POE'S DEADLY DAUGHTERS

A Room With a View

2012-01-30T00:00:00.003-05:00

by Julia Buckley My writer friend recently made herself an office in her home. She chose one of the smallest rooms available, but the view out of its window allows one to see into the house where Ernest Hemingway grew up. From her creative space, she can see into his. Sure, a writer can write anywhere. It shouldn't matter where she does it. Yet I found myself

Guest Blogger Nancy Bilyeau

2012-01-28T05:30:00.001-05:00

I'd like to introduce guest blogger Nancy Bilyeau. Nancy is a longtime magazine editor and writer who has worked on the staffs of "Rolling Stone," "Entertainment Weekly," "Ladies' Home Journal" and "InStyle." Born in Chicago, she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and has lived in Canada as well as the United States. "The Crown," her first novel, took five years to

IRISH CRIME

2012-01-27T00:15:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly I'm in the throes of completing the first (unnamed) book in my new (unnamed) Irish series, coming in just over a year. I've been to Ireland more than once—four times, in fact. The last trip, with my husband, was supposed to be a research trip, but the research was somewhat sidetracked by a broken ankle (it won't surprise you that I managed to include a visit to the emergency

The Literary Thong

2012-01-26T03:00:00.007-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin My short story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish,” appears along with twenty-one others in the anthology, Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices. The contributors are all members of the New York/Tristate chapter of Sisters in Crime (one of them, Ken Wishnia, a Mister Sister). Quite a few of us were present at a chapter meeting at which the speaker was a highly motivated PR person who

How do you spell "change"?

2012-01-25T03:00:00.001-05:00

Sandra ParshallI think Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster would approve of Twitterese and online language in general. Both were enthusiastic proponents of a flexible language and believed that words, when written, should look the way they sound. I doubt that either man would be moaning about internet-fostered illiteracy and young people who prefer phonetics (ur) to standard words (your).The

Blog Break

2012-01-24T06:00:00.002-05:00

Sharon WildwindSorry, guys and gals. I am in the middle of planning a funeral for a family member. Sometimes the writing world just has to give way to real life.See you next week.

Mistaken Identity: The Police and Me

2012-01-23T00:00:00.002-05:00

by Julia Buckley I have nothing but admiration for police officers, and I had a recent encounter with one which encouraged that respect. While driving home from work about two months ago, I waited in a school zone for some kiddies to get through the crosswalk. The driver in front of me waited, too, but she didn't see the police officer strolling from her spot at the school back to her car across

Canada Calling: All Bets Are Off

2012-01-21T06:00:00.003-05:00

Here’s the disclaimer. This weekend we’re not talking about every Canadian mystery writer. This is a summary from the 2011 Crime Writers of Canada Catalog. You may have a favorite Canadian writer whose name doesn’t show up here, and you’re darned certain that they published a book in 2011. Likely they did, but they chose not to submit it to the CWC catalog. But what we do have here is a good

Changing Times

2012-01-20T00:05:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly This week I was invited to give a talk to a library group in the middle of the state. It's in an area I love, and it came with dinner. Since it's not much more than an hour away, I said yes. This was not a group of writers, but a group of mystery readers from a local library. They were uniformly enthusiastic (the event was sold out, with a waiting list). There was no fixed

PD James Kills Jane Austen

2012-01-19T03:00:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin Celebrated mystery novelist PD James’s new Jane Austen pastiche, Death Comes to Pemberley, is the first book I downloaded to the Kindle I got for Xmas that wasn’t either my own work or in the public domain. It’s only the latest of a big enough bevy of novels to be called a subgenre—some mysteries and some I’d call historical chick lit—featuring either Jane Austen herself or her

A New Voice: Coco Ihle

2012-01-18T03:00:00.001-05:00

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall My guest today is Coco Ihle, whose first novel, She Had to Know, was published in 2011. In an interview, Coco talked about her writing life and the personal story that inspired her novel. Q: Would you tell us a bit about your book? A: She Had to Know is about long lost sisters, Arran Hart and Sheena Buchanan, who were separated in early childhood by the divorce of

I’m Too Old for This Nonsense

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

Sharon WildwindI hang around with older people a lot. Plus, I’m not exactly a spring chicken. It was a natural choice then for me to make the protagonist in my current work in progress a woman in her mid-sixties.That’s when I realized that a lot of what I knew about aging applied more to older people with health problems. What I needed to develop my character was a better understanding of healthy

The 100 Greatest: Do You Agree?

2012-01-16T00:00:00.006-05:00

by Julia Buckley I'm not sure what Meta-Filter is, but this website lists its choices for the TOP 100 GREATEST MYSTERIES OF ALL TIME. How many have you read? How many of these titles surprise you? Now, we're not counting MOVIE versions of the books instead of the books themselves--which makes me have to cross about ten of these off my list. My actual count comes to 37. Do you feel anyone

Why We Write What We Write

2012-01-14T03:00:00.003-05:00

Marilyn Levinson (Guest Blogger) A psychologist would have a field day analyzing why we mystery writers write the books that we do. "Why mysteries?" we're often asked. And often answer, "I love mysteries! I read Nancy Drew as a child." Of course our early reading choices influence us, along with the fact that we read mysteries for their puzzle element: who committed the crime and why? There's

JEOPARDY

2012-01-13T00:13:00.003-05:00

by Sheila Connolly I'm going to take the online Jeopardy test next week. For the third time. The first time I was actually called for the second, live round—and never heard from them after it. (Was it something I said? I didn't say? Did I smile too much? Not enough?) The second time I took the test I was suffering from brain freeze, and couldn't manage to answer questions that I knew I knew

Succumbing to Kindle

2012-01-12T03:00:00.005-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin I hope I won’t regret admitting publicly that I got a Kindle for Christmas. Or was it Chanukah? As a reader, I look forward to traveling without pounds of books in my backpack or luggage and never running out of reading matter. As a writer, I feel more ambivalent. Amazon’s world-changing e-reader has permanently debased the price of books (and therefore author earnings) and cut

Insomnia

2012-01-11T03:00:00.001-05:00

Sandra ParshallI can’t sleep.Night after night, I either can’t get to sleep or can’t stay asleep. The only member of the household who feels good about this is Emma, who takes being a nocturnal feline seriously and appreciates company while she’s busy being a cat. Our other cat, an Abyssinian named Gabriel, is zonked out by midnight and doesn’t stir until the alarm goes off, if then. I want to be

True Leaves

2012-01-10T06:00:00.002-05:00

Sharon WildwindI had a wonderful high school biology teacher. I guess I should say I had a wonderful botany teacher. Miss R. wasn’t keen on things with legs, tails, beaks, wings, etc., but she had an abiding fascination with plants, and a none too shabby ability to draw them. Hers was a big corner classroom with two walls of windows and two walls of blackboards. This was in the day when black

The Benefit (and Deconstruction) of Failure

2012-01-09T00:00:00.007-05:00

by Julia Buckley I recently watched this clip of J.K. Rowling's 2008 Harvard commencement address. She called it "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination." I thought it was a stunning address, and that the seemingly shy Rowling was actually quite a forceful speaker when she warmed to her theme. In addition to that inspirational speech, I am often inspired by my senior

Pilot Down, Presumed Dead

2012-01-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

This guest blog was written by Colorado writer Mark Stevens, whose book BURIED BY THE ROAN is now available; it provides a suspenseful mystery while examining the greed that still endangers the American west. See more about Stevens and his writing here. PILOT DOWN, PRESUMED DEAD by Mark Stevens Yeah, I know, what a title. I was nine or ten. I can practically see the precise shelf in the

R.L.Stevenson and the Key to Happiness

2012-01-07T14:37:00.000-05:00

The great Robert Louis Stevenson compiled this list of things that were (to him) the key to happiness. It's ironic to me that RLS, ill for much of his life and often suffering, wrote so many things that were positive, including one of my favorites, A Child's Garden of Verses. How To Be Happy By Robert Louis Stevenson 1. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple

Quango

2012-01-06T00:15:00.008-05:00

by Sheila Connolly I met a new word this past week: quango. Now, before you race for your dictionary (print or electronic), take a moment to think about what it might mean. Yes, it's a real word, although it is an acronym, that has come to serve as a word in its own right. I stumbled upon it in on an Irish news network website—but no, it's not an Irish word (that would be cheating). I first

The Elephants of Chiang Mai

2012-01-05T03:00:00.001-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin I was fascinated to hear about a highlight of a friend’s recent trip to Thailand: a visit to the elephants of Chang Mai. These evidently world-famous elephants do a lot more than giving rides to tourists. (Not that I didn’t envy my friend who got to do it. I’ve always wanted to ride an elephant!) But these remarkable elephants play soccer. They even do a happy dance when they

Fiction with a Message

2012-01-04T03:00:00.050-05:00

Sandra Parshall Some people believe that fiction writers, along with actors and musicians, should keep their opinions to themselves and do their work with no goal beyond entertaining an audience. No social or political messages should be allowed to make readers stop and think about real-world issues. Fortunately, crime fiction authors have always ignored that advice, because they realize their

Mish, Mash, We are Taking a Bath

2012-01-03T06:00:00.003-05:00

Sharon WildwindFor practical purposes, enforcement of copyright law is dead, and artists’ and writers’ incomes are taking a bath because of it. Governments can’t pass legislation fast enough to keep up with new media platforms. Even if copyright laws were updated weekly, those laws apply only in one country. Creators can no longer keep track of who has copied or downloaded their material or how

Writing Letters: A Goal for 2012

2012-01-02T00:00:00.011-05:00

by Julia Buckley These are some letters I received in the late '80s, two of them from overseas. In contemplating feasible resolutions for the New Year, I made several mundane but necessary ones: being healthy, losing weight, being more positive, swearing less. But I also wanted to address a problem that I've noted in the past year, when I sit down to write a note to someone in the

The Writer's Diet

2011-12-31T10:39:00.000-05:00

Lois Winston (Guest Blogger) Losing weight is one of the top New Year’s resolutions. It’s also one of the top New Year’s resolutions broken. As writers, we do a lot of sitting at our computers. We also eat a lot of chocolate and drink a lot of wine to soothe us through those inevitable rejections and harsh reviews. The result? Spreading butts. There’s not much I can offer you in the way of

Year's End

2011-12-30T03:01:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly As usual, I still haven't sent out my holiday cards. Note that I don't specify which holiday I mean. Maybe I'll try for St. Brigid's Day (Imbolc or Imbolg), or St Brigid’s Day, Irish Lá Fhéile Bríde,) an Irish festival, most commonly celebrated on 1 or 2 February. Brigid is the female equivalent of St. Patrick in Ireland. Her day celebrates the beginning of spring, when the

When I Grow Up

2011-12-29T03:00:00.001-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin Writer Patricia Harrington says she “was told once by a psychologist: Ask a woman what she wanted to be when she was nine years old, and for a boy what he wanted to be when he was twelve years old. There will be elements of that desire or avocation later in life.” Pat herself is a professional grant writer and mystery writer. She uses the idea that childhood aspirations mirror

Animal Forensics

2011-12-28T03:00:00.025-05:00

Sandra Parshall "Will I have to testify?" Even thieves and murderers often have pets at home, and if they aren’t careful their beloved Fido or Fluffy can help send them to prison. Recent advances in DNA testing have made pet hair a valuable weapon in a prosecutor’s arsenal, and it’s being introduced in a growing number of court cases. We’ve all heard that every criminal leaves something at a

Stoking the Fires

2011-12-27T06:00:00.004-05:00

Sharon Wildwind In Norse mythology, the two weeks after winter solstice (this year December 22 to January 5) are when good and evil battle for control of the world. If the sun comes up on January 6th, good will have won for one more year. Hmm, anyone else notice the correspondence to January 6th being the 12th day of Christmas? Jumping from mythology to science, remember the consequence of Newton

On the 2nd Day of Christmas . . .

2011-12-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

by Julia Buckley Christmas is a wonderful and a beautiful time, but the day after Christmas is a restful escape. No packages to wrap, no items to remember to pack into the car, no stressing over the present that didn't arrive in time. Today is a matter of quiet sorting through the rubble, permeated by gratitude for the gifts found within it. It's a day of remembering all of the funny things

Medieval Mince Pie

2011-12-24T11:54:00.005-05:00

This holiday season I went in search of an English medieval minced pie recipe. It seems there is no definitive recipe for this. I imagine that with most recipes of this kind, it involved whatever the cook had on hand. But the original medieval recipes included meat--actual minced meat--in their recipes. Was this a main course or was it dessert--or both? Well, it's certainly hearty. I took a

Happy holidays from Poe's Deadly Daughters!

2011-12-24T10:10:00.000-05:00

We hope you have a happy, healthy new year!

City Mouse, Country Mouse

2011-12-23T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly I've always lived in the suburbs. That sounds like the first line of a bad novel, doesn't it? But it's true—for most of my life I have lived somewhere on the outskirts of a city—New York, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco. I sometimes joke that I can't sleep without the sound of a commuter train rumbling by, because there has been one close enough to hear as far back as I

The Chanukah Bush and Other Soothing Lies

2011-12-22T03:00:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin For most people, the winter holidays bring a certain nostalgia—or post-traumatic memories, depending on what kind of childhood you had. I’m lucky to have had wonderful parents, but some of their quirks and crotchets, which appeared perfectly normal to me as a kid, appear in a different light from my adult perspective. My family was Jewish, so you might imagine we always

Favorite Books of 2011

2011-12-21T03:00:00.001-05:00

Sandra Parshall When I can look back over my list of books I’ve read or listened to since January and find more than a dozen that I loved and would recommend enthusiastically, I know it’s been an outstanding year for fiction. As usual, most of the novels I’ve read have been crime fiction, but one unclassifiable book stands out as a gorgeous exercise of a writer’s extravagant imagination: The

Banking the Fires

2011-12-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Sharon WildwindI hope you’re not on some horrendous deadline at the moment, because this blog is about one word.StopWhether you’re celebrating Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa or some combination of those and other holidays, it’s time to rest. Right, along with last-minute shopping, a couple of holiday parties, defrosting a thirty-pound turkey, driving half-way across the state (if not the

A Child's Birthday in Chicago

2011-12-19T00:00:00.012-05:00

by Julia Buckley It always starts to feel like holiday time a bit early in our house, because my son, born on December 23rd, starts off the round of partying with his birthday celebration. Inspired by Dylan Thomas' wonderful story "A Child's Christmas in Wales," I thought I would relate some of the highlights of the day that will at some point be merely part of a tapestry of memories in my son's

Canada Calling: Stephen Legault

2011-12-17T06:00:00.002-05:00

Stephen Legault is a Canadian social activist, consultant, professional photographer, and writer. He is the author of numerous non-fiction works and three (so far) mystery series, featuring protagonists in the Utah desert, an environmentalist/ investigator, and a disabled Mountie in the 1880s.PDD: What links Durrant Wallace, Cole Blackwater and Silas Pearson as characters?StephenAlmost nothing,

The Golden Age of Musicals

2011-12-16T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly It's been a while since my daughter was young enough to require entertainment during school breaks, but this time of year always reminds me of the Good Old Days when my sister and I were young. One of the treats of those golden years (well, I am talking about the 1950s, when apparently—or so say today's pundits—everything was better, except for all the smoking) was going to

Cover Shot

2011-12-15T03:00:00.028-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin Back when my first mystery was about to come out, a lot of people heard the story of the head shot that not only appeared on the book jacket, but became my “brand” image: on my website, all my bookmarks, eventually my Blogger profile, my Facebook page, and everywhere else a photo was needed to depict Elizabeth Zelvin, author. It was the shot I loved among a hundred snapped by

Smile! They're watching you

2011-12-14T03:00:00.002-05:00

Sandra Parshall Airports make me feel rushed and anxious and crabby. I’m always in a better mood on return flights, when I know I’ll be home again soon, but I’m still not a happy traveler, and that’s probably obvious to everyone around me. I’ll have to improve my attitude, though, if a proposed new security system called FAST becomes reality, or I’ll be in big trouble. I’m okay with current

Exactly the Same, Only Different

2011-12-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

Sharon WildwindI wonder if stories have a best before date? Hollywood certainly doesn’t think so. Trying the search term “The Return Of . . .” on the Internet Movie Data Base got so many hits that they couldn’t be displayed. And that search wouldn’t capture the metamorphosis of television shows like Mission: Impossible and The A-Team into full-length movies or the multiple-movies series like

An Icy Challenge

2011-12-12T00:00:00.004-05:00

by Julia Buckley These lovely pictures, captured in Versoix, Switzerland after an ice storm, are a stark reminder of the cold that is coming. It reminds me of Robert Frost's famous poem "Fire and Ice," in which the speaker surmises that either theory of destruction, an ice age or a heat wave, is an equally potent agent for destroying the world. But if we were to express what these photographs

D.P.Lyle: The CSI Effect

2011-12-10T05:01:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to have D. P. Lyle, MD as our guest today. He's the friend of mystery writers everywhere because he helps us murder our fictional victims with poisons, bludgeon them with blunt instruments, stab them, shoot them, or just find them in their different states of decomposition. He'll tell us what the body looks like when frozen in a lake, burnt in a building, or buried in a shallow

Looking Backward, Looking Forward

2011-12-09T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly Recently I've been asked to speak to two different organizations, one for writers, one for library mystery readers. The topics for each are very broad—something along the lines of, "how I became a writer." I'm more than happy to tell people about how (and why) I did it, but I'm becoming more and more aware that I and most of my writer friends are the last of the dinosaurs.

When Music Is A Lot Like Writing

2011-12-08T03:00:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Zelvin I’ve been working for about a year on a project that’s been a dream of mine for a very long time: making an album of songs I’ve written over the past thirty years. The album title is Outrageous Older Woman, and when it’s finished, it will be available in CD and download form. Recording and co-producing the album in my co-producer and sound engineer’s studio has challenged me to

My 2012 Wish List

2011-12-07T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Sandra Parshall I’m long past the point when I viewed each new year as an exciting opportunity for a fresh start, extraordinary good luck, and amazing turning points. Now what I hope for is that my husband, our two cats, and I will all still be here this time next year, looking ahead to 2013. But I’m not beyond making a wish list, even if I have little expectation that my wishes will be

The Slow Season

2011-12-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

Sharon WildwindWho has taken the hand-made pledge, and this week extends that pledge to her blog.

Stocking Stuffers for Mystery Lovers

2011-12-05T00:00:00.005-05:00

by Julia Buckley The Season of Giving is in full swing. While I'm not one of those who will join the throngs at malls or elbow my way to sales on "Black Friday," I do enjoy perusing the Net in the silence of my home to find unexpected joy gifts for those on my list. Perhaps you'll enjoy some of my finds enough to purchase them for your mystery-loving friends and family. 1. Just a few dollars

Dangerous Medicine: An Interview with Larry Karp

2011-12-03T03:00:00.061-05:00

by Sandra Parshall As a physician, Larry Karp worked in the field of reproductive genetics and specialized in complicated pregnancy care, founding the Prenatal Diagnosis Center at the University of Washington, and Swedish Medical Center's Department of Perinatal Medicine. During that time, he authored three nonfiction books and wrote newspaper and magazine articles, as well as a monthly

Cozy Pets

2011-12-02T03:01:00.001-05:00

by Sheila Connolly Recently a friend who writes cozies said that she had received a number of critical comments, both on panels and in blogs, about the pets who appear in cozies. I recognize that cozies are kind of a middle child, often ignored in the greater mystery community, despite their continuing strong sales and the steady emergence of new writers with multi-book contracts from

A dish that’s best served cold

2011-12-01T03:00:00.001-05:00

Elizabeth ZelvinMy husband asked me a good one last night: “Why is revenge a dish that’s best served cold?” I was particularly pleased because he’s far more likely to break a silence by sharing some scintillating fact about Frederick the Great. Anyhow, it was a fair question, and I immediately felt a blog post coming on.When I googled for the origin of the saying, I got this from Yahoo! Answers:

Amazon's Long Reach

2011-11-30T03:00:00.014-05:00

by Sandra Parshall Wow. I knew Amazon had its fingers in a lot of different pies, but I didn’t realize how long its reach is until I read the interview with Jeff Bezos in the December issue of Wired magazine. Amazon is not only the biggest bookseller in the U.S. and a media powerhouse; it is also the power behind a huge chunk of the internet. Even if you’ve never held an e-reader in your hands

The Play’s the Thing

2011-11-29T06:00:00.002-05:00

Sharon WildwindWhich if it’s not catching this writer’s conscious, has very much caught her interest.A couple of years ago, with the help of the Alberta Playwrights’ Network I set out to discover the differences between writing a play and a novel. I just finished my third workshop with APN and here’s what I’ve learned.Contrary to what is portrayed in movies, often for laughs, playwrights, actors,

A Disturbing Trend, or The Status Quo?

2011-11-28T00:00:00.001-05:00

by Julia Buckley On so-called "Black Friday" this year the media reported several incidents of violence, including one in which a woman pepper-sprayed a crowd waiting for deals at a California Wal-Mart. It is not yet clear why the woman did it, although the assumption at the time was that she wanted "an advantage" in getting a cheap X-box. Certainly one could look at these store skirmishes and

Touring: Worth the Price?

2011-11-26T05:01:00.004-05:00