Of course, there’s a third third approach to the promotion game: If you don’t want to let your publisher do all the arranging and deciding, yet you don’t want to just go out and hawk the book all by yourself, you can hire someone to help you. Independent publicists can be especially effective for a…

The funny thing is, nobody really knows what works when it comes to selling a book. Because everything publicity-wise is done simultaneously with publication, when they do a NY Times ad or a New Yorker crossword puzzle or a country-wide flying banner, there’e2’80’99s no discernible bump in the numbers to show the result of that…

Back before the Flood (sounds like a joke; isn’e2’80’99t, not really) there was BoucherCon, with me and 1,999 other denizens of the mystery world scurrying through the halls of the Chicago Sheraton listening to, or participating in, panels and talks on more subjects than you can shake a laptop at. Remember BoucherCon? No? If you…

One reader of this blog objected to my use of the word ‘e2’80’9crefugee’e2’80’9d in the last post. I did not use the less loaded term ‘e2’80’9cevacuee’e2’80’9d precisely because I wanted the emotional punch of the word. It is a shameful thing, to have tens of thousands of homeless and abandoned citizens at loose in the…

Two blogs mention book-related relief for our US refugees: MJRose’s blog on September 7th, and Susan McBride in the Lipstick Chronicles, also on September 7. Because of the unfortunate possibility of scams–white collar looting–I can’t suggest where to send your money. But if you have a group of refugees in your town, take them a…

BoucherCon is always a somewhat otherworldly experience, with a couple thousand mystery fans tripping over each other for four days and continually coming around the corner and seeing a familiar face, a thing that happens about once every ten years in the rural area where I live. This year’e2’80’99s conference was odder than usual, because…

I won’t have a laptop at Bouchercon, mostly because my laptop is so venerable it laughs pityingly at the idea of wireless connections and even Ethernet is but a dream in its little electronic mind. So I’m going to be dependent on the hotel computers, a notoriously difficult state of affairs. Even the Library Hotel…

The talented and winsome Sarah Weinman posed a question recently, Why go to Bouchercon? And because my poor battered brain is finding it so hard to squeeze out the words, I thought I’d steal my response to her and post it here, too. But do go look at what others have to say on the…

Finished. 478 typescript pages concerning THE ART OF DETECTION, going down to the photocopier’e2’80’99s tomorrow so I don’e2’80’99t have to nurse the printer for hours and hours, into the FedEx box on Monday, onto my editor’e2’80’99s desk on Tuesday. While I’e2’80’99m away in England, the thing will come back to me, its right-hand side at…

I love living in Santa Cruz, the PC capital of the Western world. I love knowing that racism here is not just wrong, but wicked, that the city is a Nuclear Free Zone, and that so long as you don’e2’80’99t frighten the horses (the Humane Society is active here) you can get away with pretty…