In reply to Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt.

The funny thing? For me, writing is easy. Or it doesn’t work at all. Meaning that either I’m “pantsing” and enjoying myself, or I can’t produce enough words to matter. Which doesn’t mean I can write whenever I want…though you’d think it would. Turns out, getting into the right (write?) frame of mind to produce fiction can be difficult. But at least, knowing this, I can (in theory) quit trying to do all the things that don’t help.

And yeah. He does seem to be a sweetheart.

I have an autographed copy of Spider, Spin me a Web.

Mr. Block made writing seem so easy – write it, clean it up a bit, send it out.

I still love his books on writing – even though I discovered a very long time ago that he is a pantser, and I an extreme plotter, and those things don’t go together very well. I STILL like those books. He makes it seem so easy…

And he is apparently a sweetheart.

In reply to Scott Pritchett.

Yeah, it’s weird that I hadn’t read it either. Probably a combination of factors there: genrebending and the age of the thing. I’ve had this prejudice against older LB work for quite a while now. Looking back, I’m not sure where it came from. Maybe that collection of his really early stories? But I think my goofiness predates it. There was probably some sort of reason…?

OTOH I just reread “After the First Death” yesterday, and it was pretty damned good. From another author, I’d say it would have been better as a short story…because the plot was utterly predictable. But who wants that in a short story? As things stood, I had a lot of fun seeing the thing unfold even though I was pretty sure how it would end.

Did I remember the ending? Is that why it was so predictable? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’m glad I picked it up again.

So now I have a perfect excuse to go back and re-read a lot of books. So much for working! {8’>

In reply to David.

I am still wondering how I missed this great book the first time around.
LB is, quite simply, the best.

In reply to Lawrence Block.

Now I’m all star-struck. Very cool of you to reply here.

And thanks for sending the mp3 download link for those affirmations! I would’ve paid again, though. Honest. I mean, eventually. But, since I tend to put off almost everything I really ought to do right away, maybe my next book will turn out a little better than I’d have otherwise managed….

What a nice start to the day! Ariel’s a book that can get lost, because it doesn’t really lend itself to categorization, as you point out. But self-publishing has enabled it to find a new and reasonably enthusiastic audience.

May I add that we’ve also brought it out in paperback? Same Classic Crime Library cover, and it should be on the same Amazon page—and probably will be eventually. Here’s a link to the paperback: http://tinyurl.com/guxkr6q