Barbara Fradkin's Blog, page 36

The tangled string

 Oh how I wish I had been at Bouchercon! Reading about everyone's experiences, both in this blog and on Facebook, has made me realize how much I miss in-person conferences where I meet old friends, make new ones, laugh, learn, commiserate, and celebrate with kindred mystery lovers, both formally during the panels and informally at the bar, lounge, patio, etc.I haven't been to a conference since

At Bouchercon

I went to Bouchercon, too. I started to write a post last Friday but never had a chance to get back to it. Here's how I started:"Sorry to keep this short. I'm in San Diego attending Bouchercon 23. I'll have more to say about that in my next post. This morning, I need to pick up my Bouchercon packet and hit my first panel. I slept in after getting up early yesterday to take Fergus, my dog, to

Please Don't

 Donis here. I have mentioned previously that besides writing mysteries, I have a side gig as a free-lance mystery reviewer for Publishers' Weekly Magazine. I don't choose the books I'm going to review. The editor at PW sends me three or four advance reading copies (ARCs) a month to review. Usually these books will not be available for purchase for several months, and an ARC is not the final

My Bouchercon 2023 Experience

 by Sybil JohnsonAuthors, readers, panels, interviews, awards, friends, books and walking—so much walking. That, in a nutshell, was my Bouchercon experience.I spent last weekend plus some at Bouchercon in San Diego. It was nice to go to a conference that is only a couple hours drive from home. As Thomas noted in his post, there were a lot of people there. 1700 or so, the most of any Bcon.  View

Old Books

 by Charlotte HingerToday I downloaded Captains and Kings by Taylor Caldwell. I can't pinpoint what made want to re-read this old old book. I read so many books that are less than memorable. I would like to pinpoint the reasons why so many of these ancient books have stuck with me. In the case of Caldwell, her characters were so vivid. Thanks to Amazon it's easy to track down these old books

Notes from Bouchercon

 By Thomas KiesI’m writing this from the Marriott Marqui Hotel in San Diego on the last day of Bouchercon 2023.  This is one the biggest, if not THE biggest, mystery conferences in the world.  There are over 1,700 participants.  The guests of honor here this weekend are David Baldacci, Ann Cleeves, Jacqueline Winspear, C.J. Box, Cate Carlisle, and Dru Ann Love.  The Toast Master is Naomi Hirahara

A writer's summer life

 Summer always feels like a mishmash of competing interests and attractions, with little sustained direction or goal. Especially up here in Canada, after enduring many months of cold and darkness, we greet summer with a kind of frenetic euphoria. We tend to cram a lot of living into the brief months of sun, heat, and long, languid evenings. Friends to invite over, trips to take, family to visit,

Mystery Central

 By Charlotte HingerBlackPast is the biggest blog or the website with the most readers that I'm aware of. So what does it take to create such a wonderful site?A really big need. Dr. Quintard Taylor at the University of Washington saw a need and devised a plan to fill the hole. Before BlackPast there was no single central location on the internet that collected comprehensive accurate material

The Writer's Junkyard

I've started a new manuscript and to my surprise, it was a challenge putting words on the page. I found myself struggling with the perpetual dilemma--either going forward as a panster or as an outliner. For the last few years I've been a ghostwriter and prided myself on churning out prose like a machine. In order not to waste my client's time, we'd discuss the story and I'd put together a chapter

Words From the Masters

As I struggle along with my work in progress, I take comfort from knowing that great literary masters had the same problems with writing that the rest of us do. One difficulty I have is picking up where I left off. I usually re-read everything I wrote the day before, which usually leads me right back into my novel's world. Hemingway suggested that you always know exactly what word comes next