A Writer Prepares

by Lawrence Block

"Sometimes a reviewer just can’t wait to write about a book. Even though Lawrence Block’s memoir, “A Writer Prepares,” isn’t available till June, I was recently sent an advance proof. Quite innocently, I started reading it — and couldn’t tear myself away…."—Michael Dirda, Washington PostFrom the Sometime in 1953, I knew with unusual certainty what I intended to do with my life. I would become a writer.By the time I was 25, I had a wife and two daughters and a house in a suburb. I had published over fifty books. Most of these bore pen names, and for a time I resisted acknowledging my early pseudonymous work. Then, in one astonishing and feverish week in 1994, I recalled those early years in fifty thousand words of memoir.A publisher contracted to bring out my memoir once I'd completed it. Instead I put it on a shelf and never looked at it again. Early in 2020, I had a fresh look at A WRITER PREPARES. And I went back to work on it. By the time I was ready to stop, I'd written about my life as a writer well into 1966, when I'd completed The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep.A WRITER PREPARES, an examination of the first quarter century of one writer's life, is arguably the work of two writers. There's the middle-aged fellow who wrote about half of it at a blistering pace in 1994, and there's the octogenarian who finished the job another quarter century later. The older fellow brought less raw energy to the task, and his memory is a long way from infallible, but one can only hope he's offset these losses with a slight edge in judgment, in perspective, in maturity. (I was about to add wisdom, but that might be a bridge too far.)"A WRITER PREPARES is incredibly smooth reading, written in Block’s conversational style. It’s also funny. I kept stopping to read parts of it out loud to my family, because they wanted to know why I was giggling my way through a memoir. Block puts a light spin on everything, reminding us that writing truly is the best job in the world....Reading a writer’s memoir is always inspirational, but A WRITER PREPARES is both inspiring and instructive. It’s a delightful look back in time filled with lessons for the present day." —Alex Kourvo, Writing Slices

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Memoir, Audiobook, Biography, Biography Memoir

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Lawrence Block has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published in excess (oh, wretched excess!) of 100 books, and no end of short stories.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., LB attended Antioch College, but left before completing his studies; school authorities advised him that they felt he’d be happier elsewhere, and he thought this was remarkably perceptive of them.

His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the late 1950s, was mostly in the field of midcentury erotica, an apprenticeship he shared with Donald E. Westlake and Robert Silverberg. The first time Lawrence Block’s name appeared in print was when his short story “You Can’t Lose” was published in the February 1958 issue of Manhunt. The first book published under his own name was Mona (1961); it was reissued several times over the years, once as Sweet Slow Death. In 2005 it became the first offering from Hard Case Crime, and bore for the first time LB’s original title, Grifter’s Game.

LB is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller.

Because one name is never enough, LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke.

LB’s magazine appearances include American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Linn’s Stamp News, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times. His monthly instructional column ran in Writer’s Digest for 14 years, and led to a string of books for writers, including the classics Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and The Liar’s Bible. He has also written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.

Several of LB’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and is scheduled for release in September, 2014.

LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. As if that were not enough, he was also presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. (But as soon as he left, they changed the locks.)

LB and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers; the two are members of the Travelers Century Club, and have visited around 160 countries.

He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

Reviews

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this from the author for review.

First there was Batman Begins and now we have Block Begins.

Lawrence Block seems like a permanent fixture in crime fiction to me so it’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time when someone couldn’t wander into any bookstore or library and find several shelves filled with his works. However, everybody has to start somewhere, and in this memoir of the early days of his writing life Mr. Block tells us how he got his.

It wasn’t exactly a straight line even if he knew what he wanted to do from the time he was fifteen years old and got encouragement from an English teacher. A job at a shady literary agency provided invaluable experience and contacts to start his career churning out material under various pen names, most of it erotica, but even after he had his start Mr. Block bounced around between college and sometimes worked other jobs even as he was paying the bills with his writing.

This isn’t a traditional memoir. As Mr. Block explains, he began it in 1994 and wrote most of it one quick burst, but even though he had a publisher for it he set it aside and didn’t pick it up again until late in 2019 when he was going through old material to donate to a college. Rereading it sparked his interest, and he finished it up while leaving most of what he wrote back then intact.

A writer looking back at his career in his fifties, and then revisiting that in his eighties is unique and fascinating. One of the more interesting aspects is how Mr. Block’s attitude towards his early work-for-hire output has changed. Back in the ‘90s he refused to acknowledge or sign anything he’d written back then. These days, he cheerfully has these books reprinted either via e-books or via publishers like Hard Case Crimes. While never going so far as to say that he was ashamed of this early writing, he had various reasons for not wanting to take credit for it either back then. So explaining that shift is one of the things that benefits from letting the book sit for that long.

This is also most definitely NOT a biography. While certain aspects of his personal life come it’s always in relation to explaining something related to his writing. So there are some things mentioned like the death of his father and starting a family during his first marriage, but those aren’t the focus. It’s treated mainly as the backdrop to give a reader an understanding of what the situation was when Mr. Block made a choice regarding his writing.

There’s also a lot of fun stories and details about things like how the work-for-hire game was played, and how the Scott Meredith agency profited off of keeping wannabe writers on the hook for more reading fees. One trick that Mr. Block shares is how he sometimes used dialogue which often features a character wandering off the point as a a way to easily stretch out a page count for a book. This ultimately became part of his writing style.

Hard core fans should also be aware there isn’t anything about how he came up with his later creations like Matt Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, or Keller. Here, the culmination of the story is how he was originally inspired to start his Evan Tanner novels, and how they became the next stage where he left

What we end up with isn’t so much a full historical account of Mr. Block’s life or writing. Rather it’s him looking back at his youth from two different perspectives, and how the experiences then shaped him into the writer he would become. What I loved about is the casual and sometimes wandering nature of it. It’s as if a reader sat down with Mr. Block over a cup of coffee and got to listen to him tell a bunch of stories about the old days. As a longtime fan of his, that’s a real treat.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Writer Prepares is an account of the early years of Lawrence Block.

Lawrence Block has been one of my favorite living crime writers for almost twenty years at this point so I snapped this up once I figured I had enough free time to read it.

A Writer Prepares covers the early career of Lawrence Block, from his stints in college to toiling at the Scott Meredith agency to cranking out one or more porno books a month to make ends meet. The book ends with The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep, the book that Block feels lifted him to the next plateau.

Some of the stories were touched on in Block's other non-fiction, although I enjoyed reading them again. I'll never get tired of the story of Block cranking out a book in three days to pay the hospital bills after his daughter was born. Other aspects were new to me, like the drinking binges, moving to Wisconsin to work for a coin collecting magazine, or drinking cheap cough syrup that contained codeine for years.

Block wrote most of this in the 1990s and finished it in 2020, assuming he'd catch covid and die at some point in the near future. Thankfully, he didn't AND he finished the book. Block's frank about mistakes that were made and things that he might have done differently. He also doesn't pretend his books have all been masterpieces but isn't ashamed of them either, most of them having been reprinted fairly recently, some self-published.

A Writer Prepares is an interesting look at the foundational years of Lawrence Block. Five out of five stars.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a good deal of Lawrence Block’s output and along the way I’ve learned a reasonable amount about his life – well, in all honesty I’ve really only previously learned about his life since he became a successful writer of crime fiction novels. There have been glimpses of how things played out for him prior to this, in some short pieces he’s published and random anecdotes I’ve come across, but really nothing substantial. However, on his 83rd birthday (June 24th, 2021) he self-published this book detailing his formative years as a writer – his ‘apprenticeship’, as he calls it. About half of this book was written in a manic sitting in 1994 and the remainder was completed recently, a quarter of a century later.

Block was born in Buffalo, New York and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His ambition to become a self-sustaining writer came early and by the mid-to-late 1950’s he was already churning out sex novels (Block prefers the term classic mid-century erotica) at the rate of a book a month, for a rather paltry fee. These books were printed cheaply, sold in small numbers and Block always penned them under a pseudonym – any one of a few he routinely used or a random name supplied by the publisher. He talks about how he meticulously measured his output in order to produce the minimum number of pages needed to achieve the required quota. These weren’t labours of love, simply a way of earning money by doing what he always wanted to do.

There’s a lot of detail here about the process of producing and selling these books and along the way he describes a few tricks of the trade, such as the fact that inclusion of quite a bit of dialogue not only suited his own reading preference but also filled up space much more economically than extended, uninterrupted prose. LB does talk about life outside of writing, but this only to a fairly limited extent. These, though, are my favourite segments in this book. His good friend and fellow writer Donald Westlake features quite a bit and there are some interesting and sometimes hilarious reminiscences of the times he spent with Don and of others he bumped into along the way.

It’s clear that LB was something of a workaholic through his period, he muses that all he had to hear was that somebody needed something as fast as possible “and I’ve have the sucker half written before he could hang up the phone”. He’s also evident that he’s always had a compulsive, and potentially addictive nature – if he got a taste for something (coin collecting and alcohol are examples he talks about) then he’d quickly become obsessed with it. In fact, it’s evident that he’s long since attended AA meetings in order to address the latter. He’s also honest about his fear of failure at this early point in his career: he’d found an agent who was able to place his material with willing publishers but he was reluctant to step outside of this arrangement even though it might provide greater reward and potentially increase his opportunity to broaden his horizons.

Eventually, though, he gathered together a few bits of input he’d garnered from conversations and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (his go to reference tool) and wrote what turned out to be his game changing book: The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. The hero of this novel – Evan Tanner, a man who never slept – would re-appear in five subsequent books. Block would go on to write successful series featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr (bookseller by day and burglar by night), troubled New York PI matt Scudder and a stamp collecting hit man called Keller, to name but a few. But this particular account terminates at the publication of the first Tanner book, in 1966.

This is clearly a very personal book, LB having chosen not to employ an editor who might ‘filter’ his words. This decision also helped him to bring the book to market quite a bit earlier than might otherwise have been the case – not a bad idea, he reflects, for someone of his age. But it’s also always been his inclination to do things at speed. It’s possible that we may not see another fictional novel from this prolific writer, he uses up his final few pages reflecting on his own mortality as he sits in his Greenwich Village abode whilst New York, the city he always gravitated to, continues to battle the coronavirus outbreak that has impacted us all. If that's to be the case the case then at least I have the comfort of knowing that there are in excess of a hundred titles he’s penned that I’ve yet to catch up with (I've read a number of his early books and some of them are really pretty good).

Lawrence Block is one of my favourite writers of crime fiction - for information the others include James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, John Sandford and Donna Leon (and I could easily add half a dozen more). Amongst all of these Block is the writer most willing and able to vary his mood and style: Rhodenbarr is funny, Scudder is complex and dour and Keller is something of an enigma. There are other examples too of this flexibility of in his wider catalogue. In my view he truly is a master of his craft and this memoire provides a valuable insight in describing how he started out on his writing journey.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Writer Prepares is the new memoir from author Lawrence Block that details his early years as a writer and how he broke into the industry offering a glimpse into an incredibly successful and prolific career.

How this book came together is just as interesting as the content itself. Block began writing this memoir in the mid-90s while in his mid-fifties hoping to fulfill an obligation to a publisher. Ultimately, even though he was several thousand words deep, Block decided against finishing the damn thing and shelved it. Now, nearly twenty-five years later, and Block now in his eighties, he picked up where he left off and is finally releasing it.

Despite knowing from an early age that he wanted to be a writer, Block didn’t quite know where to start. He took a job early on working for a literary agency where he would read short stories, novellas and novels and offer feedback to amateur writers desperate to break into the market. He’d work that mind-numbing job all day and then turn around and pump out erotica in his spare time as a writer-for-hire under various pseudonyms.

He mentions in the book that much of his early work ended up being stories he wanted to distance himself from as he became more established under his own name. In fact, he would flat-out refuse to sign some of the stuff that had been floating around under any of these old pen names, which is surprising to me considering some of those stories are really quite good (Sinner Man and Lucky at Cards come to mind).

I guess we have a publisher like Hard Case Crime to thank for his change of heart. With Hard Case publishing several of his early novels and the favorable response from readers, Block now takes to self-publishing much of his back catalog. Which is great, because you’ll never hear me complaining about more Block!

I’m happy that Block ultimately decided to finish and release this book. While Block has written several books about the craft of writing, I’ve always wanted to know more about just how one of my favorite authors got his start and A Writer Prepares allowed me to sit down and get to know him a little better.

[Una Tiers · Rating 3 out of 5]

At one time, I was a fan of the Bernie Rhodenbarr series. But after some disparaging remarks about women, and a cowardly failure to act, I stopped reading them.
Picking up this book was my first library visit since March of last year.
It was mildly interesting, but by the middle I started to skim. Half-way through I skipped pages just to get to the end.
There was no structure and most of the time I couldn't tell what year it was.
Not recommended.

[Kevidently · Rating 5 out of 5]

In part because I've been a lifelong Stephen King fan, I'm a sucker for writers' stories. Their methods, their tales of writing, and how they became writers in the first place. So when I found out one of my favorite writers, Lawrence Block, was going to publish a book about his beginnings, I thrilled at the notion. I've read enough essays and forewords by Block to know I like the way he talks about himself, never aggrandizing but not overly minimizing, either. He has always come to the subject of himself with a somewhat guarded interest, as if it's a topic he knows very well but doesn't entirely trust his main sources. It's a great way to write and a delight to read.

The worry when it comes to autobiographies of creative people is that they're going to spend a lot of time looking for those signature moments in childhood that helped shape them. I understand why those are important, and they can be interesting when told correctly and with economy. Sometimes what we get is a mire in family history that's ... not as fascinating as the writer seems to think, Bruce Springsteen. People who admire someone's work are drawn to the stories of the work before the stories of the person behind it, I think, and I also think that if a writer is doing a good job, those things can become intertwined in a narrative.

Lawrence Block does this so deftly in A Writer Prepares that it attains the pace and excitement of a Lawrence Block novel. The thrill comes not from whether Scudder will find the killer or whether Rhodenbarr will get out of the scrape he's found himself in, but whether Lawrence Block can pull another erotic novel out of the ether this month, so he can continue to make a living doing what he does best. Along the way, we delve into the heady world of pseudonyms, the grift of early publishing houses, and the mental state of a man who realizes, after writing dozens of novels, that he might be a very good writer indeed.

This is the story of an apprenticeship, of a beginning. As such, we don't really touch at all on much of Block's major fiction; you won't find Scudder, Bernie, or Keller in these pages, aside from a brief mention or two. The magic of A Writer Prepares is that you don't miss the stories behind those stories much, because what we get is so compelling. I'd gladly read an entire book of Block's reminiscences in the publishing world, but I'm content with - and grateful for - this fascinating and often exhilarating look at the life of a novelist who becomes a writer.

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for the first 2/3 of this, written when Block was 55, at white heat (Written At White Heat could be the title of this book, in fact, not just for that, but for how he wrote his first several dozen books) about his apprenticeship as a "hack" writer of pulp stories and softcore porn and fake psychiatric advice books and tender lesbian novels, in the early 60s, mostly under pen names. Churning a short book per month, sometimes two, he paid his bills and learned not only his craft, but how to not be overly artsy-angsty about the whole business and get down to the business of writing and hit deadlines. This part of the book was funny and engaging.

I grabbed it with the hope he'd talk about his friendship with Westlake, and he did (though no poker game details. I really wanted one of those poker games in detail, but alas...).

The last third, written recently, when he was/in his 80s, is not so good. But he did find the topic of the book then, the apprenticeship that ends with his developing The Thief Who Never Sleeps and starting that series.

It's isn't a typical autobiography, and anything that happened after he was 27 (divorce, sobriety, awards, etc.) is only alluded to. But it is a fascinating snapshot of that moment in time in NYC. If you love his novels, or if you're one of the collectors pricing that old softcore Block/Westlake porn out of my price range, you'll want this.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you already are a fan of Lawrence Block, you know you will want to read this book. Block has written a delightful and gripping memoir of his early years as a writer. He brings to life his time at Antioch College and working at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Always entertaining even as he is philosophical about the steps that took him to become the Grand Master he is.

[Wayne Fenlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Block's writing life is quite the eye opener. From the beginning of his career working as an editor to the amount of books he could churn out in a year.
I loved the honesty running throughout this book.
A brilliant read.
Five stars.

[John Domenichini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just fun and wonderful. A real pleasure to hear about the old days of publishing from Lawrence Block's specific experiences.

It feels very personal, like I'm sitting in a coffee shop with Lawrence Block while he shares stories from back in the day about how he made it as a writer.

[Bobby Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A Writer Prepares’ is vintage Block, in more ways than one


The most interesting aspect of Lawrence Block’s new memoir of his early days as a working writer is that the book was published at all.

Before he was the hardboiled genius behind alcoholic ex-cop Matthew Scudder, before gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and before the perpetually wakeful knight-errant Evan Tanner, Block made a living pounding out softcore sex novels with titles like Sin Hellcat, Circle of Sinners, and High School Sex Club.

For years, Block refused to acknowledge much of this earliest work, even going so far as to tell New Mexico-based publisher and all-around book maven Ernie Bulow that he would refuse to acknowledge or autograph any of the midcentury erotic novels that bore any of his various and sundry pen names. But as years passed, Block began to look at those works with a kinder eye. He has even released many of them himself, bypassing traditional publishing, as Kindle-exclusive titles.

Block’s embrace of his salad days has resulted in a remarkable memoir: A Writer Prepares details Block’s early life, his time as a fee reader in the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and his career cranking out 50,000-word paperbacks for softcore publishers like Beacon and Monarch.

The book was begun in February of 1994, while Block visited Ragdale, a writers’ colony in Illinois for a month-long stay to complete a new novel. When the book he was working on didn’t pan out, Block instead turned to the memories of his earliest days in publishing. Within a week, he had written more than 50,000 words of the memoir.

The book was originally folded into a four-book deal with William Morrow and Co. (now an imprint of HarperCollins) in the mid-1990s. However, after the first half or so of the memoir, Block never finished it. He was able to regain the rights to the book, and in 2019 began -- in fits and starts -- to work on it again, a quarter of a century later.

Had Block not referenced it in the book itself, it would be impossible to tell where the break in the writing occurred. Remember that Block has been writing narrative for publication -- whether fiction or creative nonfiction -- for more years than he’d likely care to count. In A Writer Prepares, he is by turns breezy, chatty, and completely candid. In other words, it’s prime Lawrence Block. He is, in almost every way that counts, a writer’s writer.

The book is quintessential Block. Readers who enjoyed The Crime of Our Lives will find some familiar material here. While Block does nothing so gauche as re-hash his stories, he expands and explains. Most illustrative of how Block became a working writer is the passage on his time with Scott Meredith.

Well, sort of with Scott Meredith. While Block did work as a fee reader for SMLA, he rarely if ever saw the man himself. Instead, Block’s job was to read and respond to unsolicited submissions, for which hopeful writers paid $5 for Meredith to read and review.

It was a scam, of course. Long before the Association of Authors’ Representatives was even thought of, it was common for many agents to charge a reading fee, though it seems doubtful that anyone ever went to the lengths that Meredith did to fleece hopeful scribblers.

Longtime agent Henry Morrison, who also worked for Meredith before hanging out his own shingle, has referred to SMLA as “a pirate ship,” and Block explains why in chilling detail.

But working for Meredith also opened doors for Block. Publishers who paid a flat fee for books would often approach the agency looking for young writers, and Block was one of the mainstays, publishing novels under multiple aliases. Other notable writers of the time period like Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) and Donald Westlake did the same kind of work.

Block knows how to write, and he knows how to tell a story (those things are often only tangentially related). His smooth style, honed to a fine cutting edge over the years, is on full display, even as he details surprising details about his life. He is candid about his substance abuse and subsequent sobriety, although those details are never dwelled upon. Perhaps Block felt that he may have already shared enough of that side of his life in the pages of the Scudder novels.

Longtime Block fans will smile at mentions of Greenwich Village musician and unofficial mayor of MacDougal Street, Dave Van Ronk. The pair prowled the same coffee shops and bars during the same time period, and Block even co-wrote a song with Van Ronk.

Block has been writing and publishing for more than 60 years at this point, and it might seem that he’s done everything there is to do. While he’s undoubtedly slowed down from the young man in a Village apartment pounding away at the typewriter keys, sometimes churning out three novels a month. Not only has he written four distinct and successful series of novels, he’s also instructed beginning writers in books as diverse as From Plot to Print to Pixel and Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. He’s a sought-after editor for crime fiction anthologies and his introductions and blurbs are still much-sought. And now with A Writer Prepares, Block has also conquered the memoir.

What’s next for Block? In recent years, he has again taken control of his publishing destiny by going outside the traditional houses and self-publishing much of his back catalog as well as occasional new works like A Time to Scatter Stones and Dead Girl Blues. Whatever comes next, it figures to be a lot like all of his other work: eminently readable.

Block’s memoir is honest about his foibles, direct about his writing, and gripping in its details. For writers who want to be the kind of professional (and artist) that Block is at the keyboard, and for longtime fans, A Writer Prepares is a must-read. For those new to Block, the book is still worthwhile for its explanation and detail of how a little-understood era in publishing actually operated.

A Writer Prepares publishes on June 24, 2021, Block’s eighty-third birthday.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing account of the writing apprenticeship of Lawrence Block, my own most read author

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Block has turned out another fascinating look into how he developed as a writer. (I say "another" because various pieces and books of his have given many glimpses [and I've enjoyed them all]).

I note here that I first heard of Block when we were both readers on the same program at the late lamented Science Fiction, Mysteries and More bookstore in lower Manhattan. Block read a Bernie Rhodenbarr short story, and I was hooked. I tracked down all the Bernie books and stories I could, and -- after that -- began reading his other series and any of his stand-alones I could get my hands on. While I do not claim to be any kind of an expert on Block's work I can assure the reader that the reason I enjoy it so much is that his prose is crisp, and NEVER gets in the way of the story.

That is very true here, too. Block's recollections are vivid (even when he is not sure he is remembering something accurately), and the various twists and turns his career has taken are an excellent reminder that following your interests can often lead to interesting tangents.

I was a bit startled to see where he feels his "apprenticeship" ended, but it does make sense.

Frankly, I hope Block is around for many more years, and that he keeps gracing us with his prose, his anthologies, and his joy in (and sense of privilege at) -- in his own words -- "making things out of words."

Anyway, as both a writer and a reader (and an unashamed fan of Block's) I have had the great pleasure of reading this book. I hope you find it as enjoyable as I have.

[Ronald Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy writer memoirs. Lawrence Block, who has been around for quite awhile, delivers one that is a bit different than most. A Writer Prepares is not a biography and does not cover his total career. As its title indicates, the emphasis is on Block's early years and how he became a writer. He keeps the memoir centered from his first real desire to write for a living until he finally develops his first series character, Evan Tanner. He covers his mixed blessing time with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency as a fee reader, where he had to balance the skills he could later use with the moral turpitude of the agency scamming would-be writers (though SMLA did have some legitimate pro clients). Once he left the agency and finally tackled the novel-writing process, learning how to (almost naturally) produce sellable material, the flood gates opened. Perhaps the task was a bit easier since the novels he decided to write were what he now calls "Classic Erotica." And they were definitely a proving ground. He had the desire, the enthusiasm, the perseverance, and, with time, damn if he didn't learn how to hone his talent.

A Writer Prepares has an interesting structure. The core of the book, the first 50,000 words were written in little over a week at Ragdale, an Illinois art colony, in February 1994. This project was something Block had been putting off for quite a while. It came in a torrent and when it ended, unfinished, it languished for 25 years. As Block says, the writing of the memoir forced "me to look at parts of my history it was less than a joy to examine." But 25 years later he realized that when he had originally written the book "he was the wrong age for it." So he "fix(ed) typos and tweek(ed) the occasional infelicitous phrase" and finished at 81 what the 55-year-old writer couldn't do. He added about a quarter to the memoir, bringing it up to the creation of Evan Tanner and I, for one, am most grateful. There is a notable difference into the tone and perspective of the last portion. Most interesting.

Lawrence Block is a fine writer and this volume was a pleasure to read. If I had had the spare time I would have read it through in a sitting or two. I do have the feeling that I will return to it again because I think it deserves another reading.

I received an advance copy of the ebook from Lawrence Block, with no requirement for a review. I would have willingly paid for this book.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great memoir about Larry Block's early years as a novelist. It covers his career from his first submission to Manhunt up to the publication of his first in a series of Evan Tanner novels, which he marks as the end of his writing apprenticeship.

He goes into more depth about his time at Scott Meredith and the circumstances of how got started writing sex novels in the early 1960s, than he has previously blogged about.

He started the memoir in 1994 and finished it while working as a writer-in-residence at Newberry College in South Carolina. Curiously, though, he let the factual errors in the 1994 text stand, making no revisions to what he wrote then.

I was pleased to find that I had made a small contribution to the book. It turns out that he and were writing about Bill Coons at the same time, he for A Writer Prepares<\i> and I for the introduction to A Beatnik Trio, which contained one of Coons books written under the Dell Holland pseudonym. I did a lot of research on Coons and discovered that he had taken a teaching job at Skidmore College, where he was working at the time he was busted for selling LSD on the 4th of July in 1969.

Larry and I exchanged information via email and much of what he related to me ended up in my intro, for which I am grateful.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The front half is a joy-ride telling of Larry's beginnings, writing several types of trashy stories and books. What a life!!

This was re-told in one mad week at a retreat, and then his time was up before he finished.

Decades later he came back to it, but the world had changed. And changed again with COVID. The second half is perhaps the most introspective writing Larry has put out.

Fan-friends of Larry will want to read this. Others will think "WTF!??" and not get it. Read a few Tanners, several Scudders, The Specialists, Get the Bear...., and then see if you want to know more about the man and mind behind these works.

[Mizloo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Block always entertains and, in addition to writing 2 classic detective series, he had at least a speaking acquaintance with many of the mystery writers in NYC during the second half of the last century. He's currently revising, rewriting and remarketing his lifetime of work, much it excellent, some better left in the vaults. This one could have used some polishing and editing, but it's a look at NY in the 50's an 60's through the clear eyes of an observant, witty bon vivant. I enjoyed it.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

At one time, I was a fan of the Bernie Rhodenbarr series. But after some disparaging remarks about women, and a cowardly failure to act, I stopped reading them.
It was mildly interesting, but by the middle I started to skim. Half-way through I skipped pages just to get to the end.
There was no structure and most of the time I couldn't tell what year it was.
Not recommended.

[Michael Mullins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very entertaining read with a thoroughly engaging narrator. You don’t have to be a writer to appreciate Lawrence Blocks recounting of his writers life. This is a book he started in his twenties and just finished and published in his eighties, so it comes at you from two time frames. Funny and insightful and heartfelt, also informative. Imminently readable and highly recommended.

[Craig Childs · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction, but, by God, it's less entertaining, and nowhere near as realistic."

"What I'm finding out, sitting at my desk here in Newberry, is that I seem to be more interested in examining my life in full than in trying to recall and recount the details of every book I wrote. If I was once reluctant to let anyone know anything much about me, I seem to have been utterly transformed into an old man desperate to tell all."

A Writer Prepares is Lawrence Block's long-gestating memoir about his start in the writing game. While the events of the narrative occur between 1956-66, the first half of the book was composed in 1994, and it was finally completed in 2021. Thus, readers get the unique and slightly vertiginous experience of having the author relate his young adulthood experiences from the vantage of 28- and then 57-years removed.

I don't know if this book appeals to a wide audience, but it is a must-have for Lawrence Block aficionados. Some of the anecdotes have appeared before in his Writer's Digest articles, the book version of his seminar Write For Your Life, and his collection of afterwards for reissues of his backlist titles in Afterthoughts 2.0. However, this is the first time the full story has been set down.

He talks about discovering he is an alcoholic, his initial failed attempts to get sober, his first marriage, his stumbling into the pseudonymous sex novel industry, and of course the now-infamous Scott Meredith Literary Agency scams.

I have read almost all of the books he reminisces about, but I learned the origins of some of them like Naked New York (it is better than Block thinks it is), Killing Castro (written on request after the publisher heard rumors of the Bay of Pigs attack before it happened), and Carla (the weird love scene in the grease pit only got written because the author had never actually seen a grease pit).

Block also dishes on some obscure entries in his bibliography that are nearly impossible to find today. The chapbook The Strange Sisterhood of Madam Adista was a hot ticket for a decade in Times Square bookstores. Babe in the Woods might not have been very good, but John Jakes stepped in afterwards and continued William Ard's Lou Largo series with excellent results.

He shares funny anecdotes about well-known authors like Don Westlake, Randall Garrett and John Farris.

The book will also interest readers who are generally curious about an inflexion point in American publishing. These years saw the peak and subsequent collapse of the fiction magazine market, the rise of paperback originals driven in large part by the popularity of Mickey Spillane and Gold Medal Books, and a marked loosening of obscenity laws across the country. These were the pulp backwaters in which latter-day genre virtuosos like Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg cut their teeth and honed their skills.

I alternated between my kindle edition and the audiobook read by Peter Berkrot.

5 stars.

[John Bruni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Block does not give a single solitary damn. Not even a ha'damn. This is possibly the most honest accounting of an up and coming author in the 'Fifties I've ever read. For someone who disavowed his earlier work under pen names, he really let it all hang out in this book. He tells all the dirty secrets of the Scott Meredith agency, for example. They really did some eye-watering levels of con work on those poor authors. If I did that kind of thing, I probably wouldn't tell the world about it.

I probably would tell the world about me going to sex workers, though, and Block is pretty open about that, but I don't have kids, and he does. If I had kids, I probably wouldn't have brought it up.

And if I was friends with an adult who had a romantic relationship with a twelve year old girl, I would end that friendship, not talk about how I didn't have a problem with it in my memoir. But it's this indifference that makes this book a very interesting read.

(As I'm reading this back, that last sentence sounds terrible. I didn't mean it to imply that being honest about having a pedophile friend is a good thing. I mean, the levels of honesty it takes to admit to something like that is a clear indication that I'm reading something that is 100% truthful.)

I don't think I could write a book a month, like he said he did back in the day. I have to have something to say when I'm writing, and dashing off a book a month doesn't seem conducive to me. And here's where I admit that I'm not a fan of Block's. I read The Girl With the Long Green Heart, which was amazing, but that's the only book of his that I've liked until now. I think the reason I don't like his work is because it seems like it was dashed off at times, and it strikes me that a lot of it can be related to the old sound and fury concept of Shakespeare's, and to have this confirmed in this book makes sense. But this book, while rambling at times, doesn't seem dashed off. He wrote it with such an urge to set the record straight that he came clean about his pen names in the last chapter. Which makes me think maybe he *does* have a damn to give. Or maybe just a ha'damn.

If you're a writer, you'll find this book interesting. Not sure how it will handle for the rest of you.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read Block despite the fact I'd probably like his books (he's sometimes lumped with Donald E Westlake and Evan Hunter who I enjoy). I really liked this dive into his early years and the publishing industry of the time. One of the reasons I don't read Block is that he is what I call a prolific: someone who has written so much stuff it's hard to track it all down. He addresses that in this book when he admits to having lots of pen names that he doesn't want to reveal. I enjoyed his enthusiasm for his erotica which seems he had fun with. I was also pleased to find the answer to my question as to how Donlad Westlake ended up writing a biography of Elizabeth Taylor.

[Scott Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really two books in one. The first half of this book was written over the course of several days in 1994. It has a breathlessness and clarity of purpose that makes it hard to put down. But he took what was supposed to be a momentary break and then didn't back to it for over 35 years. The conclusion of the book, while it still has its charms, is frankly not as good. There are a lot more digressions, and while some are interesting, others, like the ones on memory and various acquaintances he made, feel pretty pointless. But overall, it is a riveting read and an essential one for Block fans.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was moved to read this book after having read "Burglars Can't Be Choosers." I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but Lawrence Block, along with his many pen names, shared an unexpected tale of life's twists, turns, and the choices he's made over the past 83 years. I did not expect the career of an aspiring writer would look like his! So many stories created just to fill pages and provide his publishers something to sell! It has certainly humanized the person behind a published story or book for me and has broadened my view about authors' motivations, intentions, and aspirations about what they've written.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir of Blocks beginning of his writing career. I enjoy seeing a lot of the same thoughts, doubts, and fears I've felt while writing. The book slows down a bit at the end, but also got almost sad as Block comes to realize his novel writing days are all but over and he doesn't expect to write another.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

a cool look at how he became a writer. The interesting thing about this book is that he wrote some of it and then added to it. There is a discussion of what hewrote and what he continued. He is a wonderful one to read memoir because he is comfortable and his voice comes through

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The hell with New York," I shouted. "I'm going back to Buffalo. I'm going to write a fucking lesbian novel!"

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

An evocative account of LB's literary education — by way of working at an unscrupulous agency, writing any sort of piece that would sell, and making his way in New York in the early ’60s.

[StiffSticks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish we could have part 2 of this outstanding memoir .

As it stands we get Block's writing history, from his earliest days picking up a pen up to his mainstream breakthrough.

[Cheng-Chung Tsai · Rating 3 out of 5]

已高齡85歲的卜洛克回憶錄，敘述他如何開始展開作家生涯於其間所發生的生活瑣事，一樣很卜洛克式的輕鬆易讀，無論是推理小說或是內容所說的早年剛出道成名的情色作品，卜洛克似乎永遠存在讀者心中，有著崇高重要的地位。