Mystery Melange

 

Sisters in Crime (SinC) announced that the 2020 winner of the annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award is Yasmin McClinton of Columbia, SC. The winning novel-in-progress was selected by judges Rachel Howzell-Hall, Alex Segura and the 2019 winner, Jessica Martinez. The award, which honors the memory of pioneering African-American crime fiction author Eleanor Taylor Bland with a $2,000 grant to an emerging writer of color, was created in 2014 to support SinC’s vision to serve as the voice for excellence and diversity in crime writing. Past recipients include Maria Kelson (2014), Vera H-C Chan (2015), Stephane Dunn (2016), Jessica Ellis Laine (2017), Mia P. Manansala (2018) and Jessica Martinez (2019).

The Hugo Awards for excellence in science fiction announced the winners in the various categories. Many of these often have a crime component, such as the winner of the Best Novel this year, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, which follows Ambassador Mahit Dzmare who arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has been murdered.

After the cancellation of all the Edinburgh International Book Festival due to the coronavirus pandemic, the book festival has moved entirely online, hosting 140 book readings and, for the first time, online book signings. It has arranged signings with 22 authors based in the UK, where fans who buy the first 50 of their books will be given access to short, private signing sessions lasting about a minute, with the possibility of recording the moment. The authors involved include the crime novelists Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.

Independent publisher Canelo is launching a new crime fiction imprint, Canelo Crime, and has promoted Louise Cullen as publishing director to oversee the list. The imprint will launch with a selection of eight titles, including novels by Rachel Lynch and Nick Louth, due for release on September 24.  Cullen is now actively seeking new novels with "bestseller potential" for inclusion in the imprint in 2021 and beyond, with a target of 15–18 new releases next year.

Jane Friedman took a look at the state of the book publishing industry in the midst of the pandemic and found that book publishing is positioned to grow in terms of unit sales when compared to 2019, and in fact, 2020 may prove to be one of the strongest sales years in recent memory - at least in terms of total sales. The numbers for brick-and-mortar stores aren't as bright.

The August issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine is out with the cover feature, "Lucid'' by Bill Kelly, a femme fatale tale dealing with mystery, memory and murder, and original custom cover art By Robin Grenville-Evans. There are also story contributions from Michael Mallory, Josh Pachter, Rachel Amphlett, Leone Ciporin, Michael Bracken, David Bart, and Gerard J Waggett.

Publishers Weekly asked seven mystery writers to discuss the debt they owe to the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.

So many blogs have gone the way of the dinosaur over the past several years, and last week brought the end to two more: the Cozy Chicks blog announced it was ceasing operations as a blog after thirteen years. The authors (Lorraine Bartlett/Lorna Barrett, Duffy Brown, Mary Kennedy, Maggie Sefton, and Karen Rose Smith) will continue to post in a Facebook group; likewise, the Killer Characters blog also announced it was also ceasing operations after ten years. Their final post was an unpublished draft from colleague, Sheila Connolly, who passed away in April.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Kneecaps Or Us" by David S. Pointer.

In the Q&A roundup, Marshal Zeringue, of Writer Interviews, chatted with Adele Parks, author of the psychological thriller, Lies, Lies, Lies; Mystery Playground spoke with Paul D. Marks about his new crime novel, The Blues Don't Care; and Indie Crime Scene interviewed Phillip Jordan, whose first novel, Code of Silence, has its debut this autumn.