#almost impossible if you read other books than New York Times best-selling fantasy-romance that looks exactly like the previous one
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Sensor Sweep: Year’s Best Horror, Blood Sundown, Al Williamson, Northworld
RPG (Modiphius Entertainment): Before Conan, there was Kull! DANGER BREEDS CAUTION, AND ONLY A WARY MAN LIVES LONG IN THAT WILD COUNTRY WHERE THE HOT VENDHYAN PLAINS MEET THE CRAGS OF THE HIMELIANS AN HOUR’S RIDE WESTWARD OR NORTHWARD AND ONE CROSSED THE BORDER AND WAS AMONG THE HILLS WHERE MEN LIVED BY THE LAW OF THE KNIFE. Here, for the first time in roleplaying gaming, Kull and his world are described in all their savage, dreamlike glory.
Writing (Larry Correia): Of course the article is trash. It comes from Buzzfeed. They get everything wrong. But worse, some of the quotes in there from certain writers are agenda driven garbage, which give aspiring writers a completely ass backwards view of how publishing works. I want to see writers be successful. I’m rooting for you guys. This crap right here? It is defeatist garbage, and if you buy into this pity party, you are going to artificially limit your career.
Fantasy (DMR Books): Lin Carter (1930-1988) blazed a trail in fantasy literary criticism, and for that we owe him a debt. Today on what would have been his 90th birthday I celebrate his pioneering efforts as a historian and guide, thank him for treating fantastic material with respect and enthusiasm—and also offer some critique I think he might have welcomed.
Science Fiction (Black Gate): First, it’s Heinlein’s first novel in that it’s the first one he wrote, way back in 1938 and 1939, when he hadn’t yet broken into print. But it didn’t sell, was never published at the time, and went unknown for decades. In fact the manuscript was thought lost; Heinlein and his wife had destroyed copies in their possession in the approach to Heinlein’s death. Yet another copy of the ms. was found years later, after Heinlein’s death in 1988, and, as Robert James explains in an afterword here, was published in 2004, with an introduction by Spider Robinson. (Spider Robinson would later publish Variable Star, based on a Heinlein outline, in 2006.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Edgar Rice Burroughs was a professional in the best sense of the word. This meant he worked hard at producing the best work he could. It also meant he knew you didn’t stop a successful franchise but always left a back door for more stories in the future. With Tarzan, Pellucidar and John Carter he used pretty much the same method (which I think was largely instinctual and certainly not planned).
REH and HPL (Westhunt): Just as Robert E. Howard’s take on prehistory was closer to the truth than the one promulgated by archaeologists in the past few decades, H.P. Lovecraft’s views on insanity were more realistic than the common ones in American popular culture – where people are thought to be driven insane by trauma, where your mum and dad fuck you up by their actions, rather than their genes.
Comic Books (Bleeding Cool): Robert E. Howard’s Conan is brought to life UNCENSORED! Discover the true Conan, unrestrained, violent, and sexual. Read the story as he intended!
In the kingdom of Vendhya, the king has just died, struck down by the spells of the black prophets of Yimsha.The king’s sister, Yasmina, decides to avenge him…and contacts Conan, then chief of the Afghuli tribe. But several of Conan’s warriors have just been killed by the men of the kingdom of Vendhya, further complicating the matter. The princess thought she could use the Cimmerian, but rather it is she who will serve his interests…
Fiction (Misha Burnett): I love it when a plan comes together! Yes, I do have a plan, although it may not be evident from my publishing schedule. Ever since I realized that short fiction is the ideal medium for me, I have been working towards building a body of work. As I’ve said several times in this blog, I am now writing stories with an eye not just to first publication, but to inclusion into a series of collections.
Fiction (Marzaat): My multi-part look at this John Buchan collection concludes. Buchan took a cruise to the Aegean in 1910 and that’s the setting of “Basilissa”. This 1914 story is my least favorite in the collection. It mixes precognitive dreams with a standard damsel-in-distress romantic plot. Every April since boyhood Vernon has had a dream where he enters a house with many rooms and senses a danger. On each repetition of the dream, the danger draws closer.
RPG (Tenkars Tavern): Using my Soapbox to “Discourage” a Problem at Some Tables… So I’m not 100% when this post will be, well posted, but I’m running with the assumption that this will be my 1st weekly entry here at the Tavern. There’s so many things I could write about, but one thing popped into my head, something I feel strongly about and something that has a back story. There are probably three things I’m passionate about, well maybe five things, or 50……..I really don’t keep track, but clearly I’m a passionate, passionate man…..
History (Brandywine Books): I’ve been doing a little translation lately (I’ll tell you more about it later) which reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla. This story involves King Eystein I, far from the most renowned of Norway’s kings, but very possibly the most likeable. He was part of a set, sharing a joint monarchy with his brother, Sigurd Magnusson. They were both the sons of King Magnus Bareleg, who never got the memo that the Viking Age was over, and died young and outnumbered in Ireland, declaring, “Kings were made for glory, not for long life.”
Pulp Magazines (Pulp Net): Adventure magazine was one of the “Big Four” of pulp magazines. For those not aware, the other three are Argosy, Blue Book, and Short Stories. Adventure existed from 1910 to 1971, though not always as a pulp fiction magazine. Ridgeway, which had been bought by Butterick Publishing, who published sewing patterns and related magazines, published Adventure, along with Everybody’s and Romance, until selling these to Popular Publications in 1934. I suspect Butterick basically sold Ridgeway to Popular, similar to Popular buying out Munsey in 1941.
Art (DMR Books): The great Al Williamson died on this date in 2010. Not to be confused with the equally cool Jack Williamson—wouldn’t it have been awesome if Al had adapted Jack’s “Legion of Space” tales to comics?—Al was the “kid brother” and child prodigy at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School which was run by the legendary Burne Hogarth. Al would fill the same role at EC Comics, where he worked with the likes of Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Wally Wood. Here’s an excellent bio from the Inkwell Awards website:
Science Fiction (Science fiction fantasy blog): The Northworld Trilogy, by David Drake. This trilogy was first published as three individual novels: Northworld (published 1990), Northworld Vengeance (1991) and Northworld Justice (1992), although I have all three in one paperback omnibus, published by Baen in 1999. The first novel (but not the others) has the distinction of its own Wikipedia page, so if you want a thorough plot summary – complete with spoilers – you can look it up. The principal character of the story is Nils Hansen, a classic SF hero; an intelligent and highly capable leader of a special police unit on the planet Annunciation, and exceptionally skilled in close combat.
RPG (Dr Bargle blogspot): I’ve been running the sample adventure in Blood Sundown for the past few nights for players who are relatively new to RPGs and it has worked a treat. Everywhen’s simple mechanics with little bookkeeping or arithmetic make it ideal for new or casual players, and the range of pregenerated characters included mean you can be up and running almost straight away. The sample adventure could probably be played in an evening if players most fast, but it’ll have taken us three sessions of 2(ish) hours.
Cartoons (Black Gate): The show’s setup couldn’t be simpler. Sometime in the near future – near enough for there to be no such thing as microwave ovens but future enough for personal hovercraft to be no big deal – Dr. Benton Quest (one of the world’s “top scientists”) roams the globe, troubleshooting various problems for the U.S. and other friendly governments. (We’re never told what Dr. Quest is a doctor of, and it’s impossible to pin down his specialty. Is it nuclear physics? Chemistry? Geology? Botany? Oceanography? Molecular biology? Who knows? He shows a deep knowledge of all of these fields and more, like that guy they had to retire from Jeopardy.)
Horror (Jayro Thermal): 8 stories from Year’s Best Horror Stories 1980 The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VIII, Edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1980, DAW) Volume VIII was the first edited by Karl Edward Wagner. In 1980 the boom was underway. When I first landed a copy of this paperback, I read the stories by Dennis Etchison, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Alan Ryan, and Charles L. Grant, but I left money on the table when I got distracted and picked up another book instead.
Publishing (Kairos): Imagine that you’re an artist of some sort desiring to make a living through your art. In the case of novelists, this used to mean seeking approval from an agent and then an editor before landing a book deal with one of the big New York publishers. That publishing model is on the way out, thanks to decades of literary malpractice on the big publishers’ part brought to a head by the Kindle revolution and finished off by Corona-chan. We can expect another round of mergers and mid list contract cancellations. When the dust settles, old pub will be reduced to pimping a handful of name authors at Costco.
Sensor Sweep: Year’s Best Horror, Blood Sundown, Al Williamson, Northworld published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/
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BLOG TOUR - Killer Tied
Welcome to
THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!
DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Great Escapes Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.
Killer Tied (Eve Appel Mystery)
by Lesley A. Diehl
About the Book
Killer Tied (Eve Appel Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
6th in Series
Camel Press (March 15, 2018)
Paperback: 264 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1603813198
Digital ASIN: B0789824WQ
Eve Appel Egret is adjusting to married life with Sammy and their three adopted sons in Sabal Bay, Florida. While still running her consignment stores, she is going pro with her sleuthing by becoming an apprentice to a private detective.
Until her marriage, Eve’s only “family” was her grandmother Grandy, who raised her after her parents died in a boating accident. Now, in addition to her husband and sons, she has a father-in-law who clearly dislikes her. Sammy’s father, a full-blooded Miccosukee Indian long presumed dead, has emerged from the swamps where he’s been living like a hermit, and he isn’t happy about Eve’s marriage to his half-Miccosukee, half-white son.
As for Eve’s family, are her parents really dead? A woman named Eleanor claims to be Eve’s half-sister, born after her mother faked a boating accident to escape her abusive husband, Eve’s father. Then Eleanor’s father turns up dead in the swamps, stabbed by a Bowie knife belonging to Sammy’s father, Lionel. Strange as Lionel Egret is, Eve knows he had no motive to kill this stranger. In order to clear him, Eve must investigate Eleanor’s claims, and she might not like what digging around in her family’s past uncovers.
About the Author
INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
What initially got you interested in writing?
I’ve always written, stories and essays when I was a teen as well as poetry. I had a piece published in a college literary journal, and I always wrote for academic journals and texts in graduate school and when I taught and did administrative work in college and university. The fiction bug bit when I retired. I’ve always loved mysteries—I read Nancy Drew as a girl—then graduated to Agatha Christie. Having relocated in retirement to the Southwest, I had no idea what to do with my time, so I began dabbling in constructing a mystery, set, as you would guess, on a college campus. It was long, boring and really terrible. I had to learn to write mysteries. I took online classes and went to writing conferences to learn the art of creating tension on the page.
What genres do you write in?
Having no background in law or police work, I write cozy mysteries with snoopy women sleuths. I make them women I admire for their spunk and pair them with gal pals who help them in their snooping. I also make certain there is a hunky guy who finds them both annoying and interesting. A lot of action, murder and some romance.
What drew you to writing these specific genres?
It would be impossible for me to write about a cop or a lawyer with no background in those fields, but nosy women? Well, that’s no stretch!
How did you break into the field?
I was first published by a small regional press, won a prestigious short story contest, and armed with this newly minted confidence, began writing several cozy mysteries that found their way to small and medium publishers.
What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?
I always have my protagonists deal with social, environmental and criminal issues that confront our society. I’ve intertwined issues such as hydraulic fracturing, floods, fires, hurricanes and tornados, human trafficking, and sexual assault as well as murder into my work. Family issues are the most important conflicts that my protagonists face every day. Cozy mysteries are all about living in today’s world—both the good and the bad aspects of our lives.
What do you find most rewarding about writing?
I instill humor into my work, so I try to make myself smile and laugh as I write. I do not consider writing drudgery. I love it and enjoy creating characters that are unusual and situations that are funny. Away from my computer, the best part about writing is the people I meet who have read my novels and enjoyed them. I find that more rewarding than the money I make from selling my books. Heavens knows I am not a best-selling author, so it’s thrilling when someone writes to me or tells me at a book event that she or he is a fan!
What do you find most challenging about writing?
The nitty-gritty of writing, I mean the actual transferring of ideas onto my computer screen is difficult for me because I am the world’s worst typist. I never learned how to type properly. I still look at the keys! I wish here were some way to hook a cable into my brain and transmit the thoughts to the screen.
What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field?
Learn how to construct and write a mystery. That way you will know what the guidelines or rules are, and you will understand what you are doing when you decide to break them. Go to writers’ conferences and hang with others who are writing and learn from the workshops offered at these meetings. Join writers’ organizations such as Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and local groups. Don’t act like the Lone Ranger and think you can easily break into publishing by ignoring advice from experts who can help you accomplish that.
What type of books do you enjoy reading?
Mysteries, of course. My favorite authors are Robert Parker, Agatha Christie, Kerry Greenwood, to name a few. I find mysteries a good intellectual workout to keep my brain in shape. I couldn’t write them without having read many.
Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?
I love to go to yard sales, consignment shops, and thrift stores. My protagonist in the Eve Appel mysteries is a consignment shop owner. Because of my passion for the used, Eve is the genuine article, a woman impassioned about secondhand designer fashions. I research the field almost weekly as I dash off to yard sales on Saturdays and explore consignment shops whenever I run across one. Finding bargains at yard sales is a lot like solving a mystery. So satisfying.
What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?
The very best way is to go to www.lesleyadiehl.com and click on the link to my blog or publications. I publish the blog every Sunday with giveaways, contests, guest authors and my own take on the writing life.
Lesley is a country gal through and through, from her childhood on a dairy farm in Illinois to college in a cornfield in Iowa, Lesley creates sassy, snoopy protagonists who embrace chasing killers in country settings. Lesley writes several series: the Big Lake Murder mysteries and the Eve Appel mysteries both set in rural Florida; the Laura Murphy mysteries located on a lake in upstate New York; and short stories, some featuring a few of Lesley’s unique relatives from back on the farm (Aunt Nozzie and the Grandmothers). She is inspired by an odd set of literary muses: a ghost named Fred and a coyote as yet unnamed. Killer Tied is the sixth mystery in the Eve Appel Mysteries. To read more about Lesley’s unusual and humorous cozy mysteries, go to www.lesleyadiehl.com.
Author Links
Visit her on her website: www.lesleyadiehl.com
Blog: www.lesleyadiehl.com/blog
Twitter: @lesleydiehl
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesley.diehl.1
Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lesley-A-Diehl/522270901254754?fref=ts
Purchase Link
Amazon
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
March 15 – Books Direct – GUEST POST, GIVEAWAY
March 15 – Laura’s Interests – SPOTLIGHT
March 16 – Teresa Trent Author Blog – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
March 17 – StoreyBook Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
March 17 – Mysteries with Character – CHARACTER GUEST POST
March 18 – Island Confidential – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
March 19 – The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
March 20 – Community Bookstop – REVIEW
March 21 – My Reading Journeys – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
March 22 – Brooke Blogs – SPOTLIGHT
March 23 – Cassidy’s Bookshelves – REVIEW
March 24 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – GUEST POST
March 25 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, & Sissy, Too! – SPOTLIGHT
March 26 – Back Porchervations – REVIEW
March 27 – Babs Book Bistro – SPOTLIGHT
March 28 – Ms. Cat’s Honest World – REVIEW, GIVEAWAY
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BLOG TOUR – Killer Tied was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir
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