BACK UP SIX FEET. THEN READ THIS.
Well, that’s attention-getting.
I’m glad you like it.
I didn’t say I liked it. I said it gets one’s attention. And helps remind people that this is a time when they get to flip-flop back and forth between boredom and terror.
I suppose. But, y’know, I think that’s all we need of that. The dialogue-with-self is useful, and it comes naturally enough, but I’m going to drop it for now. It’s similarly easy when I write fiction to spend a little too much time on banter—Bernie-and-Carolyn, say, or Dot-and-Keller, or Matt-and-Elaine. Easy to let those scenes run on too long, and the reader might find them entertaining, even as I find them a pleasure to write, but somewhere along the way the story gets lost.
This isn’t exactly the same, and it’s certainly less entertaining for all of us, but you see the parallel. And there’s a pandemic raging around us, and I’m cooped up in my apartment (and rather hope you are as well), and had two close friends die within the past month (and hope you’ve been spared that).
A few hours ago I put on my mask and gloves and went to the drugstore, and rather than sit down and wait for my refilled prescription, or go home and come back in ten minutes, I took myself for a fifteen-minute walk. That’s the most I’ve walked in the past six weeks or so, and while I get a good look at closed stores and empty streets from my window, it intensified the experience to see them close up.
I don’t want this to be maudlin, nor do I delude myself into thinking I have any special perspective on The Way Things Are. But I’ll let the foregoing set the table for the few things I think might be worth sharing with you. (And if you don’t agree, well, there’s a reason your keyboard came with a DELETE key.)
1. A Time and a Place for Writing. As some of you will recall, I had a twice-a-week workshop scheduled for April at Brooklyn’s The Center for Fiction. When we pulled the plug in early March, I turned it into a virtual event, with the same schedule—Tuesday and Thursday evenings—but everybody did it at home. No commuting time, no tuition to pay, nobody judging you—and if you cut all your classes, who would know?
I think it went well. Except for a request at the end for an evaluation of the experience, there was nothing to turn in, so I never knew (and don’t need to know) what proportion of the participants did in fact participate, and to what extent. The feedback I got was extremely positive, and quite heartening, but who knows how many elected to keep their disappointment to themselves? Or how many of my twice-weekly emails were deleted upon receipt, or slid away into a spam filter?
Sixty-six writers enrolled, some from the other side of the country, one from Germany. I know that I got something out of the experience. One man suggested I find a way to keep it going, perhaps finding a way to monetize it sufficiently to cover my time. Others said they hoped I’d offer it once again at the Center for Fiction, at some future date when live in-person events are again an option.
And I myself briefly entertained the idea of packaging my emails and some of their feedback and whatever else seemed appropriate and offering the result as an ebook.
But I don’t think so. The emails are repetitive, and to read one after another would cure anyone’s insomnia, even if his name were Evan Tanner. And the useful material in those emails can all be found in Write For Your Life, essentially the textbook for the workshop. Spend $14.99 on the paperback and do it yourself.
As for me, I’m glad to have conducted the workshop, and grateful to all who took part. And who knows? A year from now I may talk myself into having another go at it in some form or another. Right now, though, it looks like One and Done.
2. It hasn’t been all that long since my last newsletter, the one with price reductions on a dozen backlist ebooks. That was my Trusted Assistant’s idea, and I let him draft it and format it and send it out, and I’m beginning to think I should get him to do all my 
newsletters. The books have been flying off Amazon’s virtual shelf. He guaranteed to hold the price at $2.99 through May 15, so you can click here and read the whole thing on my website, and if there’s anything that appeals you have Thursday and Friday to scoop it up. (And if Friday 5/15 has come and gone by the time you read this, you may have a day or two’s grace; there’s often a little lag time between our entering a price change and the new price going live on Amazon.)
David says I should point out that the hottest title of the twelve has been Four Lives at the Crossroads. No idea why. FLATC and its eleven cousins will be priced at $6.99 each when the sale’s over, so that’s a savings of 57.2246%. In round numbers, that is.
3. I have two new books coming out soon, both now available for preorder. The first, on sale May 31, is The Darkling Halls of Ivy, an anthology of stories set in the world of higher education. The book has drawn 
starred reviews in both Booklist and Publishers Weekly, and the credit for that goes to the world-class array of contributing authors. And in Cemetery Dance, Blu Gilliand writes: “The Darkling Halls of Ivy strikes a nice balance of new and established voices, resulting in a solid mix of stories featuring all the backstabbing, tension, jealousy, rage, selfishness, and murderous intent you could ask for. Definitely recommended.”
What’s my secret? Couldn’t be simpler—recruit terrific writers and stay out of their way. Works every time. For the full list of contributors, go to the Subterranean Press page offering their signed-and-numbered deluxe edition. After the lineup has rendered you gobsmacked, pull yourself together and preorder the book, as their editions tend to be fully subscribed by presstime. (Pro tip: Do NOT order the limited edition from Amazon.)
If you want the ebook, the paperback, or the hardcover trade edition, preordering will assure you of an early copy. It’ll also save you a couple of bucks. The ebook is $7.99 now; the price edges up to $9.99 once it’s published. The paperback and hardcover are $14.99 and $24.99, and they’ll probably get an upward adjustment as well.
4. People have been throwing bouquets at Dead Girl Blues. Check out the Amazon book description to read what David Morrell, Tom Straw, Barry N. Malzberg, Lee Goldberg, and Joe R. Lansdale have had to say.
And look at these from Twitter:
Brian Koppelman: “Masterful. Deeply disturbing. Discomfiting. But magnificent.”
Ethan Iverson: “I am an *expert* in Lawrence Block and his latest, Dead Girl Blues, is his best. No foolin’.”
Thomas Pluck: “It makes a sort of trilogy with Getting Off and The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, a master of crime fiction embracing the unexpected. Wow.”
Here’s James Reasoner at Rough Edges: “This is a book that may not be for everybody, since it’s a little squirm-inducing in places, but it’s also heartwarming at times, in its own oddball way. I really liked it, and if you’re a Lawrence Block fan, you’ll want to read it.”
And Deb Wunder on Goodreads: “One of the most powerful and scary books Block has written. The opening slams the reader into front row seats at the commission of a horrible crime. The scary part is the way the sociopath proceeds, over the course of his life, to acquire the veneer of socialization that allows him to become one of the pillars of his community — even as he acknowledges that his sociopathic tendencies are still there, and not all that deeply under his skin. Oh, and his portrayal rings true. I have two sociopathic relatives, and the portrayal resonates very closely to how they behave.”
Release date for Dead Girl Blues is June 24. As with TDHOI, preordering will save you a couple of dollars and spare you the need to pay attention to the calendar. Preorder price structure’s the same: $7.99 ebook, $14.99 paperback, $24.99 hardcover.
David tells me I should point out that, if you buy all twelve backlist ebooks, you’ll save a total of $48—which will very nearly cover the cost of hardcovers of both TDHOI and Dead Girl Blues. And my Frequent Companion swears that this sort of reasoning has worked marvelously over the years, especially at Saks.
5. With Keller wrapped up, Luigi Garlaschelli has turned again to Matthew Scudder. Early in our association he translated all of the Scudder short stories in La Notte e la Musica, and now he has turned to the thirteenth Scudder novel, Even the Wicked. It has never appeared before in Italian; now, with La Voluntà del Popolo available in ebook and paperback form, readers in Italy (or, come to think of it, Italophones anywhere in the world) can start to catch up with Matt and Elaine and Mick and TJ and, well, l’intera banda.
Both Luigi and Sepp Leeb are now busy rendering Dead Girl Blues into Italian and German respectively. While I’d be surprised if either is good to go by June 24, readers won’t have a long wait.
6. Speaking of long waits, they seem to be one of the less consequential side effects of the pandemic, and often in areas where one wouldn’t expect it. As you may 
well be aware, I’ve been teaming up with voice artists to publish my backlist titles in audio via Audible’s ACX division. This would appear to be a virus-proof enterprise; I’m at my desk, the narrator/producers are in their home studios, and everything slithers back and forth through cyberspace just as it did in the pre-Covid days.
The hitch comes in ACX’s approval process. They have the good sense to vet audiobooks thoroughly before 
clearing them for sale, and this sometimes took a week, and occasionally a little longer. Well, P. J. Morgan and I have been waiting since April 4 for them to sign off on her excellent performance of Passport to Peril, and it was only yesterday that ACX approved the sparkling audio rendition of Threesome that Bill Weeden and Dolores McDougal turned in. (They did so on April 8, and now that it’s been approved we still have to wait for it to find 
its way into the actual sales channels.)
Meanwhile, Bill and Dolores have finished recording 3 is Not a Crowd. It’s an absolute delight, and they’ve managed the neat trick of swapping pen names (from Jill Emerson to John Warren Wells) while essentially remaining on topic. They’re on track to tackle a third pen name (Candy, by Sheldon Lord).
Theo Holland, the voice of both Evan Tanner and Ronald Rabbit, just finished work on Cinderella Sims; his next project is Sin Hellcat, a novel I wrote in collaboration with Donald E. Westlake. And P. J.Morgan is at work on another Jill Emerson title, but one very different in tone—A Madwoman’s Diary. And, while all this is going on, Barbara Nevins Taylor (whose Of Shame and Joy audiobook had a nice recent spike in sales) is busy with A 
Woman Must Love.
Audio? A wonderful medium, and these days the growthiest part of publishing. And it enables me to look as though I’m busy, while actually keeping a batch of superb voice artists genuinely busy. What’s not to like?
But wait, there’s more! More audio!
7. …Specifically, several new titles from Tantor Audio. The good people there selected Peter Berkrot to narrate Dead Girl Blues; a while back Peter voiced three of my crime novels—After the First Death, Coward’s Kiss, and You Could Call It Murder—and I can assure you he’s a perfect choice for the new book.
I know Robert Fass only from samples of some of his other audiobooks, but they inspire confidence; Tantor’s picked him for Generally Speaking and it should be a treat. I never expected anyone would want to produce an audiobook of columns from a magazine for stamp collectors, but the book seems to be drawing a readership that extends well beyond the world of philately, with ten 5-star reviews on Amazon. While you’re checking them out, you can preorder the audiobook; it’s set for May 26 release.
Finally, Tantor will be publishing an audiobook version of Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails, my new collection of miscellaneous nonfiction. When I know the voice artist and the likely release date, I’ll let you know.
This ran longer than I anticipated, and I suspect it’s replete with errata. But I want to send it out this evening, so it may get less in the way of proofreading than it should. Well, cut an old man some slack, eh? And let me leave you with these three reminders:
—Check out the backlist ebook sale before the prices pumpkin on to $6.99.
—Preorder Dead Girl Blues and The Darkling Halls of Ivy.
—Wash your hands!
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.
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