Oh, really?

Is something wrong?

“Rabbits Rabbits?” Look, I get it. It’s the first of the month, and you always tweet that curious phrase because you seem to think it brings a month’s worth of good luck. Do you honestly believe it makes a difference?

What could it hurt?

Well, it might keep people from taking you seriously.

If only. But I’ve been busier than the proverbial one-armed paperhanger—

The one with the hives?

That’s the very chap. I’ve been busier than your average bee, speaking of hives. I’m wrapping up the semester here at Newberry, packing for a return trip to New York, and up to my pupik in writing projects. So if I can combine my monthly greeting with my long overdue newsletter, why not?

And could you cool it with the interruptions, at least for a little while? I’ve got a batch of things to tell you, and I’m all too easily sidetracked.

1. This teaching gig. As many of you know, I’ve been serving for a semester as Writer-in-Residence at South Carolina’s Newberry College, conducting a Fiction Writing Workshop and a Lit course in The Pleasures of Crime Fiction. I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree, and I was sure I was in way over my head without a clue what I was doing, and that may well have been the case.

Nevertheless, I persisted.

The crime fiction course didn’t work terribly well, although students discovered some new writers and enjoyed much of what they read. Reading for enjoyment is a neat trick for college students, who are already saddled with no end of things they have to read whether they like it or not. There are also inescapable differences in average attention span in our internet age. (And it’s not only true for the young. Years ago, I could sit down with a thick novel and be entirely absorbed by it for hours on end. Nowadays, even with something I’m really enjoying, I can’t seem to go ten minutes without picking up my  phone.)

More to the point, I found out I’m not comfortable sitting in front of a class and imparting information to them. I think a good informative lecture is a wonderful thing, and I can enjoy it from the audience, but I don’t want to be the guy at the podium. So, while my students liked the class well enough, or were diplomatic enough to say they did, it’s not something I’d care to repeat.

The fiction workshop, on the other hand, was a triumph—perhaps because I did almost nothing. We met twice a week, and began each session with 15+ minutes of free writing—by hand, with pen and notebook. (I supply a one-sentence prompt to get them started. A favorite was Since nobody’s going to read this crap anyway, I’m just going to run on about everything I can’t stand about my life.) I set a kitchen timer, and when it rings we share some about how it went, but nobody reads aloud, and I never see what they’ve written.

Then I may have them do an interactive process from Write For Your Life, or talk about their ongoing projects. And then they’ll boot up their laptops, and for a half hour or so they’ll peck away at the keys, working on whatever that project may be.

And then you read and critique their work?

Rarely. Only if they ask. See, what difference could it possibly make if I like or don’t like their work? And what could be more liberating than knowing they can write whatever they want without having to risk anybody’s disapproval?

At first it felt odd, just sitting there and watching them work. Wasn’t it an abdication of professorial responsibility? And maybe it was, but here’s the thing—they really pounded away at those keys, really got words down. The dirty little secret about most writing courses is that most students don’t get much written. My students were writing like crazy.

One young man began and completed a full-length play, and one woman came to class with the start of a novel and is now nearing the end of her first draft. Another fellow, with a work ethic that would impress Stephen King, has been toiling away at what he sees as the first volume in an eight-part series.

But what’s important is that everybody’s been writing. I bring some expertise to the table, I’ve been writing professionally for over sixty years, but all I can really do is provide the space for them to begin the lifelong process of discovering themselves as writers. And they’re doing just that, and I don’t have to look over their shoulders to know they’re doing exactly what they should be doing.

It all sounds kinda Zen.

You want to know something? I still wonder whether or not I’m doing anything useful. But my students are happy. In fact a couple of them got Humanities Department approval and classroom space for a once-a-week workshop this coming spring. No leader—since I won’t be here, they’ll stage it themselves.

In other words, who needs Professor Block?

Exactly. Which may make it awkward when I come back next fall.

You’re coming back?

Like a coal to Newcastle. Like a bad penny to Capistrano. Lynne and I surprised ourselves by falling in love with the college and the town, so much so that we’ve leased an apartment on Main Street just blocks from the Newberry Opera House. We’ll show up in mid-February to furnish it and get an early start on spring, and I’ll be able to use it as a one-man writer’s colony if I ever feel like writing something.

Which, knowing you, seems likely.

It does, doesn’t it? And come fall I’ll offer the fiction workshop again, along with an experiment, a writing course for non-writers. Self-Realization Through Writing is what I’m calling it, and like the fiction workshop, it’s one where what the students get out of it is in direct proportion to what they put into it.

“Professor Block, he’s one weird dude.”

And a busy one, as I said, so let’s ease on out of the Groves of Academe. Which brings us to:

2. Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails. A few years back I gathered up the bulk of my nonfiction writing dealing with crime fiction, slapped it between real and virtual covers, and called it The Crime of Our Lives. I did this mainly to give the work a slightly longer shelf life than newspapers and magazines could provide, and to my great satisfaction it’s received a good critical reception even as it’s become a steady seller. (In fact, Richard Neer has completed his very engaging narration of TCOOL, and as soon as it clears ACX’s quality check I’ll let y’all know how to order it.)

While I was putting it together, I was planning a companion volume—a very mixed bag of my essays and articles that didn’t concern fictional crime. If I hadn’t had a back burner, I don’t know where I might have put this for the past several years, but that’s where it was when I finally Got To It. I’ll be bringing it out sometime in early 2020 as an ebook and POD paperback, and the title article is my American Heritage piece on the Homeric quest Lynne and I embarked on 30 years ago to visit every town, hamlet, and wide place in the road named Buffalo. We were indeed Hunting Buffalo and we still haven’t quite bagged our limit.

Okay, I get that part. But where do the bent nails come in? How did the buffalo bend their nails? Or why did bent nails become your weapon of choice?

Hey, don’t get me started. I had enough trouble explaining all that in the foreword. That’s my title, and the contents range far and wide, almost as if they were bison back in the day. Travel pieces, odes to New York, a numismatic article entitled “Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon…”

You’re making that up.

No, it’s in there, along with 27 other examples of imperishable ephemera. I don’t need to say more about it, not now, because what’s the point? It’ll be a while before you can order it, and I’ll make sure y’all know about it when the time comes. First, though, there’s something else:

3.  Generally Speaking was the title of a column I wrote for three years for Linn’s Stamp News. When I had 25 columns written I made them into an ebook, added A Philatelic Patchwork as a subtitle, and made it eVailable. Eight columns later I found my enthusiasm for a columnist’s life had somehow vanished, so that was the end of that. I still collected with a passion, albeit with less discretionary income than my philatelic hitman Keller brings to the pursuit, but eventually that too faded with the years. When it did, I realized it was time to let my stamps light up the lives of other collectors, and I arranged for the sale of my holdings.

I should publish an expanded edition of Generally Speaking, I told myself. Add those eight columns, and write a decent introduction, and this time offer it as both ebook and paperback. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to do?

It would also be an extremely easy thing to put off doing, and that’s the course I took—until putting HBWBN together freed up space on that back burner. The new edition will have all 33 columns, and it will also have some pertinent philatelic extracts from the five Keller novels, because the lad’s still at it, and he’s always been a more dedicated philatelist than I ever was.

Sounds as though the book has a lot going for it.

Everything but a title. I’m sure I’ll come up with something, and as soon as I do I’ll let you know—along with information ordering it. As I said, there’ll be a paperback and an ebook, and a hardcover is not out of the question.

It’s also going to need a cover, and the one on the current ebook is too lame to show here. My Goddess of Production and Design will help me come up with something irresistible. Meanwhile, I thought we’d usher in December with these rabbit stamps.

But before I forget…

4. There’s more coming. I mentioned Richard Neer’s audiobook of TCOOL; his narration of Spider, Spin Me a Web has been very well received, and if you read with your ears you’ll want them both. Same goes for Michael Bonner’s superb narration; his rendition of Step By Step, my pedestrian memoir, has sparked good sales and great reviews, and he’s finished work on The Liar’s Bible, which should clear quality check at ACX any day.

German readers will be happy to know that Sepp Leeb’s translation of the third Keller book, Kellers Hitparade joins Kellers Metier and Kellers Konkurrent in ebook and paperback. And Stefan Mommertz, who led things  off with Scudder #1, Die Sünden der Väter, has delivered his translation of the long-awaited Scudder #17, A Drop of the Hard Stuff; Ein Schluck vom harten Stoff is the German title, and it should be on sale in a matter of days.

5. I’ve mentioned The Burglar in Short Order, and if you wanted the Subterranean Press signed limited edition I hope you got your pre-order in on time. The limited’s sold out. There are still copies to be had of the equally handsome trade hardcover, but I don’t know how long they’ll last. (We’ll be doing the ebook and paperback ourselves.)

I’ve got other projects with Subterranean, but nothing ready for pre-order yet.

6. And I should close by letting you know that my friend Terry Zobeck has completed work on a bibliography of my work. Jim Seels’s A.S.A.P. Publishing brought out a bibliography in 1993, but Terry’s is a much more ambitious venture; he built on the preliminary work of Ed Kaufman, the late attorney-turned-mystery bookseller, and has somehow compiled a definitive work that lists 199 books, 88 stories and articles that made their initial appearance in books, and an astonishing 409 pieces that first appeared in newspapers and magazines. I suggested the title The Man Who Wrote Too Much, and perhaps I’ll use that for the foreword or afterword Terry has asked me to contribute. (And it’ll raise that second number from 88 to 89, won’t it?)

Terry will probably self-publish the bibliography. When that happens, I’ll let y’all know.

There’s more, but we’ll all have to wait for another newsletter, and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it. I’m not the first person to make this observation, but I doubt there’s anyone to whom it applies more: The harder I work, the behinder I get.