Mystery Melange

 

Margery Flax, Administrative Director at Mystery Writers of America, wants you to know that registration is now open for the next three MWA Universities, including August 13 in New York Saturday; October 1 in New Orleans; and October 15 in San Francisco. These events are full-day, low-cost writing seminars designed to teach participants the essential skills needed to write a novel, from the idea stage to the final editing. Although primarily designed as a member benefit, they are open to the general public and applicable to all genres of fiction writing. The core curriculum of college-level courses includes: After the Idea; Dramatic Structure and Plot; Setting and Description; Character Editing; The Writing Life.

It’s not too early to start planning your mystery conference schedule for next year, and Janet Rudolph has already given us details about Mining for Murder!, the next Left Coast Crime conference taking place March 29th through April 1st in Sacramento, California.  Guests of Honor areJohn Lescroart and Jacqueline Winspear, Toastmaster is Harley Jane Kozak and Fan Guest of Honor is Noemi Levine. In case you need added incentive, there will be Sacramento Tours and Highlights including: Wine Country, Gold Country, Old Sac Speakeasy Tour, Railroad Museum, River Trips, Capitol Tours.  

The Malice Domestic convention will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2013, and the Board of Directors is preparing a book tentatively titled Malice Domestic…Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea: An Interesting and Entertaining History of Its First 25 Years. Although they already have a lot of program books, newsletter, photos, recordings and other materials to draw from, they’d also like previous attendees to participate by sending along your submission, up to 500 words (prefereably in pdf format) of your memories and anecdotes. Send them to both Verena Rose and Rita Owen no later than December 31st of this year. 

Charles Ardai, Editor at Hard Case Crime, sent along word that Robert Silverberg will be added to their publication roster in 2012. Silverberg is best known in science fiction circles as a five-time winner of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, but he also started out his career writing for pulp magazines such as Trapped Detective Story Magazine, and his first novel, Blood on the Mink, grew out of that background. As Ardai notes, “Hard Case Crime will be giving Blood on the Mink its first-ever proper publication, including a new afterword by Silverberg discussing the novel’s genesis and his work for the pulps, as well as two short stories he wrote for the pulps with a connection to the novel, that also haven’t seen the light of day for more than 50 years.”

EuroCrime takes a look at upcoming African crime fiction set in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe by some familiar authors and some not so familiar, perhaps.

MSNBC compiled a list of Scandinavian authors to seek out, if you can’t get enough of Steig Larsson. The ten authors and/or series are fine choices and worth taking a look (and read).

A big welcome to the Blogosphere for author Lawrence Block, whose first posting discusses the “Power of Negative Thinking.” It’s an amusing tale of what NOT to do as a writer and how to learn from one writer’s hubris.