I am trying to streamline my life a bit, so instead of trying to occasionally post to my blog here, I'm using the RSS feed gadget on my member page to feed items from my main blog. That means this is the last of me you'll see in the blog feed section of Crimespace's front page. (Hurrah! they all cried.)

Thanks to Daniel for pointing out how to do this in the Crimespace FAQ.

There's a good piece by Charles McGrath in today's Times about genre fiction and quality. The call out quote - "Today's novelists feel as if they have to choose

either pedestal or plot."

Referring to the Brady Affair, he says…

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What a good year for reading! It…

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I’ve been anxiously awaiting this moment. While I’m totally useless myself when it comes to graphic design, I’m enamored of cover art and love sampling it in a good bookstore. I like covers that are unusual,

colorful, say something about the book inside, and have a bit of

mystery to them - what is that about? Hmmm, let’s take a look . . .

So I was delighted to get the cover art for In the Wind, and…

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It's a trifle ironic that, on the same day that the new NEA jeremiad, er, report on how reading is going to hell in a handbasket (again) Amazon finally released its e-book reader, Kindle. So, if nobody reads anymore, is Kindle - or, as Newsweek puts it in swooningly glowing… Continue

I should update a previous blog post on the libraries in Jackson County, Oregon that were closed last April. They're going to reopen now that the county has outsourced them to a for-profit library management company. They'll be open fewer hours (from 40/week to 24), have fewer employees with no union contract and much-smaller salaries - and the books will be chosen,… Continue

Here's a charming idea - a "create your own path" story stenciled on the sidewalks of San Francisco! Found via if:book, cross posted from my blog.

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A guest post I wrote for Poe's Deadly Daughters appeared today. It's all about how to find less embarrassing ways to tell well-meaning friends who ask when the next book is coming out, "I was dumped." Turns out the best line I could come up with is "I have a book coming out with another publisher next year." But sheesh, it took me a while to come up with it. I must lack imagination.



Anyway, if you want the entire twisted tale,… Continue

Ever read a book that has everything in it you don't like, but you like it anyway? I just did, with Cornelia Read's A Field of Darkness. Trying to put my finger on it took a while over at my other blog - suffice it to say, my Bolshie impulses and hardboiled tastes were appalled, but the writing was too gorgeous to miss.

Artist Thomas Allen loves pulps. He also loves pop-up books. He puts these passions together in some amazing 3-D artwork. Some photos of his creations can be found here at the Georgia Review. Hat tip to Dwight Garner over at Paper Cuts.…



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All of the public libraries in Jackson County, Oregon are closed. And yesterday, by a margin of about 10,000 votes, the citizens voted to keep them closed.

Every place I’ve ever lived - with the exception of a year in North Africa - had libraries, and just as important as getting the electricity turned on was getting my library card. It told me I was a

resident, that I was now…

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This post from a site that claims "the Internet makes you stupid" is too good to pass up - film posters redone in grindhouse style. Found via boing boing.

I haven't read John Banville aka Benjamin Black's Christine Falls yet, so this is totally premature. But when I read a NY Times review something began to bug me.



It sounds as if the author really loves dark crime fiction and is rolling around in its conventions like a dog that just found something wonderfully dead. The review says it's not… Continue