I’ve been looking forward to attending the Left Coast Crime convention in Denver (March 6 – 9), for the opportunity to hook up with old friends—especially the great group of people I met in Anchorage at Bouchercon—and to make new ones.

This week, I found out that I have another reason to anticipate the event: SILENT COUNSEL has been…

It’s a New Year, but I’d like to mention the last days of 2007.

Celine, Alex, and I left Key West and flew to a freezing New Jersey for my daughter Chela’s New Year’s Eve wedding. It was colder than a witch’s tit – especially for someone from Key West, where I put an electric blanket on the bed when the temperatures fall below 75!

But we braved the weather and enjoyed a week with my pregnant daughter Seanan (pronounced Shannon, but spelled in Gaelic) and her husband Paul…

A column I recently wrote for the "Crimescene" website:

Crime, to a writer, presents a fascinatingly…

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

The title words by John Donne, written four centuries ago (I looked it up) have been in my mind lately. We mystery lovers deal with, wallow in, foster death in many ways--with humor, with tragedy, with a certain "he deserved it" hubris.

Real death, though, when it comes, is not usually humorous, is sometimes tragic, and is hardly ever deserved.

Real death has visited me lately. My 67-year-old brother-in-law died just before Christmas…

Rejection is hard, and it takes a bunch of "victory thrills" to overcome one defeat, at least for me. We know all the platitudes: that success is getting up one more time than you're knocked down, that only the strong survive, that the great men and women of the world often felt the sting of defeat, too. None of that helps when you've just gotten that "Dear Author" letter.

You start trying to prepare yourself for it. A queried agent asks for a partial: "Don't get your hopes up." A…

For the past few weeks, I have been madly writing away on my first novel. After a welcomed break from true crime, I was finding it extremely easy to write a crime fiction. Then last night disaster struck.

I sat there with my laptop on my lap, my little USB flashdrive hanging off the side. My book open to page 74 and ..... nothing. I have been writing chapter after chapter without a second between words. It was writing itself. I already have the chapters already planned out, with…

Echelon Press has been a sponsor for LIM for a few years now, and President Karen Syed also hears pitches from writers at the conference. Independent presses are a great place for new writers to get a foot in the door, and promoting that dream for many is Karen's goal.

In December,…

Last night, I joined roughly 65 other people in the library of Toronto's castle, Casa Loma, for an evening of readings and questions with two very successful Canadian mystery authors, Giles Blunt and Louise Penny. It was a very interesting and informative evening.

But what really struck me was how settings…

Posted by Guest Blogger, Kate Flora

I had a plan for January. A bold and exciting plan. Once the tree was down, the bedding that had been hauled out to accommodate the extended family put away, and all the cute tree-shaped candlesticks, reindeer candlesticks, little metal sleighs to hold candles and all the red and green patterned runners and table toppers stowed in their boxes in the basement, I was going to write a book.



Maybe this doesn’t seem like such a bold plan…

When I lecture on writing, I stress the importance of keeping good records, but I must confess, I don't always practice what I teach. When within a few days I hear from a bookstore owner who wants a signing, a festival organizer who wants an appearance, a former student who sends congratulations, a local cable operator who wants programming, a library group who wants me to come and speak, and an acquisitions editor who wants an electronic version of an MS for her editor in chief, I get a…

What do you think is the best way to get the word out about a release?

I'm tussling with this topic (it's at the top of my "Things to consider in 2008" List). I don't think there's a magic bullet, excuse the crime pun. I think it's going to be a matter of creating some interest in me, my topics, etc., and then launching assorted books out there and see what strikes a chord.

I suspect once I have a few books out, that might generate interest in my backlist and since I'm…

The Supreme Court is taking up the question of the death penalty, but that's not what I mean. For authors, it becomes usual to wait long periods to find out if your "baby" lives or dies. Agents, editors, and pub houses throw out casual approximations like "six to eight months" when accepting a MS for possible publication. One of my plays took three years to make it through the editing system at the pub house before acceptance, and I've gotten refusals so long after submission that I have to…

I'm really thrilled to learn that 2 of my books, 'The Nemesis Cell', and 'Murder, Mayhem and Mexico' have been nominated in the annual Preditors and Editors Readers Awards. 'The Nemesis Cell' is in the mystery novel section and 'MMM' is in the anthologies category. I'd be grateful if any of my friends out there would visit…