Lawrence Block's Blog, page 5
August 3, 2020
DEAD GIRL BLUES—How My New Novel Came About and Why I’m Publishing It Myself
When Dead Girl Blues first became available for preorder, I wrote this essay for Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare. I don’t know that it went precisely viral, and that’s an idiom that’s less appealing these days, anyway. But a lot of people read it, and I sent links along with review copies, because it seemed to state the case effectively. While you can still read it on Janet’s site, if you’ve got a link that works, I think it probably ought to be posted on the blog.
LAWRENCE BLOCK:
DEAD GIRL BLUES—How My New Novel Came About and Why I’m Publishing It Myself
Sometime in the late fall of 2018 I started writing a short story. It began with a man picking up a woman in a lowdown roadhouse. A lot of stories, true and fictional, begin that way. Few of them end well.
This one didn’t end well for the woman. I’d have to finish writing it to find out how it would end for the man.
I was writing it in the first person, which meant I had to live within the psyche of a homicidal sociopath. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about that is how easily it comes to me. But I figured I’d wrap it up in four or five thousand words, and then I could write about something else.
Or nothing at all, if I wanted. I began selling short stories shortly after I turned nineteen, and within a year I’d written a publishable novel. And I kept writing more of them. The estimable Terry Zobeck has just completed a bibliography of my work, and the section of individual books runs to over two hundred volumes. Now some of those are anthologies I’ve edited, while others are nonfiction. But that still leaves ample evidence that writing publishable fiction, and seeing it published, has been something of a habit over the past sixty-plus years.
Which is to say I shouldn’t have to keep doing this to justify my existence. “We’re at that stage in our careers,” my friend Hal Dresner observed, “where the higher moral act is not to write the book but to spare the tree.”
And it was at least twenty years ago that he made this point.
I don’t know how many trees have been slain on my account since then, but I do know my arboricidal impulses have declined in recent years. I had the sense several years ago that I was probably done writing novels. A novel demands energy and focus and concentration to a degree that is less readily summoned up after a certain age. Imagination, a fiction writer’s most precious and least appreciated gift, begins to wane. And the will to put one’s shoulder to the wheel for the long haul of a novel—well, you know, why knock yourself out? Why not sit down and see what’s on TV?
Then again, who cares what’s on TV? Work has become a habit, and I’m much happier and way easier to live with if I’m busy. Besides, the two horses that pull my chariot are as powerful as they ever were. Their names are Ego and Avarice.
So I’ve never ceased being busy. I compile and edit anthologies. I team up with translators and bring out my backlist in German, Italian, and Spanish editions. I reissue under my own name all the books that had quite sensibly born pseudonyms in the past, I take random walks down Memory Lane and turn them into essays, and now and again an idea comes along and engages me enough that I turn it into a short story. Sometimes, if the stars are in alignment, it might run a little long. A novelette, say, or a novella.
This story I was writing, the one about the homicidal sociopath, looked as though it might want to be a novelette. Ten or twelve thousand words, say. Maybe even fifteen thousand.
But when it approached the 12K mark, I saw that it wanted to be a novella, and not one I had any real interest in writing. In fact it was becoming distinctly unpleasant to write, and probably wouldn’t be much fun to read, either.
So the hell with it.
I closed the file, as I always did at the end of a day’s writing, but the difference was that I didn’t open it up the next day. Or the day after that. Or at all, until several months had passed.
Until spring had sprung, in fact. I’m not sure when it was, but sometime in April or May, possibly even early June, I found myself wishing I had something to write. And I remembered the story and decided I probably ought to force myself to look at it and see if there was anything there worth keeping.
And the next day or the day after I did just that. I read it what I’d written, and in spite of myself I really liked what I read. I thought about it, and first thing the following morning I sat at my desk, set a kitchen timer, and wrote for thirty minutes. I wasn’t sure where my protagonist was going, or what he might do when he got there, but I used the tried and true Lost Horse method.
That’s from the story about the moron who found the lost horse when no one else could. How, they wondered, had he managed it? “Well,” he said, “I just asked myself, if I was the horse, where would I go? And I went there, and there he was.”
So that’s what I did. And, well, one thing led to another.
It helped, I suspect, that I wasn’t in a hurry. I wrote every day, except when I didn’t. And I set the kitchen timer, for a half hour or forty-five minutes or sometimes as much as an hour, and when it went off I stopped—except when I didn’t.
I got more and more interested in the characters, not only the man who was telling the story, who became increasingly real for me, but the supporting players as well. They hadn’t existed in those first ten or twelve thousand words, but along the way they appeared in his life, and I liked them, even as I had come to like him.
I still didn’t know where it all would ultimately lead. But what I did always know was what would happen in the next paragraph and on the next page, and that I’d find the horse at the end of it all.
Meanwhile, it kept getting longer. The short story that had turned into a novelette went on to reach novella length. And I kept sitting down at the keyboard, setting my kitchen timer, tapping keys that had done nothing to deserve such treatment, and rising from my desk each day knowing there was more to be written.
Until there wasn’t, at which point the story had grown to 52,000 words.
I can’t claim to have been surprised by that number, as one of the miracles of the computer era is that there’s never a moment when you don’t know how much you’ve written. The software I use is MS-Word, and I don’t even have to choose Word Count from the Tools menu; at the bottom of the page there’s a space where it says Words:—followed by the number thereof contained in the document. In this case, 52,000 of the little darlings.
Look at that, will you? I wrote a novel.
Not, to be sure, a long novel. For comparison, consider that the most recent novels in the Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Keller series ranger from 82,000 to 85,000 words. The latest non-series novel, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, was shorter at 61,000, but still almost a fifth as long again as what I’d now written.
On the other hand, 52,000 words was itself more words than you’d find in a good number of my earlier novels. All three of the first Scudder titles, originally published as Dell paperback originals, ran to 47,000 words. My first hardcover book, Deadly Honeymoon, came in even shorter, at 44,000 words. Early ventures in Midcentury Erotica include Carla (47,800), Campus Tramp (46,900) and College for Sinners (45,500). People might fault any or all of these books for one reason or another, but nobody ever said they weren’t long enough to be novels.
So I had a novel. What was I to do with it?
The first thing I did was get my First Readers to give it a first reading. My wife and my three daughters all enthused—which, to be sure, is part of any First Reader’s job description, but their enthusiasm felt authentic enough. (One of my daughters did allow that she might have been more comfortable with the book if she hadn’t kept hearing the narrator’s words in her father’s voice.)
Encouraged, I showed what I’d written to a couple of trusted friends, people who’d been reading my work for years. They all told me they thought it was right up there with my very best work. They also said what I already knew: that I might have problems with it.
I sent the book to my agent, Danny Baror. He could see the book’s strength and its potential, but he could also see the same problems I saw. It was a few degrees darker than the B-side of the moon, it had elements guaranteed to put off any number of readers, and it lacked the pulse-pounding excitement you might expect from a book of its type.
Somebody could surely be found to publish it, but it needed to be published well, by someone willing and able to put a lot of muscle into it. That meant going with a major firm, and drawing down a substantial advance. So he went wide with it, and had the clout to make sure it was read by the key decision makers at top publishing houses.
He ran it, you might say, up a whole lot of flagpoles.
And nobody saluted.
Nor did they thumb their noses. Everyone professed to like the book, but I think we can take that with a flake of kelp. When a good agent sends you a manuscript and makes it clear he has high hopes for it, you don’t tell him it’s crap. You say it’s not quite for us. You insist you think very highly of the writing and the writer, but cite the book’s problems of theme and content. You give it high marks for artistry while faulting it for being insufficiently commercial. And you might even say what publishers in your position have been saying for upwards of thirty years: Gosh, five years ago we would have jumped at this, but the way the business has changed—
Right.
Getting rejected was, I have to say, a very interesting experience. I’d undergone it often enough in the early years, but the early years were a long time ago, and I’d largely forgotten how it felt. One of the affirmations I’d developed for my Write For Your Life seminar was “Every rejection brings me closer to success,” and it’s a powerful affirmation indeed, but in the late summer of 2019, when one publisher after another passed, every rejection was bringing me closer to despair.
Now when I initially showed the book to Danny, I knew it might be a problem to market. But by the time he had begun sending it around, my mind had given itself over entirely to a best-case scenario. The book, I realized, was better than I’d thought, better indeed than I’d dared to hope. Surely every heavy hitter from Sonny Mehta on down would line up, checkbook in hand, and whoever shelled out a hefty six-figure advance would then follow through with an appropriate promotional campaign.
And so on.
Well, when nothing of the sort happened, I decided they were all being stupid. All right, I’d tell myself. So-and-so’s an idiot, but What’s-her-name has the brains and vision to see what we’ve got here. She’ll come through for sure.
Right.
And then it began to dawn on me that they weren’t crazy, that my book was not the stuff of which bestsellers are made. For heaven’s sake, the book begins with the hero committing a rape and a murder, and—ahem—not in that order. Believe it or not, some readers might find that unsettling.
Nor is it the book’s only unsettling element.
It was, I had to conclude, a very unlikely candidate for bestsellerdom. And, while I’ve had books on various bestseller lists some years ago, it’s been quite a while since I wrote anything that wound up on the charts. My recent sales history alone would keep stores from ordering carload lots of any book of mine, irrespective of the book’s commercial merits or the publisher’s promotional efforts.
And with this particular book, well, forget it.
So they weren’t all crazy. They weren’t stupid, or even misguided.
They were right, dammit.
I should mention that I did have a couple of offers. The publishers who extended them were eminently respectable, and their enthusiasm was gratifying. But their proposed advances were low, and their promotional efforts would be unremarkable, and I had no reason to believe that they could furnish the book with the escape velocity it would need to overcome its own undeniable commercial liabilities.
One of them wanted, oh, a couple of minor changes. Couldn’t I have my guy rape the girl first, and then kill her? And couldn’t the killing be, you know, sort of accidental? A heat-of-the-moment thing? In fact, did he really have to rape her at all, before or after?
Another publisher said he loved the book, and if I absolutely insisted he’d publish it exactly as I’d written it. But he did have a few suggestions, and maybe I’d like to at least think about them.
No, I don’t think so.
And of course they’d expect to get ebook and paperback rights, and to retain control of them forever.
Well, the hell with that. In this age of ebooks and POD paperbacks, a publisher’s hold on a title is essentially absolute and permanent. Technically, nothing ever quite manages to go out of print. It costs the publisher nothing to keep a book forever available, and it’s virtually impossible for an author to get the rights back to anything.
I decided a few years ago that I was no longer giving away eRights. A massive advance on the new book would have induced me to change my mind, but that wasn’t on offer. Barring that, I’d sooner publish the book myself.
Once I decided to do just that, I felt a whole lot better.
Forty or fifty years ago, I’d sit around with good friends like Brian Garfield and Donald Westlake, and we’d fantasize about publishing our own books. We could stop dealing with shortsighted and wrongheaded editors and publishers. We could, by God and all the angels, actually Do It Right.
Now these conversations were often accompanied by adult beverages in quantity, and that does make their content suspect. I’m by no means certain we’d have done anything right, and it was moot to begin with, because there was no practical way we could publish anything ourselves.
Then, of course, the world changed.
My first venture in self-publishing was in the very different world of 1985. I wanted to make my Write For Your Life seminar available in book form, couldn’t imagine that a commercial publisher would want to do it, and more to the point wanted copies as soon as possible to sell them at seminars. I found someone to shepherd the book through the printing process, had five thousand books printed, and sold them all. A successful venture, but one that grew out of special circumstances—and not something I could see myself repeating.
Then the internet came along, and electronic books, and desktop publishing, and everything that followed. Almost before I knew it, my out-of-print backlist was available first as ebooks, then as paperbacks. I self-published new titles—a collection of Matthew Scudder stories, a collection of essays about crime fiction, and a new novel, The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons.
By the time I could see that my new novel didn’t have a viable future with commercial publishing, I knew I’d be happiest bringing out Dead Girl Blues myself.
(Except for the headline, I haven’t mentioned the title before, have I? That’s because it started out with another title, which nobody really liked, and then I found a second title for it, which was acceptable but way too generic for a book that was itself, for better or for worse, definitely sui generis.)
By publishing Dead Girl Blues myself, I’m spared all the hurry-up-and-wait time that’s so much a part of the publishing process. If the first prospective publisher who saw the manuscript had bought it on the spot back in late August, when do you suppose it would come out? Well, if they really rushed it they could publish in the fall of 2020, but that wouldn’t give them time to do it right, and it wasn’t a Christmas book, and you get lost in January, and—
Spring 2021 would be my guess.
It was early this year before I made the firm decision to self-publish. And now it’s March 11 as I write these lines, and the book became available for preorders two days ago. The official release date is June 24, the very day when I celebrate my birthday.
My 82nd birthday, and I’ll tell you something. No man who’s too old to buy green bananas wants to sit on his hands waiting for his book to come out. I’ve always been impatient in this regard, and whenever I typed THE END at the bottom of a manuscript I wanted to be able to have a quick drink, put on a sport jacket, walk around the corner, and see the book I’d just finished on a bookstore shelf.
And I’m doing very nearly that with Dead Girl Blues. It’s typeset, it’s got a dandy cover, it’s uploaded to all online ebook platforms, here and abroad—and you can order it right now, if you’ve a mind to.
But you may not want to. One thing I’ve taken pains to do, when preparing the book description for the online booksellers, is to warn off the readers who won’t welcome Dead Girl Blues into their homes. Because I really don’t want to sell a book to someone who’s not going to enjoy it.
A few years ago William Morrow brought out Small Town, a big New York novel with a powerful erotic element. A lot of people loved the book and called it a favorite, but at the same time I got a whole lot of outraged emails from longtime readers who were hoping for a book about an endearing burglar and his stub-tailed cat. And more recently I got a one-star review for Getting Off, by some sensitive soul outraged over the sex and violence contained therein. (I wasn’t going to apologize for that one. The prominent subtitle read “A Novel of Sex and Violence.” I mean, what did they expect?)
Oh well. David Morrell and Joe Lansdale love Dead Girl Blues, and gave me powerful quotes to that effect. Quite a few folks have said they started the book and couldn’t stop reading it, although they had other things they were supposed to be doing.
You know what? When I last re-read DGB, I realized it was exactly the book I want it to be. And how often does that happen? And what more could an old man possibly ask for?
July 31, 2020
Download AFFIRMATIONS FOR WRITERS!
[image error]It’s a steady seller, month in and month out, and if you’re not familiar with it I feel comfortable suggesting you make its acquaintance. I used it last fall in my workshop for student writers at Newberry College, and it played a central role in the virtual workshop I conducted by email in April. You might want to give it a look—and if you do, I’d recommend you choose the paperback over the ebook.
But right now I’m especially concerned with those readers who have indeed read WFYL, and who’ve been wanting to get hold of one of the key resources I feature in the book.
In WFYL, I discuss affirmations at length and explain some of the ways to make optimal use of them. Early on I recorded a tape—two sides of a cassette— packed with affirmations and designed for repeated listening. I rented a studio, and did the narration myself; a friend, keyboard artist Jeremy Wall of the jazz fusion band Spyro Gyra, laid down as background the piano track he’d composed. We incorporated the tape into the seminar, sold cassettes on site and by mail, and eventually retired the tape in 1988 when we discontinued offering the seminar.
A quarter of a century later, with the book back in print, I came across the remaining stock of cassettes—but they were both physically and technologically well past their sell-by date, and I didn’t feel comfortable offering them for sale. Instead I found someone who could convert a cassette to an MP3 file, and sold downloads through my eBay operation, LB’s Bookstore.
We put the store in mothballs a number of years ago, even as we stopped offering books for sale. (Eventually I autographed my entire stock of back copies of my various books and wholesaled the lot to Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop. If you’re a collector searching for a book of mine, that’s the first place to look.)
Because Write For Your Life keeps finding a new audience, I’ve had a stream of inquiries over the years. (Well, a trickle. But a fairly steady one.) Can I possibly provide a copy of the Affirmations tape? Could I explain how to purchase a download?
The answer was always a regretful No.
Now,I’m happy to say, it’s an affirmative Yes.
There’s no website to visit, no eBay store to contend with. There’s just one way to get the MP3 file, and it’s uncanny in its simplicity:
1. Using PayPal, choose “sending money to friends and family.” (I mean, if we’re not going to be friends, let’s just forget the whole thing.)
2. Remit $10 to lawbloc @ gmail.com.
3. In the Message space, enter your own preferred email address and “Affirmations MP3.”
4. You’ll receive an email with a link and David’s explanation of how to download the file.
And that’s really all I’ve got to tell you.
Cheers,
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
LB’s Blog and Website
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July 27, 2020
57% Off on 4 Matthew Scudder Books!
Um, strictly speaking, you get a discount of 57.22460658083%…
David Trevor here, and I’ll keep this short and sweet. LB’s accountant told the Great Man that we ought to increase the price on our Matthew Scudder ebooks. “They’re too low,” she told us. “They’re $6.99, and they should be $7.99.”
I asked LB if I should raise the prices.
“Lower them,” he said. I started to say something. He cut me off. “Everything’s a mess,” he said, “and people need something to read. We control the prices of four Scudder books. Cut ’em to $2.99 for a week, and let our friends know about it. Then you can make our accountant happy by boosting them to $7.99, but in the meantime our newsletter and blog followers can save a few bucks.”
Done.
This is a Kindle-only deal, because that’s the simplest way for me to handle it. The four books are A Stab in the Dark, A Walk Among the Tombstones, A Long Line of Dead Men, and The Night and the Music. (HarperCollins still controls rights and pricing of the other books in the series.)
The low price of $2.99 is in effect now, and I’ll keep it there through the end of the month. (Uh, that would be July.)
See? Short and sweet, like I said. No pictures, no templates with falling leaves. And I’d leave it at that, except we got another really nice review for Dead Girl Blues a week ago and never did anything with it, so here it is, from Andres Kabel:
“Lawrence Block is a master at what one might call philosophical noir, dark thrillers that hinge on explorations of the mysteries of good and evil and human motivations. Dead Girl Blues, Block’s first full-length work for a number of years, launches with a gut-wrenching tale of evil, and then settles into an ooze of tension: will justice prevail or will evil recur or is there another available path? Written in a voice at once deadpan and endlessly reflective, the tale ratchets up tension not through action but through dialogue (and Block is superb at this) and rumination. In the end, I was not sure whether Dead Girl Blues resolved satisfactorily, and part of the philosophical heft of the book is just that quandary. In conclusion, not typical noir at all, not a pell-mell thriller, but a slow-burn, tense read best savoured.”
What can I say? I just felt the need to share that with you. Now go load up your Kindle with Matthew Scudder. You can thank me later.
Cheers,
David Trevor for
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
July 23, 2020
THE UNSIGNED BOOKS ARE THE RARE ONES…
Ah, I get it. You’re being ironic.
Well, I suppose so, but the statement’s not that far from the literal truth. There was a good stretch of time, up until perhaps a dozen years ago, when I spent a disproportionate amount of my days and nights inscribing my name on the title pages of my books. I autographed endless stacks of copies at my publishers’ warehouses, toured relentlessly, signed stock at every bookstore that would let me in the door—and, of course, did the deed at no end of readings and signings.
While the point of all this activity sometimes eluded me, I knew it was hugely important to booksellers and their customers. If you collected books, even in the most limited way, you wanted your copies signed. Otherwise they were somehow incomplete.
It was not always thus. The rules keep changing. Once upon a time, most book buyers regarded a dust jacket as no more than a bit of promotional material designed to keep a book clean while it was on a bookstore shelf; when you sat down and read it, you as often as not tossed the thing in the trash.
Book and all? Or just the dust wrapper?
I suppose that woould depend on your reaction to what you read. But even if you did hold on to the jacket, you were unlikely to treat it with reverence. You let it get torn and tattered. You parked your drink on it. It never occurred to you to go out and buy a clear plastic cover to keep the thing pristine.
Some decades ago, that changed utterly—to the point where a book by a collectible author may lose 90% of its value if it loses its jacket, and will very likely descend to the level of a reading copy.
That’s not quite the case with signatures, but it’s close.
I have some unsigned books of yours. I guess that means they’re rare. Does that make them more valuable?
No, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. Colectors still prefer a signed book to an unsigned one. In fact they insist on it.
But with the new book, everything’s changed.
That would be DEAD GIRL BLUES, wouldn’t it?
It would indeed.
Your new novel . You self-published it June 24, and in the month it’s been out it’s been getting some really impressive reviews.
And some negative ones, let’s not forget. Some people don’t like it at all.
Well, you knew that would happen. But most people like it, and some of them have called it your best book ever.
Even as some would call that a low bar.
Oh, cool it with the self-deprecating crap, will you? I know people like it and I know it’s selling briskly. Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy the book’s success?
Um—
And what’s actually changed, anyway? The unsigned copies are suddenly more valuable?
No, and they’re not even scarce. With Dead Girl Blues, virtually all copies of the book are unsigned—and will remain that way. It was published in the middle of a pandemic, and while every author hopes his book will go viral, this is not what I had in mind. I stopped book tours years ago, but these days I hardly ever set foot outside the house. I’m certainly not going to bookstores, or making public appearances, and I’ve never allowed people to send me books for signing.
So if I want a signed copy, I guess I’m screwed.
Not necessarily.
Oh? Do tell.
First, a quick survey of the forms in which Dead Girl Blues is available.
1. The ebook is for sale at Amazon and most other online platforms for $9.99.
2. The paperback is widely available from Amazon and other online booksellers for $14.99. Bookstores may order copies via Ingram’s Lightning Source division.
3. The Case Laminate hardcover (aka library binding) is available from Amazon and other online booksellers for $24.99. Again, bookstores and libraries may order copies via Ingram’s Lightning Source division.
4. German and Italian editions, translated by Sepp Leeb and Luigi Garlaschelli respectively, are available in ebook and paperback editions from Amazon and elsewhere.
5. The Tantor Audiobook, voiced by Peter Berkrot, is widely available; here are links for Amazon and Audible.
I know all that. What about getting a signed copy?
Sorry, I just wanted to lay the groundwork. The Mysterious Bookshop is the only mystery bookstore remaining in New York, and even after I stopped touring it was the one place where I continued to appear for signings. In addition to launching new books there, I would contrive to show up regularly to sign stock.
And now they’re able to supply signed copies of the hardcover edition of Dead Girl Blues at the list price of $24.99. Just yesterday I signed 40 books for which they’d already accepted orders, and did so without leaving my apartment; a chap from the bookshop brought the books to my building; the concierge accepted them and put them on the elevator; I took them off the elevator, signed them, and returned them the same way—and they’re now on their way to collectors.
But if those forty books are already gone—
The whole operation went smoothly enough for us to repeat it. The Mysterious Bookshop has reopened the title for orders, and they’ll be able to accept new orders through the end of the month, at which time they’ll place their final order; as soon as the books they order get to New York, we’ll repeat the process described above. I’ll sign them and put them on the elevator to the lobby, an emissary from the bookshop will retrieve them and take them back to the store—and, if you got your order in on time, you’ll shortly receive your copy.
Should I order online? Or would I be best advised to pick up the phone?
Either way should work. Personally, I’d give them a call at 212.587.1011.
But first let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’ll sign as many copies as they get orders for by the end of the month.
Right.
And Mysterious Bookshop isn’t marking them up? The price stays at $24.99?
Right again.
And these are hardcover books. But they don’t have dust jackets.
Right twice more, by golly. What would be printed on the dust jacket is instead printed directly on the glossy hard cover, art and text and all. And that leads into what I want to talk about next, which is indeed Library Bindings.
They call them that because libraries have always been fond of them; indeed, when a library book needs to be rebound, that’s generally been the kind of binding it would get. They’re durable, they’re attactive, and you don’t have a dust jacket to worry about.
When I first stuck my toe in the waters of self-publishing, I was limited to ebooks. Then paperback publication became an option, and now everything I self-publish is in that state as well.
More recently, I’ve been able to publish hardcovers, and at present the following titles are thus available in library binding: Dead Girl Blues, of course, along with The Burglar in Short Order, The Darkling Halls of Ivy, Generally Speaking, and Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails.
There are other candidates for Library Binding treatment. Some of my books for writers, for example, and some anothologies and short story collections. I publish the three Scudder novels I’ve been able to wrest away from the original publisher, and I think they might succeed in this form. But I don’t think every backlist title is suitable. I can’t think libraries will rush to order hardcover copies of High School Sex Club, say, or Gigolo Johnny Wells.
You know what? That’s enough for today. I’ve spent the whole newsletter telling you how to get your hands on a signed copy of Dead Girl Blues, and that’s as much of my space and your time as I really need to waste.
I wish you well. I wish us all well.
Cheers,
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
July 3, 2020
DEAD GIRL BLUES—good news and, well…
My new book is off to an explosive start, and has taken only a week to reach 19 reviews on Amazon. I’d like to share a favorite, but it strikes me as only fair to balance it off with the words of a reader whose judgment is a good deal less laudatory.
So let’s begin with the verdict of Craig, of Lakeland, Tennessee, who gives DEAD GIRL BLUES five stars:
“How many of us can cross a forbidden line once and never step over it again?”
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
[image error]“A man walks into a bar, he picks up a woman, then he rapes and murders her — but not necessarily in that sequence.
“‘Rape and murder, while frequent companions, don’t always take place in that order. Which is to say I was neither the first nor the last man to kill a girl first and [violate] her afterward.
“‘I’d blundered into a crime, blundered through it, and blundered out of it, with nothing beyond dumb luck guiding my footsteps… How many of us can cross a forbidden line once and never step over it again?’
“This novel is steeped in the traditions of noir, but it is not a traditional crime novel. It is not primarily about the commission of the crime. It is not about the police hunting for the killer. It is not even, strictly speaking, about the aftermath of the whole event.
“It is the story of what the man does with the rest of his life, over the next fifty years. How does he go on after an act like that? Does he wallow in guilt? Does he forgive himself? What rituals does he develop to subvert and sublimate his strange sexual urges? Does he find a path to contribute positively to his family and society? Does he kill again? Does he get caught?
“Let me say upfront: If this book does not win an Edgar Award, then they should stop giving the darn things out.
“I’ll even go one step further: This novel deserves consideration for a Pulitzer Prize.
“In a very unique way, using the tropes of a long-established genre, this nuanced character-driven drama examines an overlooked aspect of the universal human condition, that single facet of our sin-filled nature responsible for many of history’s atrocities–from human sacrifice to slavery and the Holocaust, even the killing of George Floyd at the hands of four white cops. It is a frank exploration of the human mind’s ability to rationalize, justify, minimize, and ultimately accept any behavior, no matter how abhorrent.
“It is a book that also celebrates the bond of families, the power of confession and forgiveness–even when that forgiveness is only imagined or proffered by individuals who have no right to do so and may be acting out of selfishness.
“At one point, while the man contemplates an act of atrocity even greater than his first crime, he reflects, ‘I’ve learned that it’s prudent for me to do what this quasi-conscience prompts me to do. It’s in my interest, and I’m able to act in my own interest and override contrary impulses. In fact I’ve done so for long enough that I’m barely aware of those impulses…. I’ve given a good performance. I’ve even managed at times to convince myself.’
[image error]“Where does this book rank in the Lawrence Block oeuvre, which now stands at 209 books? I think it sits at the very top, alongside When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. It has been years since I was so absorbed by a single character that I (literally) could not put the book down until I finished it in the wee hours of the morning.
“This feels like the culmination of several ideas, characters and stories that Lawrence Block has been working towards for decades. I feel the progenitor of this narrator was a character from a much older book, A Stab in the Dark (1981). The structure owes a lot to Resume Speed (2016) and perhaps also Donald Westlake’s Memory.”
Well, doesn’t that gladden a writer’s heart? Indeed it does, and it’s tempting to let it go at that, or to drop in another five-star encomium. (I have a sufficiency to choose from. Of the 19 reviews, 17 award DGB five stars. Another gives it four.)
But how would that provide you with a fair and balanced view? No, what I’ll do is quote, complete and unedited and unabridged, this one-star review by William Styron, of Medford, New Jersey:
[image error]“not a prude but it’s a disgusting book from a one great writer”
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2020
“There is little to no ,distance betwee\n demented narrator and author.. What happened to Lawrence Block ?”
I ask myself that very question more often than you might think. And if this is indeed the William Styron who wrote Sophie’s Choice and Darkness Visible, I can only bow my head in shame.
Oh well…
July 2, 2020
“Touched in equal parts with genius and sin…”
Ethan Iverson, when he’s not playing the piano, is apt to be reading crime fiction—and writing eloquently and incisively about it. (His new survey of Rex Stout’s body of work is remarkable.) Here’s what he’s now posted:
“One of the new best novels I’ve read in years is Lawrence Block’s Dead Girl Blues. I wrote a five-star Amazon review:
“DEAD GIRL BLUES is a surprising late triumph: one of a kind, touched in equal parts with genius and sin. The author has been heading this way for a while — probably his whole life — but recent sensationalist tales like GETT[image error]ING OFF (2011), THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES (2015), RESUME SPEED (2016) and A TIME TO SCATTER STONES (2019) now seem like sketches for the real deal. Donald E. Westlake shared a lifelong friendship with Block. For me, the dark standalone THE AX is Westlake’s masterpiece; when the dust settles, I suspect I will give the same honor to DEAD GIRL BLUES. Not for the faint-hearted. If you have any trigger warnings around, put them on this book. Put ’em *all* on.”
And he adds (and I quite agree), “If you love the arts, don’t hesitate to leave thoughtful praise online when you can. As we all know, the “discourse” these days is heavily weighted towards politics, protest, and the endless amplification of bad news. Protest is valuable, but life is more than protest. Again: If you love the arts, don’t hesitate to leave thoughtful praise online when you can. It does make a difference.”
July 1, 2020
More than you need to know about DEAD GIRL BLUES:
First of all, let me tell you that the book is off to a genuinely gratifying start. Self-publishing anything recalls what Don Marquis said of bringing out a volume of poetry—it’s like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
But in the weeks since it came out, Dead Girl Blues has already had more of an echo than I’d expected, and it’s been selling copies at a faster rate than my previous adventures in self-publishing, and for all of that I have all of y’all to thank.
Now for a bare-bones newsletter. I’ve some things to tell you, and I’ll number them to create the illusion of system and order:
1. Where to buy the ebook: If this wretched pandemic has had any good effect, besides making parents aware of the extreme importance of schools and teachers, it’s the shot in the arm it’s given the ebook industry. What could better suit a world of locked-down folks desperate for something to read? You shop and order without leaving your desk, and you start reading immediately, without even having to walk to the mailbox.
Click here to buy the $9.99 DEAD GIRL BLUES ebook:
amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.com.au (and all other Amazon platforms worldwide)
Barnes & Noble Apple Books Thalia Vivlio Scribd
2. Where to buy the printed book: It’s not as easy as it might be. Even if you find a bookstore open and accessible, you won’t find DEAD GIRL BLUES on its shelves. But we’ve been able to publish the printed book, as a library-binding hardcover volume @ $24.99 and a paperback @ $14.99.
Here’s where to order it:
amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.com.au (and all other Amazon platforms worldwide)
Barnes & Noble IndieBound Bookshop.org
3. Where to buy the audiobook: I’m not sure what effect the present health crisis has had on audio sales. The medium has aways been a favorite of commuters and road warriors, and listening to a gripping novel is certainly safer than texting with somebody you just met on Match.com—safer in more ways than one. Most of us are driving less, but we’re also discovering that audio can be a nice changed of pace, and that reading with your ears can save wear and tear on one’s eyes.
Happily, Tantor Audio enlisted Peter Berkrot to voice DEAD GIRL BLUES. One reviewer writes, “The narrator was spot on. He voiced the character better than I could have imagined him. Like many a stellar narrator, his vocal choices enhanced the story without getting in the way.” Another adds, “Peter Berkrot did a great job with the narration. You can almost hear him grimace through some of the more visceral scenes. He brings the first-person viewpoint to life, at once making one forget that it’s a contemplative psychopath telling the tale and giving voice to the savagery he is capable of.”
Here’s where to buy it:
audible.com amazon.com audiobooks.com
4. Where to buy the German and Italian editions: June 24th was a particularly eventful publication day. That was the book’s on-sale date in print, ebook, and audio—and not only in the English language. Due to the shoulder-to-the-wheel energy of translators Sepp Leeb and Luigi Garlaschelli, and the resolve and resourcefulness of Design & Production Goddess Jaye Manus, DEAD GIRL BLUES was loosed upon the world in three languages at once.
As you’ll see, Luigi and Sepp translated everything but the title; we decided to retain the English wording and add Edizione Italiana or Deutsche Ausgabe. Both books are widely available as ebooks, and increasingly available in paperback editions.
Here are some links to them:
amazon.com amazon.it amazon.de
(and all other Amazon platforms worldwide)
Weltbild Thalia Barnes & Noble Kobo Hugendubel
Hey, can I get a word in edgewise here? See, what I really want is an autographed copy.
Well, as my late mother-in-law used to say, “People in hell want ice water.” I’ve occasionally observed that, with many of my titles, the unsigned copies are the scarce ones, but that’s not likely to be the case for DEAD GIRL BLUES. In these virus-laden days I barely leave the house, and I’m certainly not going anywhere for appearances or signings. And I never allow anyone to send me books for signing.
5…BUT I have somehow contrived to sign a limited number of hardcover copies for The Mysterious Bookshop. The link’s to their order page, and you’ll find a great stock of other signed books of mine on their site as well. Please note that their supply of the new book is limited, so if you’d like to lock in a signed copy of DEAD GIRL BLUES, you might want to pick up the phone: (800) 352-2840.
6. Gosh, what’s the number six doing there? Because that, I do believe, is that. I hope you’ll read the book—with your eyes or your ears, in one language or another. And, if you do, I hope you enjoy it. And, um, don’t feel obliged to keep your enjoyment and enthusiasm a secret. Tell your friends—including the ones you haven’t met yet, by blogging about it and dropping a review on Amazon or Goodreads or Audible or, well, all of the above. The book’s been well received, with 14 reviews on Amazon in the first week, but it turns out that DEAD GIRL BLUES is a genuine star queen. You know how a woman can’t have too many earrings? Turns out it’s the same thing with stars. Who knew?
Cheers,
[image error]
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
June 29, 2020
Bookreporter on DEAD GIRL BLUES
…a brilliant hybrid of a crime novel and first-person psychological study where the subject attempts — not always successfully — to analyze himself. In the meantime, there is a clock that ticks faintly in the background across the years and threatens to chime. You will want to be there if and when it does.
June 23, 2020
Thomas Pluck on DEAD GIRL BLUES
This review appeared today in Criminal Element, and it’s just too good to keep to myself…
“Lawrence Block has been writing for over sixty years, and he’s written everything from parlor mysteries solved by an affable burglar to the hardest of hard-boiled detective fiction starring Matt Scudder. Additionally, he has published a few bushels of memorable short stories including an Edgar winner only a few years ago, and a series about a hitman who is both sociopathic and damn good company—at least on the page. Now, after he’s given each of his beloved characters a capstone, he’s written a book that he’s decided to publish himself, for his own reasons. Rather than paraphrase the man’s words—a foolish endeavor when he has such a way with them—I’ll share the article he suggests you read before picking up his latest book.
“You can read that now, or at your leisure, or never, and still enjoy Dead Girl Blues, as I did. But be warned, this is the darkest journey he’s taken us on since the double whammy of Matt Scudder novels All the Flowers are Dying and Hope to Die. Block has a knack for writing the psychopath, inhabiting the mind of the human predator who walks among us and only shows his true face when it will be the last thing a victim ever sees:
THIS IS WHERE a person would say, And then everything went black. Or maybe red, like looking at the world through blood.
Or, And that’s the last thing I remember.
Maybe they’re telling the truth, maybe everything goes black for them, maybe that’s really the last thing they remember.
Different for me. You could say it’s the first thing I remember. Pulling into the roadhouse lot, ordering the beer, buying her the drink—those are hazy memories, filled in with my knowledge of what must have happened.
But the minute the lights went out for her was the minute they came on for me.
“Thus begins the latest novel from Lawrence Block, with a drifter in a roadhouse committing an unforgivable crime. And what makes it uniquely a Block novel is that it never goes where you expect. This isn’t a serial killer novel or like anything I’ve read before. The closest it comes to is Charles Willeford—who Block knew, and wrote about here in detail—as a sociopath moves among us and changes his colors like a chameleon, and keeps them for so long he isn’t sure if he’s a still a leopard underneath his spots.
“That article about Willeford asks, “Can a self-diagnosed sociopath be at the same time an intensely moral person?” And Dead Girl Blues is in some ways an exploration of the answer. In my mind, it forms a loose trilogy with his novels Getting Off, where Kit Tolliver decides to “re-virginize” herself by killing every man she’s had sex with, and The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, which takes a familiar noir tale of sex, jealousy, and murder, and tweaks it in a very daring fashion. That remains one of my favorite crime novels because it takes the moral compass we’ve carried with us since our time in the Scouts and hurls it into the sea.
“It’s easy to see two lovers bonding over a crime and defending one another to the bitter end. In Dead Girl Blues, he takes a bolder tack. I don’t want to spoil the suspense of a novel that depends on it. I’ll admit that at first, I balked; then I remembered how many people in the news behaved exactly the same way, to my infuriation.
“There are expectations in crime fiction. Our genre has been called the most conservative, in part because of the description of the detective as a moral policeman who brings the world back to order after the chaos of murder. Want to polarize the audience? Write a brilliant novel such as In the Woods, with an ambiguous ending. We are often the crowd swarmed around the gibbet, eager for blood.
“What Lawrence Block does with Dead Girl Blues is perhaps what he does best: he tells us a story in the mellifluous voice we’ve been reading for decades, one that’s made us laugh and then takes us on a tour of hell, giving us the most chillingly honest depiction of a sociopath and his family ever put to print. They discuss things that I’ve heard after dinner in a dimly lit restaurant, or by the fire at a friend’s house over drinks, but never on the page. Until now. At a time when a book can rarely captivate me for more than a chapter before I check the news for the latest horror, I read Dead Girl Blues in two sittings, rapt. That’s saying something. If it turns out to be his last book, it would be a capstone to an incredible career. But I hope it’s just another damn good book from Block.”
~Thomas Pluck
THOMAS PLUCK on DEAD GIRL BLUES:
This review appeared today in Criminal Element, and it’s just too good to keep to myself…
“Lawrence Block has been writing for over sixty years, and he’s written everything from parlor mysteries solved by an affable burglar to the hardest of hard-boiled detective fiction starring Matt Scudder. Additionally, he has published a few bushels of memorable short stories including an Edgar winner only a few years ago, and a series about a hitman who is both sociopathic and damn good company—at least on the page. Now, after he’s given each of his beloved characters a capstone, he’s written a book that he’s decided to publish himself, for his own reasons. Rather than paraphrase the man’s words—a foolish endeavor when he has such a way with them—I’ll share the article he suggests you read before picking up his latest book.
“You can read that now, or at your leisure, or never, and still enjoy Dead Girl Blues, as I did. But be warned, this is the darkest journey he’s taken us on since the double whammy of Matt Scudder novels All the Flowers are Dying and Hope to Die. Block has a knack for writing the psychopath, inhabiting the mind of the human predator who walks among us and only shows his true face when it will be the last thing a victim ever sees:
THIS IS WHERE a person would say, And then everything went black. Or maybe red, like looking at the world through blood.
Or, And that’s the last thing I remember.
Maybe they’re telling the truth, maybe everything goes black for them, maybe that’s really the last thing they remember.
Different for me. You could say it’s the first thing I remember. Pulling into the roadhouse lot, ordering the beer, buying her the drink—those are hazy memories, filled in with my knowledge of what must have happened.
But the minute the lights went out for her was the minute they came on for me.
“Thus begins the latest novel from Lawrence Block, with a drifter in a roadhouse committing an unforgivable crime. And what makes it uniquely a Block novel is that it never goes where you expect. This isn’t a serial killer novel or like anything I’ve read before. The closest it comes to is Charles Willeford—who Block knew, and wrote about here in detail—as a sociopath moves among us and changes his colors like a chameleon, and keeps them for so long he isn’t sure if he’s a still a leopard underneath his spots.
“That article about Willeford asks, “Can a self-diagnosed sociopath be at the same time an intensely moral person?” And Dead Girl Blues is in some ways an exploration of the answer. In my mind, it forms a loose trilogy with his novels Getting Off, where Kit Tolliver decides to “re-virginize” herself by killing every man she’s had sex with, and The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, which takes a familiar noir tale of sex, jealousy, and murder, and tweaks it in a very daring fashion. That remains one of my favorite crime novels because it takes the moral compass we’ve carried with us since our time in the Scouts and hurls it into the sea.
“It’s easy to see two lovers bonding over a crime and defending one another to the bitter end. In Dead Girl Blues, he takes a bolder tack. I don’t want to spoil the suspense of a novel that depends on it. I’ll admit that at first, I balked; then I remembered how many people in the news behaved exactly the same way, to my infuriation.
“There are expectations in crime fiction. Our genre has been called the most conservative, in part because of the description of the detective as a moral policeman who brings the world back to order after the chaos of murder. Want to polarize the audience? Write a brilliant novel such as In the Woods, with an ambiguous ending. We are often the crowd swarmed around the gibbet, eager for blood.
“What Lawrence Block does with Dead Girl Blues is perhaps what he does best: he tells us a story in the mellifluous voice we’ve been reading for decades, one that’s made us laugh and then takes us on a tour of hell, giving us the most chillingly honest depiction of a sociopath and his family ever put to print. They discuss things that I’ve heard after dinner in a dimly lit restaurant, or by the fire at a friend’s house over drinks, but never on the page. Until now. At a time when a book can rarely captivate me for more than a chapter before I check the news for the latest horror, I read Dead Girl Blues in two sittings, rapt. That’s saying something. If it turns out to be his last book, it would be a capstone to an incredible career. But I hope it’s just another damn good book from Block.”
~Thomas Pluck
