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What’s Scary Is If You Don’t Read Trick or Treat Murder by Leslie Meier
As I wrote last October, if there’s a holiday and you want to read a mystery featuring that holiday, Leslie Meier has you covered. Starting in 1991, Meier has written 36 mysteries starring Lucy Stone, a mom, wife, and citizen of Tinker’s Cove, Maine. The first book I read, Back to School Murder (the 4th overall), Lucy fills in at the local newspaper and that’s what gets the crime on her radar. Trick or Treat Murder (1996) is the third book, but first of her Halloween stories and I reckoned I might as well start there. It’s Almost All a Domestic Story… A series is nothing if you don’t like…
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When Tragedy Struck, Chicago Bounced Back and Delivered a Key Album: Hot Streets at 45
Now what?That must have been the thoughts of the members of the band Chicago after fellow founding member Terry Kath’s untimely death in January 1978. The previous year, they had released their eleventh album and conducted yet another successful tour. Their last show—the last time Kath performed in public—was 1 December 1977 and they had already decided to move in a different direction by parting ways with James William Guercio, their producer and manager since 1969. The year 1978 was going to be a time of change and transition anyway. Soon after Kath’s death and funeral, the band had to wonder if they should move on as a band or…
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New Nightwing Creators Remember Comics Can Be Fun Yet Deep
That image. A single splash page is all it took for me to put the current Nightwing run over at DC Comics on my radar. And oh boy am I glad I did. A fellow writer posted it on Facebook about a month ago and I was captivated by the art, the simultaneous classic and modern style. The artist is Bruno Redondo and he has teamed up with writer Tom Taylor to have a run at Nightwing. And what a run (so far). Comics Are Not Supposed To Make You Cry…Right? Luckily, my local library has the first three volumes of the Taylor/Redondo Nightwing books and I eagerly checked them…
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The Dog Isn’t Who He Really Is In Play Dead by David Rosenfelt
Who doesn’t love comfort food? There’s a reason why we call pumpkin spice lattes, chocolate chip cookies, queso, ice cream, or McDonald’s French fries comfort food. When we eat these foods, we are comforted, usually by a past memory that soothes some current problem. Everyone loves and needs comfort food from time to time. So when I call the Andy Carpenter novels by David Rosenfelt comfort reading, I am not dogging them (yes, pun intended). I love them, but my ADHD reading style usually prevents me from reading a lot by the same author back to back to back. When the clock turned to “fall” post Labor Day, I had…
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The 1970s Come Alive in the Highly Entertaining Lowdown Road
Look at that cover. Hard Case Crime might be the only publisher in this century who remembers how great painted covers used to be. This cover looks like a long-lost book you’d have found on the paperback spinner rack at the 7-Eleven in 1975 as you clutched a Slurpee in your hand, your favorite hero painted on the white, plastic cup. Or it’s the novelization to a 1970s movie you’d see at the drive-in. The cover was pretty much all I needed to see to know this was a book I wanted to read. The plot was just icing on the cake. Let me see if I can boil it…
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The Saturday Night Ghost Club and the Nature of Memory
Sometimes the perfect arrives at the best possible time. I love summer. I love the heat (yeah, really). I love rolling down the windows of my car and blasting loud music (well, I do that all year round…). I love the movies that are associated with summer.But most of all, I love the looser vibe. By the end of summer, however, while I may not be ready to shift into an autumnal mindset, it approaches nonetheless. I always take stock of seasons as they end, and I was in that mood during the last week of summer 2023 as I started to listen to Craig Davidson’s Saturday Night Ghost Club.…
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How’d You Spend the 99 Days of Summer 2023 – (Part 1)
I read at lot and watched a lot of movies. There. End of post. See ya. What did I see and read? I’ll recap the reading next week. Here’s what I watched…and hopefully you did, too. Summer 2023 Movies Were Great When was the last time we had a summer movie season like this? I think many of us earmarked certain dates on the calendar to get ourselves to the movie theater. I did that nearly every weekend this year. The end result was that, with the exception of the Pixar film, Elemental, I saw every movie I wanted to see this summer. And I enjoyed just about every one…
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Lion and Lamb: The Book With the Wittiest Banter This Side of Nick and Nora
“They can catch a killer—if they don’t kill each other first.” That’s the tagline for LION & LAMB, the new novel by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski, released just a couple of weeks ago and I downloaded the audiobook that very day. Yet I had to finish another book before I pushed play on Lion & Lamb, but as soon as it started, I wondered why it took me so long. Okay, fine, it was only a week. Quarterback Archie Hughes of the Philadelphia Eagles is a week away from starting in the NFC Championship Game, the last step before the Super Bowl. And he’s found dead in his car.…
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When a Show is Cancelled, You Get to Write the Rest of the Story
Well, that sucks. Whenever my wife and I start watching an older show on streaming, I don’t look the show up on the internet. I don’t want to be spoiled about things the world already knows. For example, when I started watching “Brothers and Sisters,” my wife did look up the show and discovered Rob Lowe departed the series before its end. I just like to keep the watching as pure as possible. Which can make for a great viewing experience. It can also lead to heartbreak. We recently watched the Hulu series, “Reboot.” It follows the cast and crew of a fictional 1990s TV show that was cancelled and…
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Recharging the Excitement by Talking Shop About Writing
It is rare that we constantly sustain the excitement of what we do. We writers can love the writing process, but after, say, you hit 50,000 words, sometimes the work is more like work than magic. The same thing applies to the publishing side of things. When we’ve finished a manuscript, now comes the more mundane aspects of our jobs: editing, copy editing, proofing, cover design, and uploading files for publication and distribution. After you’ve done it enough times, it becomes routine. A little rote. You know you need to do it, but you might look forward to it the least. That is until you get to talk to someone…