I'm not really a comics fan, but a reader sent this in and I found it interesting. Zuda Comics (a division of DC Comics) is holding a competition to select a new comic writer, and one of the entrants (Shawn Aldridge) has created a pulp detective/science fiction mash-up called Vic Boone.
Check it out -- the kid's got talent.
A friend of mine is a finalist in Amazon's contest to write a Harry Potter ballad. It's down to two finalists and hers is the better one, I think.
So go vote for Laura H.
If she wins, she's going to steal the super-limited edition The Tales of Beedle the Bard book that Amazon paid a million bucks for. Then we'll all have a chance to look at it.
As reported in The Onion, the current strike by the Novelists Guild of America "has had no impact on the nation at all." The strike, which has "brought an immediate halt to all new novels, novellas, and novelettes from coast to coast" has reportedly "affect[ed] no one."
The article goes on to note:
A report published last week by the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication found that the strike has thus far had an economic impact of approximately 0.00 to 0.01 percent. In addition, consumer habits remain unaffected, with 0 percent of those polled saying their reading habits had changed "significantly," 0 percent saying they had changed "somewhat," and an additional 0 saying they had changed "slightly." A significant number of respondents reported no reading habits.
Tough times, my friends...I have been on strike since June of 2006, but so far the impact has sadly been minimal.
Here's a question for you shyster types out there:
If workmen make a GODAWFUL UNENDING POUNDING noise outside your house for two days running, can you legally bludgeon them with a baseball bat?
I'm just wondering...
(This might be the plot for my next story...which quite possibly will be written from prison.)
Frank Wilson, the books editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, is leaving the newspaper. (I just saw the news on Sarah's site.)
I wrote for Frank for the past few years and it was always a great experience. He was one of the good people in a tough business, and someone who truly loved books -- all kinds of books. Under Frank's guidance, the Inquirer covered literary fiction and non-fiction and true crime and science fiction and poetry and lots of crime fiction -- anything a reader could want.
This is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't signal a decrease in books coverage by the Inquirer. I hope that I'm wrong.
David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire and a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, had an excellent article in Sunday's Washington Post about the decline of the newspaper business.
It's strange to imagine a world in which the daily newspaper is an anachronism, but we're fast heading in that direction.
First Book's mission is to give disadvantaged children the opportunity to read and own their first new books. They were named a Gold Star Charity by Forbes Magazine and received a Four Star rating (the highest) from Charity Navigator.
This is just plain wrong.
(Courtesy of Paul Levine and the Naked Authors.)
There was no Book of the Week (or anything else) last week because my daughter was sick. (She's fine now.) But I'll be posting something this week.
Assuming you were waiting with bated breath...
If you feel like putting off work a little longer, you might pay a visit to crimespace, a new interactive community for readers and writers of crime fiction.
A lot of fine folks are participating, and there are always some interesting discussions going on.
I've just learned (through The Rap Sheet) that my friend and colleague Dick Adler is ill. I don't have any more details than that, but I did receive an email message from Dick last night and although it was brief, it didn't sound like he was doing very well.
Hopefully this will only prove to be some minor malady and Dick will soon resume his critic's duties. He has been one of the finest champions of crime fiction over the past few decades and an invaluable contributor to the scholarship of our genre.
Dick and I are "rival" critics in the same way that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were. Dick writes for the Chicago Tribune and I write for the Chicago Sun-Times. Of course, neither of us live anywhere near Chicago, we never appear on TV, and almost nobody knows who I am. So it's not much of a rivalry.
Dick, you're in my thoughts and prayers and I wish you all the best.
M.J. Rose has started a linking campaign in honor of Barbara Seranella, who passed away recently from liver failure, and the Crime Fiction Dossier backs her all the way.
Please consider signing up to be an organ donor. There is no better way to give meaning to the end of one's own life than to give a new start to another's.
Peace and happiness to everyone.
From David, Maili & Amanda Montgomery
Happy Thanksgiving!
David, Maili and Amanda Montgomery
Like most writers, I have a day job. I write event listings for Goldstar Events, an online ticket seller. (The hook with Goldstar is that the tickets are only half-price.)
I've been doing it for the past four years -- used to be full-time, but I went down to part-time to finish my novel and then to take care of the baby. Day jobs suck, but as such things go, this is a pretty good one.
The company recently expanded into New York and Boston and today we got a nice write-up in the New York Times. This doesn't have anything to do with books, but I thought it was cool, so I wanted to share it with you.
The other day, I woke up to an inbox full of hate mail about an article I'd written. No, not because I chose a list of writers that didn't include a woman. This was serious business: an article in the Washington Post about the recent controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's comments on Michael J. Fox and the political ads he filmed.
The article was a straight piece of journalism, not commentary, but it still enraged a handful of readers enough to write to me and complain. Interestingly, the outraged letters were split between those who were fans of Limbaugh, and those who think he's an idiot. That suggests to me that it was in reality a fair and even-handed piece.
Of course, I wasn't the person who actually wrote the article. Believe it or not, there is more than one person in the world named David Montgomery. The David Montgomery in question is a staff reporter for the Washington Post, while I am a book reviewer who spends most of his time changing diapers.
There is also a David Montgomery who is a very distinguished professor of labor history at Yale, and a David Montgomery who is a pianist and conductor. (I used to get the latter's phone calls all the time when we were both at UCSB.) There's even a David Montgomery who snagged my domain name, even though he uses it to no good purpose.
So remember: even though Google is your friend, you still need to put on your thinking cap before sending hate mail. Either that, or next time I'll pull a Goldberg and post the emails on here.
Until further notice, and probably permanently, my old email address (editor@mysteryinkonline.com) is no longer valid.
Please send all emails to: davidjmontgomery@yahoo.com
And, just for the record, GoDaddy.com is an inexpensive place to register domains, but, man, does their customer and technical service suck. You get what you pay for, right? Well, it's certainly true in this case.
Something is wrong with my editor@mysteryinkonline.com email address. So if you've written me in the past few days, I probably didn't get it. Please send all messages to davidjmontgomery@yahoo.com. That one is still working.
If you entered the contest, please resend your entry to davidjmontgomery@yahoo.com. Don't worry about duplicating, assuming the original message eventually arrives. I'll take care of it.
But isn't she adorable?
Our little girl, Amanda, was born today at 4pm. Why she wasn't born yesterday is a story to be told around the bar after a few gin & tonics. But she and Mommy are doing quite well, and I'm very proud of them both.
Amanda is currently re-reading Larry Block's Matt Scudder series. She says that it's her favorite detective series of all-time. But she really isn't that widely read, so I'm not sure how much faith you want to put in her opinion.
The Crime Fiction Dossier is having a baby!
Okay, actually my beautiful wife Maili is having a baby... but close enough, right?
My wife and I are headed to the hospital this evening. Her doctor will be inducing labor tomorrow morning. So, God willing, by this time tomorrow, we'll be the parents of a beautiful baby girl!
Your thoughts and prayers for the three of us are very welcome.
I redid my personal website: www.DavidJMontgomery.com. Nothing fancy, but I think it looks better.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have any trouble viewing things.
It turns out that Yahoo has being doing a particularly vigilant job lately of filtering out some of my legitimate emails, mistaking them for spam. So if you've emailed me lately, but not received a response, you might want to send your message again.
David J. Montgomery writes about authors and books for several of the country's largest newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe.
In the past, he has contributed to such publications as USA Today, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Kansas City Star, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and National Review Online.
He lives in the Washington, DC suburbs with his wife and daughter.
