Mystery news
Good news to start off the day: The Stephen King Illustrated Companion was nominated for an Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America. Winners will be announced at a banquet in NYC at the end of April. The full list of nominees can be found here. I’m nominated in the category Best Critical/Biographical, which puts me up against the likes of P.D. James. Not a position I ever imagined finding myself in!
Followed by the sad news that is circulating the blogosphere concerning the death of crime writer Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser novels (Spenser for Hire on TV, starring Robert Urich) and the Jesse Stone novels that have recently been adapted starring Tom Selleck, along with numerous other works. I can’t remember when I read my first Spenser novel, but it must have been nearly 30 years ago. I kept up with him until recently, when I found the hardcovers were getting too expensive for their contents. Ironically, I was going to pick up some of his newer works on my Kindle. When I think about it, I have to say that Parker is one of my literary influences, though I’ve never written anything quite like his books. I’ve always wanted to, though.
I’m between works at the moment, still dowsing for a storyline to match the characters and situation I’ve come up with for the next story. Still got up at 5 a.m., though, because there’s always other things I can be doing that isn’t writing but is still work. I had to write a 350-word afterword for my story “The Fingernail Test” that discussed why I chose the urban legend for the story, and I had two short stories that I needed to resubmit. One was the story I finished on Sunday. The new market Lightspeed lives up to its name in terms of turnaround time. I received a rejection on it yesterday, albeit a nicely worded personalized one.
Castle was quite good last night. They handled a potentially difficult development very well–the investigation into the murder of Beckett’s mother. They had their cake and ate it by revealing the person who pulled the trigger without discovering who hired him. Also, Castle’s actions at the end could have caused a rift between him and Beckett (she might have suggested that his actions caused the death of the only link they had to the real villain) but instead it brought them closer. And not in the totally predictable way that TV often falls back on — they didn’t have a romantic moment, they had an honest character moment, where Beckett told Castle that he made her difficult job easier. Nicely played, I thought.
I stumbled upon Dreams with Dark Teeth, the Harlan Ellison documentary, on Sundance last night. I didn’t see the whole thing, but I got a kick out of what I did see. I’ve only met Ellison once, but the documentary seemed to capture his essence, both private and public personalities on display. I’m not sure how much of it I missed, but I’ll be on the lookout for it to see the rest.
Monday night comedies were hitting on all cylinders, especially Two and a Half Men (I’ll never think of smores the same way again) and Big Bang Theory. I think Leonard is going to have to turn in his secret decoder ring soon, though. He’s almost not a nerd any more.
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