Month: February 2021

Welcome Keenan Powell

Fiction

Welcome Keenan. Not only are you a crime writer, you’ve had a multi faceted professional life ranging from an illustration in the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons to your law career. Is there a thread that binds these together?

I believe the short answer is there is a subterranean current tying all of these together: The desire to create an image or story that resembles what I see in my head. The mediums have morphed with the materials and education available to me but the urge is the same.

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Belly Up to the Bookshelf

Fiction, Writing

I was chatting with my blog-mates earlier about literary feasts—who would we invite and what would we serve, that kind of thing.

The conversation reminded me of real-life literary feasts, like those hosted by Chantal Tseng (@ShinobiPaws). Chantal is a bartender and sherry specialist who earns her living these days by crafting custom cocktails.

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Hide in Place

Uncategorized

Today is the launch date for our newest Miss Demeanor’s debut book, Hide in Place.

It sounds like an incredible story: She left the NYPD in the firestorm of a high-profile case gone horribly wrong. Three years later, the ghosts of her past roar back to terrifying life.

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Welcome Emilya Naymark

Uncategorized

Today I am thrilled to introduce one of our new Miss Demeanors, Emilya Naymark.

Emilya: Years of hearing my husband’s tales of buying drugs in the city got my gears churning and instead of helping him write his memoirs, as we always joked I would, I up and made him a lady and stuck him into a crime novel.

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Books and Cookies–A Perfect Match

Fiction, Writing

It’s cookie season! Girl Scout cookies, that is. I bought a box or four from a friend’s daughter. Cookie sales have gone high tech. I ordered online and had the sweet treats shipped to me. That’s a big change from my Scouting days, when we had to go door-to-door with a paper order form and had to hand-deliver the cookies.

Since book and booze pairings are also a thing, I decided, why not book and Girl Scout cookies?

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Books to Get Me Through

Uncategorized

Yesterday, my fellow Miss Demeanor, Susan Breen, talked about buying each of the books recently nominated for the Edgar in the best novel category. She rationalized, quite reasonably in my view, that money not spent in restaurants during the pandemic could be redirected to purchasing books.

But with so many books, how do I choose which books? The reasons seem to fall into the categories of Smart, Savvy, Sentimental, and Seemingly Silly.

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Edgars

Fiction, Uncategorized

The Edgar nominees for Best Novel were announced last week, and, in a moment of extravagance, I went out and bought all six. I can’t go out to dinner, I figured. Why not spend my money on books?

wanted to be able to write in them and underline favorite sentences and learn from them. I’m a writing teacher and one thing I’m always telling my students is that there’s no better teacher than a book.

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