Book sculpture by Jodi Harvey-Brown
The Nero Wolfe Society announced the nominees for the 2013 Nero Award that recognizes excellence in the mystery genre. They include Antiques Disposal by Barbara Allan; Burning Midnight by Loren D. Estleman; Dead Anyway by Chris Knopf; and The Truth of All Things by Kieran Shields. The winner will be announced at the annual Black Orchid Banquet in December. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
Authors often pitch in to help raise money for charitable causes, the latest being the Authors Love Teachers OK Tornado Relief Auction. A group of authors and the Bookgasm site are banding together to help students and teachers at the Plaza Towers Elementary School and Briarwood Elementary School affected by the recent EF5 tornado in Oklahoma. You can bid on items through June 30th including autographed books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Max Allan Collins, Ed Gorman, Lou Berney and William Bernhardt, among many others.
Author Tess Gerritsen has also launched a separate charitable appeal, this one for Alzheimer's research, a disease that claimed the life of her father. For every $5 you donate to her GoFundMe campaign, you’ll be entered into a drawing to have a chance to name a character in the next Rizzoli & Isles book. Three runners up will receive a Rizzoli & Isles prize pack that includes a signed copy of Gerritsen's latest book, Last to Die, plus a pair of handcuff earrings and a Rizzoli & Isles baseball cap.
Another new charitable project is the anthology Grand Central Noir for the Amazon Kindle. The anthology was compiled and edited by Terrence McCauley, with stories from I.A. Watson, Charles Salzburg and Jessica Hall, S.A. Soloman, Matt Hilton, Jen Conley, Amy Maurs, R.J. Westerhoff, J. Walt Layne, Kathleen A. Ryan, Silas Donohue, Marcelle Thiebaux, Ron Fortier, Richie Narvaez and Seamus Scanlon. All proceeds go directly to God's Love We Deliver, a non-profit that delivers meals to those in need.
Madison, Wisconins's new Mystery to Me bookstore (which took over from Booked for Murder) held its grand opening last Saturday. As the newspaper Isthmus noted, Mystery to Me plans on adding Skype sessions with authors, using a large flat-screen TV in the store; is partnering with the nearby public library branch to potentially hold events; and will order any book, mystery or not, with each purchase coming with a free "mystery book" wrapped in white paper (for a limited time).
On Wednesday, September 18, Sisters in Crime is sponsoring their annual SinC Into Great Writing workshop in association with Bouchercon. The one-day workshop features Cathy Pickens leading a session on the creative process, including developing, learning to tap into creativity more deeply, and producing creative work more readily; and Bob Dugoni will lead a session on selling your novel.
Seventeen novels by Stuart Palmer are now available as ebooks by MysteriousPress and Open Road Media. Palmer (1901-1968) is best known for his whodunits starring the humorous spinster sleuth/school teacher, Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who solves mysteries, beginning with The Penguin Pool Mysteries in 1931 and continuing for 13 more novels.
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