Lawrence Block: It’s so nice to be working together again. Jill Emerson: Oh, is that how you see it? LB: Well, don’t you? We’ve got a book coming out together from Titan. Getting Off, by Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson. It’s Hard Case Crime’s first book since they hooked up with Titan, and their first hardcover book ever. JE: Blah blah blah. LB: You know, I don’t get your reaction at all. I thought you’d be excited. JE: You always think women are going to be excited. And then you think its their fault when they aren’t. LB: But— JE: I’m not even going to mention the fact that your name is like huge on the cover, and you need a magnifying glass to…
Early post this week because I’m off to Edinburgh at the weekend. Three things to say before the post proper. If you’d like to read about my perfect weekend, why not visit the Nottingham Post? This week, they also interviewed me about my new novel, Secret Gardens. More on that below. Finally, I have a surprise, very special guest blogging the Saturday after I get back (skip to the bottom to find out who). Here’s what I’ve been reading (and listening to) over the last month. My favourite novel was undoubtedly Pure by Andrew Miller, an engrossing account of the destruction of a graveyard by a naive engineer in eighteenth century Paris. This doesn’t sound like the subject matter of a great story, but I’ve…
I’m a little bleary today so excuse me if I ramble a little. I woke up early thinking about how to handle a scene in the edit of the second Bone & Cane novel, couldn’t get back to sleep. I won’t be writing the new scene until Monday. I never write fiction on weekends. During the nine and a bit years that I was a schoolteacher, I wrote every Saturday that we were at home. Once I was earning enough to become a full time writer (seventeen years ago, this month) I decided to allow myself one weekend day off (inevitably, there’s always marking and preparation on Sundays). And although I have a part time job teaching Creative Writing at a university now, I still…
Yesterday we launched my fortieth novel, Secret Gardens, in the allotment at the back of our house, in Bagthorpe Gardens. These allotments, along with Nottingham’s Hungerhill Gardens (where the novel is set) are the oldest in the world. We’re lucky to have one. For health and safety reasons, not to mention the risk of having to cram everybody into the house if it rained, I couldn’t invite as many people as I would have liked, but please join us for a virtual book launch today. Raise a glass, eat a cake, and, most of all, please buy a copy of the book. (Yes, it’s a bit cheaper on Amazon, but they don’t have it in stock yet. That said, I’d really appreciate any Amazon reviews…
Just back from London, where we visited friends with a new baby and saw two excellent plays: Howard Brenton’s vastly entertaining ‘Anne Boleyn‘, revived from last year at The Globe, with a superb central performance by Miranda Raison and the terrific production of ‘Betrayal’ at the Comedy Theatre, starring Kristen Scott Thomas, Douglas Henshall and Ben Miles. Like many men my age, I’ve had a bit of a crush on Kristen since seeing her in the dreadful Prince movie, ‘Under The Cherry Moon’ and it was a joy to see her acting her socks off, becoming youngier and sexier as the play progresses (the story has a reverse chronology, which was nicked for the famous Seinfeld episode of the same name). Henshall is excellent as…