Does Block get much fan mail from Taiwanese readers? "A fair amount," he said. "I produce an occasional e-mail newsletter, for which readers can sign up at my Web site, www.lawrenceblock.com, and we have quite a few Taiwanese subscribers."
Block is also published in Japan where his books do well in translation, too, he said.
During his visit to Taiwan, Block said he hopes to visit the 85th floor observatory in the Taipei 101 skyscraper adjacent the World Trade Center, where he has been for the international book fair.
At the fair, he has been signing books, talking shop with editors and readers, and appearing at several public workshops. Block has also been invited to several college campuses around the country, including Chung Cheng University in Chiayi County, where several graduate students in the university's Taiwanese literature department are waiting to meet the acclaimed author.
Block said that he knew he wanted to be a writer when he was just 15 years old. When asked how he knew this and what lay behind that decision at such a young age, he said, "Beats me. I just had the sense that this was something I'd be good at and that I'd find satisfying."
The secret to his success, both literary and financial, Block said, is laziness. "It leads me to write rapidly and produce first drafts that don't need much in the way of revision. Virtually everything I've written fits under the broad canopy of crime fiction, and I'm not much inclined to define it any more precisely than that," he said.
Block said that most of his books in Taiwan have been translated by Yi, who often questions the author in New York by e-mail to clarify uncertain points of the text or some hard-to-translate American slang terms.
"There are often Americanisms and wordplay that's difficult to translate," Block said. "Of course I can't comment on the Chinese translations, since I can't read Mandarin, but our correspondence suggests that Clara Yi is a very thoughtful and perceptive translator."
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