Lawrence Block's Blog, page 29
July 28, 2011
Afterthoughts published!
Here's an email I just sent out to blog subscribers and other good friends. I'll post it here because I really want to get the word out to you all ASAP:
Hi—
Is it okay to email you directly? I have an announcement I don’t want you to miss. My new eBook, Afterthoughts, has just come out from Open Road, and I want to do everything I can to get it off to a good start.
If that’s all you need to know, you can cut to the chase and snap it up for Kindle for 99¢: http://tinyurl.com/3wgyhez
There you go! Now let me tell you what you just bought…
Afterthoughts is the book friends have been urging me to write for years. And now, in the course of preparing new afterwords for my 40+ Open Road eBooks, I’ve almost inadvertently produced a piecemeal tell-all memoir of my life as a writer over the past 55 years.
All my early crime novels are here, from Grifter’s Game and The Girl With the Long Green Heart all the way to Random Walk. Then there are the dozens of early books I wrote under pen names. For years I wanted to disown them, but time has brought acceptance, and in Afterthoughts you’ll find essays and reminiscences of the days I spent as Lesley Evans and Anne Campbell Clarke, as Sheldon Lord and Andrew Shaw, as Chip Harrison and Paul Kavanagh and Lee Duncan. (And let’s not forget Jill Emerson, whose brand-new book Getting Off is due in September from Hard Case Crime; all seven of Jill’s early novels receive their due here.)
This may be the best news of all: The price of Afterthoughts is only 99¢.
Why so low? Well, I really want people to read Afterthoughts. It’s far more open and candid than I ever thought I’d be, and if I’m gonna go public, I’d like to reach as much of the public as I can. Besides that, it’s my guess that you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to sample some of the books you’ll read about.
But first things first. August 2 is the on-sale date for Afterthoughts, and by then it’ll be available on all major eBook platforms—Nook, Kobo, Apple, Sony Reader, etc. But you don’t have to wait to pre-order it for Kindle; one click of your mouse and you’ll guarantee you receive it first thing on Tuesday.
May I encourage you to order the book right now? Nothing launches a book as effectively as early orders, and I hope you’ll want to be at the head of the line.
And while I’m being pushy, let me ask you a favor. Could you forward this email to any friends who might be interested? They may thank you for it, and I know for sure that I will! In fact I’ll just conclude by saying…
…thanks in advance!
LB
PS—There’s more on Afterthoughts, including several sample chapters, on my blog http://lawrenceblock.wordpress.com/lb.... You can go there first to help you decide, or stop by after you’ve ordered the book to whet your appetite for more. Goodreads members will find a sample chapter (Campus Tramp) just posted on my Goodreads blog.
PPS—At least for now, Afterthoughts is only available as an eBook. If enough readers let me know they want a printed book, Open Road can produce a Print-on-Demand paperback. (But it’ll be priced a whole lot higher than 99¢!)
Hi—
Is it okay to email you directly? I have an announcement I don’t want you to miss. My new eBook, Afterthoughts, has just come out from Open Road, and I want to do everything I can to get it off to a good start.
If that’s all you need to know, you can cut to the chase and snap it up for Kindle for 99¢: http://tinyurl.com/3wgyhez
There you go! Now let me tell you what you just bought…
Afterthoughts is the book friends have been urging me to write for years. And now, in the course of preparing new afterwords for my 40+ Open Road eBooks, I’ve almost inadvertently produced a piecemeal tell-all memoir of my life as a writer over the past 55 years.
All my early crime novels are here, from Grifter’s Game and The Girl With the Long Green Heart all the way to Random Walk. Then there are the dozens of early books I wrote under pen names. For years I wanted to disown them, but time has brought acceptance, and in Afterthoughts you’ll find essays and reminiscences of the days I spent as Lesley Evans and Anne Campbell Clarke, as Sheldon Lord and Andrew Shaw, as Chip Harrison and Paul Kavanagh and Lee Duncan. (And let’s not forget Jill Emerson, whose brand-new book Getting Off is due in September from Hard Case Crime; all seven of Jill’s early novels receive their due here.)
This may be the best news of all: The price of Afterthoughts is only 99¢.
Why so low? Well, I really want people to read Afterthoughts. It’s far more open and candid than I ever thought I’d be, and if I’m gonna go public, I’d like to reach as much of the public as I can. Besides that, it’s my guess that you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to sample some of the books you’ll read about.
But first things first. August 2 is the on-sale date for Afterthoughts, and by then it’ll be available on all major eBook platforms—Nook, Kobo, Apple, Sony Reader, etc. But you don’t have to wait to pre-order it for Kindle; one click of your mouse and you’ll guarantee you receive it first thing on Tuesday.
May I encourage you to order the book right now? Nothing launches a book as effectively as early orders, and I hope you’ll want to be at the head of the line.
And while I’m being pushy, let me ask you a favor. Could you forward this email to any friends who might be interested? They may thank you for it, and I know for sure that I will! In fact I’ll just conclude by saying…
…thanks in advance!
LB
PS—There’s more on Afterthoughts, including several sample chapters, on my blog http://lawrenceblock.wordpress.com/lb.... You can go there first to help you decide, or stop by after you’ve ordered the book to whet your appetite for more. Goodreads members will find a sample chapter (Campus Tramp) just posted on my Goodreads blog.
PPS—At least for now, Afterthoughts is only available as an eBook. If enough readers let me know they want a printed book, Open Road can produce a Print-on-Demand paperback. (But it’ll be priced a whole lot higher than 99¢!)
July 15, 2011
What does LB like to read?
After years of ducking the question, I've added a section to my blog http://lawrenceblock.wordpress.com/ab... listing books for which I have a special fondness. Here's a sample of what you'll find there:
WALTER TEVIS
A brilliant writer who wrote too little and died too young. Much of his work is science fiction (Mockingbird, The Man Who Fell to Earth) but I’m fondest of his contemporary novels. The Queen’s Gambit is a personal favorite, and I’m about due to re-read it again. Ditto The Hustler and it’s under-appreciated sequel, The Color of Money. (The Paul Newman film version of the latter departed entirely from the book on page one; I can understand the filmmaker’s decision, but I don’t have to agree with it.)
. . .BASEBALL STORIES
Jalfieri’s comment tilted me toward baseball stories. I was in the process of ePubbing “Almost Perfect” and had made these observations in the online introduction to the story: “My own favorite baseball stories are all novels. Bernard Malamud’s The Natural is a critical favorite, and justly so, but there are four other books I like even better. Three are by Mark Harris—The Southpaw and its two sequels, Bang the Drum Slowly and A Ticket For a Seamstitch. (Harris wrote a fourth novel about the same character toward the end of his life, and it can be charitably described as disappointing.) And Charles Einstein’s The Only Game in Town is a book I’ve reread several times, with undiminishing enjoyment.” I unaccountably failed to mention W. P Kinsella’s magical Shoeless Joe, which I enjoyed immensely as a book and again as the film, Field of Dreams. And I’ve ordered the Shaara book on Jalfieri’s recommendation.
There's more, and this is a section I'll add to from time to time. Live links for everything, so if anything appeals, you're just a mouse-click away from it.
Come visit!
WALTER TEVIS
A brilliant writer who wrote too little and died too young. Much of his work is science fiction (Mockingbird, The Man Who Fell to Earth) but I’m fondest of his contemporary novels. The Queen’s Gambit is a personal favorite, and I’m about due to re-read it again. Ditto The Hustler and it’s under-appreciated sequel, The Color of Money. (The Paul Newman film version of the latter departed entirely from the book on page one; I can understand the filmmaker’s decision, but I don’t have to agree with it.)
. . .BASEBALL STORIES
Jalfieri’s comment tilted me toward baseball stories. I was in the process of ePubbing “Almost Perfect” and had made these observations in the online introduction to the story: “My own favorite baseball stories are all novels. Bernard Malamud’s The Natural is a critical favorite, and justly so, but there are four other books I like even better. Three are by Mark Harris—The Southpaw and its two sequels, Bang the Drum Slowly and A Ticket For a Seamstitch. (Harris wrote a fourth novel about the same character toward the end of his life, and it can be charitably described as disappointing.) And Charles Einstein’s The Only Game in Town is a book I’ve reread several times, with undiminishing enjoyment.” I unaccountably failed to mention W. P Kinsella’s magical Shoeless Joe, which I enjoyed immensely as a book and again as the film, Field of Dreams. And I’ve ordered the Shaara book on Jalfieri’s recommendation.
There's more, and this is a section I'll add to from time to time. Live links for everything, so if anything appeals, you're just a mouse-click away from it.
Come visit!
July 14, 2011
LB's Afterthoughts
When I was preparing forty-plus backlist titles for publication as Open Road eBooks, I decided to add value by contributing an afterword of 1000-2000 words to be appended to the end of each book. It turned out to be fun to do, and I frequently found I had more to say about the circumstances of [...]
