Well, hello there. I have a few things to report, so let me get right to it: 1. First of all, I should tell you about MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, the new film by Wong Kar-wai, the brilliant Hong Kong-based director. It opened the Cannes Film Festival last year, and has just been released in the US. Norah Jones, in her first acting role, plays the lead, and the other stars include Jude Law, Natalie Portman, David Strathairn, and Rachel Weisz. I wrote the screenplay, based on an idea of WKW's. Hope you get to see it, and that you enjoy it. 2. I've mentioned a just-completed book, but haven't told you about it---and, noodges that some of you are, you've expressed the hope that it might turn out to be a Matthew Scudder book, or a Bernie Rhodenbarr book, or a sequel to War and Peace. It's none of those things. It's not even a work of fiction---except to whatever extent my memory is an unwitting liar. Because, you see, it's calling itself STEP BY STEP: A Pedestrian Memoir, and it sets out to cover a year in the life of an aging and none-too-gifted racewalker. Writing it, I found myself inclined to examine walking in all the forms it's taken in my life, from when I first made the transition from infant to toddler. I'd never expected to write about my childhood, but it's in here, and so's the long walk Lynne and I took across Spain to Santiago de Compostela, and, well, lots of stuff. I wondered throughout whether anybody would be interested in what I was writing. I was bothered by the fact that the damned thing was all about me me me---but it is, after all, a memoir, so what did I expect? And I was concerned that readers with no great interest in racewalking (and that would take in most of you, wouldn't it?) would find the book slow going. Those who've read it so far insist that's not that case, (Of course maybe they're just trying to keep from hurting my feelings. Maybe. . .oh, never mind.) I don't know exactly when STEP BY STEP will be published, or if that's the title we'll stick with. I expect it'll come out sometime in 2009, by which time I'll very likely have told you still more about it. 3. All well and good, some of you are saying, but what are you going to write next? (Yes, I can hear you. Even when you whisper, so be careful what you say.) Well, the answer to that question is two-fold: A. I don't know. B. If I did know, I wouldn't tell you. There's a good chance that the rest of 2008 will hold some film and/or TV work for me, but sooner or later I suspect I'll find myself writing a novel. Sooner or later I generally do. 4. The next book to be published, of course, will be HIT AND RUN in late June, and I want to say how pleased I am that so many of you have ordered the special limited Philatelic Edition. The response has been heartening, so much so that I'm finally moved to do what David Trevor has been pestering me to do for months, if not years---i.e., list some more of my titles in the bookstore and give you all a crack at them. In a day or two you'll get an email from him, detailing what's available; many of the new items are in very short supply. And I should add that there's still time to reserve your copy of the Philatelic Edition. Here's the link: http://www.lawrenceblock.com/content_shopping.htm. 5. There was something else, but I can't think what it was. I seem to have used up all my memory on the memoir. -- ★Ptt 以後 Ptt要靠你 [06/29/2004 23:42:29] --

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