A REAL-LIFE PHONY GENUINE HOLLYWOOD SPY STORY by Rob Lopresti Melodie’s terrific recent column about visiting the CIA Spy Museum, and learning that they employ Hollywood make-up artists, reminded me of a fascinating article which brought up that very subject. It had to do with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. As you may remember the U.S. […]
Melodie had to contend with an emergency yesterday and didn’t have time to write her regular column. Although we all know that nobody can replace her, here’s some advice for aspiring authors written in 1963 from another pretty good California writer1 that reminds me a little bit of Melodie. —JLW LETTER TO WRITERS by John […]
HOW TO SCRIBBLE by James Lincoln Warren This summer, on June 13 and 14, the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime Los Angeles Chapter will be co-sponsoring a mystery writing workshop called the California Crime Writers Conference at the Hilton Pasadena here in sunny SoCal. (In previous years, SinC […]
THE BLACK HOLE by Leigh Lundin A crime story … You may enlarge the image to full screen by clicking the icon that looks like a rectangle within a rectangle, the second icon in at the lower right of the video.
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH by John M. Floyd I once read something in a book whose title I don’t remember, written by someone whose name I don’t remember, that put forth the theory that if fiction writers happened to disappear tomorrow from the face of the earth, they — unlike carpenters and mechanics and brickmasons […]
BEHIND THE MASK by Steve Steinbock In my column of last week , I spoke briefly about the difference between pulps and digest magazines. I thought I’d begin this week on the topic of the most famous of the pulps, Black Mask. Launched in 1920 by H. L. Mencken, the magazine claimed “the best stories […]
FEELING PHILATELIC by Deborah Elliott-Upton Outside my window snow is being carried away by a swift wind — my meteorologist friend tells me they are flurries, which seems such an innocent word for such a wicked event. The temperature gauge outside my home reads twenty-eight degrees. I’m glad I’m inside where my sweater and tights […]