Author Archives: Murderati Members

A GOODBYE TOAST

by Alafair Burke 59.

That is the number currently next to my name on the list of Murderati archives. This will be the 60th and final post. I started to connect the end of Murderati to the increasing pressure on all artists to build a platform for themselves in 140-character snippets, but then I bummed myself out. Instead, I read through my 59 previous posts and remembered how lucky I was to have Murderati as a place to share whatever happened to interest me with a community of smart, supportive people who — whoa — like books!

Some of my favorite posts were kind of nutty, like this one about writers and their doppelgangers. https://murderati.com/blog/2010/2/1/literary-look-alikes-who-are-the-doppelgangers.html

I subsequently changed my mind about Michael Koryta, who is now more Aaron Paul than David Duchovny, but the Laura Lippman – Sweet Polly Purebread comparison holds up.

Some of my favorites were about process, like the time I confessed to doing a true rewrite of my eighth novel. https://murderati.com/blog/2011/9/12/rewriting-v-editing.html

I’m starting my tenth now and hope to write it only once. I spent a lot of time talking about my dear, sweet pal, Duffer, who inspired this post about literary animals. https://murderati.com/blog/2010/5/24/are-you-there-dog-its-me-margaret.html

And I was lucky enough to use my space at Murderati to interview some of my favorite people: Lisa Unger, Jonathan Hayes, Denise Hamilton, April Smith. How amazing it that?

Though it’s hard to say goodbye to this wonderful party, we maintain the relationships built here. I’m forever grateful.

Spring Winds

by Pari

It’s spring in New Mexico. For some parts of my large state, that means mercurial shifts in temperature with low 80s one day and upper 40s the next. For the southern part of the state, it’s a breath of beauty before scorching summer sucks what little rain might have fallen back into the air before it ever hits the earth.

However, there’s one thing that spring means for everyone and everything in NM: hellatious winds. We’re talking all the levels of Dante’s hells combined into one. Daily gusts from 60 or 75 mph. Winds that strip fruit trees of their fragile whites and pinks. Blizzards of petals slapping sand-blasted faces and swirling into banks at sidewalk curbs. Highways closed due to zero visibility. Soil transformed into angry clouds of murky brown.

I can’t sleep this time of year. Winds roar at night. It’s not the weird banging of branches against my bedroom walls, it’s the unsettledness of the world that gets to me . . . The lifting up of things better left on the ground, the battering of new plants just trying to set in before the ravages of drought-ridden summers . . . It’s the horrid knowing that someone’s smoldering cigarette butt, carelessly cast out of a car window, will destroy mountainside forests that took centuries to grow.

This year, I’m thinking more about the winds than usual. They usher in a new season, presage change. When I take my long walks after work, the violent movement of air forces me to keep a stronger center so that I don’t get pushed off the sidewalk into the street. There’s powerful symbolism in that for me. So much of my life is changing drastically: A long marriage facing its end, shifts in culture and responsibilities at work, the end of posting on a blog I’ve loved and nurtured for seven years.

And yet I feel much less adrift in the middle of all this flux than I ever have before. With my knees bent and my body lowered against the gusts, I’m building in a certain — new — ability to sway rather than break.

I don’t like when people tell me that with one shut door, others open. But in typical contradictory style, I also do feel the optimism intrinsic in movement, the blessed knowledge that the only constant is, indeed, change. I’m sad with the end of my marriage, of Murderati as we know it, of what I thought I knew about myself on some levels. Yet I look bright-eyed to the future, to possibilities in these most windy of life days.

Questions for today:
1. What is spring like where you live?

2. Have you ever noticed a sense of internal centeredness when you would’ve expected otherwise?

(And yes, I know this is the long goodbye this month, I just had to give everyone a break with a more general post.)

Helping to Pull Each Other’s Bootstraps

By Naomi Hirahara

Eight years ago, when Pari Noskin Taichert assembled a group of mystery writers together for Murderati, Twitter had not yet launched as a public site. Facebook was still mainly for select corporations and college and high school students. I secured my domain name, but only had a single home page on my web site for quite a few years. I barely understood what a group blog (grog?) was, but agreed to participate in Pari’s brainstorm nonetheless.

My debut publishing year, 2004, was an auspicious one. Auspicious in that a faint – very faint – smell of change was in the air. Within a couple of years, my then publisher, Random House, would announce that ebook splits with authors would drop from 50 percent to 25 percent.

Also in my publishing Class of 2004 was JA Konrath, a writer who engenders either fanatical cheers or jeers. Whatever you may think of Konrath, there’s no doubt that he is a change agent or at least an evangelist. An early adopter of the self-publishing digital model, he has left traditional publishing for a very successful DIY career.

So what does this leave the rest of us today? Which path should we follow?

I feel that decision is very individualized. And personal. There have been new terms, like “hybrid author,” that actually describe a very old-school situation. From the times of Dickens (and perhaps dating back to the creation of the Gutenberg Press), the writer has had to be savvy and enterprising. From serials and short stories and novels and nonfiction, we’ve had to experiment and dip our toes in different genres and publishing outlets. No different today.

For me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to build the rest of my writing career on fiction and nonfiction. And although for a brief time common wisdom said that writers needed a breakout standalone to get out of the midlist, now series fiction is the desired choice for many mystery writers, both self- and traditionally published. So in other words, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Walter Mosley has been my literary role model and as I’ve watched him write multiple series, dip into children’s lit, science fiction, political writing, etc., and support small presses as well as large, I’ve attempted to follow his example – but not as prolifically or successfully. But I will say diversification and openness to new options have allowed me to cobble together a so-called writing career.

Before I had become a published mystery novelist, Gary Phillips had inscribed in one of his first books, VIOLENT SPRING, to me with this message: “Writing ain’t for sissies.”

Ain’t that the truth. In the nine years since my first novel was published, I’ve been orphaned five times (lost an editor due to job change or downsizing) and my agent left agenting. We’ve lost our publishing contracts or received smaller advances. Nonetheless, we get back up, dust ourselves off, and figure out a new plan. We may go the DIY route, go with a smaller publisher, or change genres. But we keep writing. Some in fits and starts, and some, more than ever.

The life of a writers can be a lonely one, so I’ve coveted the relationships cultivated by groups like Murderati. Pari has slept on my living floor and we’ve shared heart-felt conversations over steaming bowls of Korean food in La Crescenta in Southern California. I’ve torn up the dance floor with Alexandra Sokoloff and high-fived (either in person or in spirit) JT Ellison’s success (remember that I knew you when!).

We’ve seen our comrades fall: Murderati’s own Elaine Flynn; Louise Ure’s husband; Sally Fellows, the indefatigable mystery reviewer and supporter; and many others.

One author shared with me his disappointment when the mystery community he had served so faithfully failed to attend or even acknowledge the funeral of his partner. He learned that these so-called relationships were actually more superficial than he realized. The news of that stung, but I knew that he was speaking the truth. We can be a narcissistic, self-centered bunch. And we all have our own personal stuff to take care of, leaving precious few moments to look beyond ourselves.

Through Murderati, we attempted to create some kind of community, in which we pulled at each other’s bootstraps as well as our own. Although I lasted only barely two years (or 46 posts – nothing compared to JT’s 223 and Pari’s 218), I did give it my all. I did start to lose steam; as I’m an introvert, it was extra effort to get the words in my head out on the Internet. (Posting photos on Facebook takes a lot less energy.)

In my first Murderati post on April 5, 2006, I pretty much stated that after producing my third novel, I, more than ever, have come to the conclusion that I don’t know much.

“Change is inevitable. Change before change gets you,” I wrote in a blog post. Although that is definitely true, I’d add “know yourself.” Deeply. Be informed, but don’t let anyone dictate which path you should take. Regarding your work, no one really knows or truly cares except yourself. (By the way, I would recommend that every writer read Anne Lamott’s BIRD BY BIRD.)

Walking on that path is a solo journey, but it certainly is nice when someone who understands joins you for certain empty stretches. Thanks, my Murderati mates and all who have followed!

(Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series. Her fifth, STRAWBERRY YELLOW, was released in March 2013. Her new series featuring a 22-year-old multiracial female bicycle cop with the LAPD will make its debut in spring 2014. Completing her second middle-grade novel, she will be working on a coffee table book on the history of Terminal Island for the Port of Los Angeles. For updates, subscribe to her newsletter on her web site, www.naomihirahara.com.)

THANK YOU, MURDERATI!

by J.D. Rhoades

I honestly don’t remember if it was JT, or Pari, or both who asked me to join Murderati back in 2007. I’d met and liked them both at various conferences. When I saw the roster of other people who’d been posting there or who’d be joining at the same time, I saw some other names that pleased me. These were folks who I’d met, hung out with, had a great time with, and—this is the important part—whose work I liked and admired. Pari and JT , of course, but also people like Louise Ure, Toni McGee Causey, Alexandra Sokoloff and Robert Gregory Browne. So I said sure, that’d be cool, especially since I would only be doing one every two weeks.

Great, I was told. You’re following Ken Bruen.

Say what?

You’ve got to understand something. I fucking idolized Ken Bruen. I still do. THE GUARDS knocked me flat on my ass, and I quickly gobbled up everything of his I could get my hands on (and still do). He is an amazing writer, a master, a true poet of this genre, as well as a heck of a nice guy. I knew there was no way in hell anyone was going to want to read a thing I wrote if it followed one of Ken’s amazing pieces.

It got worse. I started looking at who else I was going to be blogging with, reading some of the ones I hadn’t already read, and I realized: ALL of these people were better writers than I was. They were more talented, more disciplined, wittier, better looking, and more successful.

Damn, I thought, I am in WAY over my head.

But it’s like playing music, or acting, or sex: you get better at it by doing it with people way better than you. And as I read my fellow ‘Rati’s books and blog posts, I learned a lot, and not just about writing. I still refer people who ask me about story structure to Alex’s excellent posts on the subject, and I have her story elements checklist saved to a file on my computer that I often pull up. Rob did a great post on free tools for writers that’s still very useful. Tess’s posts, including this one, taught me a lot about fan expectations and how one who deals with the reading public should have a thick skin. Toni’s blog about motherhood, Dear God, the Stick Turned Blue, made me laugh and brought tears to my eyes in the same post. Cornelia’s unflinchingly honest entry about clinical depression and better living through chemistry, Why I Say Yes to Drugs, was a source of inspiration and comfort to me. And that’s just a small sample. Reading those posts, and dozens of other ones by the smart, funny, informed, fearless, honest, and incredibly talented writers here made me want to write, and write better, because it was such an honor to be in company like this.

And I can’t forget the commenters here. Not just my fellow ‘Rati, who showed up to offer their own perspectives in comments, but the people like Jake, Reine, Kaye, Patti, Dave, David, Stacey, Bryon, Tom, Christa, Shizuka, Judy, K.D., R.J., B.G., P.K. the Bookeemonster, Stephen, other Stephen, and so many others who offered support, advice, and jokes to all of us. (I have to pause here to mention commenter and fellow writer Wilfred Bereswill, who left us, suddenly and far too soon, a few weeks ago. RIP, sir.)

The decision to leave regular blogging here was a tough one, and I put it off for a long time. I still miss it sometimes, but the reasons I set out here for leaving are still there.

So thank you, my fellow writers at Murderati. Thank you, readers who took the time and energy to share your ideas, knowledge and support with us. You made me sharper. You made me work harder. You made me braver.

You made me better.

Wait, what?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’ve been a bit sick and rather distracted these last few weeks so this whole “Long Goodbye” has had a dreamlike quality for me. I keep thinking, “Did we really say we were going to do that? Surely not.”

But now it’s my turn, and it’s all starting to feel alarmingly real.

I’ve been with Murderati since, well, let’s look at the archives. Friday, December 8, 2006. That would have been just after my first book, The Harrowing, was published.

I switched from screenwriting to writing books so quickly I really knew nothing at all about the book business, and even less about book promotion. I’m a pretty quick study, though, in general, and I jumped into the Internet research. And in 2006 it was pretty clear that blogging was the thing for authors to do, and pretty clear to me that Murderati was the mystery blog to beat.

So I became a frequent commenter. I came from theater, I know how to audition. I figured I’d just be so sparkly and irresistible and indispensible that they’d just have to ask me to join. Which apparently worked, because they did.

It’s been a long time. I blogged here every week for several years. I was quickly so sick of talking about myself (within a month, I’d say…) I started blogging on story structure instead, and ended up writing almost my whole Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook here, one blog at a time. That’s a pretty amazing thing, right there. A lot of what I’ve written has been scribbled (typed) frantically at the end of long days when I’ve simply forgotten what day it was, an occupational hazard of a full-time writer. Other times I felt inspired, or felt like I had to top some tour de force of Steve’s, and I ended up feeling like a real writer of other things besides books.

I don’t have to tell any of you this, but a blog becomes a kind of PLACE, where people know they can stop by and find other people of like mind, a whole batch of regulars. Sometimes fun, sometimes comforting, sometimes confrontational, often emotional. You actually work with your blogmates, so this is feeling like leaving a long-loved job. As well as, as others have already said, like a favorite restaurant or bar or club closing down.

Only we did it to ourselves. Why?

Honestly, it’s not the bi-weekly blogging that’s so hard – it’s the turnover. Anyone leaving throws the balance into turmoil and the rest of us have to scramble to get back on track. I’ve done that scramble more times than I want to count over these six years. And the truth is, writers don’t seem to have enough time to blog any more. It feels like diminishing returns, when there’s a fast and easy alternative conversation on Facebook. The technology has changed. The conversation has moved. We’re having to reinvent.

I used to run a huge cyber bulletin board of 2000+ screenwriters. In many ways I’ve never been as comfortable with the blog format as I was with the bulletin board format. On WriterAction, ANYONE could start a thread. It was perfectly egalitarian that way. Some of our beloved backbloggers here on Murderati have been confessing that they had hopes of joining the lineup here. My feeling is that you often WERE the lineup – it just didn’t appear that way to a casual visitor because of the hierarchical structure of a blog. But on a bulletin board, you guys would clearly have been the lineup. I can’t help but feel that’s a better way.

Facebook eventually made our bulletin board unnecessary. It’s possible that it was mostly Facebook that made Murderati unnecessary as well. I’m an intensely social person and I need my social contact, but I see so many of you regularly on Facebook that I may have been lulled into feeling it’s not goodbye, just a change of venue that seems better suited to the times. I guess I’ll never know how many people regularly read my blogs here, but it’s easy to see that I’m getting massive traffic from my Facebook mini-blogs and random silly or profound comments there, because I get so many comments back. More people take that time to comment on Facebook. It feels more real, and I can be political, or brief, or cryptic, or completely idiotic. I like the informality, and I love the pace of conversation when it gets going.

In previous years I would have taken on the burden of reinventing Murderati as a bulletin board community or something similar. But I’m getting what I need out of Facebook, and I’m providing anyone who cares to drop by my FB page with the same thing I’ve done here, whatever the hell that is! – and with MUCH less time investment, leaving me more time to do what I’m supposed to be doing. And we all know what that is. We all keep saying it.

We need to write books.

I know I’ll still be seeing a lot of you as much as ever, elsewhere. But because Murderati is a PLACE, I am already missing and mourning it. It’s the end of an era, and we all take change hard.

Please keep in touch, or it’s just too unbearable.

– Here’s where I am far too often on Facebook.

– I will be blogging regularly on my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors blog – I teach a college film class, now, and will be doing a lot of movie breakdowns in the future. I would love to have people come by and talk.

– My website is regularly updated, and you can join my mailing list there to get book news (no more than four updates a year.)

– And I am going to make a point of checking the Murderati Facebook page every day and posting/responding there.

And… I have to let you all know, since I have shared so much of my e book journey here: Huntress Moon was just nominated for a Thriller Award in the International Thriller Writers’ brand new category of Best E Book Original Novel.

That’s partly down to you, you know.

Thanks for everything. I love you all.

Now tell me. Am I just an idiot for thinking Facebook is the modern alternative to blogging, and that it could ever be the same? If so, what WOULD be an alternative?

– Alex

Be sure to tune in on weekends, too this month for posts by alumni. J.D. Rhoades is first up, tomorrow!

AND THEN WE CAME TO THE END

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Okay, picture this:

There’s this great dinner club. It’s run and attended by some of the smartest (and of course, most beautiful) people you know. Successful, funny, generous people. For years, you’ve hung around outside the club, just outside the red velvet rope, sharing a word or two with the men and women entering and exiting just to get a sense of how cool it would be to be one of them. And then, one day . . .

They invite you inside. Offer you membership. Give you a key to the front door.

Now you’re at the club every other week, meeting new people, making new friends. Telling stories your audience finds fascinating, cracking jokes everyone laughs at (well, almost everyone). Slowly but surely, you’re finding your place in this rarified crowd, developing a sense of actually belonging here. Life is good.

Now picture the club owner choosing this exact moment to shut the joint down.

Say what?!

Welcome to my Murderati experience. Just when I was starting to really have fun, the lights go out — for good.

Was it something I said?

This has been a fantastic writers’ blog, and it was one long before I ever came onboard. One thing I think has always set it apart is its almost total lack of a promotional focus. For all the writers, big and small, who have held a place on the Murderati roster over the years, few have shown more than a passing interest in salesmanship. The emphasis here has always seemed to be on telling great stories about the writing life, rather than hawking literary merchandise.

I’d be lying if I said holding up my end of the Murderati bargain every two weeks (plus again every eight weeks for Wildcard Tuesdays) has always been easy. It hasn’t. I spent more than a few nervous Tuesday and Monday nights banging my head against the wall seeking to shake a post topic that didn’t suck loose for the next morning. But overall, I had a blast, and I think I wrote a post or two I can be proud of.

In fact, I think that’s how I’ll leave you all: With a brief list of my favorite Murderati posts:

LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME (THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE)

THAT’S INCREDIBLE! (AND THAT’S THE PROBLEM)

NO PAIN, NO GAIN

THIS I DO BELIEVE

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

DECEMBER 14, 2012

SORRY, OUR MISTAKE, WON’T EVER HAPPEN AGAIN

Thanks for the memories, people. And a special shout-out to Pari and J.T., who threw this party in the first place. You guys are the best.

Take it away, Dandy Don.

GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

By Tess Gerritsen

Blogging is hard work.

It starts off as a labor of love, but labor it truly is — a fact that becomes more and more apparent as you pound out your twentieth, fiftieth, hundredth blog post. As novelists, we use words as our tools of trade, and we struggle to choose the right ones to tell our stories. Like the carpenter who’s been swinging a hammer all day, at the end of the workday, many of us are weary and ready to put down our tools.

But no — for some of us, it’s time to write another blog post. A task that started as a pleasure becomes just another responsibility. Week after week, we struggle to come up with some fresh topic that we haven’t yet addressed. After you’ve shared everything you know about writing and publishing and marketing, what next? Do you write about kittens? Can you make it funny and engaging and thoughtful? At the same time, can you avoid being too controversial, so that your site won’t be flooded with angry comments by dog lovers?

There is a natural life cycle to blogs. I’ve seen it with my own site. I’ve watched other writers leap into the blogosphere, bursting with a thousand things to say. Or they’re lured into it with the promise of greater exposure and better book sales. Over time, though, the entries become less and less frequent. Or they start to repeat themselves. Or they touch on a sensitive subject that launches a flame war of comments, forcing the blogger to go silent, just to maintain her sanity.

For years, the wonderful exception has been Murderati. With its rotating panel of contributors, it’s been able to draw on multiple voices, and over the years the insights have been funny, moving, and thought-provoking — sometimes all at once. Through these writers, we’ve watched the industry evolve, lives change, and careers thrive … or not. We’ve had an inside look at what it really means to be a writer, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thanks to visionaries JT Ellison and Pari Noskin Taichert, Murderati, has seemed like the party that would never end.

Only now it is ending. I am truly sad about it, because it’s one of the best writers’ blogs around. I also understand why it’s folding up its tents: because writers get tired. Because everyone’s lives are demanding. And because, sometimes, it’s just the right moment to move on.

Thank you, JT and Pari for launching Murderati and for so lovingly keeping it alive all these years. Thank you to all the writers who’ve contributed; I’ve learned something from each and every one of you. Since everything is saved to the archives, not a single word here will vanish.

Murderati may no longer be active, but it will be immortal.

ALOHA

by Robert Gregory Browne

“Good bye may seem forever. Farewell is like the end, but in my heart is the memory and there you will always be.” ~Walt Disney

I figure the above quote is only appropriate, because when I left Murderati a while ago, I left to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song.

When I look back over the last few years, I’m amazed at how much has changed since JT first asked me to blog for Murderati. The industry is now in turmoil, the transition from print to digital happening much faster than anyone anticipated. Publishers have dug in their heels and refused to offer better terms for midlist authors—in fact, the terms are much worse than before. I’m sure if I were still blogging for Murderati I’d be ranting about this, because more often than not my posts were a chance to get whatever was bugging me off my chest.

I admit I was surprised that Murderati survived without me. I was, after all, the heart and soul of this place and…

Okay, maybe not so much. Most of the time I was a guy in search of something to say, and I’m thankful that even when I posted nonsense, many of you came by to cheer me on and start a lively conversation in the comments.

I realize that this place has become a kind of after school playhouse for a lot of people and I know how sorely you will miss it now that the playhouse is being torn down. It’s a sad moment, but probably an inevitable one. Blogging is a time-consuming task and the authors who have remained are very busy people, indeed. I can’t blame them for deciding to move on. I did it myself. So thank you to all of the wonderful hard-working authors and readers who helped make Murderati the wonderful blog it is.

Now it’s time to say goodbye To all our company…

Rob

Hey, guys – this is Stephen here. Just wanted to let you know that Pari will return next Monday, April 15, and then again on Monday, April 29, to finish out the month as well as the blog. JT will be joining us on Friday, April 26, to give her farewell. We’ll be having other past members of Murderati joining us all month, mostly on Tuesdays and weekends. Tomorrow, Tess Gerritsen will have the floor. Please come by and say hello!

PENULTIMATE

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

It’s not quite the last but almost the last. It’s the second to last. Penultimate.

I’ve always loved the word and yet never fully utilized it. Well, it gets its due today.

I was thinking about writing something entirely different. Something to keep us from dwelling on the fate of Murderati.

Then I thought, no.

Let’s talk about Murderati. It doesn’t have to be sad. It can be nostalgic.

I don’t know what I’ll write about next week, in my ultimate blog entry. I’ll save that for next Thursday night. I hope I leave something to be said.

What I can say now, what I want to say now, is that I’ll miss this place. It’s been very, very good to me. My entire author journey began here and a good part of the reason my opinion means something somewhere is due to the fact that I have a platform here on Murderati.

When I started on Murderati, when JT asked me to split her time, when Alex and Brett and others voted to bring me on, I wasn’t even published. I was set to be published and the above-mentioned authors had read and blurbed my ARC. But no one knew who the hell I was. So I had about three full months to do this thing called “blog” before Boulevard was released. And that blogging helped create a fan base for my work that resulted in some pretty hefty pre-sales numbers. I remember one comment I received on Murderati – still a month or so before my release date. The commenter said, “If Schwartz’s novel is as good as his blog I’m going to love it!” Murderati gave me a community before I even entered the scene.

And, along the way, Murderati created some amazing opportunities. The PR person for James Ellroy’s TV show found me and Allison Brennan through Murderati and invited us both to join Ellroy on his bus tour of historic, L.A. crime scenes. We spent three hours in a bus with fifteen journalists (we were the only authors) while Ellroy led our private tour. I was also invited to speak at the Omega Institute by an administrator who read our blogs. I’ve been invited to speak all over the country by readers who found my voice through Murderati.

I’ve met heros and personal saviors through Murderati as well, like Allison Davis, who helped me out of a serious bind when I was caught between jobs, and Toni McGee Causey, who recently arrived to help me through yet another fine mess I found myself in. Murderati brought me together with my old friend and past college RA Brett Battles, who became quite the mentor during my debut year.

Murderati has also allowed me to celebrate the work of some very good artists through Wild Card Tuesday interviews. I’ve introduced friends like film director Blair Hayes, film director Kevin Lewis, author Sean Black, photographer Eraj Asadi, film and TV manager David Baird and many others to our unique readership. I hope in some way these interviews have benefitted them, as they’ve certainly benefitted us.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work alongside such wonderful, wonderful, talented individuals as David, Gar, Zoe, PD, Alex, Pari, Martyn, JT, Brett, Dusty, Rob, Tess, Alafair, Cornelia, Jonathan, Toni, and the lovely Louise. And not just the other authors, but the readers, too. Reine, Lisa Alper, KD, Larry Gasper, Richard Maguire, Shizuka, Sarah W, Allison Davis, Fran, Stacy, Stephen D. Rogers, Philip, Lil, Susan Shea, Susan from SF, and so many others…I apologize if I didn’t include everyone’s name. You guys have been my sounding-board and first-responders.

Murderati is also where I’ve done some of my very best work. It has allowed me to stretch my fingers a bit, to write outside of the “dark, sex-addicted homicide detective” box. Here I can be fun, playful, autobiographical, snarky, and sometimes downright silly. I’ve had the opportunity to explore the growth of my children and to celebrate the daily wisdoms they pass my way. I’ve explored my attitude towards society and examined the weight it brings on the writer’s soul. Murderati has been my soap box and forum. Overall, the exercise of writing two blogs a month has made me a better writer. I really can’t thank you enough.

And yet, the blog has blogged me down, too. It comes down to available time. Juggling a day job, a family, various writing projects, and running from the law takes most everything I have. Sometimes I have to choose between writing my book and writing my blog, and that’s when it gets tough. I have so little time for creative endeavors, I’ve got to make each moment count. Of course, now I won’t have any excuse not to write another novel. Hayden Glass Part III, coming your way.

And so….it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke after all.

I love you guys…I’ll be here until the end. I’ll save the tears for my final blog, Friday, April 19th. See you then.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

Zoë Sharp

“I’m sure Zoë will be in a much sunnier frame of mind tomorrow—or pretend she is. So stiff-upper-lip, that woman. Bless her murderous little heart.”

Hmm, thank you to David Corbett for that impossible introduction in his Murderati blog yesterday. How to respond? If I wail and gnash my teeth, I’m being a wuss. If I carry on like nothing’s happened, I’m conforming to a racial stereotype. Ah well.

The truth is that I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the end of such an era as Murderati. This is my hundred-and-fiftieth blog here and for that reason alone it feels slightly momentous. It would seem that only JT Ellison, Pari Noskin Taichert and Alexandra Sokoloff have written more on these pages. I had no idea I’d been quietly scribbling away to such an extent.

Things have certainly changed for me since Ken Bruen first invited me to join the crew here. I hope I’ve grown as a writer—that every book has shown some slight increase in understanding the pursuit of a craft that’s ruled my life since I was about twelve.

I hope I’ve learned even more to value the friendship of other authors—those here and elsewhere. Mainly we connect via the internet. By Facebook and Twitter and goodreads. We email and support each other via Killer Thrillers and The Hardboiled Collective. But getting to sit and talk at conventions both here and in the States is always a pleasure. That’s why the bar at Bouchercon is always so crowded until the wee small hours. It’s not so much the drink as the craic, as they say.

But most of all I love the contact this blog has given me with people who love stories, who become totally wrapped up in the characters’ lives and whose enthusiasm for what we do never fails to give me a boost and a very large cheesy grin.

Like David yesterday, I can’t help taking the loss of Murderati hard. I too feel a personal failing—if only I’d been funnier, more insightful, more heartfelt, less insubstantial, then maybe the decision would not have been made to archive and shelve and preserve this like hold baggage not required on journey.

On the other hand is it better to go out with a bang than fade away? Better to go out on a high rather than jumping the shark? Or—even more silly than that—future-16th-president-of-the-United-States-with-axe-versus-vampire-during-horse-stampede fight from the truly laughable Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

So, this month will indeed be the Long Goodbye from Murderati, but I hope not from the contributors who have had the privilege to take this road, and from all those who have walked with us.

And if all else fails:

This week’s Word of the Week comes courtesy of my Twitter pal Jon Cooper. It’s ultracrepidarian which is a person in the habit of giving opinions, criticism or advice on matters outside his or her expertise. Well, we’re all guilty of that occasionally aren’t we?