Mystery Melange

Congratulations to this year's Ned Kelly Award winners, handed out by the Australian Crime Writers Association. The winners include In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty (Best Crime Novel); Hades by Candice Fox (Best First Crime Novel); Murder in Mississippi by John Safran (Best True Crime); and "Web Design" by Emma Viskic (Sandra Harvey Short Story Award).

Hofstra University announced the three finalists of their law-themed short story writing contest, with nods going to Bev Vincent, Andrew Italia, and grand-prizer winner, Lucian Dervan.

Northern Virginia will host a Noir at the Bar event Saturday, September 13 at One More Page Books. Participants include Bruce Holsinger, Terry Irving, Dana King, Nik Korpon, Elisa Nader, Laura Ellen Scott, Kieran Shea, and Steve Weddle. Author E.A. Aymar will emcee the evening's entertainment, and David Montgomery is the evening's mixologist and bartender.

The upcoming Left Coast Crime Conference has had a change of guests, after Ridley Pearson had to cancel. The new Guest of Honor is the Edgar, Lefty, Shamus, and Macavity-nominated Tim Hallinan, author of sixteen published novels including six Bangkok-set thrillers about American travel writer, Poke Rafferty.

There's a new kid on the blog: BJ Bourg, former editor of Mouth Full of Bullets and the Chief Investigator for a Louisiana District Attorney’s Office, has started up Righting Crime Fiction for writers seeking to include police procedural information in their stories and who want to get it right. First up, "Revolver Basics."

Salon senior writer Laura Miller made the case for "Why today’s most exciting crime novelists are women."

Over at Slate.com, Zachary Karabell explains why independent booksellers are on the rise again.

Did you know that science fiction author Ray Bradbury also wrote noir? Edward A. Grainger reported on just such a book over at Criminal Element.

The University of East Anglia is adding a Masters in Crime Fiction degree to launch in September 2015. The program will include critical, theoretical and historical perspectives as well as a creative writing focus. The publishing company Little Brown plans to award £3,000 to one student and also will read the students' manuscripts. (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare.)

A new app wants to help Sherlock fans control their withdrawal symptoms until the next TV series from the BBC.  Available for iOS, Android, and Kindle, the app includes a game where you solve a series of cases, with Benedict Cumberbatch leaving you voicemails with mission updates, and you can watch exclusive video and audio clips.

Margaret Atwood is the first contributor to the Future Library, which will compile 100 texts for publication in 2114. The Future Library project was conceived by the award-winning Scottish artist Katie Paterson and involves the planting of a forest of 1,000 trees in Nordmarka, just outside Oslo. Every year until 2114, one writer will be invited to contribute a new text to the collection, and in 2114, the trees will be cut down to provide the paper for the texts to be printed.

Bete Noire is open for submissions again. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.) They are seeking stories that are well written, character driven and have a dark bent to them. Pulp Modern is also looking for submissions on the theme of "drugs."

The annual William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers, sponsored by the Malice Domestic conference, will accept submissions between September 15 and November 1. Each grant includes a $1,500 award plus a comprehensive registration for the following year's convention and two nights' lodging at the convention hotel.

Kobo has launched a Mystery Contest With Gone Girl to promote the company's new Aura H2O E-Reader.  Titled "Going, Going, Gone," the six-week promotion puts readers’ sleuthing skills to the test by reading ebooks and solving riddles, and then entering for a chance to win $5,000 (Canadian) and a Kobo Aura H2O.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "911" by Charles Rammelkamp, and the new story at Beat to a Pulp is "The July Rebellion" by Kate Lincoln.

This week's Q&A Roundup includes Minerva Koenig chatting with The Mystery People about her debut novel Nine Days, and Christopher Meeks stopped by Omnimystery News to talk about his new crime thriller, A Death in Vegas.