Ideally, something I wrote. Three books of mine came out last month, and let me briefly commend them to your attention. The most recent is Resume Speed, just out in hardcover from Subterranean Press. It’s a novella about a fellow who wakes up one morning in Galbraith ND, packs a bag, and hops on the first bus out of town. He gets off in Cross Creek MT, finds a room and a job and starts a life. I wrote his story a little over a year ago, published the novella as a Kindle Single, and love what Subterranean has done with it now. The 200-copy limited edition sold out in a heartbeat, and the trade edition is going fast at $25, and won’t be reprinted. (In fact, copies may even now be hard to locate.) The ebook, of course, will remain in good supply, as will the suberb audio version narrated by Theo Holland.

I wrote Resume Speed in December of 2015, approximately 55 years after I wrote Sinner Man. As the book’s afterword explains in detail, some eight years passed before my agent was able to foist it off on a low-rent paperback house, where it was published in 1968 under a pen name and a different title. I searched for it, as did Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, and we both came up empty until, like a corpse in a millpond, it bobbed to the surface. Now Hard Case has brought it out—in hardcover, paperback, and ebook, all at once—and the reviews have been so good it’s hard to figure out why the hell Random House didn’t publish it 55 years ago. (They thought about it, as my afterword recounts.) The illustration, you’ll note, is of the audio version, which I heartily recommend; it’s by the Voice of Noir, Mike Dennis.)

The third book is one I didn’t write—except for the introduction and one of the 17 stories. It’s In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by Paintings of Edward Hopper, and it’s received more attention in the media than anything of mine since I first learned to type. Let me feign modesty by assuring you that the concept and the participating writers deserve the lion’s share of the credit—with much of the rest going to Pegasus Books, for backing up their faith in the enterprise by producing a genuinely beautiful book. (It’s available as well in ebook and audio form, but you really want the bound book; even if you’d rather listen to the stories, it’ll enrich the experience to have the physical book—and Hopper’s paintings—in front of you.)

I’ve been hearing rumors of a sequel.

Is that a fact.

That’s my question. Is it?

Well, yeah, but I’m a little reluctant to talk about it at this stage. The working title is Alive in Shape and Color, the contributing writers include most of the Unusual Suspects from In Sunlight or in Shadow, with a few more crashing the party, and the paintings inspiring their stories are the work not of a single artist but of eighteen different artists. I won’t name the writers or the artists, that can wait until the book’s available for pre-order, but I’ll say that I already have over a dozen finished stories in hand, and I couldn’t be happier. Pegasus has the book scheduled for December, and I’ll keep you posted as the date draws nigh.

Meanwhile, I should bring you up to date on our efforts to publish foreign-language editions of some of my books. A week ago I got out a German-language newsletter, detailing what’s available and what’s coming soon. Stefan Mommertz’s translation of the third Matthew Scudder novel, Mitten im Tod, has joined #1—Die Sünden der Väter—and #2—Drei am Haken—as ebook and paperback. Stefan’s at work on #4—A Stab in the Dark—and I’ve arranged with Sepp Leeb to publish his excellent translations from years past. By this year’s end, we hope to have almost all of the Scudder series available.

I speak German but I never got the German-language newsletter. Was bin ich, gehackte Leber?

Wir entschuldigen uns für die Unterlassung. Send an email headed Newsletter—DE to lawbloc@gmail.com and we’ll add you to the German list.

And now a quick round-up of our other titles. In Spanish: La noche y la música, Los ladrones no pueden escoger, Matando a Castro, El Sicario, y Excitación.

In Italian: La Notte e la Musica, Il Ladro nella Biblioteca.

The links are to amazon.com, but all of these titles are available on all Amazon sites. Most are available in both ebook and paperback, but Amazon doesn’t always manage to put both editions on the same page, so you may have to scout around a bit. Eventually I hope to have all of this information on my website, with a page for each language and a full assembly of links, but that will have to wait…

It’ll have to wait, will it? For what?

Well, for me to get back home. In a couple of days my Frequent Companion and I will be flying halfway around the world for a small-ship cruise, with a return date in early February. I don’t expect much in the way of email access while we’re gone, and I’ll be devoting the first several weeks after our return to recovery from jet lag. So it may all take a while.

For now, a few more links to help y’all get through the winter…

If you enjoy reading with your ears, check out my page of audio titles. Audio’s said to be the fastest-growing area in publishing, and it’s certainly growing around here; at last count, I had 90 titles available, and there are more in the works.

Navigating my website can be tricky; there’s a lot of stuff there that’s hard to find. Here, for example, is everything you might want to know about my Collection of Classic Erotica, in ebook and paperback and—sometimes—audio. I can’t even find the Jill Emerson titles on the website, so here’s an Amazon link to the series. Ah, well. Poke around, see what you can find.

Bundle up, keep warm, stay out of drafts.

Cheers,

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

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