Mystery Melange

The Publishing Gives Back blog is hosting an auction this week to raise money for the American Red Cross and other Sandy relief charities, with various editors and agents offering up editorial and critique services to the highest bidder. The individual auction offerings will only be up for bids for one week, so hurry and put in your best offer.

Early bird pricing for ThrillerFest VIII (held July 10-13 in New York City) ends midnight on November 30th.  Special guests will include 2013 ThrillerMaster Anne Rice, 2011 ThrillerMaster R.L. Stine, T. Jefferson Parker, Michael Connelly, Michael Palmer, and Steve Berry.

The California Crime Writers Conference early registration is open for writers and would-be authors. Elizabeth George is the keynote speaker and will also lead a workshop on "Finding Your Process." Other workshops will offer information on contracts, writing tips, and the latest crime-fighting techniques, plus agents and editors will also be on hand for manuscript critiques. The conference takes place June 22-23, 2013, in Pasadena.

This Saturday, December 1, is the third annual Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day in close to 1,100 participating stores in all 50 states, Canada, England and Australia. For more information and an interactive map (that hopefully includes a store near you), check out the event's website.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Marshall Karp, author of the books NYPD Red and Bloodthirsty, who chatted with the Scene of the Crime blog; Chuck Wendig interviewed Chris Baty, author and the founder of NaNoWriMo, who talked about what goes into writing a good character, and more; and Sophie Littlefield was this week's "Five on Friday" guest over at Jen's Book Thoughts.

Congrats to some of the latest crime fiction award winners:

• Broken Harbour by Tana French won the 2012 Irish Book Award in the Crime Novel category. (Runners Up: Slaughter's Hound Declan Burke; Vengeance by Benjamin Black; The Istanbul Puzzle by Laurence O’Bryan; Too Close for Comfort by Niamh O’Connor; and Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips);

• Åsa Larsson's Till offer åt Molok won the Swedish Crime Academy's 2012 award for Best Swedish Crime Novel and Peter Robinson's Before the Poison won the Academy's Best Foreign Crime Novel prize;

• And the Cat Writers' Association awards for mysteries featuring cats went to Carole Nelson Douglas, creator of the Midnight Louie series, who won a CoE for her short story "Butterfly Kiss" as well as her novel Cat in a Topaz Tango, while Shirley Rousseau Murphy, creator of the feline P.I. Joe Grey, won a CoE for her novel Cat Striking Back and the Muse Medallion for Cat Telling Tales.