcover or ebook, I also know there's an ardent band who collect all Hard Case publications in paperback; if you're a member of that tribe, the book's currently available for pre-order.

Our Blue-Eyed Girl's been getting some attention lately. David Morrell has been a great cheerleader for the book, and interviewed me for The Big Thrill , the magazine of the International Thriller Writers (Note to self: register now for ITW's Thrillerfest, NYC, July 5 -9.) And Joel Meadows has some provocative questions for me for the online magazine Tripwire.

Also due from Hard Case, though not until the fall, is an early crime novel of mine that was completely lost for half a century. And yes, genuinely lost; I spent years searching for it, and even blogged about it, and then it turned up out of nowhere thanks to a Facebook friend. The book's called Sinner Man , and includes an afterword detailing how and when it was written, how it disappeared, and the manner in which it miraculously materialized. I'll let y'all know as soon as it's available for pre-order—which will probably happen as soon as Hard Case has the cover finished. (And I can't wait to see it myself!)

In a previous newsletter, I alluded to an anthology I've got in the works. I can tell you a little more about it, starting with the title— In Sunlight or in Shadow —and the subtitle: Fifteen Stories Inspired by Paintings of Edward Hopper.

Isn't that a wonderful premise? I floated it to a batch of A-list authors, and it turned out that Hopper's work resonated powerfully for just about all of them. I'm superstitious enough to tell you only the names of those writers who've already delivered finished stories: Joyce Carol Oates, Jill D. Block, Warren Moore, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert Olen Butler, and Jeffery Deaver. They're all outstanding stories, each linked to a different painting, and I can't wait for the rest to arrive. (And, while it's not for me to assess its merits, my own story is finished. It's inspired by Hopper's Automat , illustrated here.

Pegasus Books will be publishing the book, beautifully printed and fully illustrated, in November—a good time, as I can't think of a better Christmas gift. You'd be well advised to pre-order if you want to guarantee a first edition, and I'll let you know as soon as it's possible to do that.

Sounds great, but it must be a lot of work for you. Doesn't it cut into your writing time?

Damn right it does, and I'm forever grateful to it for so doing. Still, it doesn't cut deeply enough. I've got a new short story in the works, with the working title of "Traveling Light." At least I thought it was going to be a short story, but it's been growing longer. We'll see how it winds up.

And that's enough for now, except that I'm going to end this newsletter in uncharacteristic fashion. I don't ordinarily ask y'all for money, aside from whatever you choose to shell out for my books, but here's something that might appeal to any of you with a couple of extra bucks lying around. My Marketing Goddess, Erin Mitchell, is an ardent and enthusiastic fan of crime fiction, a staunch advocate of writers and readers, and one of my favorite people. In one sense nobody has a better heart, but in another very physical sense almost everybody does; she's gonna have to get a new one.

So—there's a fundraising effort underway , and you might want to support it. Or not, but I thought I'd give you the choice.

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.
LB's Bookstore on eBay
LB's Blog and Website
LB's Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock