COVER REVEAL 😃 (publication is soon) 𝙒𝙚𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝘾𝙞𝙩𝙮! 𝘿𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩!

One of my favourite parts of London is Hampstead. Here's a short little piece (a time capsule, now) by John Mortimer about his home town.

My story, MURDER IN F-SHARP, appears in this issue. On sale now. "𝑀𝑦 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑠 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑡𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦. 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑀𝑟. 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑏𝑦. 𝐻𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑛 𝑎 𝑚𝑢𝑑𝑑𝑦 𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝐶𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑘..."

Everyone is worried about AI. I’m more concerned with what the other vowels are up to.

Pro tip: Don't put animals in a zoo, then you won't have to feed them pets to simulate "the wild."

Elementar, mein lieber Watson.

The revolution will not be televised. But there will be merch.

Interesting.

It's starting to get exciting. 😀 My first Mean City novel, THE BRIDE MUST BE STOPPED! is only a couple of months away...

We had a wonderful time at Whangaparāoa Library for Saturday's Mystery at the Library event ("Crime by the Coastline"). A criminally great discussion on the craft of crime fiction writing.

If you're in Auckland next weekend, drop by the library in Whangaparaoa for a fun afternoon of mystery writers talking about the craft of mystery writing. See you there!

Cool news no. 2 this week! Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology has received an Anthony Award nomination for Best Anthology! (My story ROOM OF ICE is in this book.)

Cool news! Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology received the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology! My story ROOM OF ICE is in this book.

I know it's perfectly fine, but when writing in NZ English, I am so wanting to change that verb to "centimetred."

Saturday afternoon at the Whangaparāoa library with one of New Zealand's finest writers, Graham Reid. Wonderful.

Saturday. Writing. I see it's taken two months to write 11k. WIP is currently 62k and change. Onward. The plot is thickening. #writing #amwriting #booksky #WritingCommunity #WritingLife

Grrr. LibGen has stolen (scraped, pirated) several of my published short stories to develop their dataset. Meta (Zuckerberg) doesn't give a damn about copyright. Apparently, Meta considered paying authors, but then decided, fuck it, let's just steal it.

Noir. Palms.

I would actually start watching Bond movies again if this were a thing. (Yeah, it's from The Onion.)

Dorset, England, 1938.

Me, today.

A mystery writer, who is, himself, a mystery.

He should have named it "Gulf of the Americas" to be more accurate and inclusive, but then, inclusivity isn't his thing. It's been known as the Gulf of Mexico for 400 years, and 400 years from now, it will still be the Gulf of Mexico.

Reasonably accurate.

I just learned that the MURDER, NEAT anthology (published last year) has been short-listed for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. (My story ROOM OF ICE is in this book.) Nice news on a Sunday morning. 😃

Just updated my copy of Final Draft. I was on version 8. Latest is 13. Yeah, it's been a while since I worked on a screenplay.

The Devils (1971) - Ken Russell. Based on the book The Devils of Loundun by Aldous Huxley. I've seen it only once (in a cinema in the early 1980s). Unforgettable. One of those films that burns itself into your memory.

Sometimes a pipe is not a pipe. But a Nazi salute will always be a Nazi salute.

BLOOD SIMPLE. I saw this movie late night in a theater 40 years ago (yeah, it's now 40-years old). I had no idea what it was about. I went on a whim. It's still one of my favorite movies.

What lies beneath (my desk). A solid foundation of literature.

RIP David Lynch. The architect of many of my inspirations.

Et tu, Zuckerberg?

51k completed. Starting today on the final 30k (ish) to take me to the end of the book. I like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Writing a book is like dragging a pyramid across town in heavy traffic. #writing #amwriting #booksky #WritingCommunity #WritingLife

Friday night. Music night. Working on an arrangement of a song I wrote 37 years ago. #musicsky #musician #rockmusic #music #songarranging

Well, that's 2024 on the bus and heading out of town.

I'm embarking on an awfully curious reading adventure: GET EDALJI. And this is a delight of a book to hold (see the photos). All books should come with such lavish presentation (supplements, hard-bound encasement).

Alan Rickman says, "It's a Christmas movie!"

"Two memorable things happened on Tuesday morning. Myles West began his first day at school, and the body of the music master was discovered at the foot of the main staircase with his neck broken." THE THIEVES OF ST. IVES, by Stephen Ross Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Nov/Dec 2024

The Cinema of Cool. The French Connection (1971)

The pyramids swayed.

The Art of Noir. Double Indemnity (1944).

Doing the happy dance! Finally made it to the middle of the book (second draft of the WIP). Wine, me thinks. Start second half after lunch. #writing #amwriting #booksky #WritingCommunity #WritingLife

A sunny Saturday outside, a typewriter inside waiting for my input. #writing #amwriting #booksky #WritingCommunity #WritingLife

Another day, another chat with a fellow author, who is actually a robot that wants to sell me some marketing services.

What if doctors' eye charts are actually communications from extraterrestrials, and by reading them outloud with one eye closed, we are tacitly agreeing to their harvesting of our organs? #whatif