A MONTH of SUNDAYS by Leigh Lundin Some days you wonder what to write about. Last week’s article on Tom Dooley took forever to piece together and the week before that, I was dealing with neighborhood crime, dreadfully dull. Cops and criminals must be watching the Olympics because weird crime stories are thin. The truth […]

COLONIZATION by John M. Floyd One thing I try to do is read while thinking like a writer and write while thinking like a reader. It doesn’t always work, but I try. And one of the things I’ve noticed is that most of us writers seem to use too much punctuation in our fiction. Some […]

LINGUISTICS FROM THE DENTIST’S CHAIR by Steven Steinbock They say the eye is the window to the soul. If so, then what is the eye tooth a window into? Right now I have an open window where my eye tooth was a day and a half ago. This Wednesday I was sitting in a periodontist’s […]

AGATHA by Deborah Elliott-Upton The 2009 nominees for Malice Domestic’s Agatha Awards have been announced. The awards named in honor of Agatha Christie are given to Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Nonfiction, Best Short Story and Best Children’s/Young Adult for the “traditional mystery,” best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as […]

DICK FRANCIS by Rob Lopresti Some random thoughts on the passing of Dick Francis . . . I refused to read him for many years, thinking: why would I want to read mysteries about sports? And worse, by an athlete? How good can that be? Well, very good, in fact. And it is quite clear […]

Enough from us fictioneers here at CB on what constitutes a good crime short story. What does a mystery reader look for in a mystery short? Here’s Brooklyn White‘s take on the subject. She’s a freelance writer who specializes in the subject of education programs for forensic science technicians. You can find her website here. […]

MURDER SET TO MUSIC by James Lincoln Warren As my distinguished colleague Rob noted last week, murder is a prominent theme in folk music—and he didn’t even touch upon the seemingly endless list of grisly Celtic and medieval English songs of revenge, dismemberment, poison, supernatural justice, and incest, confining himself to good old-fashioned Boy Murders […]