So tell us, LB—what color is the moon?

What kind of question is that?

Rhetorical, because I already know the answer. It has to be blue, because there’s a newsletter from you in my inbox, and how often does that happen?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I could dodge your original question with one of my own: “What color was the bear?” But I’ll save that question and all that goes with it for the end of this epistle.

I can hardly wait. But, you know, given that I’ve already waited this long…

Right.

So shall we get to it? I’ll lead with the bit of news that pleases me the most, and that’s that Jill Emerson’s strongest novel, A Week as Andrea Benstock, is now available as an audiobook, brought brilliantly to life by Barbara Nevins Taylor. The book was published in hardcover by Arbor House in 1975, and was serialized in Redbook, and I’ve described the novel’s origins in detail on its Amazon page. It’s a very personal book, set in my hometown of Buffalo, and I suppose it’s a period piece now, given that almost half a century has come and gone since I wrote it, but I hope you’ll find that it holds up as a piece of mainstream literary fiction.

Barbara felt it did, and voiced it superbly. She’d already narrated two earlier novels of mine, A Woman Must Love and Of Shame and Joy, so my expectations were already high, but she’s exceeded them.

And if you’re deaf to the pleasures of audiobooks, you can still make Andrea’s acquaintance and spend seven enlightening days with her. Her story’s readily available as an ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

So after all these months, your lead item’s a novel you wrote under a pen name 46 years ago.

Well, I haven’t been doing much lately. A Writer Prepares got a good reception when it came out in June, and Dead Girl Blues, published in June of 2020, continues to sell briskly and pick up heartening reviews.

And readers and critics alike seem happy with Collectibles, my new anthology published in May. As per Omar, I’ll take the cash and let the credit go—to the authors of the individual stories. My chief contribution was the whimsical introduction, which you can read for free right here.

Didn’t I read somewhere that Collectibles will be your final anthology?

I don’t remember saying so, but I had pretty much decided I’d spent enough of my dotage as an anthologist. The pursuit does lend itself to the Golden Years, one gets to pose as a writer without having to write anything, but it’s a surprising amount of work for a surprisingly small return, and I figured I was done. And Collectibles was a strong book to go out on.

But you’re not done, are you?

Alas, I’m not.  What happened was what all too often happens—I got an Idea.

A lightbulb materialized overhead?

Just so. Now when I get an idea for a short story or novel, it’s rarely a problem. Usually I let it percolate, and it doesn’t, and that’s that. But if it’s a really good and persistent idea, I actually spend a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks, writing words and sentences and paragraphs, even whole pages. And then I stop, and start again only to stop again, until one day it becomes clear that it’s not going anywhere, ever, and I’m able to abandon it.

That sounds so sad.

Ah, but the final five words of the paragraph make up a happy ending, don’t they? “I’m able to abandon it”—and thence return to a blissful state of inactivity. Never mind. With an anthology it’s different, because the first flush of enthusiasm leads me to propose the idea to a publisher like Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, who’ll get on board for a signed limited edition, and then I set about recruiting writers do the actual work.

And so on.

And then, by the time I realize that the world could get along fine without this book, and that I don’t want to go through all the work required for putting it together and publishing it, well, see, it’s too late.  I’ve got other people signed up, working on stories (or not working on stories and secretly hoping the project gets aborted, but never mind). I’ve got a Contract with a Small-Press Publisher. I’ve got Other People all over the place, and they’ve got Expectations, and it’s up to me to Fulfill them. “I’m stuck this time,” I tell myself, “but once this is done I’ll never do it again.”

Yet here you are, doing it again.

Indeed, with a book called Playing Games. At the moment I’ve got sixteen stories in hand, and one more’s gonna land in my inbox in a matter of days, and we’ll be good to go. And of course they’re outstanding stories, because that’s what you tend to get from outstanding writers.

Care to name names?

Not just yet, but for now I can tell you that each story involves a game, and here they are: Hide & Seek, Pac-Man, Handball, Checkers, Candyland, Dungeons & Dragons, Psychiatrist, Mousetrap, Mahjong, Crokinole, Marbles, Jigsaw Puzzles, Bar Trivia, Boggle, Russian Roulette, and Gin Rummy.

All salutary ways of passing the time when you’re not writing anything.

Russian Roulette? Salutary?

Well, maybe not. And this will be your final anthology…but we’ve heard that song before, haven’t we? Just how many have you of these hodgepodges have you perpetrated, anyway?

Terry Zobeck lists seventeen in A Trawl Among the Shelves, and that doesn’t include Collectibles, so I guess Playing Games will be #19 when Subterranean publishes their limited edition sometime next year. Of course not all of them are in print or eVailable. Here’s a list in chronological order, with links to the ones that are: Death Cruise, Master’s Choice, Opening Shots, Master’s Choice 2, Speaking of Lust, Opening Shots 2, Speaking of Greed, Blood on Their Hands, Gangsters Swindlers Killers & Thieves, Manhattan Noir, Manhattan Noir 2, Dark City Lights, In Sunlight or in Shadow, Alive in Shape and Color, At Home in the Dark, From Sea to Stormy Sea, The Darkling Halls of Ivy, Collectibles.

What else is there? A young Uzbek filmmaker,  Mahmudov Shohruh, has completed a short film based on my short story, “When This Man Dies,” with two versions, one with an English soundtrack, the other with English subtitles; it’s not yet available for viewing, but I’ll let you know when it is.  I’ve got voice artists at work on a couple of audiobooks, and translators wrapping up Italian and German editions of works of mine. (To see what’s available from Amazon or another online bookseller, search for “Lawrence Block Sepp Leeb” or “Lawrence Block Stefan Mommertz” [German] or “Lawrence Block Luigi Garlaschelli” [Italian]; for German audiobooks, search for “Lawrence Block Richard Heinrich.”)

And Ego and Avarice have led me to continue bringing out early Andrew Shaw titles in my Collection of Classic Erotica.  Most of these are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so that members can read them for free. And even if you don’t have KU access, all you need is an internet connection to read my mini-essays specially written for each book’s Amazon product page.

Sometimes they’re better than the books.

And shorter, too. And entirely my own work, which is more than I can say for Sin Master, which I discovered to be the work of some nameless ghostwriter. I kept a few ghosts busy writing Andrew Shaw novels, and one reason I’ve been republishing my own titles is to separate my own chaff from the chaff produced by others. (Another is that those covers,most of them by Harold W. McCauley, deserve another season in the sun.)

Here are the newly published titles, volumes 25 to 37 in the collection: Flesh Mob, Flesh Parade, Girls on the Prowl, Lust Weekend, Passion Nightmare, Sexpot, Sin Bum, Trailer Trollop, The Wife-Swappers, The Sin-Damned, Man For Rent, Butch, and Sin Master.

One of these, Man For Rent, was in fact a joint effort with the most prolific of my ghostwriters, William Coons. The others are all my work—except for Sin Master. While you probably don’t want to read Sin Master, even for free, you might enjoy the explanation of how it came to be; it ties into an episode recounted in A Writer Prepares, and you’ll note that, while the book’s actual author is unknown to me, I’ve shared a byline with him on the Amazon page, and even supplied him with a name.

Kasper Freundlich? What kind of a name is Kasper Freundlich?

An appropriate one, I think. And that’s enough, so let me wish you all the pumpkin-spiced joys of the season and—you look agitated.

What color was the bear?

Oh, right. Seventy years ago I was in the eighth grade at Buffalo’s PS 66. One day the school principal, a reserved gentleman whose last name was Webster and whose first name may very well have been George, popped into the classroom and had a few quiet words with the teacher.  (Miss Clark? I think it was Miss Clark.) She called us to attention, and Mr. Webster presented a problem:

“Two men set up camp and went out hunting. They walked one mile due south, then one mile due west. Then they shot a bear. And then they walked one mile due north and found themselves back at camp. So—what color was the bear?”

So?

I figured it out right away, to the evident chagrin of Mr. Webster, who’d supposed his conundrum was right up there with the Gordian Knot and the Riddle of the Sphinx. And I certainly don’t intend to deprive any of y’all of the satisfaction of working it out for yourselves.

Cheers,