Mystery Melange

Gerald So, one of the editors of two anthologies titled The Lineup: Poems on Crime, announced that due to losing two co-editors due to busy schedules, he's instead created a weekly web page for crime-themed poetry. You can find submissions guidelines there.

Two terrific mystery conferences are coming up at the end of this month, Mystery Florida in Sarasota, August 24-25, and Killer Nashville, August 26-28. Special guests at the Florida event include Gayle Lynds, James O. Born, Don Bruns, Tim Dorsey, H. Terrell Griffin, David Hagberg, Chris Kuzneski, Ward Larsen, P.J. Parrish, Sharon Potts, James Swain, Les Standiford and Elaine Viets. The Nashville affair has Donald Bain and Robert Dugoni as the special guest authors. Registration is still open for both these conferences--a great way to catch a late-summer vacation at the same time!

Editors Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan just released the new anthology Pulp Ink, which uses the soundtrack and lines from the movie Pulp Fiction to create short stories. For a listing of stories and authors included, Thomas Brown has the rundown. (Hat tip, too, to Sandra Seamans.)

If you're on the hunt for more short story anthologies and single-author collections, Spinetingler's Brian Lindemuth has a nice listing of those books published so far in 2011. Sandra Seamans added to that list two current books from Snubnose Press (the anthology Speedloader and a collection from Keith Rawson called The Chaos We Knew) as well as two books coming soon (Monkey Justice from Patti Abbott and Gumbo Ya-Ya from Les Edgerton). 

For those of us who can't afford a vacation to Europe this year, Alexander McCall Smith takes you on a tour of Edinburgh's New Town, where many of his books are set. Also, Mysteries in Paradise is featuring a EuroPass crime fiction tour, with different entries each week from August through October that feature on one European country and some suggested books.

The Forth Worth Star-Telegram takes a look at African crime writers who are gaining attention outside of the continent, including Cape Town's Roger Smith, who article author Cary Darling says "writes with the brutal beauty of an Elmore Leonard in a very bad mood."

Janet Rudolph has been sponsoring an alphabetical look at crime fiction authors. Yesterday was "K," with Tracy Kiely, author of the Jane Austen inspired mystery series. Previous entries included Rennie Airth, Lawrence Block, Bruce DeSilva, Vicki Delany, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Jamie Freveletti, P. L. Gaus, Timothy Hallinan, Graham Ison, Sue Ann Jaffarian. Many of the entries offer book giveaways, too.
 
And now for something completely different...an American flag created entirely out of 30,000 bullets by artist Berta Leone, which took her two years to complete.