STEAL THIS BLOG part II by Steve Steinbock Last week I wrote about John Dortmunder, Arsène Lupin, and a few other larcenous heroes of crime fiction. Philosophically I’m not keen on glorifying crime, and I’m not all that crazy about the “caper” subgenre. But I do love Ed Hoch’s “Nick Velvet” stories.  And I can’t […]

RULES for ALL STORYTELLERS by Deborah Elliott-Upton Playing on the Internet is often rewarding, sometimes great fun, and sometimes, a waste of time. I can’t imagine going back to a time where we didn’t have the World Wide Web as a playground and information highway. While hitting some Internet backroads, I stumbled on a poster […]

UNDERWORKED and OVERHEARD by Rob Lopresti I just got back from  music camp.  My wife did most of the music while I spent the week writing a big chunk of what I (and the publisher) hope will be my next novel. Since I was surrounded by a crowd of strangers, I thought this was an […]

When ELLERY QUEEN met NBC by Dale Andrews Please welcome back our good friend Dale Andrews, the latest avatar of a certain well-known detective. —JLW Satire, it is said, closes on Saturday nights. In an article published some years back in the San Francisco Weekly reflecting on the spotty career of satirist Tom Lehrer, Jack […]

COLORFUL LANGUAGE by James Lincoln Warren By the time the Gentle Reader peruses this article, I will be in South Africa, vacationing with my father. The trip is the fulfillment of a long-time dream. I have been fascinated with the continent ever since I saw my first Tarzan movie and watched Louis Leakey and Jane […]

BAD, BAD CRIMINALS, part I by Leigh Lundin This week, we bring you criminal briefs from North America. Why aren’t you out writing speeding tickets? Hanceville, AL.  Billy Floyd Norris, being an upstanding citizen, phoned police he’d been robbed by his two roommates. Once police arrived, they found an operating meth lab. That’s a big […]

MAD for MAGAZINES by John M. Floyd I read a lot of short stories. Mostly mystery/suspense stories, and mostly those featured in magazines. There are of course two other good places to find short fiction: (1) anthologies containing the work of different authors and (2) collections of stories by the same author. I read a […]