Blog: Things I'd Rather Be Doing

The crime fiction fairy tale contest is closed to entries, and I now have 16 great stories to read to determine the winners. There was a flurry of entries as the final hours ticked away, so now, after having kept up pretty well, I have quite a bit of reading ...

I came across a copy of Bob Dylan's Saved at the local public library a couple of weeks ago, and it was the catalyst that led me to a reassessment of Dylan's trio of so-called Christian albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love. Thirty years after the fact, these ...

There is one week to go on my fairy tale crime fiction challenge, and the response thus far has been fantastic. Already, three writers have submitted top-notch stories, and I have heard from more than a dozen more that plan to submit something. To refresh the memory, here's the original pitch: Write ...

I wouldn't consider myself a huge Rolling Stones fan, but when the opportunity to read a memoir by guitarist Keith Richards presented itself, my interest was sufficient to make it a must read. Now, I must qualify the above. I probably own 10 Stones albums, which is more than I can ...

It was too difficult to narrow things to a top 10 in this, my first attempt at a best books of the year list. So, I offer instead a dozen, 12 books that were a cut above in 2010 (in alphabetical order): Room – Emma Donoghue A Visit from the Goon Squad ...

It was too difficult to narrow things to a top 10 in this, my first attempt at a best books of the year list. So, I offer instead a dozen, 12 books that were a cut above in 2010 (in alphabetical order): Room – Emma Donoghue A Visit from the Goon Squad ...

So, while looking for something else in a box in the basement recently, I came across an odd artifact: A dot-matrix printout of "KGGO's Top 95 of 1985." For those who didn't grow in Des Moines, that means it is a list of what were deemed the 95 best songs ...

So, anyone who has read this blog for the past few years has probably figured out that I'm a huge fan of Lawrence Block. In 2009, I figured that this would lead me down a frustrating, costly road where I tussled online against other fanatics to secure the few extant ...

Each year when December rolls around, I kick myself for not doing a better job of keeping notes throughout the year to help with the annual challenge of compiling a list of the best music of the year. Well, this year's kick was half-hearted at best, because I did keep ...

Perhaps it is a symptom of reading a lot from a book of fairy tales to my two-year-old of late, but I have been thinking of ways to update Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, et al as modern day crime fiction stories. It's not a stretch: these stories are filled with ...

Perhaps John Jurgensen is just trying to get a jump on the inevitable 70 birthday-related retrospectives and analysis that will accompany Bob Dylan's next birthday in May. How else to explain his attempted takedown of Dylan in Friday's Wall Street Journal. The piece, "When to Leave the Stage," supposes that ...

More great news out this week from Hard Case Crime for we Lawrence Block fans. As if HCC's efforts to bring out-of-print Block books back to life weren't enough, now Charles Ardai and Co. are working on their first original Block title.Ardai announced that a new Block title, Getting Off, ...

When I logged into eMusic today, I wasn't struck by the absence of Merge, Beggar's Group (which includes Matador) and Domino Records, nor did I notice whether any of the announced 250,000 new songs were anything I cared to hear. What I noticed was that in place of the number ...

I've said it before and likely will again, but now is a great time to be a reader and writer of crime fiction. Seemingly every day a new short story appears somewhere online, and the sheer wealth of stories available means never being at a loss for something to read. Taking ...

While my bank account doesn't always agree, I must say it is a great thing to have someone at the local book store who knows my tastes. You walk in, converse for a moment as you are led around the store, and leave with your wallet lighter and your bookshelves ...

So, I just finished Chris F. Holm's ebook Eight Pounds: . To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I had seen Holm's stories in some of the same places I have published (Thuglit) and those I aspire to (Needle, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), so his name was familiar. For 99 ...

So, I just finished Chris F. Holm's ebook Eight Pounds: . To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I had seen Holm's stories in some of the same places I have published (Thuglit) and those I aspire to (Needle, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), so his name was familiar. For 99 ...

So, I just finished Chris F. Holm's ebook Eight Pounds: . To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I had seen Holm's stories in some of the same places I have published (Thuglit) and those I aspire to (Needle, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), so his name was familiar. For 99 ...

So, last October, I saw a link to a note from writer Robert Swartwood where he solicited submissions for an anthology of what he called "hint fiction:" a story of 25 words or less. I had never heard of Swartwood, had no idea what was to become of the accepted ...

There was a time in the late 1990s when there were few high-profile power pop releases of which I was unaware. I subscribed to all of the magazines (Amplifier!), got the Not Lame mail order catalogs (where everything was Extremely Highly Supremely Recommended!), attended the rare shows that made their ...