Are you out of your mind?

Well, that’s not really for me to say. Why do you ask?

What kind of a header is that, telling your readers not to waste their time on your newsletter?

I just thought—

Or is it all some kind of devious reverse psychology? You tell ’em to skip it and then they absolutely have to read it. Is that your strategy?

Never occurred to me. Do you suppose it would work?

Probably not.

Then the hell with it. No, I was just being uncharacteristically candid. Nothing I’ve got to report is exactly earth-shaking, and only a small proportion of readers will be interested, so I decided to give the others a chance to move along without worrying that they’re missing something.

On the other hand, Matt Scudder’s German fans will want to keep reading. As they know, and as most of the rest of you probably know by now as well, I’ve been publishing  Matthew Scudder’s adventures in that language. Skillfully translated by Stefan Mommertz and Sepp Leeb, the books have won an increasing audience; except for A Drop of the Hard Stuff and the just-released-in-English A Time to Scatter Stones, the entire series is now available in ebook and paperback. (And so is Hit Man, the first book in the Keller series, under the title Kellers Metier.

And now narrator/producer Richard Heinrich has set about giving Scudder a voice. The first book, Die Sünden der Väter, has been selling on most German online platforms for a couple of months now, and at last it’s on sale at Audible and Amazon.

Richard is almost done with Scudder 2, Drei am Haken, with the other books to follow.

That’s pretty exciting, I’d say. Has anybody else thought of self-publishing audiobooks in translation?

I’m sure others have thought of it. They’ve just had the good sense to lie down and close their eyes until the impulse passed. But I think that’s as much as I need to say on the subject.

You’ve got a new anthology coming out. And I see you’ve been blogging again. Care to talk about that?

Why not? At Home in the Dark, a cross-genre anthology of dark stories, is slated for end-of-April publication, and for some time now the book’s only hardcover edition, signed and numbered, has been sold out at publisher Subterranean Press. (Amazon is still offering copies, and at a 16% discount from the list price. How long they’ll last is anybody’s guess.)

And yes, I’ve been posting a thousand words or so from the various stories on my blog, and those of you who signed on as blog subscribers have found them turning up in your inboxes, along with some words about their authors. Author photos, too. Stories sampled so far include those by Elaine Kagan, Wallace Stroby, Ed Park, Laura Benedict, Joe Lansdale, Noreen Ayres, Joe Hill, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pluck, and Jill D. Block.

I lost count. How many is that?

An even dozen. Coming up in what’s left of March are James Reasoner, Nancy Pickard, Warren Moore, Richard Chizmar, andDuane Swierczynski. If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, or anything else in my not-very-frequent blog posts, you can subscribe. Just click here or on any of the name links in the preceding paragraph; the right-hand column of the page you land on will have spots where you enter your email address to subscribe to the blog and/or this newsletter. All you have to do is key in your email address, no name required, and we never sell or lease our list.

So the only annoying and useless junk mail they get this way will be from you.

Um, right. Well, I guess that’s it, so—

Really? Weren’t you going to tell them something about the new Scudder novella?

Oops, almost forgot.

What almost? You flat-out forgot.

I would have remembered before I hit SEND. Never mind. A Time to Scatter Stones has been selling well and getting great reviews. The hardcover trade edition is sold out at Subterranean. So is the hardcover limited, but this was in a recent note from the publisher:

“We have thirty-five copies of the signed limited edition that bear slight printer mistakes, just significant enough that we’re not comfortable selling them for full price. Our pain is your gain. While supplies last, we’re selling these copies, one to a customer, for the same price we put on the trade hardcovers: $25.”

Is that a good deal, do you think?

I’d say it depends on the customer. The limited edition is deluxe—bound in leather, signed and numbered. Subterranean’s trade edition is a handsome volume, but it’s sold out, and the limited’s significantly nicer—and my guess is those slight defects are pretty minor. OTOH, you can keep it simple and pick up the ebook or paperback. Or the audiobook, for that matter.

And now I really am out of things to say, and—

Not so fast. What about including some links to books of yours you’d like to push? Like you did the last couple of newsletters. People seemed to like that.

You think? Well, okay, but instead of flogging my own work I think I’ll toss in some links to books I didn’t write—but think highly of.

Forever, by Pete Hamill. My absolute favorite New York novel.

The Unwinding of the Miracle, by Julie Yip-Williams. As involving a memoir as I’ve read in years. Maybe ever.

Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday. Two separate story lines, and what they’re doing in the same book is beyond me—but the Philip Roth dish is delicious.

And that’s enough for now. It’s not quite spring yet, on the calendar or in the forecast, but we had to set the clocks forward this morning, so just think of all the daylight we’re saving!