You Gotta Get Up If You Want to Get Off

If you're a fellow Lawrence Block fan (and if not, what the hell's the matter with you?) you have to admit: we are living in golden times. There's a brand new Matt Scudder novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, out this spring from Mulholland Books. There's a virtual treasure trove of ebook editions of many hard-to-find Block novels available on your Kindles and your Nooks and iPads. (If you haven't already ready, drop a ten spot on Such Men Are Dangerous, a short-but-blistering action thriller unlike anything else you've ever read. Trust me; you'll thank me in the morning.)

And now comes word that a brand-new Block novel is leading the relaunch of Hard Case Crime from a.) a new publisher, and b.) in hardcover.

Strangely it's Block writing as one of his former pseudonyms, a la Stephen King/Richard Bachman. Confused? Let Charles Ardai explain:

GETTING OFF: A Novel of Sex and Violence by Lawrence Block (writing as Jill Emerson) -- The story of a beautiful young woman who sets off on a mission to kill every man she's ever slept with (and she's slept with quite a few). For this book, Lawrence Block is reviving a pseudonym he hasn't used in almost 40 years, under which he wrote seven particularly sexy books back in the day. When he saw how sexy this new one was coming out, he thought...that's the Jill Emerson in me coming out again...

Me? I'm already sold. By the premise, as well as that 1970s-style chunkalicious font and the rather, uh, cheeky Gregory Manchess cover art.

(And that's just the beginning for the new Hard Case. Getting Off will be followed by a new Mickey Spillane/Max Allan Collins, a new Max Allan Collins, and a new Christa Faust.)

So yeah. These are golden times.

Blockheads, Rejoice!

I know I'm still supposed to be sore at Amazon.com, but yesterday the cold hard ball of ice in the middle of my heart melted a little when I received an email newsletter from Lawrence Block. Seems that Mr. Block has unleashed a virtual treasury of his work for the Kindle, including a new Kindle-only collection of intros and afterwords called Introducing Myself and Others. It's a fantastic idea, because Block is one of those writers whose intros/outros, etc. are alone worth the price of admission. (The others who come to mind are Harlan Ellison and Jack Ketchum.) This new collection is only $3.98, and includes introductions for books that haven't even been published yet -- namely, forthcoming reprints of Block's early smut pulp novel Campus Tramp and Hellcats & Honey Girls, a collection of three "erotic" novels he co-wrote with Donald E. Westlake.

Block's also released other rarities, such as Cinderella Sims, Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man, and my favorite of the lot, his pulp action thriller The Specialists. All $3.98 each, all highly recommended. My Kindle is officially allowed back in the house.

Legends of the Underwood #7: Lawrence Block

I have on occasion written books in as little as three days; I've written a couple that took only seven or eight days that are probably as good as anything I've done. I can't argue that I made a mistake writing those books as rapidly as I did. nor am I at all inclined to attempt to do that sort of thing now.

—Lawrence Block, in Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print (Writer's Digest Books, 1979)

(Seventh in a series. Photo by Laurie Roberts.)

Oh Yeah. We've Got a Missile Crisis

Will you please take a look at this? Today, Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime revealed the imprint's January 2009 release: a Lawrence Block rarity called Killing Castro. I haven't been this excited about the early sixties since the first season of Mad Men. And I love that every January, Charles manages to coax another incredibly rare novel from Block's seemingly endless pseudonymous backlist. This, however, may be it. Charles writes: "All I'll say here is that this is by far the rarest of all Block's books. He wrote it under a pseudonym he never used before or since, it's never been published under his real name (or this title), and he couldn't even locate a copy of it himself for thirty years!"

But you? You can read a sample right here.