Let me tell you about my week.

A couple of days ago I subwayed a few stops uptown on the #1 train to the Automedia Production studio, where I narrated “The Burglar on the Screen,” my contribution to Hollywood vs. the Author. Edited by the estimable Stephen Jay Schwartz, the book’s a cooperative venture that brings together a bevy of writers—Lee Goldberg, Michael Connelly, Diana Gould, Jonathan Kellerman, Alexandra Sokoloff, and T. Jefferson Parker, plus a dozen more, myself among them, all assembled to echo the lament of the late Rodney Dangerfield. We don’t get no respect—but we’re writers, so what we do get is the last word.

My essay concerns the casting of the film Burglar. I had a good time writing the piece, and can but hope you’ll have as good a time when you get to it. I also enjoyed reading it out loud, in front of God and everybody, and was greatly pleased that the session went so well. 

The printed book’s publication has been postponed until November to coincide with the audiobook; you can preorder now, although the Amazon page shows the book as “temporarily out of stock.” Well, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Just click and order the book, and it will all work out just fine.

Will there be an eBook?

Probably, but I don’t see it listed yet. Hey, this is the joint effort of a roomful of writers. Think of it as eighteen cats banding together to herd themselves.

You say the recording session went well?

Very well, and this made me very happy, because it bodes well. I’ve narrated a batch of my own works over the years, starting way back in the bad old days of audio abridgements. More recently I’ve recorded The Night and the Music, Catch & Release,and Keller’s Fedora, and they were fun to do and got a good reception.

But I wondered if I might have aged out of the pursuit, and when it was time to bring out an audio edition of Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel, I found the prospect daunting. While it was the sort of book that really ought to be author-narrated (as I’d done some years ago with Telling Lies for Fun & Profit) I turned it over to Mike Dennis, who’d done such good work with Borderline, Sinner Man, and The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes. The resultant audiobook is one we can all be proud of, but it still felt to me like an abdication of responsibility.

Now I have a couple of other books that ought to be in audio—two writing books (Spider Spin Me a Web and Write For Your Life) and a pedestrian memoir (Step By Step). I’ve been reluctant either to engage narrators or elbow my way into that role myself. So I’ve done neither.

I just know this has to be going somewhere…

But in a roundabout fashion, I admit. So let’s cut to Bouchercon, just a few weeks ago in St. Petersburg. I had a marvelous time, highlighted by the chance to interview Guest of Honor Ian Rankin, who’s been a friend for almost as many years as Matt Scudder and John Rebus have roamed their separate fictional worlds. And one morning, listening as a panel discussed the world of audio, I realized just how much I wanted to narrate the forthcoming Scudder novella, A Time to Scatter Stones.

Now I’d already read portions of it to an audience—once at KGB Bar in Manhattan, a second time at Kew & Willow Books in Queens, and most recently at a Bouchercon edition of Noir at the Bar. I went straight from that panel to my computer and emailed my agent with a request. Could he could persuade Brilliance Audio to give me the role?

He could and did. I rejoiced—and then wondered if I’d be up to it. So recording “The Burglar on the Screen” was a trial run, and it went smoothly and pleasurably, and I still had a voice at the end of it.

So in a few weeks I’ll take a train to Michigan, sit in front of a microphone, spend a couple of days giving voice to Matthew Scudder, and…

You’ll take a train?

Right.

To Michigan? Don’t they have planes that fly there?

They do, and they can keep them. Look, I took a train to St. Petersburg. The next two Bouchercons are slated for Dallas and Sacramento, and Amtrak goes to both of those cities, and consequently so shall I; I’ve already registered for Dallas.  I’m not afraid to fly, but I’ve certainly grown to hate it, and I’ve always loved trains. I’m just three or four train rides short of an Asperger’s diagnosis, and I have to say I’m way more comfortable with that than I’d ever be in a middle seat in Coach, or even a comfy window seat at the front of the plane.

I suppose riding trains is something the elderly can do in retirement. With all that time on your hands…

Yeah, that’s what I’ve had lately, sonny. Time on my hands.

Did I mention that I’ve got two anthologies in the works? Both coming together at the same time? From Sea to Stormy Sea, coming next year from Pegasus, is art-based, in the manner of In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color. This time all 17 paintings are by American artists, among them Grant Wood, Mark Rothko, Thomas Hart Benton, Harvey Dent, Winslow Homer, and Helen Frankenthaler. I won’t mention the writers until the book’s available for pre-order, but I will say that one of them, alas,  wound up unable to deliver.

Now these things happen. (It’s a mathematical certainty, in fact; station an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, and sooner or later one of them will be at a loss for words.) I had a couple of choices—go with 16 stories (because where is it written that I have to have 17?) or page through my address book and call in a favor from an eleventh-hour replacement. But I thought about it, and I remembered that ISOIS and AISAC had each contained a story of mine. (And, come to think of it, the one I forced myself to write for ISOIS won me an Edgar.) I certainly hadn’t planned on writing one for FSTSS, but now I found myself feeling obliged.

And then I guess you were struck by an idea, right?

If only. What I did was sit down at the computer and open a  Word document that was every bit as blank as my mind, and then I started writing about a woman standing in front of a Roy Lichtenstein painting at the Whitney. And a man spoke to her, and one thing led to another. Don’t you love it when one things leads to another? This past Monday I wrapped up a 5000-word story, “The Way We See the World,” and your mileage my vary, but I think it’s outstanding.

“He said modestly.”

Well, I’ve always taken a lot of pride in my modesty. But just as it was reassuring to find I could still narrate effectively, it was no less so to learn I could still write fiction, and a piece of fiction rather different from anything else I’d ever done.

But now let me tell you about the other anthology. It’s called At Home in the Dark, and Subterranean Press will publish it sometime early next year in trade and limited hardcover editions; as with A Time to Scatter Stones, I’ll ePublish it around the time the hardcover goes on sale, and follow some months later with the paperback.

Crime stories, I presume?

For the most part, but the crime fiction canopy’s a broad one,with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts. And some of the stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner‘s story is a period western, Joe Lansdale‘s is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill‘s novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. And now that I’ve singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead and list the rest of the gang: N. J. Ayres, Laura Benedict, Jill D. Block, Richard Chizmar, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Elaine Kagan, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Park, Nancy Pickard, Thomas Pluck, Wallace Stroby, and Duane Swierczynski.

Wow.

Exactly. If you’re looking for a common denominator, two come to mind. They’re all dark stories, with nothing cozy or comforting about them. And every last one of them packs a punch.

As with FSTSS, I have all the stories in hand, and just last night I wrote an introduction for the volume. I also knocked out what’s called an ad card, the “other books by” page.

You got all your other books on one page?

Just my anthologies, along with the books I’ve published with Subterranean. Hard to believe I’ve edited fifteen anthologies. One of them just got reissued—Blood on Their Hands, compiled in 2003 to benefit Mystery Writers of America, and I added a new foreword to buttress my original introduction. Neither the foreword nor the intro constitute a reason to buy the book, but the stories are reason enough, esp. those by Henry Slesar and Jeremiah Healy.

BoTH (if you will) is part of a program of reissuing MWA anthologies. They’ve appeared regularly over the years, and have always contained some outstanding short fiction, much of it unavailable anywhere else. And one of them, Merchants of Menace, led to an assignment that landed on my virtual desk only last night. The book, edited by Hillary Waugh, came out originally in 1969; Hillary wrote its introduction, and would now have been asked to add a foreword for the new edition, but for the fact that he was born in 1920 and died in 2008. Standing in for him wouldn’t be ghostwriting, I was assured, as I’d be using my own name, but could I come through with a foreword? And, um, could I deliver it in the next week or so?

Well, why not? Hillary was a real gentleman and good company, a Grand Master and an ardent supporter of MWA, and arguably the father of the police procedural. When I looked at a PDF of the book, the first thing I read was a Donald E. Westlake story that I’d never encountered before. That was a treat, and the table of contents suggests there’ll be more goodies in the box. And I’ve got the time, haven’t I? Being retired and all…

Maybe you should take up shuffleboard. Or learn to crochet. Something to pass the time.

I was thinking mah-jongg, but you may be on to something. Meanwhile, some news briefs—

Audio: Theo Holland, whom some of you know as the Voice of Evan Tanner, has wrapped up Resume Speed and Other Stories; next up for Theo will be Tanner’s Tiger. Dana Roth is at work on 21 Gay Street, while Barbara Nevins Taylor tackles Of Shame and Joy, and Michael Cleary has a go at 3 is Not a Crowd. And, across the ocean, Richard Heinrich takes on the first Scudder novel, Die Sünden der Väter.

I’ll be self-publishing all of the above as soon as they’re ready. And I’ll also have to figure out what to do with the 20 audiobooks published by Audible via Open Road on a five-year license; the term is up, the rights are mine again, and the books are off-sale for the time being, and asterisked accordingly on my audiobooks blog page. I may republish with the existing recordings, I may look for new narrators—there are a few possibilities, and you’ll know as soon as I do.

Graphic novels: John K. Snyder III’s adaptation of Eight Million Ways to Die continues to win the hearts and minds of mystery and comic book fans alike. Many of you have asked what book he’ll tackle next and a few of you have offered suggestions. John and I both hope to be able to answer those questions soon. Stay tuned!

Translations: They continue apace. Between them, Stefan Mommertzand Sepp Leeb are within a book of completing Matthew Scudder’s adventures in German, and Sepp’s at work on the firstKeller book. Luigi Garlaschelli (Il Sicario) and Mª Carmen de Bernardo Martínez (El Sicario) have each moved on from Hit Man to Hit List. Enriqueta Carrington is rendering The Burglar in the Closetin Spanish, while a gentleman in Portugal has climbed upon the Keller bandwagon, and I suspect O Sicario is not far in the future. And any day now will see the publication of Godimento, Annalisa Passoni’s Italian rendition of Getting Off. And—

Stop!

Stop? Isn’t that the whole point, that I apparently can’t stop, that I’ve made an utter dog’s breakfast of retirement?

No, because I’ve figured out your secret, LB. You sit around while other people do things for you. They write stories for your anthologies, they narrate and produce audio versions of your novels, they translate your night-school English into fluent German and Italian and Spanish. And what do you do? You toil not, and neither do you spin. 

Ha! Pinochle!

Say what?

Mah-jongg’s way too daunting. I’m not even sure I can spell it. So I’m thinking maybe pinochle’s the answer…