From today until Sunday it's Crimefest, the UK's premier crime book festival. Crimefest takes place every year in Bristol, but for one reason or another I haven't been since before covid, so I'm greatly looking forward to it. However, the railway unions chose Wednesday for a strike forcing us to travel by coach. The coach arrived "unroadworthy" and we were delayed nearly four hours as we waited for a replacement. But here we are. I had planned a post about Henry Moore's home and estate that we visited on Sunday, but that will have to wait for another occasion. No doubt Caro and Jeff will repo ..read more

Ovidia--every other Tuesday I'm handing the mic over to a friend today--Grace Koshida of Ottawa, Canada, who will be Fan Guest of Honor at Left Coast Crime 2025. Grace is an eclectic reader of all crime genres (with a soft spot for P.I., police procedurals and culinary cozies). She's also a Netgalley reviewer with over 600 reviews to her name. April 24: Grace with Cathy Ace (author of the Cait Morgan and Wise Enquiries Agency mysteries) in a bar at the International terminal, YVR airport. Cathy was headed to Wales before attending Crimefest (as Master of Toasts) and Grace to Singapore... henc ..read more

 Annamaria on Monday The second in my Africa series relaunched on May 1 in a beautiful new edition.  In celebration of that, herewith, a past post outlining the background history of that story.  It explains wh they British were still dealing with the slave trade a few decades after they had, at great cost, abolished it. Stan Trollip, who figures in this little essay, is the Stanley of Michael Stanley - partner of Michael Sears in authoring the marvelous Kubu series. Yes, slavery was still an issue in British East Africa in 1912.  Vis:  My British East Africa ..read more

Miki Hayden has a variety of novels ranging in setting and genre. She is also a prolific writer of short stories, one of which won the coveted Edgar Award. She is active in MWA, and teaches writing at Writer’s Digest’s Writers Online Workshops. She has worked in business journalism, and has studied a variety of martial arts. No doubt all of this is grist to the writing mill. On the other hand, although she cares about setting, she's willing to discover it from afar - especially if it's in the past. Or the future! It's a different approach to that of many writers who want to steep th ..read more

  Well, well well, it's festival time again with a mixture of panel appearances, moderating and interviewing and all the excitement and uncertainty that can bring. It never fails to amaze me the spectrum of good and bad panellists… well more the excellent and the completely awful. You can tell, right from the get-go, the people who are well prepared and comfortable doing the job of moderation. (they tend to have notes for one thing)  And by completely awful (I'm talking as a moderator who once forgot to introduce the 4th member of the panel! I had turned over 2 pages in my notebo ..read more

Wendall -- every other Thursday James and I headed to the California desert last week to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, revisiting one of our favorite places, the Integratron.   Me on our first trip to the Integratron in 2011. You have to love a place with a sign like this. Although we’ve spent several anniversaries in Palm Springs over the years, this time we headed to the other side of the 10 Freeway to Joshua Tree, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, to stay at the historic Joshua Tree Inn.    Biggest pool in Joshua Tree. . . One vie ..read more

Kwei--Wednesday Algot and me at Christmas 2023 (hence the “jingle bells") Losing a beloved animal is never easy. It's like losing a part of your soul that only they could touch. This is a tribute to Algot, my dear equine friend, whose sudden departure has left a void in my life. I’ve been very quiet over the last two weeks since his death, but I’m slowly returning to normal. This is Algot's “Where’s my treat?” look The Bond We Shared Transported from Sweden to the US when he was a colt, Algot was a Swedish Warmblood, known for their willingness to learn and their smooth ..read more

 Annamaria on Monday To make my time-machine stories work, I have to get myself to the point were I feel l]as if I am there with my characters in their historical lives.  Fortunately, when it comes to East Africa at the beginning of the 20th Century, I have found lots of tickets to get me there.   Sometimes, they just show up in my life - like magical gifts.  For instance, the metal placard pictured above.  It's a 7x9 inch reproduction of a travel poster from around 1910.  Since I acquired it, it has sat on the bookshelf about my computer.  I boug ..read more

Native New Yorker Ann Aptaker’s Cantor Gold novels have won the Lambda Literary and multiple Goldie awards. Her short stories have appeared in the Fedora II and III anthologies, the Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir anthology Volumes 1, 3, and 4, Switchblade Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars, the upcoming Private Dicks & Disco Balls anthology, and the online zine Punk Soul Poet. Her novella, A Taco, A T-Bird, A Beretta and One Furious Night, is featured in season two of the Guns & Tacos crime fiction series.  Her latest novel, A Cri ..read more

  Jeff—Saturday Perhaps my favorite place on all of Mykonos for watching sunset is by a waning crescent moon beach that was once the island’s most famous beach, Megali Ammos–before new roads made dozens of other beaches readily accessible and development played its inevitable role.  Yet, for me, there’s still no more beautiful a spot for sunset than there.  The sea shimmers in combinations of gun-metal blue, silver, and gold against a backdrop of vermilion skies and shadowy forms of distant islands.  But for a lone white church with a blood red roof on the tiny island ..read more