posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I just spent three weeks pet- and house-sitting for friends named Smith--really!--who went to Hawaii. The pets and I all survived. So did the house, more or less. That house had it in for me, though. (Insert evil music here.)

I stocked up on simple food so I would not have to cook. I could (and did) microwave everything. That…

Posted by Doranna Durgin



Once upon a time, I was a pre-teen who spent a lot of time scribbling in a notebook. Although I started with my own characters and my own book (about a seeing-eye dog), I quickly started writing in what was the very first television universe to fascinate me: Star Trek. (Don't even ask if this was the original series. Yes, thank…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

It's been almost two years since my first book was published by a small press and given a teeny, tiny print run. The book didn't get a lot of notice, which quite frankly broke my heart. Not surprising, anyone in that position would feel the same. I got some lovely reviews online, but it wasn't enough to get the book into libraries and the hardcover price was also a turnoff to readers unfamiliar with my name.…

I'm happy to announce that two of us blogging buddies from Writers Plot have finally met. More accurately, some of us know each other separately, but we've never crossed paths since we joined forces in these cyberpages. This weekend two of us actually wound up face to face for the first time. I supply the evidence: Jeanne Bracken and Sheila Connolly, at the New England CrimeBake conference this past weekend.…

posted by guest blogger Jessica Conant-Park

I admit it: I’m driven by food. I’m married to a chef, I write culinary mysteries, and nothing delights me more than a visit to Russo’s upscale market in Watertown, MA. The heroine in my Gourmet Girl mysteries, Chloe Carter, jokingly theorizes that she operates under Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, fulfilling basic physiological needs (food, , sleep, breathing) before she can move on to other needs, like love, in order to reach the goal…

Posted by Guest Blogger, Kate Flora

My recipe box is a trip down memory lane. I can thumb through it and find not just food that I associate with special people and special occasions, but also familiar handwriting. There are even some small blue cards with my own early and awkward cursive. I’ve had the box since I was about eight, and over time, the cardboard dividers have disintegrated so that I have to thumb through the whole box whenever I want a recipe.



The other…

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

We have these really good friends who have been part of our lives since 1977. So when they said they were going to Hawaii for three weeks and would I like to pet- and house-sit while they were gone, I said sure! I have borrowed their house in the past when they were away, since I can set up my current writing project, leave it spread around, and tackle it whenever I have time without all those pesky home interruptions. What could go wrong?

Evil…

posted by Doranna Durgin

Seems like it's pretty straightforward, really, or it should be: Write the book.

Okay, maybe that's glossing over the whole book-writing process just a teensy bit, but let's go with it: Write the best book you can, follow it through the production process, meet your deadlines along the way. Because being a good writer is not the same as being a good blurb crafter, a typesetter, or a publicist...and there's no reason those skillsets…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

"Do you read mysteries?" I innocently asked a library patron at my last signing.

"No," she snarled, giving me a look of disdain. "I only read INTELLECTUAL books."

I stood there, dumbfounded for about five seconds, before I babbled, "Thank you. I'm a mystery author."

The elderly woman instantly backpedaled. "I mean, I have to save my eyesight for SIGNIFICANT books."

I bit my tongue. I didn't say, "Oh,…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

(Following Kate Flora's lovely post) Has anybody noticed that television food shows recently have been getting more and more erotic? No, not all of them, but a significant number. All those opening shots of glistening, colorful vegetables, slabs of succulent meat, handsome potatoes and stacks of intricate pasta. And then there are the chefs... How did this happen?

In the good old days, there was Julia Child. No one will…

Posted by guest blogger Kate Flora

Sometime around early November, when the leaves are sailing down from the trees and the air grows nippy, I move my attention from the pleasures of the perennial gardens to the pleasures of the kitchen. In spring and summer, I'm so challenged by the job of balancing dedicated writing time with time spent gardening that I resent having to also keep house and prepare meals. This is when I entertain fantasies of…

posted by Jeanne

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but many of us on the East Coast have been shuffling around for the past week as if in a trance. We're Red Sox Nation and we've been through division championships, league championships and finally the World Series.

Of course we're glad that The Olde Home Team won the big trophy. Personally, and I note here that I've been a Sox fan for ...let's just say decades and leave it at that, I was suprised that the Series only…

Posted by Doranna

Mr. Leash is Your Friend

Well, Mr. Leash is my friend. Especially when Mr. Leash is on other peoples' dogs. And I swear I wrote this before the events of the 21st and my previous blog, when Connery was attacked by the Giant Schnauzer. Honestly honestly truly. I even wrote it before the comments I saw in my SFF Net hang-out,…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

Here at Casa Ivy Bend, we've been living in a computer crisis, so following Sheila's lead, I thought I'd blog about it.

My husband is self-employed as a cartographer, and his Mac G3 has been dying a slow and painful death. We really had no choice but to…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

I am writing and sending this post from my new computer. To most of you out there, this should be no big deal, but this is the first computer I have researched, purchased, and set up all by myself. I am patting myself on the back.

I know, most kids today could do this while watching television, listening to their MP3 player, and eating lunch, but for me it’s a major achievement. I remember life before computers (gasp).

Back in the Dark…

By guest blogger Sue Ann Jaffarian

Silly me – when I first started writing mysteries, I had no idea there were so many subgenres. To me, a mystery is a mystery is a mystery. When I put my fingers to the keyboard and pumped out my first mystery, Too Big To Miss, I was writing a mystery – period. I didn’t write for a particular label or to avoid being labeled. I wrote from my gut, the labels came later and were purely superficial.

Although many readers consider my Odelia…

posted by Leann Sweeney

Thank goodness some semblance of autumn finally arrived in southeast Texas this past week. For me, that first real cool front means it's time to make chili. And I did. I do a good chili, but not Texas chili, Yankee chili. I know. You can the girl out of Yankee-land but you can't .... Anyway, it's also time to pull out the best kitchen…

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

Dear library user,

Your local librarians are delighted to welcome you to the library. We are happy to help you find whatever you need (except for you porn surfers--you know who you are). There are, alas, some limitations to what we can do for you. Most of those limitations involve computers. As for the rest, well, we're talking humans here...

First, I have to point out that those of us in middle age were trained in the Dark Ages when…

This should be a blog about Belle Cardigan's triumphant return to the show ring--about how although she's not even on fully normal activities around the house just yet, she nonetheless went out to a dog show this past weekend, competed in rally and obedience, and earned Qs in all four classes--with two red ribbons on Saturday and two blues on Sunday. She came home…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

Last week I attended the New York Library Association's annual conference, this year held in Buffalo, NY. Since MURDER ON THE MIND takes place in Buffalo, it felt good to reconnect with the setting of my book. And I met a lot of wonderful librarians who seemed truly interested in my work.

I was there as part of the Mystery Writers of America's New York chapter. My "appearance" was at the second-annual "Author Garden." The authors…