Another battle to circumnavigate the building cages into work today. Goodness me but my exercise quota will be overshot at this rate, what with having to walk halfway round the campus to get into the office. Well, that may be a slight poetic exaggeration, but heck I always exaggerate. Tee hee.



Oh, and Lord H and I have been chuckling at the funny test papers someone sent him yesterday which can be found here: …

"Oh my lord," tweeted Miss Sassy, turning round from the mirror in which she had been preening herself, "Whatever has happened to Peeve?"



"What do you mean?" asked Dimwit, taking a break from pulling out his feathers with his beak.

Miss Sassy pointed a perfectly manicured claw towards the bottom of the cage. A small green budgie lay stiff as a piece of cuttlefish on his back at the bottom of the cage, his little legs turned skywards, his beady eyes made beadier by…

posted by Doranna

You can blame this one on the air conditioner. I certainly do. I had this week's post idea chosen and ready to write during the regular Sunday evening blog-writing time (it only makes sense that a listmaker would also prefer to have a weekly pattern of events, don't you think?). And then came the air conditioner.

Casita Durgin is a thing of creative beauty...it started life as an RV garage with attached office, received a serious upgrade…

Has anyone on here discovered any new authors so far this year? Ive discovered Tana French(In The Woods), Rob Gregory Browne(Kiss Her Goodbye), Marcus Sakey(The Blade Itself). Really enjoyed all of those.

Read a book by titled Dirty Littel Lies by John Macken which i totally hated

I have noticed lately that there are a tremendous number of religious themes found in the mystery and thriller genres.

Dan Brown, Steve Berry, James Rollins, and tons more.

I am pretty new to these genres, but it seems to me that they are quite large in numbers. Is this one of those pahses the industry is going through or have I just not noticed it before.

By the way if anyone is looking for an excellent read, I highly suggest MAP OF BONES by James…

Though I’ve managed to catch up on most of my work, and my latest manuscript in progress is now in the second go-round of editing by me, things will once again start moving at a fast pace.

Here’s some of the fun stuff that I’ve managed to squeeze in. I spent a late afternoon visiting over appetizers with Becca Buckley, the organizer of WOW (Wizards of Words) and Heather Howard, the author of The Chore Whore. We were celebrating the fact that Heather’s book may be made…

I think I've learned a lesson, which just goes to show that no matter how long you've been writing, or how much you've been published, it's never too late to learn. There are always surprises.

Case in point: A while back, when I finally crawled up out of my depression over no longer having a current book contract, I was actually kind of exhilarated. Even given that my track record is so poor that my agent said I'd have to write under a pseudonym. I thought "I can write anything I want…

Lordy, lordy, more rain. How I love these early UK winters we’re having. Have been forced to wear my fingerless gloves and scarf at work today, plus put my little owl-shaped desk heater on. I’m beginning to feel like something sad from a minor Dickens novel. If there are any minor Dickens novels …



It was a voyage of discovery getting into the office today – the builders who are taking over the campus have moved all their wire fences so that the stairs between the car park and where…

The Fort Clifton Festival was the usual fun, and a good chance to sign a few books. Plus, it took place on an almost perfect weekend to spend outdoors. I say almost because Saturday we had to pack up a little early due to a sudden…

Posted by Lorraine Bartlett

As Sheila mentioned in her post yesterday, she recently attended Malice Domestic--the cozy (or traditional) mystery conference.

I did not.

Mind you, I bought a ticket, but as the conference approached it was painfully obvious that I did not have a "new" book to promote. Not that I haven't had any sales since Malice Domestic 2006. In fact, I not only sold the sequel to MURDER ON THE…