B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 216

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES



Brie Larson has signed on to star in the indie drama Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, playing a woman kidnapped as a teenager and held captive for years in a tiny room with her 5-year-old son Jack. Emma Donoghue adapted the script from her own 2010 bestseller inspired by a real-life 2008 case.



Screenwriters Mark and Brian Gunn (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), are writing the script for Timecop, a remake of the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme time travel action movie, where time tra...

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FFB: Murder at the Villa Rose

British author Alfred Edward Woodley (A.E.W.) Mason, born in 1865, spent much of his career serving in Parliament and in World War I where he worked in naval intelligence. Although his first novel was A Romance at Wastdale, Mason is credited with one of the earliest fictional police detective protagonists, Inspector Hanaud of the French S��ret��. The novel in which Hanaud made his debut was Murder at the Villa Rose, published in 1910.



Mason created Hanaud as an anti-Sherlock Holmes, at leas...

Mystery Melange

The International Thriller Writers announced the finalists for the Thriller Awards, including Best Hardcover Novel contenders Linda Castillo ��� Her Last Breath; Lee Child ��� Never Go Back; Lisa Gardner ��� Touch and Go; Stephen King ��� Doctor Sleep; Owen Laukkanen ��� Criminal Enterprise; Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child ��� White Fire; and Andrew Pyper ��� The Demonologist.



The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers announced the nominees for the 2014 Scribe Awards, which re...

Media Murder for Monday

Brad Pitt and his Plan B production company will produce an adaptation of David Kushner's Rolling Stone article "Anonymous vs. Steubenville." The story follows Deric Lostutter, an Anonymous hacker involved in exposing a cover-up of the rape of a 16-year-old girl by two high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, who received a harsher sentence than the rapists.



Brad Pitt is also interested in an untitled WWII romantic thriller from screenwriter Steven Knight, to be produced by Grah...

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - A Dram of Poison

American author Charlotte Armstrong Lewis (1905-1969) wrote poetry, plays, short stories and 28 novels under the name Charlotte Armstrong and the pen name Jo Valentine, as well as working in the worlds of fashion, advertising and accounting. Her first success as a novelist came in 1942 with the fairly conventional detective offering Lay On, MacDuff! (featuring an early series character MacDougall Duff). Her stories were frequently adapted for TV, and she also penned the teleplays for several...

Mystery Melange

The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the winners of the Derringers for 2014:

Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 Words): "Luck is What You Make" by Stephen D. Rogers (Crime Factory, May 2013)
Best Short Story (1,001-4,000 Words): "The Present" by Robert Lopresti (The Strand Magazine, February-May 2013)
Best Long Story (4,001-8,000 Words): "Give Me a Dollar" by Ray Daniel (Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold, Level Best Books, September 2013)
Best Novelette (8,001-17,500 Words...

Poems from the Dark Side

It's National Poetry Month, and that means it's also time for the third annual blog tour for the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. The 5-2 site, edited by Gerald So and the occasional guest editor, publishes an original poem every Monday. (5-2 refers to 52 weeks of the year, as well as being a nod to police radio codes.)



The blog tour also has another bonus: All April revenue from 5-2 and Lineup poetry anthology books and merchandise is donated to the nonprofit Academy of American Poets, supporting...

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES



Produucer Edward R. Pressman (Wall Street, American Psycho) has optioned feature film rights to debut author Ted Scofield's thriller novel Eat What You Kill (published just this past week by St. Martin's Press). The film is described as "a high-octane story that tests the limits to which one man will go for wealth and power in a world obsessed with luxury and excess."



British actress Miranda Hart is joining Paul Feig's untitled spy comedy for Fox. Already-signed fellow cast members...

Quote of the Day