From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article <1lvubqe.xjjz8wstn6qcN%mbottorff@lshelby.com>,   
   Michelle Bottorff  wrote:   
   >Dorothy J Heydt  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Lawrence Block, who back in the day wrote lots of whodunits and   
   >> also wrote a monthly essay for one of the writers' magazines on   
   >> how to write fiction (generally, everything else in the book was   
   >> about how to write nonfiction and how to sell it to the editor   
   >> before you had written it).  One of his essays was titled "Let's   
   >> Hear It for Sex and Violence!"  He gave a couple of sample   
   >> paragraphs full of sex and violence, and then said, "You'd go on   
   >> reading, wouldn't you?"  No, I wouldn't.   
   >   
   >I probably wouldn't have either.   
   >   
   >I read a Lawrence Block book once, and I did actually finish it, but I   
   >didn't pick up any more Lawrence Block books, because I prefer my   
   >mysteries not to have utterly pointless sex scenes inserted in them.   
   >   
   Yeah, well, Block (as he admitted from time to time) kept beans   
   on the table till he hit his stride, by writing soft porn thinly   
   disguised as case-histories, by "[Various Pseudonyms], M.D."  He   
   seems to have gone on thinking, perhaps unto the present day,*   
   that if nobody gets bonked or beaten up in a chapter the reader   
   will not buy it.   
      
   _____   
   *I just googled him; born 1938, he appears to be still alive.   
      
   --   
   Dorothy J. Heydt   
   Vallejo, California   
   djheydt at gmail dot com   
   Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.   
   Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)