At Love Is Murder 2012, non-fiction author Gaye Mack went to our all-day pitch event and walked away with the agent she most wanted for her first novel. She graciously agreed to share her Love Is Murder experience with KISS KISS BANG BANG.

DPG: Tell us a little bit about the novel you pitched.…

Only 29 days til the start of the 13th Love is Murder Conference, returning to Chicago February 3-5 at the Intercontinental Chicago O'Hare Hotel.

This year's featured authors are Donald Bain (…

The Black Thumb by Constance and Gwenyth  Little (1941; Doubleday Crime Club)

http://bookshopblog.com/2011/10/23/no-81-the-black-paw-best-100-mysteries-of-all-time/

Great news, writers! Recently released statistics about the book biz show that the sky is not falling. In fact, sales have been on the rise for quite some time.

Read the rest of the story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arielle-ford/the-golden-age-of-authors_b_975119.html

Billy Dead by Lisa Reardon. Viking Publishers 1998; in print

Not an ordinary crime novel.  The story is shocking, hard, and to some, I’m sure, distasteful. It’s also heartrending, compassionate and creates a reality so strong, the characters and events linger long long after the pages have been read and the book closed and perhaps traveling on to the next reader. Read more at…

Brattleboro, Vt., is a bucolic town — pricked with picturesque church steeples — and home to a vibrant arts community. So it's an unlikely setting for gruesome murder and gritty crime, but that's just what goes on in Archer Mayor's Brattleboro-based Joe Gunther detective series.

Mayor is something of an unlikely character himself. Never mind his New England blue blood background — Mayor has had some grisly jobs. He works as a death examiner for the state's medical office and…

As much as independent booksellers may have wished that Borders had gotten swallowed up back in the 1990s when it put so many stores out of business and was well on its way to becoming a 1,249-store behemoth, the response to its impending demise has, for the most part, been measured.…

July 17 was Erle Stanley Gardner's birthday (1889). He studied law on his own and passed the bar at age 21. Working as a lawyer wasn't enough to keep him busy so he began writing detective fiction for pulp magazines. In 1933 he published The Case of the Velvet Claws, his first Perry Mason novel, and went on to write 80 more -- writing 4,000 words a day, even while practicing as a lawyer --…

Want to learn the craft of writing crime fiction this fall?

Want to polish your manuscript?

Want to spend the day with a pro?

Sign up for:

"Anatomy of a Crime Novel: The Craft of Crime Fiction"

Conducted by Libby Fischer Hellmann…

Mystery Fanfare, a fantastic blog by long-time crime fiction expert Janet Rudolph announced the nominees yesterday. The award will be presented at the annual Bouchercon mystery fan convention later this year. Macavity is named for T. S. Eliot’s cat in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Here’s the link and list–check it out:…

The MWA Writers' Track topics at LIM 2011 will include: "How to Write and Maintain a Series Character," "Outlining, Do You or Don't You?," "The Ten Things Every Mystery Writer Needs to Know about Publishing in the Marketplace Today," and "Query Letter Writing/Submission Proposal Writing."…