Mystery Melange

The Left Coast Crime conference has announced the lineup for 2013 at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs. Guests of Honor are Laura Lippman and Craig Johnson, with Fan Guests of Honor Tom and Enid Schantz, Toastmaster David Corbett and "Troubador" Parnell Hall.

If you're in Los Angeles, Sunday, March 25th at 8 p.m., check out Noir At The Bar at The Mandrake Bar on La Cienega Blvd. Authors Hilary Davidson (The Next One to Fall), Gary Phillips (The Underbelly), Gar Anthony Haywood (Assume Nothing), Johnny Shaw (Dove Season) and Jordan Harper (author and staff writer on CBS's The Mentalist) will read and sign their work, with Mysterious Galaxy on hand to sell books.

The Friends of Mystery handed out their annual Spotted Owl Award to crime fiction author Bill Cameron, for his novel County Line. The honor is bestowed upon a writer living in the Northwest region including Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho or the Canadian province British Columbia.

The March Madness tournament created by Jen Forbus is ready for contestants. This year's theme is Heroes and Villains, and she's soliciting your choices for the best fictional entries in both categories. But you'll need to hurry, because the deadline is this Friday, March 16th.

The Thrilling Detective 'zine turns 14 on April 1st, and to celebrate, editor Kevin Burton Smith is asking for your favorite P.I. novel of all time. Send along your top choices via e-mail, Twitter or the Yahoo newsgroup, and he'll tally up the responses and compile a list of the Top 14.

A big welcome to two new 'zines: Big Click Magazine and Blood and Tacos. Big Click is published by Jeremiah Tolbert, with editors Seth Cadin and Nick Mamatas and will appear bimonthly in various electronic formats. The first issue features short ficition by Ken Bruen and Anonymous-9 and interviews with Tom Piccirilli and Joe Lansdale. Blood and Tacos is the brainchild of author/screenwriter Johnny Shaw and will be published quarterly, with stories from authors creating new pulp heroes and book reviews (and even a recipe or two) in each issue.

In sad 'zine news, Flashshot is no more, after ten years. It was an unusual publication, in that it e-mailed stories to subscribers. The driving force behind the project. G.W. Thomas, posted on the website: "Ten years of psychotic killers, cheating hubbies, alien invasions, criminals caught and uncaught, monsters, housewives, Santa Clauses, leprechauns and New Year's celebrations. Ten years. 73,000 minutes, 1217 hours, 50+ days of his life…Made a lot of friends, not so much money."