Have you seen it yet?

Here’s the scoop— A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson, written and directed by Scott Frank, and based on the tenth Matthew Scudder novel, opened Friday, September 19, throughout the US and UK and most of the world. (But some of y’all have to wait a while. The opening’s set for mid-October in Australia and Taiwan—which seems odd, doesn’t it? You folks get daybreak twelve hours before we do, but you have to wait an extra month for a movie. Well, the opening in Germany’s not until November, so go figure.)

Lynne and I saw AWATT Wednesday at a special screening, and here we are in a photo with an unidentified stranger. (The stranger’s latest venture, Celebrity Name Game, premieres this evening on a TV channel near you.) All three of us loved the film unreservedly, as did the rest of the audience and most of the critics. And so did a great many of you, as I’ve been assured by a tidal wave of emails and tweets and Facebook posts. It’s a genuine rarity these days, a suspense thriller made by and for actual grown-ups, with a solid script and wonderful actors and a cinematographic vision of New York City that manages to be down-and-dirty and, at the same time, genuinely beautiful. Liam just plain IS Matt Scudder, and embodies the character even more perfectly than I knew he would. What a treat!

I’m very likely preaching to the choir here, as most of you have either already seen AWATT or placed it high on your To-Do list. Either way, I have a couple of suggestions. If you’ve seen the movie, and if you loved it, please spread the word. Word of mouth is what makes the difference, and I hope you’ll enlist your mouth in the cause. Tweet, post, blog, send emails—and, if you’re sufficiently retro to have actual conversations with folks, on the phone or even (shudder) in person, well, you know what to tell them, loud and clear.

And if you’re planning to go see AWATT, sooner is better than later.

Why? Well, you’ll be shocked to learn that I have an agenda here…but it’s one I hope you share. See, if enough people buy enough tickets soon enough, the Powers That Be will greenlight a sequel and we’ll all get to do this again. Scott would love to write and direct another one, and Liam would welcome a return  engagement as Matt, and you can probably figure out that I’m on board. So if you’d like to see a sequel—well, enough already. You get the point.

Moments before they lowered the house lights Wednesday night, an email informed me that Hard Case Crime’s mass-market edition had just landed on the New York Times Best Seller List; it will debut there this Sunday, September 27, in the #19 slot. That means a whole host of sales in airports and supermarkets, but it’s becoming clear that the paperback’s also a strong seller online. (And, while we’re not able to offer this edition in LB’s eBay Bookstore, David’s got a good supply of autographed copies of our Trade Paperback edition @ $14.99.)

Now on to other matters. I know I’ve tipped you to Defender of the Innocent, the 12-story Ehrengraf collection coming September 30 from Subterranean Press. You can pre-order it now—and I’d recommend doing so, as the publisher routinely sells out his entire printing, and prices tend to climb on the aftermarket. I self-published the book in audio, with the little lawyer expertly voiced by Don Sobczak, and you don’t have to wait until the end of the month to download it; it’s available right this minute at Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

Emily Beresford voiced our audiobook of Jill Emerson’s erotic novel in diary form, Thirty; it’s been getting a good reception from listeners and reviewers. She’s just finished narrating Jill’s first book, a sensitive novel of the lesbian experience with the unfortunate title of Warm and Willing. “Beautifully written as usual,” Emily messaged me. “I really loved this story. You write so believably from a woman’s perspective, more so than many women authors I have read.” I’ll let you know when Warm and Willing goes on sale; I can let you know now that Emily’s on board to narrate Jill’s second novel, Enough of Sorrow. (And the title, from a Mary Carolyn Davies poem, is a whole lot better than Warm and Willing.)

My friend Brian Koppelman, best known as a screenwriter and director, does a weekly podcast called The Moment on Grantland.com, and I sat down with him recently for an hour of conversation, most of it about Matthew Scudder. (Brian’s a big fan of the books, and wrote a lyrical appreciation for The Night and the Music.) The podcast goes live sometime tomorrow (Tuesday, 9/23); if you get there ahead of time, his chat with Gilbert Gottfried is a killer. As if he hasn’t got enough to keep him busy, Brian made time to write a story for an anthology I’m editing, and it’s a honey, set in a Kazakh-run NYC barber shop. I’ll tell you all about that project a little later on.)

And that would be enough for now, but I have to keep David happy by mentioning a couple of items in LB’s eBay Bookstore. Actually, I’ll let him do the mentioning:

Okay, sure. Step by Step, LB’s racewalking memoir, price xxxed to $9.99. Tanner’s Tiger, Subterranean hard cover, way too cheap at $9.99. The Mundis book on breaking writer’s block, don’t recall the title, price reduced to $4.99, or a 10-copy lot for $29.99 postpaid. Grab bag lot of 8 Burglar paperbacks, six lots left and then forget about it, $49.99 postpaid. And I’ll be adding titles if we can get the new scanner to work. That okay? You can edit it, fix it up nice.

I suppose I could, but I think I’ll leave it as it is. It’s got its own crude charm, and gives the folks out there an idea of what I have to put up with.

Cheers!

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