Mystery Melange

This week, the annual Pulpfest returns to Columbus, Ohio, and Don Herron has a mini-preview and a tale of his own attraction to the pulpy goodness of Dime Detective magazine.

The latest issue of Pulp Metal Magazine is now live, with a "Vengeance" theme and several new stories and other features. PMM bills itself as "A heady smorgasbord of odd fiction, cult celluloid, unreal doodling, lowbrow waffle & heavy, heavy music."

Pulp Modern editor, Alec Cizak, says they're accepting submissions for the Autumn issue, and "stories about autumn, Halloween, chopping up turkeys, etc., will go to the front of the line." Stories should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Cizak also announced Elisha Murphy will be joining Pulp Modern as an assistant editor.  (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)

The Ngaio Marsh Award 2012 shortlist was announced yesterday. The award honors the best in crime fiction from New Zealand writers. Nominees include Paul Cleave, Neil Cross, Ben Sanders, and Vanda Symon.

The shortlists for the Ned Kelly Awards were announced last week. The awards are handed out for the best in Australian crime fiction in the categories of True Crime, Best Fiction, Best First Fiction and Short Stories.

More sad bookstore news to report. Last week, it was Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks that went out of business, and now, after 18 years in the spot on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers is closing its doors on September 20th. The store posted a note on Facebook that "We've had a great run and have enjoyed helping a generation of readers find the books they love. We've had a lot of fun, learned a tremendous amount, and enjoyed our time with all of you – customers, authors and publishers."

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots Ezine includes entertaining musings from "The Ripster" on South African crime writer Deon Meyer, the obit for crime fiction supporter Iwan Hedman Morelius, a note about the annual convention of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and much more.

If you're an Australian and a woman writer, you have until the end of this month to enter Sisters in Crime Australia's Crime & Mystery Short Story Competition with a total of $1,500 worth of prizes. The annual contest is sponsored by Melbourne’s famous Athenaeum Library.

The Q&A roundup this week features Michael Koryta talking about his new novel The Prophet with fellow author Dean Koontz; and EuroCrime chats with Jefferson Bass, the writing team of Jon Jefferson and Dr Bill Bass.

Untreed Reads is offering a special summer sale through August 15th at The Untreed Reads Store for 50% off all titles, including my story "Ill-Gotten Games" and the anthology Grimm Tales, in which I'm honored to be included as a contributor. There are hundreds of other titles from the likes of Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle, Victor J. Banis, Nigel Bird, Paul D. Brazill, Denise Dietz, Barb Goffman, John Kenyon, Stephen D. Rogers, Elizabeth Zelvin and many more fine writers.