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.