The finalists for the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards were announced this week. The awards, which are named after the famed Kiwi crime author, celebrate the year's best in crime fiction from New Zealand writers. Awards founder Craig Sisterson noted, "Ten years after we launched the Ngaio Marsh Awards to help celebrate excellence in local crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing it’s heartening to see so many new voices infusing and stretching our #yeahnoir community."
This year's finalists include:
BEST NOVEL
Whatever it Takes by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press)
Girl from the Tree House by Gudrun Frerichs
Aue by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press)
The Nancys by RWR McDonald (Allen & Unwin)
In the Clearing by JP Pomare (Hachette NZ)
The Wild Card by Renée (The Cuba Press)
BEST FIRST NOVEL
Tugga’s Mob by Stephen Johnson (Clan Destine Press)
Aue by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press)
The Nancys by RWR McDonald (Allen & Unwin)
Into the Void by Christina O’Reilly
The Killer Nashville conference announced the longlist for its annual Claymore Award for unpublished manuscripts. The award was established to "assist new and rebranding English-language fiction authors to get published, including possible agent representation, book advances, editor deals, and movie and television sales." A jury of publishing and writing professionals within each genre chooses the Top 20 Finalists through a blind judging process, and you can see their efforts via this link for all the nominated titles. The announcement of the winners for the Claymore and also the Silver Falchion Awards (for published works) will continue as planned, just not in person due to the conference's cancellation, at a later date TBA. Voting is also currently underway online for the Killer Nashville Readers' Choice Award (full disclaimer: I have a book, The Suicide Sonata, listed there).
The finalists for the 2020 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards in the genre category include Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery by Larry Sweazy. Judges include former winners, writers, educators, scholars, local bookstore owners and librarians, with winners to receive a $5,000 prize.
Another Noir at the Bar is coming up this Saturday via CrowdCast. Award-winning contributors to the anthology of short stories and essays, Writers Crushing Covid-19, will be on hand for selected readings from their works. Those currently scheduled to participate include Diane Kelly, Micki Bare, J.L. Delozier, Vince Zandri, E.A. Aymar, and Lawrence Kelter.
Organizers of the International Noireland Crime Fiction Festival in Belfast had postponed the event back in March, moving it to October this year in the hope that life would be back to normal by then. But as Festival Director, Angela McMahon, noted, "Sadly, it seems we were a little optimistic! The risk to public health from Covid-19 is still significant and unlikely to change for some time. As the wellbeing of our audiences, our authors and our many wonderful volunteers is paramount, we have concluded that in the circumstances we cannot go ahead with NOIRELAND this year." She went on to add that the hope is to present another great program of events in 2021.
We marked another passage in the crime fiction community, with the death at age 96 of Betty Rowlands, dubbed the "queen of cosy crime" by publisher Bookouture. The author, who wrote 25 books including the Melissa Craig and the Sukey Reynolds series, passed away peacefully of natural causes at a residential home on July 29th.
The summer issue of Suspense Magazine is out, featuring interviews with D.B. Corey, Jasper Bark, Riley Sager, Andrew Mayne, Joel C. Rosenberg, Harlan Coben, Kay Hooper, and Iris Johansen; an article on "how to write a murderer" by Ronald S. Barak; how to make your fictional serial killer, scarier, according to R. G. Belsky; plus new short stories, tons of new book reviews and more.
If you're a fan of short fiction, the Black Cat Mystery & Science Fiction Ebook Club from Wildside Press offers a book-of-the-month club, except for weekly and with electronic short stories and some novellas. Every week, paid club members get an email telling them about the seven-plus stories, a mix of crime/mystery and science fiction, that they can download that week in mobi or epub versions. Unpaid club members get the same weekly email giving them access to one free story, a specific one each week. All of the ebook club stories are available for two weeks only, giving members an incentive to check in each week to download the new offerings. (HT to Barb Goffman at the Sleuthsayers blog)
Bookriot compiled a list of six murder mysteries involving classical music, a subject near and dear to my heart since I'm a lifelong fan (and my own Scott Drayco series also features a former classical musician).
Do authors' "invisible" words reveal the blueprint for storytelling? Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Lancaster University think that they do.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Call Me Morbid, But ..." by Stephen J. Golds.
In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews chatted with entertainment lawyer/producer/writer, Nina Sadowsky, about her novels, including her latest, the psychological thriller, Convince Me; the same blog also recently spoke with Heather Vogel Frederick, the award-winning author of the young-adult Pumpkin Falls Mystery series, and Julie McElwain, author of Shadows in Time, which continues the journey of time-traveler FBI Agent Kendra Donovan as she solves murders in Regency England; the Venetian Vase blog welcomed Leah Konen to discuss her debut psychological thriller, One White Lie; and Laura Lippman sat down with CrimeReads to open up about "parenting, aging, choosing happiness, and exploring her dark, twisted imagination."
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