A Blog for Readers and Writers of Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction
This past week saw a Russian hacking group hack into Colonial Pipeline, a company that provides gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to a large portion of the Eastern Seaboard. The hacking group, Darkside, reassured the world this was not political in nature, but done purely for monetary gain. The fact that they generally target English-speaking countries either supports this (English-speaking countries are generally richer than Slavic-speaking ones), or, you know, not.
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Today is officially National Star Wars Day, so let’s talk about science fiction. Star Wars itself has always seemed to me an odd mix of historical fiction and science fiction (after all, it did happen a long time ago), and therefore not as prescient as, say, Star Trek, which predicted–so far–smart phones, Alexa, and 3D printers, virtual reality, bluetooth, tablets, video chats, and whatever those things are the TSA uses to scan us at airports.
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We might not all write what we know, but we are all shaped by our upbringing and this bleeds into our writing whether we’re aware of it or not. I once heard an author say he believed his fans knew him better than his wife because they had read all his books and witnessed all of his little peculiarities made real in his stories.
Read on to find out how the Miss Demeanors were forged.
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I’m a new convert to audiobooks, and as all new converts, I’m now a zealot. Oh, sure, years ago there were “books on tape” and then on CD, but it was just somehow not the same.
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Now here’s a tradition I can stand behind! Apparently everyone in Norway goes over to the dark side the week leading up to Easter and reads massive amounts of crime and true crime, as well as watching every possible crime show.
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Women have been poisoning themselves in the name of beauty for thousands of years. From deadly nightshade to lead, here are a few beauty tips from the past (that should stay in the past)
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Some of the best fiction explores moments of intimacy and shows us relationships between people that are chilling as a result of that intimacy.
In no particular order, here are my favorite thrillers featuring two people locked in a struggle where love, hate, possession and obsession blur.
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Lately it seems we all need a little superpower to stay on top of the zooms and the general absurdness of pandemic life. Kids taking tests next to you at the dinner table while a winter storm knocks the power out? Zooming late into the night? What do you wish was your superpower?
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A couple of years ago, back when we could do such things, I went to see a band at a Brooklyn nightspot. In performing what I thought would be a cursory rummage through my bag, the bouncers found my pens. All two dozen or so of them.
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Reading about horrible things help us deal with them IRL.
From ancient myths to fairy tales to epic poems and literature of every era and genre, it’s the worst-case scenario that glues us to the page/stage/screen. We shudder and close our eyes trying to imagine what it’s like to go into battle or to lose someone we love. The story takes us by the hand and lets us live through the tension and fear, then lets us out at the end, still whole, our lives still intact.
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