I am always looking for ways to connect with my readers. And so, from time to time, I devote one of my blogs (www.xanga.com/doahsdeer) to writing collaborative stories with my readers. I'll post the first few hundred words and invite my readers to write the story along with me. We write without a plan, without even an idea who our co-writers will be. Quite simply, I invite my readers to post the next section of the story as a comment at my blog.…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

I was planning to give you another profound, insightful and educational commentary about the literary world and the writer's life. And then I said to myself, forget it–it's summer.

So I'm going to talk about t-shirts. Summer reading, lite.

So there I was, standing in the local supermarket, guarding the full shopping cart while my husband went back and bought the six things he had forgotten the first time through, which took a while. Being a…

Posted by Leann Sweeney

I'm not talking about drugs or Alzheimer's here, though at times spaced out does describe my mental state. Okay, maybe half the time. Anyway, I am talking about the Internet. Again. I suppose a hundred years from now, when people can transfer their thoughts without benefit of keyboard or telephone or writing something in longhand (longhand probably won't take a hundred years to disappear), they will look back on how we socialize and publicize and…

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

About 20 years ago when my first book was published by an eminently respectable publisher, I received a form inviting my inclusion in Contemporary Authors (CA). I am a librarian, so I know that CA is a respected biographical source used often by students and other researchers.

I had a flash fantasy of professors wearing elbow-patched jackets, drawing on their pipes and helping their seminars limn the depths of Children With Cancer: A…

posted by Doranna Durgin



Yes, I'm back from another dog show/trial...last of the season for the this area. And although we did well enough in terms of success, the contrast between this show and the previous weekend's show is something I'm still pondering.



The first weekend held an agility trial. It was a single event show--agility only--held in a quiet park in a beautiful little high desert town just outside Sitgreaves National Forest. In most agility…

In his engaging documentary Oh Dad (BBC Radio4 Sunday) Lloyd Robson explored the surprising secret life of film noir legend Robert Mitchum.…

I'm polishing a short story that is soooooooooo overdue, so have had little time to read and post on this list. What an interesting group of people are on here! Many thanks to Lynne for inviting me so long ago, and many kicks at my own pants for not coming earlier

I'm off to a good friend's surprise birthday party. Should be fun!

The folks at Borders in Springfield did everything right for my signing yesterday. They put me at a table right up front near the door, near a display of new mysteries. Every time someone picked one up it gave me the opportunity to mention that I had a locally set mystery they might want to look at. They also had lots of signage, flyers, and my brochures set up in a nice display. They even brought me coffee. No wonder I signed so many books. And a couple of familiar faces did stop by,…

I have been offline for a while, and I just wanted to say a big Hello to all my new firends that have been added and to let them know I welcome them and this is for all my firends

I'm sure that some of you will know Paul Toth, who has a page here on crimespace. Paul is building a vast library of podcasts, featuring some of his own works as well as works by guest authors. Thursday evening, I read the first chapter of A Minor Case of Murder for one of Paul's podcasts, and here it is already featured on tothworld #94. So listen, if you're so inclined to toth 94 and then check out his archives.

My thanks to Paul for…

I've been working on a short story for Blood on the Holly, an anthology of crime stories coming out in September, 2007. I had difficulty writing a crime story for a holiday time i adore - how can you write negatively about eggnog, about shortbread and holly! I finally did it, but then a writerly friend suggested I make some major structural changes, and so I entered ss hell again. I have just decided to go back to the original structure, one that works with the vision I have of the…