Mystery Melange

Continuing on from last week's links to crime fiction titles we can look forward to in 2015, The Rap Sheet jumps into the fray with a long list of upcoming books with publication dates in the U.S. and U.K. through the first quarter (March).

Mike Ripley has his first "Getting Away with Murder" column from Shots Magazine for 2015. The New Year edition features a look back at the "Christmas Chrime" at Heffer’s Bookshop in Cambridge and the recent official launch of the anthology Bodies in the Bookshop, inspired by Heffers' Richard Reynolds and edited jointly by the Detection Club’s L.C. (Len) Tyler and Shots’ own Ayo Onatade. He also highlighted the news that Vintage announced it's reissuing eleven of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion novels this year and nine in 2016.

The Malice Domestic Conference Board of Directors reported that after a fifteen-year haiatus, they will be sponsoring a new Malice Domestic Anthology, to be published in 2016. Presented by Katherine Hall Page and published by Wildside Press, the anthology will include stories from unpublished and published authors alike. The title is Murder Most Conventional, which means that submited stories must take place at or have some relationship to a convention (of any type). Stories of 3,500 to 5,000 words should be sent in by May 1, 2015. For more information check out the PDF on the official Malice website.

Lee Lofland posted a first look at the new venue for 2015's Writers' Police Academy at the Fox Valley Technical College Public Safety Training Center in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Plan B Magazine editor Darusha Wehm announced the publication has reopened to submissions for Volume V. All crime fiction short stories—detective, crime, mystery, thriller, suspense, police procedurals—are welcome. You can check the guidelines here.

Elizabeth Foxwell ("The Bunbuyist") noted that former English instructor Chris Willerton is proposing the panel "Remapping Culture with Detective Fiction" for the 2015 Christian Scholars Conference at Abilene Christian University in Texas in June.

The new poem up at the 5-2 crime poetry blog is "The Song O' No One's Daughter," by Johnny Longfellow, and the latest story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Ralph's On Third and Vermont" by Alec Cizak.

The Q&A roundup includes mystery author Tracy Weber discussing the latest installment in her downward dog series (featuring yoga instructor Kate Davidson), Killer Retreat, with Omnimystery News; John Floyd chats with The Clarion-Ledger about his writing and his new compilation of 50 brief "whodunits"; Ian Rankin, whose latest Inspector Rebus novel is Saints of the Shadow Bible, gets "The Third Degree" from Crimetime Preview; and Brad Taylor was put on the interview hot seat by The Mystery People to talk about his new Taskforce novel, No Fortunate Son.