7/15/2015 nEvermore! for evermore

July 15, 2015.  On this day nEvermore! was published.  It was a collection of new gothic stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.  Included is the last tale of the late great Tanith Lee, plus new works by Margaret Atwood, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Richard Christian Mathesen.

And also "Street of the Dead House," a sort of steampunk retelling of "Murders in the Rue Morgue," which got me my first and probably only appearance in both Best American Mystery Stories and Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Stories.

6/30/2017 When Women Didn't Count is published

June 30, 2017.  This is the date of the release of a new book by award-winning mystery writer Robert Lopresti.  WHEN WOMEN DIDN'T COUNT (Praeger Publishing) is a nonfiction work about the way women have appeared and disappeared in federal documents over the last 230 years.

And that has nothing to do with mystery fiction, but this is Robert Lopresti's blog.  So there.

Here are a few of the facts from the four chapters on crime.

* During World War II the battle against prostitution in the United States was headed by Eliot Ness of the Untouchables.

* In the 1960's the number of women arrested for serious crimes increased at triple the rate for men.

* In 1880 there were 12 men in prison for every one woman.  A statistician explained that one reason was that "if a wicked woman wants a crime committed, it is easy for her to get a man to do it for her."

* The 1990 Census was the first to try to count the number of people in Shelters for Battered Women.  Forsecurity, shelter employees, rather than Census workers, did the count.

* In 2007 the government did its first study of alcohol as a weapon of rapists.  An estimated 2.6 million women had been raped while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

You can read more here.

3/24/2015 MWA gets cooking

March 24, 2015.  This date saw the publication of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook.   It features recipes by such stalwarts as Rhys Bowen, Alafair Burke, Nelson DeMille, Lindsay Faye, BIll Fitzhugh, Sue Grafton, David Housewright, Margaret Maron, Sarah Paretsky, James Patterson, and on and on.

Consdiering how many fictional poisonings they are responsible for I don't know if I want to put them in charge of my dinner.  Maybe you'll be safe with Lee Child's "Coffee, Pot of One."

10/7/2014 Shanks on Crime on time

October 7, 2014.  On this day Shanks on Crime was published.  Leopold Longshanks is a curmudgeonly mystery writer who just wants to create his books in peace, but true crimes keep interfering...  Most of these stories appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but four are new.

7/15/2015 nEvermore!

July 15, 2015.  Today is the publication date for nEvermore!, a collection of new gothic stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.  Included is the last tale of the late great Tanith Lee, plus new works by Margaret Atwood, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Richard Christian Mathesen... and yours truly, among others.

4/28/2015 The Golden Age of Murder is published

April 28, 2015.  Today is the publication date for The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards.  Edwards is the first-ever Archivist of the Detection Club.  The Club's first president was G.K. Chesteron.  Other founding members (1930) include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, A.A. Milne, Baroness Orczy,  etc. etc. I am reading the book right now.  It's fun.