Barbara Fradkin's Blog, page 193

The quick and dirty way out

by Rick Blechta

Help! I'm inundated under a deluge of author photos!

As I've mentioned here before, I'm responsible for designing the programme book for this year’s Bouchercon here in Toronto. It’s a gigunda job, to say the very least. Today, a call went out, a rather desperate one, really, asking registered authors who haven’t yet done so to please send in their author headshots.

The response

Fun times at conferences

By Vicki Delany

Now that I'm well established into a writing career, I'm cutting down on the number of conferences I attend.

I still enjoy them very much, but other things are increasingly taking preference. Like writing time.

But I will always find time for my favourites, and top of that list is Malice Domestic, held each year at the end of April in Bethesda Maryland.



Crooked Lane authors

Weekend Guest Elaine Viets

Please join me in welcoming Elaine Viets, last weekend's wonderful Guest of
Honor at Malice Domestic, to Type M. Elaine's intriguing new series takes her
full circle and in a new direction. She's here to tell us about it.

A Writer's Mind

When I was thinking about what I would blog about today, I kept going back to something that happened on Monday. This incident was both scary and – in retrospect – a little embarrassing. But I've got to tell you about it, because I suspect this is another example of how a writer's mind functions.

Here's what happened (thank you, Adrian Monk, for that phrase). I had a great time at Malice

Ever Had One of Those Weeks?

I have been incredibly crabby over the past couple of weeks. I don’t know quite what to blame it on. Sometimes these moods just come and go like the tide. Part of it may be the fact that our air quality here in the Phoenix area has been horrible, and high ozone has always done a number on my head. Two solid weeks of low grade headache would make anybody crabby. I also might blame the mood on

The care and feeding of writers

Barbara here, writing from Iceland. This is a pleasure rather than a writing-related trip, but a writer always sees the world through the lens of words.

Iceland has only a little over 330,000 people, two thirds of whom live in Reykjavik, the capital city, but it has a vibrant arts, music, and literary scene.  The gift shops are full of hand-crafted goods made by Icelanders, instead of the usual

You’ve got to be paying attention

by Rick Blechta

Aline’s comment about everyone scribbling notes at one of the presentations during the weekend conference she organized really resonated with me. For those of us who write crime fiction, these opportunities can be incredibly important , because not only can we make use of the “nuts & bolts”-type things to which Aline is referring, but we can also make use of “motivational” (

Conference Time

For the past few weeks most of my waking hours - and quite a few when I should have been sleeping -  have been occupied in helping to organise the Crime Writers' Association Conference, held this year in Edinburgh. 

When you volunteer for things like this you really don't have the first idea how complicated it is and how many details have to be thought through.  Luckily our committee was headed

A One-Star Review and Guns

Like other writers, I loathe one-star reviews. I hate to get them, and if there’s a book that I didn’t like I’d rather ignore it and spend my time writing a review of a book that I did enjoy. But I was compelled to write a one-star review on a particular book because it exploits my favorite genre--crime fiction--as a soapbox to promote a political agenda that I disagree with. The book, Unloaded:

Serial Killers Begone

The Beautiful Lizzie Borden

Fractured Families required a serial killer. It was necessary for the plot. The murders were too bizarre to have been committed by a person of ordinary sensibility. I did a lot of research on this subject and know more about truly evil people than is good for me.

My editor asked if she should use the word "sociopath" or "psychopath" in flap copy. Actually the