The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe’s The Wolfe Pack

Do you have “the author” in you?

Last month, I received an e-mail from The Wolfe Pack with the following message, and thought I would pass it on to you all. (And, yes, the Awards Chair is Jane K. Cleland, author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery Series!)
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May 31 is the
Submission Deadline
for the 2013
Black Orchid Novella Award

[Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested.]

Call for novellas! Please submit your novella for the seventh annual Black Orchid Novella Award (BONA). We are looking for original works of fiction in the tradition of the ratiocinative detective, as exemplified by Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. Your entry must:

  • Emphasize the deductive skills of the sleuth
  • Contain no overt sex or violence
  • Not include characters from the original series

First prize: $1,000 plus publication in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length, and must be postmarked by May 31, 2013. The winner will be announced at The Wolfe Pack’s Annual Black Orchid Banquet in New York City, December 7, 2013.*

Please visit www.nerowolfe.org for official rules and procedures to submit your novella. For questions, contact the Awards Chair, Jane K. Cleland, jane@janecleland.net.

* If no acceptable candidates are received, AHMM and The Wolfe Pack reserve the right to declare no winner in any given year.
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So, if you think you have an author hiding deep inside of yourself, then stop reading this entry, and go grab yourself a pen and paper >>> Somehow grabbing a computer keyboard  doesn’t sound as “author-y” to me.

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day to all of you! I hope you are enjoying your extended weekend as much as we did.

I remember years ago, when I lived in Colorado, Labor Day was always the day I used as my gauge that summer was over. My mother’s cousin would always have a big family reunion in Canyon City over the Memorial Day weekend, which, for me marked the beginning of summer. These two holidays, Memorial Day and Labor Day, book-ended the summers for me.

Our family reunions became a thing of the past when my mother’s cousin passed away. And, of course, as with a lot of things that are no longer available, I miss those reunions. I never really appreciated them as much as I should have. When my children were little, it really seemed like a big hassle to attend the reunion – knowing that we were going to have to keep our little ones occupied, worrying about nap time vs. cranky time, bring baby food, etc. Looking back, what was I thinking?!? Enjoy the moment!

Getting back to my initial greeting: Happy Labor Day! I hope you all are having a restful, fun-in-the-sun type of day!

Three Cozy Mystery Authors, and No More…

I got a letter this week from Alfred suggesting a topic that sounds really interesting for a lot of us Cozy Mystery readers. Thank you, Alfred, for this great entry idea!

“The reason I am writing is that I had a column idea for you and thought it might be a good one to do. What if you asked the readers if they could only choose 3 or 4 authors to read, who would they choose and why? I gave this some thought and my three would be Laura Childs’ Tea Shop Mysteries and Emily Brightwell, of course I really like her. For my third one I would have to say Lorna Barrett’s Bookshop series. But what really takes center place on my bookshelf is my entire run of Tales of Grace Chapel Inn – this is an excellent series and you can’t wait to read each book to see what happens next.”

I’m going to start by telling you who my three Cozy Mystery authors would be:

Agatha Christie – She’s simply one of the best story tellers, her sleuths are great characters, she writes classic stories/plots with phenomenal settings, the mysteries are difficult to guess – yet make sense in the end because they are character-driven mysteries.

Ngaio Marsh – Her mysteries are really good classic stories that make sense, yet they are complicated. They (again) are character-driven. The characters are three dimensional, not caricatures. Marsh is a another truly good story teller. The sleuth and his team are a comfort to read about, there are no wild changes in the characters’ personalities. Her stories usually open with very long exposition of the crime setting and the characters, but the pay-off is well worth the wait – once the sleuth and his team arrive, the unfolding investigation of the crime makes interesting reading.

As for my third Cozy Mystery author, I’ll have to continue to think about this. There are so many other authors who I enjoy reading. I cannot imagine having to limit myself to only one out of all my favorite authors.

So, if you only had three Cozy Mystery authors who you could read, who would they be AND why?

(Here are all of your answers in list form: Three Cozy Mystery Authors, and No More – Part 2

August Is Here, and It’s Bittersweet for Me!

Wow! It’s August already!

At the beginning of the summer I wrote about our daughter coming home for the summer to study for the Bar. She took the three-day exam at the end of July, and then immediately started the process of moving. It’s been a big summer for her!

We have spent the last week moving her to her first “official” job, – although as some of you know through this blog, she interned every summer during both her college and law school years. Our house has looked like a storage place since she came home to study. We had all of her bins from school out in our living room, with new bins upstairs that she used to pack her “childhood” things into. We had her rowing machine in our family room, and our dining room table housed her breakable things, in short, we have been in a sort of transition stage.

I woke up two days ago with this epiphany: This is it! She is moving on with her life, and from now on, she will simply be “visiting” us… a wonderful accomplishment for her, but not so great for me as her mother! Her bedroom here now houses only has personal mementos: high school newspapers from her years as a reporter and editor, U.I.L. awards, fiction she wrote, history and science papers and projects, all things that probably mean more to me than they do to her. (She’s still young, with the passing of time she may just find that those things do indeed matter to her!)

Her life is going just as she planned. She will be working in a job she truly wants, she’ll be able to see her college roommate who will still be in Austin for another half year, and she will be living close enough to our home that she can visit when she wants, but far away so that we can’t just drop in when we want. (She hasn’t said the last part of that sentence, but I’m not so old that I can’t remember what it was like to be her age!)

So, with her moving out – and on with her life – it will be a time for the rest of us to adjust to our new family structure. My husband and I will slowly convert into the role my parents held all the years since I graduated from college and moved on with my life. It’s a cycle that is inevitable, one which I would much prefer reversing, but unfortunately, in all things related to time, cannot.

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