-Good mysteries are metafiction. They strip away the mundane routines of everyday life and turn it into something exciting, puzzling, and intriguing. They generally are not a psychotherapy session writ large. A journal is the place for a writer to work out his or her issues, not a mystery novel. Why? Because your readers don’t want to hear about your problems. They have problems of their own, and whether they are consciously aware of this or not, they pick up a novel because it creates a barrier between the real world and a fictional world to which they can escape. They look for books by writers who can create an alternate world that’s somewhat modeled on our own but obeys a set of rules found only in novels, where investigations are compressed into a one-week period, that sexy detective goes from nemesis to lover in the space of three days, and a protagonist manages to learn a very specific lesson and “evolve” by the end of the book.
-I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond
-Amazon review chart (Funny)
-The Wire Season 5
-Jude Law as Brant
BOOK REVIEWS
-The Complete James Bond Short Stories
-Silk by Dick Francis
-Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason
-The Mark by Jason Pinter
-”Who gives a fig about genres when a book is this good”Where They Were Missed by Lucy Caldwell; Dead I May Well Be by Adrian Mckinty; Ring Road by Ian Sansom
-Angel’s Tip by Alafair Burke
-As Darkness Falls by Bronwyn Parry
-The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
MOVIE/TV/DVD REVIEWS & NEWS
-No Moriarty in new Sherlock Holmes movie
-South of Heaven and The Good, the Bad and the Weird
-Eagle Eye
-The Shield episode 7.4
-Baby Moll by John Farris
-Chicago 10
-Bright Lights, Big City
BLIPS (short burst reviews)
-The Road
-American Gangster
-Antitrust
-Enemy of the State
-Murders in the Rue Morgue
-Burn After Reading
-Vantage Point
MISC.
-Free story idea: Slavery reinactments
-Pulp alert!!! (I have two of these and they look fantastic great)
-The usage of the five senses in fiction
-What can crime fiction say that newspapers can’t, particularly in the realm of politics?
-Ian Rankin love
-Comet Press, a small press print publisher, is currently seeking “Novels—40,000 to 85,000 words, Novellas—17,500 to 40,000 words, and Novelettes—7,500 to 17,500 words” with stories of “horror, suspense, and dark crime fiction. If it scares the hell out of us, makes us cringe, and is well written, then chances are good that we will publish it.” Pays ?% of net, no advance. Reprints okay, electronic submissions only.
-Desert island question: Instead, what three books would you take along that you haven’t read but are pretty sure you’d enjoy.
-Smatterings
-George Pelecanos’ 5 most important crime novels
-Read Rhys Bowen’s Watch Your Step from the spring edition of The Strand Magazine and Toni L. P. Kelner’s How Stella Got Her Grave Back care of Ace Hardcover and editors Toni Kelner and Charlaine Harris.
-Jay Walker has the greatest personal library EVER!!
