Well, that’s vague.
I suppose it is. But I’d rather think of it as inclusive. I have a batch of topics to expound upon, and their only common denominator is, um, my humble self.
So here you have it, a little of this and a little of that, numbered to provide the illusion of order. Which leads us to—
1. The Burglar in Short Order. “What a treat!” Booklist rejoiced. “Catnip to Bernie disciples!” You can 
read a full description on the Amazon product page, and while you’re at it you can pre-order the ebook before its March 2 release and save a dollar. (The price goes up to $6.99 on publication day.)
You can also pre-order the audiobook, narrated by the Voice of Bernie Rhodenbarr, Richard Ferrone. The Subterranean Press trade hardcover will probably be sold out by the time it goes to press, but as of this moment you can still pre-order it.
And, as of today, you can finally pre-order our paperback edition. Like the ebook, its on-sale date is the 2nd of March. And there’ll be a library-binding edition, too, but you can’t order that one yet—although this may have changed between my writing these lines and your reading them. I know, all these options can be confusing, but I figure you’ll be able to get it all sorted out.
It’s a good thing your readers are resourceful.
They’d have to be, wouldn’t they? I’ve noticed, too, that they’re significantly brighter and better looking than average. But let’s move along…
2. Anthologies. If, as Dr. Johnson has told us, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, then surely anthologism is the last resort of the washed-up writer. It allows me to maintain my professional status without actually having to write anything. And I have to say it has its rewards.
I published two anthologies last year, From Sea to Stormy Sea (Pegasus) and At Home in the Dark (Subterranean) and both of them had me beaming with pride this past week, when three outstanding 
stories were selected for the upcoming volume of Otto Penzler’s Best American Mystery Stories, arguably the most prestigious annual collection in the field. Tom Franklin‘s “On Little Terry Road” and John Sandford‘s “Girl With an Ax,” both from FSTSS, got the nod from editor C J Box, as did Wallace Stroby‘s Crissa Stone story for AHITD, “Nightbound.”
Now I can’t promise you’ll be getting a preview of next year’s BAMS, but it wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of the stories in The Darkling Halls of Ivy makes the cut. Look at the list of contributors: David Morrell, Reed Farrel Coleman, Jane Hamilton, Warren Moore, David Levien, Jor R.Lansdale, A J Hartley, Ian Rankin,Tom Straw, Xu Xi, Peter Lovesey, Owen King, Gar Anthony Haywood, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, John Lescroart, Seanan McGuire, and Tod Goldberg.
Wow.
Exactly. Sometime in May, Subterranean Press will publish a 500-copy hardcover limited edition. You can pre-order now, and I’d recommend it, as their limited editions tend to be fully subscribed well in advance of publication. (They won’t be offering a hardcover trade edition, just the limited.) I’ll be doing an ebook and paperback.
And you’ll let us know when they’re available?
Count on it. For now, though, let’s move on to…
3. Audio. And more good news—audio rights to both of the books I published late last year have been acquired 
by Tantor Audio. Generally Speaking, which collects all 33 of the columns I wrote for Linn’s Stamp News, along with half a dozen stamp-oriented excerpts from Keller novels, has been moving nicely and picking up a string of heartening 5-star reviews.
The consensus seems to be that, while the book’s irresistible to stamp collectors, you don’t have to have a philatelic bone in your body to find Generally Speaking absorbing and enjoyable. (Amazon gives it a high ranking in the Historical Essays category.) Similarly, you don’t need to be quite as obsessive-compulsive as its author to enjoy Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails.
But it wouldn’t hurt.
You may be right. Still, I’m absolutely delighted both books will soon be available in audio. The hardcover and paperback versions of Generally Speaking have been outselling the ebook by a wide margin, which suggests to me that stamp collectors are happiest with something that’s physically collectible.
So what do they want with audio?
They can listen to it while they’re working with their stamps. A pair of tongs in one hand, a magnifier in the other, and something engagingly philatelic to listen to—really, what could be more appropriate?
And folks can listen to Hunting Buffalo while they’re stuck in their cars, driving around the back roads of America, lost and hungry and tired…
There you go. Sounds good to me. And if the audiobook ends while they’ve still got miles of blue highway in front of them, I’ve got other things they can listen to.
For instance, here’s UK reviewer Colman Keane on Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man: “As per usual I mostly listened to this one on the commute to work. I was tickled pink and laughed like a drain and may have attracted some strange looks from fellow motorists stuck in traffic around me. A real mood lifter and fun piece of writing.”
Click here to read all of Col’s insightful review. “As ever,” he concludes, “Theo Holland‘s narration is pitch perfect.” Col won’t get an argument from me on that point. Ronald Rabbit is the tenth book of mine that Theo has voiced, and he’s at work now on an eleventh—Cinderella Sims, an 
early book reborn in the Classic Crime Library. It’ll be a while before the audiobook is good to go, but my Goddess of Design and Production has already prepared the cover—and isn’t it pretty?
My very first novel, Shadows, concerned a young woman’s sexual-identity crisis in late-1950s Greenwich Village. PJ Morgan voiced the audiobook, and audible.com just posted Peachfront’s 4+-star review: “The narration is great, and the description of the angst and 
attitudes of the time feel pretty true to life.” Nice—and it helps offset this earlier one by Anita: “Ugh! So disappointed!”
I should tell you that it was my story that disappointed Anita, not PJ’s narration. PJ has now turned to another early book of mine, Passport to Peril, a novel of romantic suspense in which young American folksinger Ellen Cameron gets caught up in a tangled web of espionage in the west of Ireland. The original publisher, Lancer Books, billed it as in the tradition of Helen MacInnes, and my byline read Anne Campbell Clark, a name I always felt had a nice ring to it, 
albeit one I never had occasion to use again. Maybe Anita will like this one better. For my part, I’m eager to hear what PJ does with it. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
You may already know Michael Bonner’s work, speaking in my voice to bring Step By Step and The Liar’s Bible to life. (Or should I say to sound? Words on a page are alive, aren’t they? Well, not all of them, I suppose, and it may depend who writes them, but…oh, never mind.)
Whatever you call it, Michael’s done commendable work—and he shows no signs of slowing down. He’s just wrapped up The Liar’s Companion, and we’re both waiting for it to make its way through ACX’s labyrinthine approval process. That’s actually not a bad thing, helping to assure the technical quality of self-published audio, and Companion should be on the sales racks at Amazon and Audible in a week or two.
Ever since I began self-publishing audiobooks, I’ve wanted to issue Threesome. It’s the fifth Jill Emerson book, and something of a tour de force; the three titular protagonists, if you will, have decided to write in alternating chapters an autobiographical novel of their relationship. I don’t think I ever had more fun writing anything, and it’s evidently served up a good time to 
readers over the years, but how could I make it happen in audio? It absolutely has to have a male voice for Harry’s chapters and female voices for Rhoda and Priss.
Problem solved! The team of Dolores McDougal and Bill Weeden have risen to the occasion, and before too long their voices (well, two of hers and one of his) will make it very clear to all of y’all that three is not a crowd. (Which, as it happens, is the title of yet another book of mine. Never mind.) Threesome may be a while coming, but you’ll note that we already have the cover.
That’s a lot of audio. Are you aiming to bring out audio editions of all your books?
I hope so. It’s a wonderful medium—and I speak as one who’s not much of a listener myself. But I’ve watched the world of audio develop from abridgements on cassette sold primarily in truck stops to today’s boom time of unabridged downloadable audio.
You’d call it a boom time, would you?
I think that’s a fair description, and—
Would that be a sonic boom?
Ugh, as Anita might put it. I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that, and we’ll move right along. To a birthday present I’ll be giving myself a few months from now on the 24th of June:
4. Dead Girl Blues. I honestly thought I was done with the writing of novels. It’s been a few years since I last forced upon the world what the poet Randall Jarrell defined as “a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” More recently I’ve written novellas and short stories, and they certainly had enough wrong with them to fit Jarrell’s formulation, but they didn’t have the length.
I figured that was okay. When you’re too old to buy green bananas, it’s probably time to leave novel-writing to younger and more energetic writers.
Go know.
Sometime in the fall of 2018 I sat down and wrote the opening of a short story. It grew some, and figured to wind up somewhere in the novelette/novella range. Maybe twelve or fifteen thousand words. Maybe as much as twenty thousand.
There was a point when i put it aside, as one sometimes does, and another point where I decided I would probably not go back to it, because I wasn’t sure I liked it enough to go on. And then one day I took the time to read over what I written, and decided I liked it after all. So I wrote a little more, and then I began sitting down to it for an hour or so every morning, and by the time I was done with it and it with me, the creature had somehow grown to a length of 52,000 words.
That’s a novel.
You bet it is. It’s not a long novel, but it’s a novel. A prose narrative of some length, for sure. And God knows it’s got plenty wrong with it.
But, see, I like it.
Even so, I can see why the publishers my agent showed it to were not eager to pay a high price for it. I don’t think it’s terribly commercial. And there are elements that will put off a lot of readers.
Oh, come on.Your readers have been through a lot with you. How are you going to put them off now?
It’s a first-person narrative, the journal of the lead character. In the first chapter, he tells how he picked up a woman at a roadhouse and raped her and killed her.
Oh. Well, I suppose some particularly sensitive souls might find that upsetting. Rapes her and kills her?
And, um, not in that order.
Oh.
But, see, this is a book that doesn’t owe me a thing. I hadn’t planned to write it, so it doesn’t have to bring in money to justify the time I spent on it. Dead Girl Blues is its own justification. I’ll publish it myself, on my 82nd birthday, and all of y’all can buy it or not buy it, read it or not read it, and like it or not like it.
Because you like it, and that’s what counts.
It’s not the only thing that counts, but yeah, it does. And I’m not the only person who likes it. I’ve shown it to some friends whose opinions I trust, and they told me that Dead Girl Blues is one of the very best things I’ve ever written. And then they added that they could see where it might have problems.
So come June 24th, after a month or two on pre-order, I’ll bring out Dead Girl Blues in ebook and paperback and hardcover, and I hope you like it.
But it’s fine with you if we don’t, right?
It pretty much has to be. I read it over last week before I sent it to my aforementioned Goddess, along with some notes on cover design, and I realized DGB was exactly the book I wanted it to be. And how often does 
that happen? And what more could an old man possibly ask for?
And that, I’m afraid, is going to have to be it for now. I’d planned to include some news about Spanish and Italian translations, but it’ll keep; I’d rather give the subject adequate space in a future newsletter than short shrift in this one.
Two things, before you or I forget: (1) If you want the ebook of The Burglar in Short Order, click on it and pre-order it now. You’ll save a buck and make sure your order is one of the first filled. (2) If you’ve been considering “A Time and a Place for Writing,” my Tuesdays-and-Thursdays workshop at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, you should know that enrollments have passed the minimum threshold, which means the class is a definite go—and that there were still a few slots open when last I checked.
Cheers,
