So Willing

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From the author: When Don Westlake and I were starting out as writers, we both served an apprenticeship writing erotic novels for Harry Shorten at Midwood Books and Bill Hamling at Nightstand. (I was Sheldon Lord for Midwood and Andrew Shaw for Nightstand, while Don was Alan Marshall for both publishers. Note though that the presence of either name upon a book is no guarantee that one of us wrote it. Both of us made arrangements whereby lesser writers would submit works under our names-and I know it's hard to believe that any writers were less than we were back then, but it's true.) Well. We'd become friends in the summer of 1959, while we were living a few blocks away from each other in midtown Manhattan. I was at the Hotel Rio, on West 47th between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and Don was a block south and several blocks west of me. Then I moved back to my parents' house in Buffalo, and Don and his wife and kid moved to Canarsie, and we wrote letters back and forth. And at one point we decided it might be fun to do a novel together. Not by thinking it out and talking through it and, you know, collaborating in a serious artistic manner. Our method was simpler. One of us would write a chapter, and then the other would write a chapter to come after it, and back and forth, like that, until we had a book. It worked, and by God it was fun. The first of our efforts was A GIRL CALLED HONEY, and it started when I wrote a chapter and sent it to Don. And so on, and we stopped when we had a book and sent it to Henry Morrison who sent it to Harry Shorten. We put both our names on the book, our pen names that is to say, and that's how Harry published it: by Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall. And he included our dedication: "To Don Westlake and Larry Block, who introduced us." It was so much fun that we did it again. This time Don wrote the first chapter, and I wrote the second. Was I still in Buffalo, and did we still send the chapters through the mail? Damned if I can remember. I think I may have been in New York by then, living with my first wife on West 69th Street. But maybe not, and what does it matter? We finished the book, we sent it in, Midwood published it, and we shared the advance, which was probably $600 for A GIRL CALLED HONEY, but may have escalated to $750 by the time we did SO WILLING. So each of us wound up with either $300 or $375 for our trouble, and that's not a lot of money nowadays, and it wasn't a lot of money in 1960 either, but neither was it a lot of trouble. Damn, those were good days. We did a third novel in collaboration, SIN HELLCAT, and I think it may have been the best of the three-but we didn't get to put a joint byline on it. Well, we did-but someone at Nightstand felt free to change it, dropping Alan Marshall from the "by Alan Marshall and Andrew Shaw" byline we'd supplied. Much the same thing happened to CIRCLE OF SINNERS, my collaboration for Nightstand with Hal Dresner; "By Andrew Shaw and Don Holliday" is what we tagged it, and this time it was Andrew Shaw who got bumped. Never mind. Here's SO WILLING-and if reading it brings you a small fraction of the fun we had writing it, you'll be back right away to scoop up A GIRL CALLED HONEY and SIN HELLCAT.

Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy. Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer. Block's first short story, "You Can't Lose, " was published in 1957 in Manhunt, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and the New York Times. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including Enough Rope (2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories. In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep. Block's diverse heroes also include the urbane and witty bookseller--and thief-on-the-side--Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out with Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block's work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor. A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn't touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers' Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.