“I didn’t know the man or anything about him, just glimpsed him a few times from across the room, but it was his physical presence that found its way into Mick Ballou.”

Lawrence Block 19 May 2012

About the Book

What is the book about?

The Night and the Music is a collection of all the Matthew Scudder short fiction written over a span of 30+ years. Two stories, Mick Ballou Look at the Blank Screen and One Last Night at Grogan’s, appear here for the first time.

When did you start writing the book? How long did it take you to write it?

The first story, Out the Window, first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in September of 1977; the final entry, One Last Night at Grogan’s, was written in July of 2011. I’ll let you do the math!

 Where did you get the idea from?

I’ve been writing about Matthew Scudder since the early 1970s. (A Drop of the Hard Stuff, the 17^th novel in the series, came out last May from Mulholland, and in the fall from Orion in the UK.) So I might better answer the question of where I got the idea to compile and self-publish the collected stories.

I felt a collection of Scudder stories would find a ready audience, esp. if it included some new material. And while I realized that a traditional publisher would be willing to take the book on, I didn’t see it as an item that would fly off bookstore shelves. It seemed to me it would do best as an eBook, and that I could market it as effectively as anyone else.  Fairly early on in the self-publishing process I decided to gamble on a trade paperback edition as well, print-on-demand, available through my website bookstore and from a handful of mystery booksellers, as well as online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This POD version has been far more successful than I imagined.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

Fictitious, but sometimes there are echoes. Raymond Gruliow, the radical defense attorney, owes a lot to the late Bill Kunstler. He appears in several of the novels, but I don’t believe he’s present in The Night and the Music. The character of Mick Ballou is entirely imaginary, but physically he looks a lot like Bradley Cunningham, who owned a jazz club on University Place for many years. I didn’t know the man or anything about him, just glimpsed him a few times from across the room, but it was his physical presence that found its way into Mick Ballou.

 We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

Dozens of them, I’m sure. I wouldn’t know where to begin naming them.

 Do you have a target reader?

No. I just endeavor to write what I myself would like to read.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

Not really. I sit there and type.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just Chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I don’t, no. Have done so occasionally, but not for many years.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I clean up some as I go along.

Did you hire a professional editor?

No.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

God, no.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

I have an agent.

What made you decide to go Indie? Was it a particular event or a gradual process? (here we can just point readers at your blog post)

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did it you do it yourself?

I picked a stock photo. Claudia at Telemachus Press suggested typefaces, and I picked one. Then she did several layouts, and I picked one, and we had a cover.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

As with the rest of my life, I make it up as I go along.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

A blog post I wrote recently provides this advice.

About You

Where did you grow up?

Buffalo.

Where do you live now?

New York.

What would you like readers to know about you?

Well, I have a couple of memoirs available—Afterthoughts, a piecemeal memoir composed of afterwords to 40 or 50 backlist titles, and Step By Step, about my career as a slow but determined aging facewalker. A page at my blog site has links to both these books, and all my other in-print and eVailable titles.

What are you working on now?

A new book, but I make it a point not to talk about work in progress. And I’m continuing to self-publish backlist titles, and will probably assemble a book-length collection of non-fiction pieces I’ve written on other writers.

End of Interview

Lawrence’s books can be found at:

Link to where the Book can be purchased or downloaded if free.

Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Smashwords   Apple

Signed trade paperbacks are available from LB’s Bookstore.

Lawrenence’s really great  blog is here and he can also be found at his   Goodreads page.