Sisters in Crime Read & Sign at Malvern Books on October 30

Austin Mystery Writers

Please join us

Members of Sisters in Crime ~
Heart of Texas Chapter 

will read and sign at

Malvern Books 

619 W. 29th Street
Austin, Texas
info@malvernbooks.com

Sunday, October 30, 2016
1:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Among those reading will be 

Alexandra Burt
Noreen Cedeno
Valerie Chandler
Helen Currie Foster
K.P. Gresham
Eugenia Parish
Kathy Waller
Manning Wolfe

Some of the books written by our HOTXSINC authors include
MURDER ON WHEELS, winner of the 2016 Silver Falchion Award
for best short story anthology at Killer Nashville
Noreen Cedeno’s FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN, finalist for
the East Texas Writers Guild Book Award in the Mystery/Thriller category 
Manning Wolfe’s DOLLAR SIGNS 
Helen Currie Foster’s GHOST LETTER
Eugenia Parrish’s A COLD BLUE KILLING 
K.P. Gresham’s HARDSCRABBLE HOMECOMING

The mission of Sisters in Crime is to promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers to achieve equality in the industry.

Heart…

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Kaye George Talks About Cooked To Death: Tales of Crime and Cookery

Austin Mystery Writers

You never know what former AMW member Kaye George is up to! She’s very busy and always working on many projects so I thought I’d ask.

VPC- Hey, Kaye George! What have you been up to lately? What’s your latest project? I heard you were in an anthology. Can you tell us a little about it?

KG- It’s Cooked To Death: Tales of Crime and Cookery. It’s an anthology of mostly Minnesota writers. Each writer contributed a crime story and a recipe, and the food was supposed to play a part in the story. I was invited to submit because I know one of the instigators and thought it was a fun project. The editors are Rhonda Gilliland and Michael Mallory. He’s the one I know. An idea I hadn’t used yet would  work for this, I was pretty sure, so I went for it.

VPC- Can you give us a little…

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WATCH OUT FOR THE NET

Austin Mystery Writers

By Gale Albright

Ever since I assumed the presidency of Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas chapter in January of 2016, I’ve been trying not to get tangled up in the net. The “net” as in “networking.”

I love all the things I’m involved in, but it behooves me to get my head out of the clouds and be careful where my feet are stepping. I don’t want to get so tangled up that I trip and fall.

I get excited, I get ambitious, I get enthusiastic, and I tend to say “yes” to any and all new projects that come my way. I find out about these projects via networking.

A net can be a safety net and it can also be a net that traps you.

Without networking, without contacts with others who have similar interests, without commitment to projects, nothing would happen. But you have to do…

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Five Reasons To Write Historical Mysteries

Austin Mystery Writers

Today we welcome a guest blogger, mystery writer Jeri Westerson! She writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels. Her protagonist is a disgraced knight turned detective, plying his PI trade on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. 

Her books have been shortlisted for a slew of mystery awards, including the Macavity, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Agatha, and the Shamus, the first medieval mystery to be nominated for this prestigious PI award. The Boston Globe calls her detective “A medieval Sam Spade, a tough guy who operates according to his own moral compass.”

Jeri also has short stories in several anthologies and talks around the country about the Middle Ages, demonstrating her cache of medieval weaponry.

Jeri is a member of the southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Private Eye Writers of America and the Historical Novel Society. Jeri is married to…

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AMW Author Highlight- Gale Albright

Austin Mystery Writers

It’s time for another installment of Who Are The Members of Austin Mystery Writers? 😉  So today I’ll interview fellow member Gale Albright. Let’s learn a little more about her.

V.P. – So tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up? Has this influenced your writing?

GA-I was born in Tyler, Texas, in the East Texas piney woods. A lot of generations of my family are from there. I know it has affected my writing because I always have to write about Texas. I had many conversations with older people in my family when I was a little kid, so I heard a lot of stories about hard times picking cotton, taking a lunch to school in a lard bucket and going barefoot until it was time to start school in the fall. I am fascinated with the Great Depression and the WW II years, all from an East…

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Farewell Too Soon

Visions and Revisions

Canterbury Cathedral, panel from window, detail St Thomas a Becket (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cinda Cyrus left us way too soon.

And I didn’t  help by fumbling the date of her departure. For some reason, December 17 was solidly burned into my brain as the day she passed on. But, according to her obituary (below), she died on December 19.

So forgive me, Cinda and friends, for my error. Cinda would no doubt say it was sloppy journalism and fact reporting and would probably shake her finger at me. Then she would laugh and say I cheated her out of a couple of days and I owed her some blueberry pancakes.

So, I’m sending a thought of  blueberry griddle cakes from Maxine’s in Bastrop, where we often went for Sunday morning breakfast.

Cinda had a number of causes she cared about. They are listed in the bottom portion of the obituary.

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Publishing Beyond Borders

November 2015

HOTSHOTS! Sisters in Crime Heart of Texas monthly newsletter

Scott Montgomery poses with Reavis Wortham at Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas Chapter’s all-day crime fiction workshop co-produced with BookPeople.

Scott Montgomery Presents Nov. 8

BookPeople crime fiction coordinator Scott Montgomery will present a mystery panel program called “Authors you don’t know and should,” Sunday, November 8, at 2:15 p.m. at the Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas meeting at the Yarborough Public Library at 2200 Hancock Drive in Austin. Special guests include Hopeton Hay of KAZI FM 88.7, writers Minerva  Koenig and Jesse Sublett, and possible surprise visitors. Prepare to have fun and ask questions.

Alexandra Burt Talks Thrillers Dec. 13

Sisters in Crime member Alexandra Burt, author of the thriller Remember Mia (also published as Little Girl Gone), will be guest speaker at 2:15 p.m., Heart of Texas: Sisters in Crime meeting, Sunday, Dec. 13, at the Yarborough Public Library. She will talk about writing, including her experiences in preparing the…

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Mystery Writers Discuss Short Stories in Murder on Wheels

Diverse Voices Book Review with Hopeton Hay

Austin Mystery Writers members Gale Albright, Kaye George, and Scott Montgomery discuss their short stories featured in the new book MURDER ON WHEELS: 11 Tales Of Crime On The Move, on the Sunday, October 25 edition of KAZI Book Review on KAZI 88.7 FM. Listen live online through tunein.com, live365.com, or through their respective apps.

Book Description

The eleven stories in Murder on Wheels put the pedal to the floor and never let up! Whether by bus, car, tractor, or bike, you’ll be carried along at a breakneck pace by the talented Austin Mystery Writers. These eight authors transport you from an eighteenth-century sailing ship to the open roads of modern Texas, from Alice’s Wonderland to a schoolbus yard in the suburbs of Dallas. Grab your book, hold on to your hat, and come along for the ride!
Included are:

A NICE SET OF WHEELS, by Kathy Waller
FAMILY BUSINESS, by…

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Turn Off Your Internal Editor and Do The NaNo

Austin Mystery Writers

 By Gale Albright

On November 1, 2015, the NaNo will begin.

Sharpen your pencils (really?), sharpen your quills, get out your parchment paper, turn on your computers, laptops, notebooks (both electronic and paper)—and do the NaNo.

No, it is not like the TanGo.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was started in 1999 by Chris Baty, who thought of a novel (get it?) idea that people could write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. The NaNo took off and is now a world-wide phenomenon. Chris also wrote No Plot? No Problem in 2004, which is a well-thumbed holy book for NaNoers across the globe. Every November, people who live in Kansas and Saskatoon and New Zealand and Austin listen for the imaginary pistol shot that signals the start of the race to complete 50,000 words of writing in 30 days.

It doesn’t matter what the words are. They don’t have…

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