School Shooting: John Byk’s Crying Bullets
John Byk, who writes under the pen name of Conrad Johnson, wrote a mystery called Crying Bullets whom I thought of today in regard to the the school shootings in Ohio. I finished Crying Bullets...
2012? What Lies Ahead?
So it's New Year's Day again, is it? I've been living in a chocolate fog for the last two weeks and it's snuck up on me. It's New Year's Day and I'm not hung over, and that's a very good thing. In...
Too Rosy a View of Cops?
Derek Pacifico's recent Crime Writer's Homicide School was another sizzler. This is my third session with Sgt Pacifico, a law enforcement trainer for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department....
I’m Surprised When Nobody Dies
Because I'm immersed in my third murder mystery set in Santa Monica, I read other murder mystery authors almost exclusively. Why? I'm interested inthe dark trappings of murder and death. It's the...
What You Don’t Know
What happens when an idea for a book strikes and won't leave you alone? What if it's something you know nothing about? Such as organized crime in Santa Monica as in my second Dave Mason mystery...
Mystery Writers I Enjoy
I read Donna White Glaser’s The Enemy We Know with great pleasure. The cover with its bloody knife stood out, particularly the circle with A Letty Whittaker Mystery and the words 12 Step within the triangle, within the circle…
The Mystery of the Five Maidens
Years ago a group of spiritually-minded forest lovers began hanging mementos of personal significance on the branches of a semi-circle of pines high on the side of a mountain here in California. The...
Occupy LA on a Beautiful Fall Day
I'm still thinking about going to the Occupy LA venture last weekend with my friend Mindy Moffat. After a long drive down from the mountains, we parked at the North Hollywood subway station, and...
The Mystery/Thriller Greats and Near Greats at Bouchercon 2011
The Murder Mystery/Thriller World – Everyone in the mystery and thriller world goes to Bouchercon, named after Anthony Bouchercon the first literary critic to raise mystery fiction to literary status.
Everyone is there to network as well as hear established authors and see what’s new. I went to talk about my debut mystery, No Dice…
