That’s quite a header. It almost sounds…
I know what it almost sounds like, and it’s not. What it is is the only way I can think of to plunge into the rushing floodtide of books coming your way. I’d like to find an elegant way to introduce this report, but I’m up to my neck in news. So I’ll just assign each item an arbitrary number and take them in order.
I guess that makes sense.
Maybe, but I can’t let that stop me…
1. I’ve told you about A Writer Prepares, my memoir of my beginnings as a writer of crime stories and erotic novels and, well, 
no end of colorful magazine pieces ranging from “We Found God on the Bowery” to “Reinhard Heydrich, Blond Beast of the SS.” The ebook’s been available for preorder for a week or so, and enough early readers have said enough nice things about it to spur a batch of orders. I reported earlier that the paperback and library-bound hardcover couldn’t be preordered, but now they can, at Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Or, if you hurry, you can preorder this beauty, and here’s what I said about it earlier:
“It’s the very special signed-numbered-limited edition coming from SST Publications, Paul Fry’s exceptional UK-based small press. Paul’s edition boasts front and back cover and limitation page artwork, all by the renowned French animator, 
illustrator, and film director Jérémy Pailler. And you can count on the fine printing and binding on which the company has built a reputation. The price is £29.95, and that includes shipping within the UK; I don’t know what it’ll cost stateside purchasers, but there’s an SST order page that should tell you what you need to know.”
When the good people at Subterranean Press aren’t busy publishing their own magnificent editions, they occasionally pass along other small-press titles to their customers. They’ve scooped up a few copies of A Writer Prepares, and collectors in the US, especially those of you who’ve already had the pleasure of doing business with Subterranean, might find it more convenient to click here and see if you can get your order in before their small supply is exhausted. (If you’re too late, it’s easy enough to order from SST. And if they’re sold out too, well, I’m not sure what you can try.)
And that’s not the only reason to visit Subterranean Press…
2. Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails has been getting a lot of love lately. GBH Hornswoggler, who gave the book a glowing review, has followed up by making it the source of his Quote of the Week twice running. Here’s this week’s:
A few years ago I was in San Francisco on a book tour. In conversation with a local I said that I lived in the City. “Oh, you call it that?” he said. ‘That’s what we call San Francisco. The City.”
I reported the conversation later to my friend Donald Westlake, whose house is around the corner from mine. “That’s cute,” he said. “Of course they’re wrong, but it’s cute.”
Bill Schafer at Subterranean is another Hunting Buffalo fan, and he’s done the book proud with a magnificent signed-and-numbered limited edition, with this gorgeous cover by Ken Laager. The ebook and paperback editions aren’t hard to come by, but if small-press collector volumes are what do it for you, click right here.
3. Until John K. Snyder III went to work on Eight Million Ways to Die, graphic novels never quite worked for me. Now I live in hope that JKS3 will get the green light for more Scudder 
graphic novels. Meanwhile, though, he’s stayed very much in touch with Matthew, and we all got a break when Subterranean signed him up to furnish the cover and the frontispiece for a deluxe collector’s edition of The Night and the Music.
Subterranean is offering two hardcover editions of TNATM, and you’ll want to visit the preorder page to get the full picture. The $30 trade edition contains the full text of the 2011 book, including Brian Koppelman’s compelling foreword, and all the short fiction about Matthew Scudder. Also included is a piece I wrote especially for Subterranean, which I call “Beyond the Afterword.”
The trade edition is cloth bound. The $50 limited edition is bound in leather, signed by the author, limited to 500 numbered copies, and includes everything that’s in the trade edition—plus the full text of the 2019 novella, A Time to Scatter Stones.
Preorder now for September delivery.
4. Did I ever mention Collectibles in a newsletter? It’s been all over Twitter and Facebook, so it feels as though I must have, but I can’t track it down. It’s an anthology, coming in May, and it’s full to overflowing with great stories from great writers. Their 
names are all on the cover, so you can read them yourself.
One of the names is Otto Penzler’s. While I was starting to put Collectibles together, I read Mysterious Obsession, the remarkable memoir of his life as a collector of crime fiction—and knew it belonged in my anthology. Five of Otto’s mini-chapters are threaded into Collectibles, and I think they really enhance the book’s collector appeal.
As with most of my recent anthologies, I’m self-publishing the ebook, paperback, and library-binding editions of Collectibles, while a small press of which you may have heard is doing a deluxe 750-copy limited edition. Along with a full description of the specifics of their superb edition, the Subterranean preorder page includes tantalizing excerpts from five of the stories—by S. A. Cosby, Dennis Lehane, Lee Goldberg, Joyce Carol Oates, and SJ Rozan.
The Subterranean edition is $50, and if you want a copy you’d do well to preorder it. The ebook is a different matter, in that we’re unlikely to run out of it—but an ebook preorder means you’ll get it for $6.99. After the May 31 publication date, the price soars to a stratospheric $9.99.
5. Meanwhile, the Collection of Classic Erotica grows by…well, not leaps and bounds. Hugs and kisses? Strokes and caresses? Hints and innuendo?
I’ve added four titles already this year, most recently #27, Girls on the Prowl, of which I had this to say on the Amazon page:
“GIRLS ON THE PROWL was first published by Nightstand Books in 1961, with Andrew Shaw credited as author. Harold W. McCauley 
provided the cover art. The principal characters—one hesitates to characterize them as titular—are Saundra, Marilyn, and Joan. (Joan is the lesbian.)
“A mere forty-three years later, THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL was first published by William Morrow in 2004, with Lawrence Block credited as author. Amy King provided the jacket design, Paul Oakley the jacket illustration, while the author photograph was the work of Athena Gassoumis. The eponymous burglar—no need to call him titular—is Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr, and he’s aided and abetted by police officer Ray Kirschmann and dog groomer Carolyn Kaiser. (Carolyn is the lesbian.)
“There is, as far as I can determine, no other connection whatsoever between GIRLS ON THE PROWL and THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL. No connection with THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (Rona Jaffe) or THE GROUP (Mary McCarthy) either. Or PEYTON PLACE (Grace Metalious).
“But, duh, I could be wrong…”
Girls on the Prowl follows close upon the round heels of Tramp, Flesh Mob, and Flesh Parade. There are, I blush to admit, eight more in the pipeline, all of them Andrew Shaw titles out of print since their original appearance back in the Paleozoic. There was a time, as you’ll note in A Writer Prepares, when I’d have happily willed out of existence Andrew Shaw and all his works, and now I evidently can’t wait to retrieve them from limbo and foist them onto your Kindles and library shelves.
I wonder what’s responsible for the change. Self-acceptance? The perspective that old age is able to bring to the work of one’s youth?
Ya think? I’d go with Ego and Avarice myself.
You’re probably right. Whatever it is, enough of y’all are buying them to keep me busy. I guess the stories are still marginally readable, and the retro-chic covers are more than enough to make the paperbacks collectible. So load up on the 27 titles currently available—and brace yourselves, because #28 is standing in the On Deck circle, ready to step up to the plate any day now. And the name on her uniform is Lust Weekend.
6. Some quick notes and boldface names from the world of audio: Anthologies, long overlooked in audio, are hitting their stride. Just this month Tantor has released From Sea to Stormy Sea and Alive in Shape and Color, both narrated by Matt Godfrey and Xe Sands; they join Peter Berkrot and Teri Schnaubelt’s At Home in the Dark and The Darkling Halls of Ivy. And Bill Weeden and Dolores McDougal, already known to you from Threesome and 3 is not a Crowd, are on hand with my NYC anthology from a few years ago, Dark City Lights.
Theo Holland has wrapped up his epic work as the voice of Evan Tanner with Tanner on Ice. That’s the eighth book in the series, written a mere 28 years after #7, and our hero doesn’t look a day older. The story takes place in Burma, and was written a few months after I visited that charming land—written, as a matter of fact, in the Listowel Arms Hotel, in County Kerry. So let me recommend the book, and the whole Tanner series, for a true cross-cultural experience.
7. Quietly, without any fuss, the incomparable Luigi Garlaschelli has been rendering the adventures of Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr, John Paul Keller, and Matthew Scudder into the tongue of Dante and Boccaccio. He’s now completed work on Scudder #15, Hope to Die, and in a matter of days you’ll be able to read it as Spere di Morire. Meanwhile, check out Luigi’s other translations of my work; the most recent is Tutti Muoiono, and perhaps someday I’ll be able to spell that title without having to look it up. (In English it’s Everybody Dies.)
Crikey, I do believe that’s it. I’ve gone on too long, and taken too much of your time and way too much of my own, and we all deserve an apology. Toward the end of A Writer Prepares, I talk some about how age changes the writing process, how one reaches a point where everything takes much longer and consumes more energy. I’m embarrassed by how much time I’ve spent on this undistinguished newsletter, and how much it’s taken out of me. The young man I once was would routinely write half a book in that many days—and with less overall effort.
Years ago, Eric Ambler reported as much to Don Westlake: “One can still write as well as ever, but it’s so tiring and takes ever so much longer.” Quite a few years later, without quoting Ambler, Don said of his own last book that it took so long and was so exhausting he wasn’t sure he’d ever do it again.
Many writers never reach this point. They die before it happens.
That seems like an extreme way to avoid writing.
It does, doesn’t it? Let’s hope I don’t have to go quite that far.
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
I ask this only somewhat facetiously after reading the last few paragraphs of your newsletter, but when a prolific writer decides to stop writing, what does he do with all the stories in his head?
It’s a legitimate question. Ideas do continue to arise,though less frequently than in the past. Most aren’t that compelling, and are easily dismissed. Others are more persistent. In the past couple of years I’ve occasionally begun stories and watched them wither on the vine. Now, at least somewhat capable of learning from experience, I know not to put them on the vine in the first place.
LB
I worry, again only somewhat facetiously, what would happen if Stephen King ever decided to stop writing.