Apparently, myself.

Galleycat (http://www.galleycat.com) reports on the results of A Women and Books 2007 study which describes the typical book buyer:

• Age 45
• Married
• BA degree
• Lives a large city (population of 500,000 or more)
• Annual household income of $88,625 or more

Gee, you'd think I'd have a chance to be the most famous mystery writer who ever graduated from my high school. No shot. Never. You see I'm an alum of Palo Alto High as is... Erle Stanley Gardner, the progenitor of…

Groan. Back to work today. Honestly, it’s not that the job is horrible – it isn’t – but the weight of despair that lies on one’s back on the dreaded Return to Work Day gets worse with age. I used to be okay about this in my 20s, even though the jobs I had then were utter and insurmountable crap, but now even the thought of it has me pinned to my bed, dragging my feet round the flat and weeping in Lord H’s arms before the dreaded 8.30am occurs. Lordy, but what an eventful morning indeed.…

I'm thinking about starting to read a new mystery series, but with so many out there, I can't decide.

Click here to vote for which P.I. I should read about in my blog poll.

Posted by Sheila Connolly

"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us. " Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), To a Louse

I had my picture taken professionally last week. This is the first time I've had a picture of me alone taken by someone other than a well-meaning friend or relative since my senior year in college (yes, they had invented cameras by then). Well, there was one family portrait (what? Only one? My sister's son had a baby last…

War on a Word

By Liam Sweeny

“We are fighting a War on Terror” the President said, soon after the tragic events of Sept. 11^th. What the world wanted, what Americans needed, were answers, assurance, and the security of knowing

that our government was doing everything it could do to…

I was at two book signings recently at my favorite book store. The signings and talks were interesting and informative. However, at one book signing, during the author's talk, several people had their cell phones go off, rather loudly too, and this kept interrupting the author's train of thought, as he continued to stop while the people answered their phones. Usually, I believe, at most signings people are asked to turn their cell phones off, or most know to do this. This…

What a vacation! We are usually only gone for a weekend with a day or two on either side. This time we were gone for about ten days. We had a great time. The down side was coming home to a stack of phone messages to return and a foot high stack of mail.

Mayhem as usual was great fun! We had Thursday a.m. to visit the Heritage Museum. Chose that over the zoo because it was pouring rain. For lunch, we went to our favorite Ahmad’s Persian Restaurant and we weren’t disappointed. Ahmad…

By Guest Blogger Deb Baker

I grew up in the Michigan U.P. where my Yooper mystery series takes place. When I was looking for material for my first book, I thought my childhood was just like everyone else’s. But I gave it some thought and decided it had been a little unusual.

We had bugs the size of Volkswagen Beetles. One year my grandmother’s house…

Is it just me or is getting back into the normal routine post-holiday just hell? It feels like a non-day really, the calm before the storm of work. A space between two definite engagements. Groan. I was vaguely thinking of popping into the Quakers again today, but couldn't be arsed, frankly. So I have had a super-non-spiritual day tripping my way down the primrose path to sin. As it were. I think that might be some kind of Medieval image, but can't think where it comes from - possibly…

One of my earliest memories is of discovering the box of well thumbed paperbacks stored under my parent’s bed. They belonged to my late maternal grandmother, who, like me, had been an avid if reader with determinedly eclectic tastes.…