After spending her girlhood writing gentle and thoughtful novels of the lesbian experience (SHADOWS, WARM AND WILLING, ENOUGH OF SORROW), Jill Emerson reinvented herself in the early 1970s, just when contemporary literature was experiencing an enormous flowering of sexuality. Even as the whole culture rocked with the sexual revolution, popular fiction echoed this change with a flinging off of censorship and a surge of sexual candor.And Jill wrote three books for Berkley.The first, THIRTY, was in the form of a diary, piling incident upon incident as the diarist, a woman in her thirtieth year, fled her safe suburban marriage and went off in search of her real self.The second, THREESOME, took the form of a collaborative novel in which the three participants in a menage a trois wrote a book together to chronicle their own experience-an experience that continued to evolve as each read what the others had written.A MADWOMAN'S DIARY, you won't be surprised to learn, is a return to the diary form. Once again the diarist is a young woman, seeking a richer and more fulfilling life in and out of bed. But the book owes its storyline to more than Jill Emerson's imagination. Interestingly enough, it grows out of a psychosexual case history previously reported by John Warren Wells.Jill, having read JWW's book in manuscript, couldn't get one particular case out of her head. It was, she thought, a perfect springboard for fiction. And the next thing she knew she was typing away, entirely caught up in the woman's story as it spooled itself out of her typewriter.John Warren Wells was unlikely to object. He and Jill, always friends, occasionally lovers, were comfortable sharing their work, and not infrequently would dedicate their books to each other. And, even if JWW found Jill's decorous plagiarism unsettling, what could he possibly do about it?Both he and Jill are in fact pen names-or, if you prefer, alternate selves-of author Lawrence Block. So they have all the reason in the world to get along.
About the Author: Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His most recent novels are THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; HIT ME, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, featuring Matthew Scudder, who will be played by Liam Neeson in the forthcoming film, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic TELLING LIES FOR FUN & PROFIT, and THE LIAR'S BIBLE. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (TILT!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.