I might have missed some things from later in the week as I was in the throws of the Noir at the Bar Crawl which started on May 3rd in Durham, North Carolina. After making stops in Richmond, DC, and Baltimore, the Crawl comes to a final stop in Wilmington, Delaware
Enjoy the 40th edition of the Incident Report. There are over 90 links to articles. The Incident Report covers the goings on in the world of small press crime fiction for the week of April 29th through May 5th with links to articles and new and upcoming book releases.
Articles
17 Perfect Ways to End a Chapter • Career Authors
- And that is the exact point of a chapter’s end: to get you to be unable to resist turning the page to start the next chapter.
- 5 Crazy Book Stunts You May Or May Not Want To Try | LitReactor
- If you are a writer then you have no money, so this might not be for you.
- My Little Corner: Jellyfish Review – Special Issue Call
- Literary magazine Jellyfish Review has posted a “Special Issue Call: Stories for Dead People”. They’re looking for flash fiction and creative non-fiction up to 1000 words and essays up to 2000 words. The “dead people” can be anyone from history or as current as the latest school shootings.
- Crime Watch: Review: CONVICTION
- CONVICTION is full of conflict, both between characters and within them. Dahl adroitly juggles ideas with nuance and depth.
- Killer Covers: In “Honor” of Donald Trump
- The cover gallery below was inspired by news stories such as this one at the Web site Vox: “What We Learned—and What We Still Don’t Know—About Trump’s Stormy Daniels Hush Money.”
- Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan: Exchanging Emails with Sam Wiebe on Dave Wakeland
- I’d rather err on showing the brutality than brushing it off or making the character superhuman.
- Women Detective Characters Who Inspire Me – Criminal Element
- There are a few female mystery writers that you’ll see on most “who inspired me” lists—and for good reason. The idea of a female professional detective didn’t get rolling in the genre until the 1970s, and those of us writing today owe a huge debt of gratitude to pioneering writers like Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky
- The ‘Zine Scene – In Reference to Murder
- BV Lawton examines some recent ‘zines.
- Page not found | Joe Clifford
- A Post Definitely Not About Roads, Crosses, or Anything Related to Construction, Junctures or Decisions by JoeC via Joe Clifford https://ift.tt/2jxanM0
- Public Places to Read (Other Than a Café): Where to Go With Your Book
- Because reading at home is so difficult.
- Bookish Triage: Reading Slow, Short, and Selective
- Reading slower gives me time to imagine how the words should sound, plus time to decode more of what the author was intending.
- Pay It Forward: Ann Quin | The Thrill Begins
- Reflections, reversals, subsumed identities, family drama, death, landscape, many of her themes are born in her first published sentence.
- The Definitive Guide to Social Media Etiquette During the Dying Days of Facebook (for Writers) | LitReactor
- The Definitive Guide to Social Media Etiquette During the Dying Days of Facebook (for Writers) by via LitReactor https://ift.tt/2FK3rE5
- The Interrogation Room – An Interview With Anthony Neil Smith | Dirty Books
- I mean, some writers may scoff at James Patterson or John Grisham, but they must know *something* I haven’t figured out yet in order to have so many people love to read them.
- Pulp Fiction Reviews: KILLING TOWN
- This is Hammer country and before once can even begin to decipher the puzzle, bullets start flying and bodies begin piling up like Lincoln Logs.
- Do Some Damage
- We all know there are problems in the crime fiction community with diversity and I’m disappointed that the “top writers” in the field as they were called by The Guardian could not have done a more inclusive job in selecting books. Obviously, it is up to us to lead from behind.
- Bookaholic Confessions: Author Interview: Amanda Robson
- Writers are like magpies collecting little bits from everyone they meet.
- Blackout – The BOLO Books Review | BOLO BOOKS
- Alex Segura has been turning out solid Miami-based PI novels for a number of years now, but with Blackout – the fourth book in the Pete Fernandez Mystery series – his cachet is about to catapult to a whole new level of appreciation. Blackout brings to fruition the seeded potential that was so effectively planted in the earlier novels.
- Crime Watch: Magical childhoods and dealing with Daleks: an interview with Leigh Russell
- … I’m still excited when a single reader enjoys one of my books.
- Meet The Women Who Are Building A Better Romance Industry
- “When we talk about diversity in publishing, I always think of the acquisition editors, but also sales and marketing,” says Cole. “I think the sales and marketing teams get shielded from the diversity talk when in fact they have a huge impact on it.”
- David L. Ulin on Tristram Shandy, Zadie Smith, and the Fiction of Apocalypse | Book Marks
- Rather, the critic is responsible to write an essay, to create a discrete piece of writing that can be experienced on its own terms, not to rehash or dismantle the book but to engage with it as we engage with any experience, and then to report back from the territory, as it were.
- Writing About Race: Do I Have The Right? by Jon Bennett | Elizabeth A. White — Editing & Reviews | Crime Fiction, Thriller, Noir
- There have been more than a few nights where I lose sleep wondering if I didn’t just write 298 pages of offensive content.
- Blog Tour | Book Review: Girl Fighter by Cyan Night (@GirlFighterBook #RandomThingsTours) – Keeper of Pages
- … a coming-of-age story, if you like, encompassing themes of: women in sport (MMA), brain trauma, and psychology. And for that reason, it may appeal to a wider reading audience.
- Bookstores Making A Comeback: Real Reading Wins the Day – JANUARY MAGAZINE
- I love bookstores, but “real reading” is such bullshit.
- Talking to Myself • Career Authors
- It’s been about fifteen years since I gave up the keyboard and took up a recorder for my first drafts.
- 50 Pulp Cover Treatments of Classic Works of Literature | Literary Hub
- Fun browse.
- For Libraries, the “Customer is Always Right” Might Be Wrong | Literary Hub
- … I’ve had to deal with people who act like they’ve lost all sense.
- Do Some Damage: Award Season Depressive Disorder
- There’s no guarantee of success, even if you persevere.
- SleuthSayers: A Close Shave
- The problem with Occam’s Razor.
- Paul Brazill interview | A CURE FOR DEPRESSION MARK RAMSDEN
- A lot of the breweries were bought by Heineken a few years ago so homogenised lager prevails.
- Questlove Aims To Save Your Brain: ‘Creativity Might Be In Jeopardy’ : NPR
- Dare I hesitate to say that creativity might be in jeopardy because one of the key components of being creative is boredom and silence and isolation.
- Fragments of Noir: Big Lonely City #5
- Some great noir photos at Fragments of Noir. Take a look.
- My Little Corner: Switchblade – Early Warning for the Next Submission Period
- Open from May 10th to May 25th.
- My Little Corner: Pulp Modern – Open for Submissions
- Up until May 10th. Get on it folks.
- Author of the Week: Paul Heatley – DIGITAL MEDIA GHOST
- The misery that seeps through all my work probably comes from the weather, though. It rains a lot.
- Review: The Lonely Witness by William Boyle – Criminal Element
- The Lonely Witness is a novel that yields a number of pleasures, and I can’t think of a reason not to recommend seeking them out.
- Sentenced at Conception: The Imprisoned and Unloved in Rachel Kushner’s “The Mars Room” – Los Angeles Review of Books
- Kushner structures the novel like interlocking Möbius strips that shift between different voices in first and third person.
- Cover Reveal for RECORD SCRATCH by J.J. Hensley | Crimespree Magazine
- Ah, book covers. They can be such a source of stress for traditionally published authors who may have a limited amount of control of what image graces the cover of his or her book.
- Books by women priced 45% lower, study finds | Books | The Guardian
- Analysis of more than 2m titles shows that on average, male authors’ work is strikingly better valued
- The First Two Pages: “Taking Care” by Deborah Lacy – Art Taylor
- Art Taylor’s First Two Pages as usual returns this week.
- Rape, Lost in Translation – Electric Literature
- Translation all too often replicates contemporary social attitudes regarding what constitutes seduction, rape, and consent — and the often problematically hazy lines we have drawn between them.
- On ‘Adjustment Day,’ A Quick, Horrifying Descent Into Madness : NPR
- What would happen is Adjustment Day, Palahniuk’s newest novel. It is Fight Club franchised. Gone national. Sick with all of our current ills and darkest, weirdest desires.
- When a Cis Writer Does a Gender Reveal Correctly
- What seldom, if ever, happens when a cis writer writes a trans character is that they want to present a fully fleshed out character whose existence is not a trial, or a joke, or a trick.
- Binge-Culture Excess and its Effect on Reading Retention
- Forgetting what one’s read.
- What makes a translation great? Ten literary translators from across the world weigh in
- Just like translators, critics work under constraints. I genuinely believe it is possible to identify hallmarks of successful translations – like transferring humour and wordplay, recreating cadence and rhythm, preserving a strong sense of place, and all the things my colleagues have pointed out above.
- Radical Noir: 26 Activist Crime Novels | CrimeReads
- If noir is the moment when obsession and belief turn to action, when inertia is disrupted, then it should be no surprise that the actions of revolutionaries, organizers, and activists drive many a plot.
- Only the Dead Know Brooklyn | CrimeReads
- I was afraid of the death of so many things. I longed to know what the dead know.
- Against Clarity (or In Praise of Youthful Wisdom) | Literary Hub
- There was no private club, no privileged position you had to earn before you could write. Or if there was, I wanted to kick the door in and take over the joint.
- 7 Methods for Writing Your First Draft | Literary Hub
- Methods to the madness. -DN
- Ron Howard might direct ‘The Warehouse’
- And then all this. Surreal doesn’t quite describe it. Fucking insanity gets close.
- On Envy, Unsatisfied Desire, and Not Waiting for Permission | Literary Hub
- I feel like I can never settle into not envying some other version of myself.
- Do Some Damage: Untouched, No Longer Read, but Saved
- I don’t remember what I was reading for classes during that period, but I do know that I tore through all four of these Borges books and that he then and there became one of my favorite writers.
- with Michael Pool | Dietrich Kalteis
- I still believe short fiction can capture a powerful or entertaining moment maybe even better than a novel.
- Kevin’s Corner: Review: Debt Crusher: A Novella by Michael Pool
- If you prefer animals in your stories, a read clean of graphic language, and the violence to be off the page, this is most definitely not the read for you.I guess this means it’s for me. – DN
- Debut Author Spotlight: Debra Sennefelder | The Thrill Begins
- I like to make dishes liked stuffed shells or lasagna.
- BBC – Culture – The secret libraries of history
- Religious or political pressures have meant that books have been hidden throughout history – whether in secret caches or private collections.
- When it’s Okay to be Uncertain | LitReactor
- But there is something so comforting about shared uncertainty. If you and I both know that we don’t know, our minds are in tune. We are lost together. We are existing.
- Why I’m calling time on “guilty pleasures”
- Why apologise for something that gives you pleasure?
- The Short Mystery Fiction Society Blog: May is International Short Story Month
- So it is.
- The World of Small-Town Policing – Strand Mag
- The allure of the city is hard to resist, but when a killer does come to small-town America, the body is just as cold and the blood runs just as red.
- Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan: Cut You Down by Sam Wiebe
- Cut You Down is superb noir crime fiction and I think it will be a contender for awards in 2019.
- Book Review: The Cyclist by Anthony Neil Smith | Dirty Books
- Sometimes The Cyclist feels less like a cat ‘n’ mouse thriller, and more like a visit to a menagerie of maniacs – and that is definitely a good thing! Entertaining stuff.
- How Do Poets Choose A Collection Opener? – Chicago Review of Books
- Without a prologue-poem, I find myself asking that much more of the opening poem, to cover the ground of both beginning the book and preparing me for the rest of it.
- BLACK GUYS DO READ – Book Reviews Blog: THE LONELY WITNESS by William Boyle
- Like Gravesend, this book is a slow novel and a bit meandering, but the reason why it doesn’t fully succeed for me the way Gravesend did is because where that first novel switched back and forth between equally fascinating POV’s, keeping it fresh, this one just focuses on one character, one that happens to be a hard nut to crack, so the pace and other issues were more evident. But the novel’s conclusion as well as Boyle’s keen-eyed observance really clicked with me.
- A Must Read: Night of the Jabberwock (1950) by Fredric Brown – crossexaminingcrime
- This is the kind of book that makes you want to emit a high pitched excited noise on finishing it,,,
- Yes, You Can Die From A Broken Heart | The Crime Fiction Writer’s Forensics Blog
- In this circumstance, extreme emotional upset changes the physiology of the heart muscle in some fashion and leads to it being “stunned” or damaged.
- Imagine lands The Warehouse for Solo: A Star Wars Story’s Ron Howard | Deadline
- The fuck?
- Fragments of Noir: Dark Fragments
- Noir gifs.
- Do Some Damage: Monday Interview: Chris DeWildt
- … he’s his own worst enemy. He’d fuck it up again and again.
- Nothing but one big shill | Pulp Curry
- Andrew Nette beats his own drum but that’s cool, he’s doing a lot.
- The View from the Blue House: Review of A Negro and an Ofay by Danny Gardner (2017, Down and Out Books)
- The strength is an engaging, flawed character fighting personal demons whilst dealing with a handful of simultaneous battles which ensure there’s a non-stop flow of action.
- Moriarty Was an Afterthought
- In real life, it came from Doyle’s desire to be rid of Sherlock Holmes, a character he’d grown tired of writing. And so he conjured an all-powerful antagonist from thin air and threw him into the story with his usual bored disregard for continuity.
- Punk Noir: Author Q & A – Paul D Brazill » We Are Cult
- I try to stagger it a bit better now. Les Edgerton, Paul Heatley, and Marietta Miles are current favourites.
- Can No-Advance eBook Contracts Be a Good Deal? • Career Authors
- Because the internet.
- Eavesdropping on Quora | Killzoneblog.com
- Sue Coletta on the benefits of using Quora to add to your research.
- What Should Your Characters Talk About? – Helping Writers Become Authors
- … let’s take a look at what meaningful dialogue looks like and how you can find answers to “what should your characters talk about?” on every single page.
- What Can Be Learned from a Killer’s Burial Site? | CrimeReads
- “Be careful and tread carefully ” By the time this article was posted that baby was thrown out with the bath water.
- First Rules of #WriteClub by Sarah Hilary | Writing.ie
- Don’t talk about it. Do it.
- Don’t Quit the Day Job: Paul Harrison | elementaryvwatson
- Over the years, I’ve met some of the world’s worst killers, looked evil in the eye and confronted it. Nerve wracking stuff, however, let me tell you, there’s nothing more worrying than waiting for a publisher’s response to a book submission.
- Criminal Minds: Publishing Options Today
- Getting them marketed and distributed so a bookstore would a) carry them; b) be willing to order them; and c) be able to order them was the really big deal.
- COL’S CRIMINAL LIBRARY: MARCH 2018 – READING LIST AND PICK OF THE MONTH
- Colman’s pick of the month is not much of a surprise if you’ve been paying attention.
- FLIGHT TO DARKNESS/77 RUE PARADIS By Gil Brewer | GeorgeKelley.org
- If you’re a Gil Brewer fan, this new STARK HOUSE omnibus is a must-buy.
- A Writer’s Sketchbook – Mysteristas
- The character sketch captures in words as many of the facets of the character’s personality as possible, and allows the writer to maintain consistency of thought, behavior, and decision throughout the story. The level of detail may depend on the story (short, novel, series) and the author’s preference, and there are many kinds of character sketches, too. Here are a few different approaches:
- SleuthSayers: Smile and Be a Villain
- … but [Shakespeare’s[ plays would live on anyway because he wrote brilliant conflicted characters, especially his villains.
- Writers Who Kill: Summer Beach Reads by E. B. Davis
- Jump-starting the beach reading reason with some cozy mysteries.
- The Petrona Award: The Petrona Award 2018 – the Shortlist
- WHAT MY BODY REMEMBERS by Agnete Friis, tr. Lindy Falk van Rooyen (Soho Press; Denmark)QUICKSAND by Malin Persson Giolito, tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles (Simon & Schuster; Sweden)
AFTER THE FIRE by Henning Mankell, tr. Marlaine Delargy (Vintage/Harvill Secker; Sweden)
THE DARKEST DAY by Håkan Nesser, tr. Sarah Death (Pan Macmillan/Mantle; Sweden)
THE WHITE CITY by Karolina Ramqvist, tr. Saskia Vogel (Atlantic Books/Grove Press; Sweden)
THE MAN WHO DIED by Antti Tuomainen, tr. David Hackston (Orenda Books; Finland)
- My Little Corner: Mystery Weekly – Pay Increase
- Seriously, are you not following Sandra Seamans’ blog yet?
- So many books, so little time: Serial Killers by Brian Innes
- A morbid history of some of the worst acts committed, short chapters so you can dip in and out as required.
- My Little Corner: Drunken Pen Writing – Open for Submissions – Non Paying
- Drunken Pen Writing has posted their Spring Open Submission Period call. They’re looking for short stories up to 5000 words and flash stories up to 500 words. And they have topics for you – 1. Hillbillies, 2. Spring Time, 3. Magic.
- My Little Corner: Amazing Stories – Open for Submissions
- Amazing Stories has posted their guidelines for submissions. They’re looking for science fiction stories of 1000 to 10,000 words. Payment is 6cents a word.
- Mystery Fanfare: AGATHA AWARD WINNERS: Malice Domestic
- MALICE DOMESTIC announced the AGATHA AWARD WINNERS tonight in Bethesda, MD. Congratulations to all!
- Dead Man’s Badge by Robert E. Dunn @WritingDead @annecater #blogtour #guestpost #RandomThingsTours | Novel Deelights
- You see there is a funny thing about literary genre. It serves to narrow focus to help the reader.
- Recommended Books For Writers and Authors – Pilcrow Proofreading
- Recommended by writers for writers, there might be something in this list you haven’t read and that you may find helpful.
New and Recent Releases
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Upcoming Releases
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