Shadows

Shadows, which was not only the debut of Jill Emerson but my own very first novel, is the story of a young woman, Jan Marlowe, who comes to New York fresh out of college, takes an apartment in the Bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, and seeks to find herself—and specifically to come to terms with the puzzling question of sexual identity.

Well then...

One morning in the spring of 1958 I woke up in my room at the Hotel Alexandria with a paralyzing hangover (which was not unusual) and an idea for a book (which was). I sat in front of my typewriter, and within a few hours I had produced a chapter-by-chapter outline of a novel. I had all the characters sketched out and knew how theyd relate to one another, and how the rather elementary storyline would resolve itself. I even had a title: Shadows.

At the time I was working as an editor at a shady literary agency, but Id already arranged for my departure, as come fall Id be resuming college in Ohio. Sometime in May I gave up my room at the Alexandria and went home to Buffalo, where I turned that outline into a book. My agent sent it to Crest Books, then the countrys premier publisher of lesbian fiction.

They spent a couple of months reading it and thinking it over, during which time I wrote and sold several lesser books to Harry Shortens Midwood Books. Then, a couple of months after Id returned to Antioch and gone through a lot of sturm und drang that neednt concern us here, Crest accepted Shadows. They changed my title to Strange Are the Ways of Love. They also changed my pen name. Id known a lesbian novel ought to have a womans name on it, and I picked one. They decided on Leslie Evans instead, so it could be gender-neutral, and then switched it to Lesley Evans, which made it more specifically female. Welcome to publishing, young man.

Its clear to me now, some 60 years later, that the book ought to set sail under its original title, and since Im republishing it myself, thats a decision I get to make. Its also clear to me that Shadows is in fact Jill Emersons very first novel, as its far more of a piece with Warm And Willing and Enough of Sorrow than with anything else Ive written. So thats how Ill publish it, right? As Shadows, dammit, by Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson.

You got a problem with that?