DUST BUNNIES OF THE BRAIN by James Lincoln Warren We’ve all seen them and shuddered with horror at the eldritch confrontation: agglutinations of dust and hair that mysteriously appear under furniture or sometimes brazenly on an open floor, almost as insubstantial as fading nightmares. Dust bunnies. Ghost turds. At Officer Candidate School, back yonder when […]

PROFESSIONAL POISE by Leigh Lundin I met a number of special people at my first MWA conference: James, Janet Hutchings, Linda Landrigan, Otto Penzler, Ed Hoch, Doug Allyn, and a host of others. At the cocktail party, one of the characters was Fran Rizer, an ex-teacher who faced the retirement choice of moving to Florida […]

THE BEST-LAID PLANS by John M. Floyd One thing I like about watching movies and reading books and stories — beyond the entertainment they provide — is that I occasionally see something that teaches me how to write better. If you’re an author, it’s fine to try certain techniques in the hope that they’ll help […]

Steve Steinbock will return next week. In the meantime, here’s an amusing piece of personal history from one of our favorite colleagues. I might mention that almost exactly the same phenomenon described below happened to me, except that it took me fifteen years longer and I’m older than Brendan. (Some folks are just slower.) —JLW […]

RESEARCHING by Deborah Elliott-Upton Many writers swear they enjoy researching a story even more than the actual writing. I’m more of a seat of the pants writer who likes to find out what’s happening just before the reader does (except for the ending, the who, and the why that a mystery writer probably always has […]

TOP OF THE POPS by Rob Lopresti For the second year in a row I am providing you lucky people with a list of the best short mysteries of the last 12-months, as determined by me using the highly objective, scientifically accurate, ILTB System.1 Before we get into the details let me point out there […]

BABBLE BOOKS by Melodie Johnson Howe In the Los Angles Times Business section, December 29, 2010, was an article titled “The Book as Collaboration.” The subtitle was: “Bob Stein foresees the evolution of reading from solitary pursuit into communal activity.” The subtitle is misleading. Mr. Stein is not talking about book clubs, but about what […]