Looking for Tips about Writing and Submitting Mystery Short Stories? This is the Blog Post for You

You want to start writing crime/mystery short stories? Great. Jump right in. After all, you've gotta start somewhere. Every long journey begins with a single step. So don't be afraid to put yourself out there when you put pen to paper. But be sure to think outside the box and avoid cliches like the plague. If you do all that, before you know it, you'll live happily ever after.

If you're a new or newer writer, you may be wondering if my word choices in the prior paragraph were ironic. They were. But the sentiment behind them was not. It is important to take risks and try to achieve your dreams, and you do have to start somewhere. 

I started my fiction-writing journey more than twenty years ago by taking a workshop in writing a mystery novel. I wasn't aiming to write short stories back then, but the skills I learned were applicable. I was fortunate to have found a workshop that exactly fit my needs a five-minute drive from where I lived. I recognize that might not be the experience of everyone who is reading this now.

But here is something you all do have in common. You can sign up for a free online webinar being held this Saturday, October 18, where you can hear from some seasoned writers and editors, as well as some successful newer writers, about writing and submitting crime/mystery short stories. It doesn't matter where you live or your experience level or what your ability to pay is. If you have an internet connection and are interested in the topic, you are welcome.

You're also welcome even if you aren't new to writing short stories. This advice could be useful no matter how many stories you've had published.

The webinar, titled Mystery in the Midlands: Writing Short Mystery Fiction 2025, is sponsored by the Palmetto Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Here is the schedule (note that everything is Eastern Time):

11:15 a.m. Welcome

11:30 a.m. Plotting Short Stories

12:30 p.m. New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction

1:30 p.m. Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected

2:30 p.m. Conclusion

 

Segment Descriptions and Participants

Plotting Short Stories

John M. Floyd’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, Best American Mystery Stories, Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and many other publications. John is an Edgar nominee, a Shamus Award winner, and a six-time Derringer Award winner.

 

New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction — Michael Bracken, moderator

N.M. Cedeño writes across genres. Her short stories have appeared in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, After Dinner Conversation, Black Cat Weekly, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Crimeucopia. “Predators and Prey,” was selected for the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2024” list in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025.

LaToya Jovena's crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Best American Mystery and Suspense. She writes about the DC suburbs a lot, because that’s where she lives.

Tom Milani’s first story was published in 2022. Since then, his work has been short-listed for a Derringer Award, and he has published an additional nine stories, a novella, and his debut novel.

 

Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected — Paula Gail Benson, moderator

Barb Goffman has won the Agatha Award four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony, Derringer, and Ellery Queen Readers Award once each, as well as the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award. She’s been a finalist for major mystery awards forty-nine times. She has edited or co-edited fifteen anthologies with another in progress, and she received a Derringer Award for Murder, Neat.

Sandra Murphy is a Derringer-winning writer whose stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and several other publications. Additionally, she is the editor of four anthologies, including, most recently, Sex and Violins: An Erotic Crime Anthology and Yeet Me in St. Louis: Crime Fiction from Under the Arch.

Josh Pachter is an author, editor, and translator. A two-time Derringer winner and the 2020 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, he is the editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including four Anthony Award finalists. 

 

Are you eager to watch? If so, it's easy to register. Just click here. 

Thank you to the organizers for inviting me to participate. I hope you join us. 

The Extra Voice

Author Sherry Harris is a good friend (and editing client) of mine. Recently, she mentioned how my prior edits continue to influence her to this day, and we realized it might be helpful for Sherry to share some of my past comments/concerns in case any of you have the same writing issues. So I invited her to be our guest blogger today. Take it away, Sherry!

— Barb Goffman

 

The Extra Voice

by Sherry Harris

All writers have voices in their head, but I have an extra one. It's Barb Goffman's. She edited twelve of my thirteen published books, one that isn't published, and all the short stories I've written. So, trust me, when I'm writing, Barb is right there with me. Below are some of the things she's saying:

Not enough sleuthing – What, Barb? I write mysteries; of course there's sleuthing. But apparently, in every third book or so, there isn't! I get distracted by a relationship or a subplot and forget the main point of the book--that my protagonist has a mystery to solve. Here's a comment Barb made when she edited Rum and Choke: "I've already mentioned this, but to flesh it out, a large majority of the book (at least it felt like a large majority) involved Chloe helping Ann search for the treasure. The rest of the book had a lot of subplots, and sleuthing into Enrique's murder felt like one of them. Obviously, that's a problem."

Are you writing a travelogue? – Apparently, I was. In an early book, I sent Sarah from her little town of Ellington, which is about fifteen miles northwest of Boston, to the North End of Boston. I love Boston. I love the North End. It took Sarah two pages to make it from the T by the Government Center in Boston to the North End, which is about a ten-minute walk. In the original version I waxed on about the history of Faneuil Hall and its famous golden grasshopper weather vane. Sarah stopped at the Holocaust Memorial and at Union Oyster House. She padded across the cobblestone street and went by Mike's Pastries before she arrived at her destination. In the final version of the book, her walk was one paragraph, as much as it pained me to delete so much detail about my beloved Boston. Sigh, Barb was right. Now when I'm waxing on about something in a first draft, it gets axed by the second one.

She needs to react – I'm reacting to this voice. Both of my series have female protagonists, and this bit of advice has made a huge difference in my writing. Find a dead body? You need a reaction. Someone say something startling? Your protagonist has to think something or say something or make an expression that gives away their thoughts to the reader. This seemingly simple statement is key to writing a book with more emotional depth. Now, it drives me nuts when I read a book where the characters don't react.

Slow down – but the pace...  It's one of those rules of writing to slow down the fast-paced (action) scenes and speed up the slow ones. While my logical brain knows that, apparently my writing brain forgets it. BTW, reactions work in the fast scenes too.

Make it a full scene – all too often when I'm writing early drafts I jump to the next scene and start it with a line that summarizes something that happened since the last scene. It's fine to do it if what happened isn't anything important. However, in the book I just wrote, I found myself hearing Barb's voice telling me that the summary deserved its own scene. She was right. Again. 

When was the last time she ate? – I don't know. If your protagonist has kids or a pet, you can add fed/took care of them to the above. Ah, yes, meals. My protagonists can apparently go days without eating. And it's not that each meal needs to be a scene (see paragraph on description above), but characters can grab something as they go out the door, or stop for something, or it can be a scene if something important happens.

I could probably write ten more pages of examples of things Barb's voice is saying. Like, why is your character doing something, or why is that scene in there–just because the writing is pretty doesn't mean it has a place in the story. Thanks, Barb. Sigh. But if you have to have an extra voice in your head, I hope it's Barb's! 

---

Sherry Harris (https://sherryharrisauthor.com) is the Agatha Award-nominated author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery series and the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries. She's published short stories in Edgar Allan Cozy, The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell, Black Cat Weekly, Three Strikes--You're Dead, and Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House. Sherry is a past president of Sisters in Crime and a member of Mystery Writers of America.

Breaking a Writing Rule to Humorous Effect

Two years ago, the fine folks at Crippen & Landru released an anthology called School of Hard Knox, in which all the stories broke one of the ten rules handed down by Father Ronald Knox back in the golden age of mysteries. Last year, I was pleased to be asked to contribute to the follow-up anthology, in which all the stories would break one of the twenty rules for writing detective stories handed down by golden age author S. S. Van Dine. That book, titled Double Crossing Van Dine, was released two weeks ago.

When Donna Andrews, one of the editors of these two anthologies (along with Greg Herren and Art Taylor), asked me to write a story, I quickly looked at the twenty rules to see which one might inspire me. As soon as I saw rule #3, my mind was off and running. This rule states:  

"There must be no love interest in the story. To introduce amour is to clutter up a purely intellectual experience with irrelevant sentiment. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar."

Heavens, we wouldn't want a little love--and lust--to gum up the works.

Or would we? 

What if, I thought, a private eye is hired by his next-door neighbor to solve a case dear to the PI's heart, but at the same time his ovulating wife is eager to get pregnant, and she keeps trying to lure him to bed. It is an amusing premise. I figured this scenario would drive Van Dine up the wall. It is exactly why he declared there should be no romance in detective stories--a desire for amour should not impede an investigation. 

But I wasn't done. I love writing funny stories, and I had an idea to ratchet up the humor: Every seductive step the wife takes gives her husband an idea for the next step he should take in his investigation. In the end, it is the wife's desire to distract her husband that leads him to solve the case. 

Take that, Van Dine! I think if he were to read this story, "Baby Love," he might decide he was a bit too harsh with rule #3. In the right circumstance, amour could be just what the detective needs.

I think Van Dine's ghost is working at the
fortune cookie factory.

I hope you will check out this anthology, which has a great list of contributors and an introduction by Catriona McPherson. The trade paperback version can be bought from the usual sources, as well as directly from the publisher. Just click here. (You also can purchase straight from the publisher a clothbound numbered edition--signed by the editors--with a Van Dine pastiche written by Jon L. Breen thrown in.) I believe an ebook version will be coming out soon too. 

Analyzing What Motivates Your Character Can Make All The Difference

Due to an injury that is making it hard to concentrate, I am rerunning this column from last year rather than writing something new (though I am making small updates). Whether you've read it before or this is the first time, I hope it is helpful. 

It's strange how you can start writing a story intending it to be about one thing, and in the end, realize it's really about something else. Has that happened to you?

With my 2024 story "A Matter of Trust" I wanted to portray the dissolution of a marriage (with a crime thrown in, of course). The story opens with a happily married couple enjoying dinner. An argument develops because the wife is worried about her husband's health. His blood sugar is too high, thanks to his love of jelly. He agrees to start cycling, a way to get his weight--and his blood sugar--under control. The argument ends, and the two are happy once more. For a time anyway. Neither of them foresee that the husband would become addicted to the jelly donuts sold by a shop in town--a shop he begins to secretly ride his bicycle to each day. And they certainly don't anticipate the events that would come from that addiction.

As my writing progressed, I realized that the husband--the main character--was an emotional eater, and jelly (rather than his wife) was the love of his life. I started working that concept into the story, going back to the beginning and layering the idea into the husband's thoughts. I'd expected that doing so would be enough for the man's actions to not only be believable but also understandable, even if the reader wouldn't agree with them. He would be a real person, rather than a character who did things because the plot dictated it. That should have been enough for a solid story.

But when I reached the end, I realized what I'd written still wasn't enough. (Don't you hate when that happens?) Why had this guy come to associate jelly with love? That was the key question. Once I figured out the answer and layered it into the story, only then did the husband become full-blown and the story have real heft. Only then did I realize that a story about the dissolution of a marriage turned out to actually be a story about ... Well, I'm not going to say. I don't want to give everything away. (But I promise, there's a crime in there!)

This type of analysis can be useful for most stories. Readers become invested when characters feel real. So the more an author understands why a character does what he or she does, the more the character will (hopefully) come across as a complex human being rather than a cardboard cutout. 

I hope I've enticed you to read "A Matter of Trust," maybe with a jelly donut by your side. The story is a current finalist for the Anthony Award and can be read on my website. Just click here. 

But if you'd like to read more sports stories, pick up the anthology it was published in, THREE STRIKES--YOU'RE DEAD! Every story in the book involves crime and sports (baseball--major league, minor league, and high school--biathlon, boxing, bull riding, figure skating (that Thriller Award-nominated story is by fellow SleuthSayer Joseph S. Walker), marching band/football, running, swimming, tennis, ultimate Frisbee, zorbing, and cycling, of course). It can be purchased in trade paperback and ebook formats from the usual online sources. The trade paperback also can be purchased directly from the publisher, Wildside Press.

Everything Is Fodder (especially torture by broccoli)

This is a reprint of a column I ran three years ago, with minor updates. I hope it is helpful to you (and amusing too).

Things many people find difficult to do:

• Lose weight
• Follow directions
• Not give unsolicited advice on social media.

You can count me among "many people" when it comes to the first item. But with the other two, I know about their prevalence because I have been a victim of them.

A victim, I say!

Yes, yes, I occasionally give unsolicited advice, but it's always with hesitation. An explanation for why I'm wading in. An apology even. Other people, I've found, don't have such qualms.

An example (one of many): During the height of 2020 pandemic madness, I posted on Facebook that I had a lot of broccoli in my house but the dressing I'd gotten in my last grocery pickup didn't taste good. I mentioned the three other condiments I had at home (salsa, ketchup, and butter) and asked my friends if any of them would work with broccoli, as I had my doubts. (I hadn't thought of melting the butter--once that option was pointed out, it was a doh moment.) At any rate, I also made clear that I don't cook and had no other ingredients in the house, so I requested that my friends not make alternate suggestions of condiments to use or ways to cook the broccoli. I thought I was pretty clear.

Then the following happened. The conversation has been greatly condensed since I received more than 300 responses. Names have been removed to protect the guilty.

Friend A

Roast it in the oven with olive oil and sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top. It’s not hard. Or steam it and top with butter and a squeeze of lemon juice. 

Me

Don't have olive oil, cheese, or lemon. 

Friend A

Ok—just steam and add butter. Do you have Italian dressing. You could use that as an olive oil substitute.

Me

Nope, I don't.

As you can see, I was calm at this point, merely reminding Friend A that I didn't have some of the items she suggested I use.

Friend B

A nice, sweet balsamic vinegar. I like white balsamic.

Me

I don't have vinegar (and I don't like it either). More for you!

See how pleasant I was? This was early going.

Friend C

I roast broccoli with garlic and chopped up bacon.

Me

I have no garlic and I don't like bacon.

Friend D

Saute in some olive oil with garlic. Squeeze on some lemon before eating if you have some. Delicious. Or roast tossed in olive oil with a little garlic salt or sea salt or Goya adobo seasoning.

Me

I don't have any olive oil or garlic. Or lemon. Or sea salt or adobo seasoning. And sauteing and roasting means cooking. I don't cook. 

Friend E

Add it to something you like ... or, as others have said, butter is good, and I'd add some seasoned salt. I like sprinkling blends from Penzeys Spices on various foods. Their Salad Elegant would be great on broccoli.

Me

I don't have seasoned salt. I wasn't kidding about the only possible toppings I have in the house. Butter, salsa, and ketchup.

Friend F

The extent to which people cannot comprehend the state of your pantry is deeply hilarious to me.

Me

I am less amused.

Friend F

Would definitely think twice about hiring your fb friends for a job that requires ability to follow instructions.

She (Friend F) wasn't kidding. But I steeled myself and kept reading the responses.

Friend G

I would boil some water, add a ton of salt, and blanch the broccoli for like 2-3 minutes. Then drain and chill.

Me

Blanch?

Friend G

Extremely easy. [Lists a link for how to blanch.]  

Note to the reader: Not extremely easy.

Friend H

Really tasty: sliced zucchini or yellow squash, plus a red sweet pepper, sauteed in olive oil or butter with garlic and sweet red onion or green spring onions. Add a little basil for punch, but it isn't required.

Me

[Mouth hanging open.]

At this point, I stopped responding to almost all the comments, most of which were suggestions of other things I should cook using food I didn't have in the house. Me. The person who doesn't cook and who certainly would not be going to the market for the suggested foods. (Add one picky eater who doesn't cook and the height of the pandemic and you got hell no.) 

Occasionally, though, I became so incensed, I did respond.

Friend I

Saute in a pan, with ginger, olive oil and garlic, 1 T corn starch, and 1/4 cup of water.

Me

I DON'T COOK!

Friend G

This post has turned absurd, and I love it.

Me

That makes one of us

Friend J

Two of us! Sorry, Barb.

Me

It's like people are trying to give me a stroke at this point.

Can you feel the stress? Years have passed, and reading all these comments is aggravating me all over again.

You may be wondering why I'm sharing all of this with you, other than for your amusement. It's because of something I often say: Everything is fodder. If you're looking for a story idea, mining current events or events in your own life is often a good place to start. I took this condiment conversation and my associated aggravation and put it to good use when the fine folks at Malice Domestic put out a call for short stories for their anthology titled Malice Domestic 16: Mystery Most Diabolical.

What if, I thought, a low-earning spendthrift without any morals is the only living relative of a rich elderly woman. He decides to friend her on Facebook, aiming to drive her crazy with unsolicited advice so she'll have a heart attack and die and he can inherit all her money. That sounded pretty diabolical to me. 

Five thousand words later, the idea became my short story "Go Big or Go Home," which is the lead story in Mystery Most Diabolical. The book was released in 2022. And yes, it has Facebook conversations just like the one above.

Regular readers of this blog may recall how I also mined my history before I wrote "The Postman Always Flirts Twice," which came out in the fall of 2024 in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. Being pressured to go on a date with your mailman isn't great, until you use it as starting point for a short story three decades later. Which reinforces the point of this column: everything is fodder!

To those of you with Macavity Award ballots, this postman story (which won the Agatha Award in April) is now a Macavity finalist in the Best Short Story category. I invite you to read it before the voting deadline at the end of this month. To read it online, click here. 

  

Some Great Books

The first half of the year will end in about thirty-five minutes on the East Coast of the US, so this is a perfect time for me to share my five favorite crime/mystery reads of the year so far. If you choose to check any of them out, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

In reverse order, they are ...

5. The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan - This excellent Sherlock-and-Watson-type amateur-sleuth mystery came out in 2024. It is the first in a series and was extremely well plotted with strong voices and witty, clever, and wonderfully descriptive writing. 

I wish the main character, who played the Watson role, wasn't as closed off as she was, but I expect the author did this to give her room to grow, as well as personal secrets--especially one big one--to reveal, in future books. But these are small issues in an otherwise strong book, especially considering it is the author's first published mystery (though not his first published novel).

4. Bearer of Bad News by Elizabeth Dini - This is a wonderful book, especially for an author's first published novel. It came out in April of this year. It's an intriguing story with delightful writing that often had me laughing. It has strong voice and characters, especially the main character, who has a nice arc. The writing was often insightful, with emotional depth. While mainly set in modern day, the book also has a historical component that is timely. Those sections can be dark (but not gory), but that element of the book is offset by the lightheartedness of the main character. I hope it is the start of a series.

The only drawback worth mentioning is that there were a lot of characters, and I had a bit of a hard time keeping track of who was who and who did what. I think if I had read the book with my eyes, I would not have had that problem. (That said, the audio reader was fantastic.) 

3. A Sinister Revenge by Deanna Raybourn - This is the eighth book in the Veronica Speedwell series, and it came out in 2023. It was a great read. It has a strong voice, as usual, as well as a charming setting, an interesting mystery, enjoyable characters, and the main character had a strong arc through which she grew and her romantic relationship was strengthened. 

I had some small quibbles with the resolution, which I won't go into because I don't want to spoil things. Just know they should not keep you from reading this book. If you like historical mysteries, I highly recommend this whole series, which is largely set in England in the 1890s. Start with the first book, A Curious Beginning.

2.  The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler - This book, which came out last year, is the first book in a new series by Osler. I enjoyed it so much, I read it in one day. It is set in 1898 Chicago and stars a gay female private eye. The book has a great voice, a charming main character, as well as an enjoyable supporting cast. It also has an intriguing plot. 

My concerns were minor (one scene in which the main character's thoughts went on too long for my taste, and there was one anachronism). If you like historical mysteries, you will want to pick this one up.

And my favorite mystery read of the year so far ...

1. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter - This witty 2024 romantic cozy mystery has great voices, characters who grow, well-planted clues, a marvelous setting, and strong writing. I did have an issue with the main characters' failure to realize in a timely manner something that seemed obvious to me, but I am willing to let this issue go because I loved this book so much. 

What mystery/crime novels have you read this year that you have loved? I would appreciate your recommendations.

And, before I go, a little news. I am delighted that my short story "The Postman Always Flirts Twice" was named a finalist two weeks ago for this year's Macavity Award. This story won the Agatha Award in April. It was published in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. While I highly recommend you buy the book, if you would like to read my story, it is available for free reading for a limited time by clicking here. 

 

 

Things You Learn From Editing ... Take Two

I am bogged down with work, so I offer you this repeat of a column from 2019, with some minor edits. The information should be just as helpful now as it was then.

 

As the old saying goes, it's never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. (As a multiple-time dog owner, I can attest that this is true!) The saying also applies to writers. No matter how much experience you have, you still can learn more.

I was reminded of this point recently as I've been editing short stories for an anthology coming out next spring. Some of the stories have been written by authors I consider to be short-story experts. Other stories have been written by authors who have had several stories published but who haven't broken out yet, and others still have been penned by authors who are just starting out. And I have learned something from all of them--sometimes simply from reading the stories (even the newest writer can come up with a twist or a turn of phrase that turns my head) and other times from editing them.

It's the editing finds that can lead to especially interesting conversations.

Did you know that SOB is in the dictionary? All caps. No periods. The acronym for son of a bitch is a word all its own, at least according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Even more surprising (to me at least), mansplain has made the dictionary too. I won't bother to tell you what that words means. I'm sure you know.

Turning to homophones, two-word terms often become single words when slang enters the picture. For instance, a woman might go to the drug store to buy a douche bag, but if her boyfriend is being a jerk, she'd call him a douchebag (one word, no space). 

 

Descriptions of animal excrement are usually spelled as two words: horse shit, bull shit, chicken shit. But when you mean "no way" or "a load of not-actual crap" you spell it horseshit and bullshit (again, one word, no space). And when you mean that someone is a coward, you call him a chickenshit--also one word. (Thanks to Michael Bracken for helping me see the horse shit/horseshit distinction.) It's interesting that horses, bulls, and chickens have had their excrement turned into slang words, yet dog shit is just that. Two words meaning excrement. As I told a friend, I might start saying "dogshit," when I want to say "no way!" just to see if it catches on. (Update: six years have passed since I originally wrote this column, and dogshit has yet to catch on. Sigh.)

Keeping with the one-word or two-words questions, do you go into a room or in to a room? This may be an obvious thing for you, but it's one of those little things I find myself double-checking over and over. Same for on to/onto, some time/sometime, and so many more. Each of these words has their proper place, so I like to make sure I use them properly.

Yep, that's a bear on a trampoline.

To answer these questions: you go into a room. Into is the correct word if you are showing motion. The onto/on to question also turns on whether you are showing movement. I jump onto the trampoline. I catch on to my boyfriend's lies. 

 

As to sometime or some time, this question turns on whether you are talking about a period of time (writing this blog is taking some time) or if you mean an indefinite date (I'll get back to you sometime next month).

 

One more thing that I see messed up all the time, so it is worth noting the distinction: When writing about a person with golden hair, use blond as an adjective, no matter the gender of the person you are talking about. When writing about a man with golden hair, use blond a noun. The only time to spell it blonde--notice the e at the end--is when the word is used as a noun for a woman with golden hair. (Yes, this blond/blonde distinction has been noted before here on SleuthSayers, but it is worth repeating.)

  
Well, I hate to cut this column short, but again, I'm short on time. (Ha ha!) (And that's two words for ha ha, per our friend Mr. Webster.)

Do you have any interesting word usage issues/spelling knowledge you'd like to share? Please do. I'm always eager to learn something new.

Murder, Neat is on a Roll!

In February of 2024, I had the good fortune of having my turn to post here on SleuthSayers fall on the very day that our first anthology, Murder, Neat, was released. The book has twenty-four short stories, all written by members of this blog. Michael Bracken and I edited it, stepping in after our original editor and fellow SleuthSayer, the late Paul D. Marks, fell ill.

Every anthology editor has high hopes their baby will be well received and that the individual stories in it will be beloved. (The authors with stories in the book hope that too, of course.) So you can imagine the smiles we all shared when Murder, Neat was named one of the six finalists a few months ago for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. Those smiles turned to grins on May 1 when we won the Derringer, especially because the competition was stiff. (Hats off to the editors and authors of the other five anthologies. You can find a list of the finalists here.) 

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Murder, Neat was named a finalist for this year's Anthony Award in the Best Anthology category. Talk about icing on a delicious cake. So this is a good time to remind you about the anthology and, if you haven't read it, entice you to do so. (I also hope you will check out the four other anthologies nominated for the Anthony Award. Bouchercon attendees, please read before you vote. You can find the names of the nominated anthologies, as well as the finalists in all the other categories, here. One of those other anthologies was edited by Michael Bracken (him again!), working with fellow SleuthSayer Stacy Woodson.)

Back to Murder, Neat. Every story takes the reader to a location where drinking happens. Bars--be they regular, college, dive, or gastropub--make an appearance, of course, as do restaurants and even a winery. What also happens in those locations? Crime, of course!

When the book came out, Art Taylor, a retired fellow SleuthSayer with a story in the book, hosted four other of our bloggers on his personal blog, The First Two Pages. There they each wrote about--no surprise here--the first two pages of their stories. I invite you to click here to read the first of those essays, by Melodie Campbell. Near the bottom of that screen, you will be able to click to read the next essay by one of the Murder, Neat bloggers, Lawrence Maddox, followed by one by David Edgerley Gates, and finally, one by Leigh Lundin.

If you haven't yet read Murder, Neat, you can purchase it in trade paperback and ebook. We all hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

Finally, before I go, a little more news: I'm honored to have been named a finalist for this year's Anthony Award for Best Short Story for my tale "A Matter of Trust," which appeared in the anthology Three Strikes--You're Dead! The other nominated authors are James D.F. Hannah, Curtis Ippolito, Gabriel Valjan, and Kristopher Zgorski. I hope you will take the time to read all of their nominated stories. You can find the names of those stories by clicking on the link in the third paragraph of this blog. And you can read my story here.

Quotes and other memories from Malice Domestic

I just returned from this year's Malice Domestic convention, where I had a lovely time celebrating my friends Marcia Talley, Donna Andrews,Gigi Pandian, and Les and Leslie Blatt, who were, respectively, the guest of honor, the lifetime achievement honoree, the toastmaster, and the co-fan guests of honor. (There also were two honorees with whom I have no personal connection. Lucy Worsley was honored as the Poirot Award recipient, and Dorothy Gilman was remembered--Malice's term for honoring a deceased mystery community member.)

While at the convention, I saw many friends, made some new ones, sat on one panel, moderated another, hosted a table at the banquet, won the Agatha Award for best short story of 2024 (for my whodunit "The Postman Always Flirts Twice," from Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy), received some other good news (for myself and for a fellow author), saw a character naming I donated to the charity auction go for $500, and listened to authors speak eloquently--and humorously--on panels. It was a great time, even if I did lose my retainer.

Here are some quotes from the panels. My apologies if I didn't get some of the wording exactly right.

"Motivation for a killer is so important. You have to set it up right away." -- Tina Kashian

Marcia Talley during guest
of honor speech

"Cozies are popular because they make people feel comfortable. Sure, people are killing each other, but they're doing it in a nice way." -- Marcia Talley

In response to a question about the best advice you ever received: "Find your community. As much as writing is a solo effort, you can't get through this alone. You need your people to help you when you get a bad review or a plot hole or ..." -- Sarah E. Burr. (Sarah didn't trail off in that last sentence, but I didn't get the end written down, hence the ellipsis.)

"A hate crime, such as a swastika painted on a synagogue, is dark, but when the whole town comes together to paint over the swastika and support the temple, that is the cozy treatment. That is how to use dark social issues in cozies." -- Kathleen Marple Kalb, who also writes as Nikki Knight

During a discussion about enjoying novels set during World War I and World War II, despite how horrific the wars were, Catriona McPherson made the following analogy: "You can be nostalgic for a time--like the lockdown--without being nostalgic about Covid. It's being nostalgic for the time spent with your family."

"Cozies are for optimistic readers. Bad things happen, but everything is right in the end. Noir is for pessimistic readers because the ending gives them what they expect from the world." -- Paula Munier

If you're interested in learning about Malice Domestic, which brings fans and authors together to celebrate the traditional mystery every April in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, click here. The website has not been updated yet for the 2026 convention, but it should be soon. I hope to see you there next year, when the honorees will be:

Guest of Honor Annette Dashofy

Lifetime Achievement Honoree Jacqueline Winspear

Toastmaster Ellen Byron

Poirot Award Honoree Jim Huang

Malice Remembers Margaret Maron

Fan Guest of Honor Billy Aguiar