With the release of SILENT COUNSEL just two months away, the calendar is filling up pretty quickly with signings. I'll be starting here in the New York/New Jersey area, and then heading out west to Bouchercon at the end of September. What a great opportunity to then stop in at places in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California (with the possibility of adding stops in Nevada and Arizona) before heading back home.

Here's what the schedule looks like so far. Hope you'll be able to make…

I have finally done it, or started to do it at least, write a novel that is. It’s going to be called White Oak and is a sort of homage to trench coats, down at heel heroes and all things noir.…

Demolition Magazine has taken one of my stories and it will apparently be published this month. Many thanks to Bryon Quertermous for liking my Viktor Petrenko character enough to grant him a second go around.

Also, The Concrete Maze has started to garner some good press - Spinetingler Magazine has written up a very nice review. Many thanks to EvilKev for his kind…

I just received, via airmail all the way from France, my first Press Book. This consists of a fat stack of pages carrying reviews and comments in the French Press for my two books THE DRAGON SCROLL and RASHOMON GATE, translated into French and published by Belfond. The first novel (released last October) had 64 of these; the more recent RASHOMON GATE 24.

Not only have none of my novels ever received this kind of coverage in this country,…

Someone bet me after one of my most recent forum posts that I couldn't write a story using the elements I had mentioned in my post (an amateur sleuth with an aardvark called Samuel who's actually the ghost of Joan of Arc, a serial killer whose signature is a chess piece made of brie wrapped in a piece of Amazonian love poetry). Well, since I had a spare hour at lunchtime, I thought I would give it a whirl. There was nothing to say it actually had to be good, so it's…

posted by Lorraine Bartlett

I need to get going on the next book in my Booktown cozy series. Oh, I've already got a fairly good start, but it's not good enough. And I really need to work at it more...but I'm overwhelmed by PAPER.

Sometimes I think Sheila and I are competing in a "who has the bigger piles of paper" contest. Just when I'm sure she's winning, suddenly there are stacks of paper (and magazines and all kinds of other junk) teetering in my office.

What is it…

One of the unintended consequences of the rise of the internet is that some great writing travels the world uncredited. Once in a while I see a line so beautiful that I search for the source, usually in vain. Yesterday I spotted a line that I wish I had written, and soon learned that tons of others agree with me, because it's on a lot of web sites and slides. The simple sentence:



"There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to…

My high tech, sf thriller, mystery short story was recently accepted for publication in "Tabloid Purposes IV". Submissions are still open--it sounds like it's going to be a high visibility publication. I did submarines in a futuristic world, should be fun. I'll be interested in hearing if anyone guesses the ending.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Everyone Heard Her Scream

Yes, I did scream when I saw my debut book—No One Heard Her Scream—already available on Amazon.com for presale. Check it out for yourself. I did. (Authors are strange. Alert the media.)

I’ve also got…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

My daughter is learning to cook. She has a shiny new college degree, but unfortunately it didn't cover the culinary arts. Somehow over the years, I thought setting a good example (yes, dear friends, we ate home-cooked meals together every night in our house!) would be enough to set her on the right path. Apparently I was wrong.

My mother was a competent cook. She put together balanced, if unimaginative, meals–meat, starch, vegetable. She gave…