Hit Me

The author's comments at the end of  "The Triumph of Evil"  included his email address and an invitation to write.  I rarely write "fan mail" but after the years and years of the pleasurable reading and listening experiences Lawrence Block has given me I felt compelled to at least say "thank you" once in my lifetime.

Holy Moly!  I got a personalized response almost immediately!  And a link to his blog and mailing list which held the promise of early notification of any new releases.  Yippee!!  I discover that LB has resurrected my absolute favorite of his protagonists - Keller of the Hit Man series!

Today's email brought a message from LB about his latest opus "Hit Me".  I had already marked my calendar for February 12th 2013, the day Hit Me will be released and figured this was a bit of pre-release hype.  There was an attachment, and after a mere glance at LB's note on my iPhone, I assumed the attachment was a few pages of a sneak preview of Hit Me. A teaser if you will.

Imagine my joy to find, upon a more careful reading and actually opening the pdf this morning, that attached to LB's email was ENTIRE text of Hit Me!  And the note from LB which read:
Hi—As you may know, Mulholland Books (and Orion in the UK) will be publishing HIT ME in February. It's the fifth book about Keller and the first since his presumed retirement at the end of HIT & RUN. I thought you might like an advance peek at it, and am attaching an eGalley in the form of a PDF; I'm assured it will work just fine on an eReader. Unlike the usual run of proofs, this is in fact the exact text of the final book. (Of course that doesn't mean there are no errors, but merely guarantees the permanence of any such errors as may exist.)

Should you like the book and be moved to review it or blog about it, I'd of course be delighted. But that's almost beside the point, which is that you've been generous to me and my work in the past, and this is a small (and remarkably inexpensive) way to thank you for it.

LB
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I have two important take-aways from this wonderful early Chanukah gift.

1. Never pass up an opportunity to tell someone, even a stranger, you admire them or to thank them for their impact on your life.  Send that Facebook post to an old, old friend.  You never know the riches that might await.

2. Lawrence Block is a class act.  He really did HIT ME with this one...