July 2008 Blog Posts (167)

Two New Novels

My sister and I have two new novels that will be released this summer. Stone of Vengeance is a modern day mystery with a western setting and will be published by Robert Hale in late July. The Devil's Game is a Western and will be published by Avalon Books in August.

Added by Vickie Britton on July 4, 2008 at 8:32am — No Comments

All about Agatha

Did you know Agatha Christie only received 25 pounds for her first mystery, The Mysterious Affair at Styles? And that wasn't even an advance. She only got that because someone agreed to serialize it, and that was her take.

I've been asked to write the introductions to two of Christie's novels; Styles, which introduced Hercule Poirot, and… Continue

Added by Clea Simon on July 4, 2008 at 3:00am — No Comments

Another day at the Office

As most of you know, I am not yet so successful a writer that I can pay a Northern Virginia mortgage with the royalties. I continue my Clark Kent job, handling media relations for the Defense Department. For years I’ve used my lunch hour to work on my writing, but lately my professional world has become chaotic thanks to a shifting mission and personnel turnovers that force me to spend more and more time training new folks.

One thing I haven’t been able to train them to understand is… Continue

Added by Austin S. Camacho on July 3, 2008 at 10:07pm — 1 Comment

A Simple One, But ...(R)

I used to teach high school, and that's a job where you see a range of writing skills, from pretty darned good to downright awful. One mistake often made but easily corrected is starting sentences with the same word over and over. Particularly in passages where things are happening to a protag, it's difficult to avoid repeating "He" or "She" or in the case of first-person narrative, "I" as the first word of a sentence. This isn't limited to student writing. I've seen some big-name authors,… Continue

Added by Peg Herring on July 3, 2008 at 9:55pm — 2 Comments

Read in June

Recently a few of us have been working on catching up with reading all the books on the longlist of nominees for the 2008 Ned Kelly's. So I managed to catch up with a couple of them this month, but I also managed a few other good books. (The Neds are marked with **)

Dreamland, Tom Gilling

My Rating: Fascinating concept

Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4634

First crime novel from a local author - When Nick Carmody agrees to take the fall… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on July 3, 2008 at 8:25pm — No Comments

Sad but True

This short video about book promotion made me laugh and cry at the same… Continue

Added by Christa Faust on July 3, 2008 at 1:20pm — No Comments

By request, An Excerpt from 'A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper'

In response to a request from Shawn Michel de Montaigne I'm posting a short extract from my current critically acclaimed novel, 'A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper'

What follows is the introduction and first chapter of the book. I'll be happy to post a further short extract at a later date, but for now, I hope this may whet a few appetites.

INTRODUCTION

The London of the 1880s differed greatly from the city of today. Poverty and wealth… Continue

Added by Brian L Porter on July 3, 2008 at 4:30am — No Comments

A View To Die For

Returned from London this morning after a reception held in Penguin Publishers office yesterday evening. Their offices are in the Strand and in what used to be the Shell building. The function room has a balcony overlooking the Thames and it was a scorching hot sunny evening with a view to die for. It looked out onto the London Eye, with the River curving its way past the Houses of Parliament on one side and up to St Paul's on the other. I only wish I'd had my camera. I could have stayed on the… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on July 3, 2008 at 4:11am — No Comments

Resting in Peace

(Cross Posted to Working Stiffs)

Lately, in an effort to get into shape, I’ve been doing a lot of walking. Since the fields around my house are loaded with ticks, I find other places to stretch my legs. One of the most convenient spots is an old cemetery a few miles from my house. It’s quiet and mostly deserted except for the… Continue

Added by Annette Dashofy on July 3, 2008 at 2:38am — No Comments

Thank you, Oline!

"These are darn good mysteries." – says Oline Cogdill, mystery columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Make my day, why don't you,… Continue

Added by Clea Simon on July 3, 2008 at 2:14am — No Comments

Remembering to forget

It's not like I don't have enough on my plate. I've got the revisions of "Probable Claws" to finish up (luckily, my editor is on vacation, which gives me some breathing room). And I've got my summer writing class to teach. But my agent is sending out my non-Theda manuscript this week, and so the time feels right to start on an entirely brand new project.

Sometimes, this part is easy. On Saturday, sitting… Continue

Added by Clea Simon on July 3, 2008 at 1:46am — No Comments

A Female Historical Character's Mindset

One of the problems with writing historical fiction is getting the mindset right, and I think that's particularly true with women in certain eras. Taught all their lives to defer to men, they might not even consider things that women today don't think twice about: contacting a strange man at his home, questioning a man's motives, or asking personal questions that a man doesn't want to answer. The nearest comparison I can think of is a child around five years old doing such things today. It… Continue

Added by Peg Herring on July 2, 2008 at 11:14pm — 2 Comments

Another Kind Review

I pride myself on the readers my work attracts, and I met some pretty impressive people at the Philadelphia book fair not long ago. One of those people was Lynn Penn, who is not merely a chemistry professor, but is in fact the head of the Chemistry Department at Drexel University! Even though she didn’t get around to my novel, Blood and Bone, for nearly a month she was kind enough to write to me to let me know how much she enjoyed it. Every author wants to hear that his work kept someone up all… Continue

Added by Austin S. Camacho on July 2, 2008 at 10:47pm — No Comments

Before There Was Six Feet Under, There Was Deathryde: Rebel Without A Corpse

Question: You said you wrote this story originally as a script before HBO’s Six Feet Under and pitched the idea around Hollywood. Explain what happened and why you shelved the story?

Michael P. Naughton: Call it Jungian synchronicity, collective unconsciousness or just plain old coincidence— or maybe not. I was working on the general story and wrote up a treatment for Deathryde and also read Jessica Mitford’s classic The American Way of Death Revisited. I was working with Jorge… Continue

Added by Michael P. Naughton on July 2, 2008 at 10:30pm — No Comments

Five Noir Essentials

What Is Noir, Anyway?

You know the drill - crime fiction comes in lots of flavors. Stuff like ‘cozy,’ ‘police procedural,’ ‘hardboiled,’ and ‘noir.’ Each of these sub-genres adheres to certain conventions in the presentation of character and subject matter. What follows is my take on the ‘noir’ tradition, including my personal interpretation of this small, but influential slice of the whole.

With the rise of crime as a popular subject for fiction in the nineteenth century,… Continue

Added by Paul McGoran on July 2, 2008 at 6:00pm — 6 Comments

We All Fall Down Hits Bookshelves Today!

My latest thriller, We All Fall Down, officially goes on sale today. It should be filtering its way into stores across the nation as we speak. Yay! Most of my books are based on real life and this one is no different. You can read all about the story behind the story here over at my publisher's website. You can also read an exerpt from the book… Continue

Added by Simon Wood on July 2, 2008 at 4:07pm — No Comments

Win a copy of Blood Sunset by Jarad Henry

We're going with another book competition - this time it's the 2nd in a new police procedural series by Jarad Henry (the book stands alone so don't stress if you haven't read the first). Open again to all geographical locations, we're drawing this one on the 25th of July.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4705

Added by Karen from AustCrime on July 2, 2008 at 11:27am — No Comments

OOTG Houston Party Video by the Chronicle: Gas-siphoning & Roller-Derby!

Added by Out of the Gutter Magazine on July 2, 2008 at 10:13am — No Comments

Rant #7

Hi, out there. Been a while.

The Supreme Court has decided, in a 5-4 vote, to be Second Amendment absolutists. Well, as a First Amendment absolutist I am encouraged.

The late George Carlin would have loved this decision.

(Parenthetically, why do conservatives never call a 5-4 vote "closely divided" when it goes their way?)

I feel that now, since the Constitution says there can be "no law...abridging the freedom of speech," we are free to spout slander, libel, sedition… Continue

Added by ed goldberg on July 2, 2008 at 6:27am — No Comments

Freebies (or semi-freebies) I received at the American Librarian Association convention

I went to my first American Librarian Association convention yesterday and the event was a doozy! It was much more sedate than BEA. Really enjoyed it. Now I want to be a librarian.

Here are some of the free (or semi-free) books I received while there:

1) Autographed copy of Sherman Alexie's THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN and a chapter preview of his upcoming YA book, RADIOACTIVE LOVE SONG. Actually I had to pay ten bucks for the former, but it was worth it… Continue

Added by Naomi Hirahara on July 2, 2008 at 1:22am — No Comments