Afternoon links

They do pile up when I’m not looking…

First up, welcome aboard to the folks behind the just-launched group blog Murderati. Naomi Hirahara, Elaine Flinn, JT Ellison, Simon Wood, Pari Noskin Taichert and Deni Dietz will be coming at you with interviews, insights in the writing life, and much more. It’s already off to a great start.

John Connolly’s been blogging for a while but now it seems to be a full-fledged one with comments. His most recent (and amusing) post describes his dinner with the Hoff during the London Book Fair.

After a six-year hiatus — much in part due to the death of his wife — Dick Francis returns to the publishing world, as UNDER ORDERS will be released this fall by Putnam.

Joseph Wambaugh’s making a return to novel-writing too, as HOLLYWOOD STATION was won in an auction for “major deal money” (as Publishers Marketplace would put it) by Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown. It’s slated for a January ’07 release, which means it’ll probably be in bookstores right around the Christmas season.

In his latest Bookslut column, Clayton Moore looks at alternate history books by noted writers ranging from Philip Kerr, Robert Harris, Robert Ferrigno and Max Barry.

Sebastian Junger’s A DEATH IN BELMONT is getting a lot of attention — some of it good, but some of it more controversial as various folk question the book’s accuracy. The Boston Globe’s David Mehegan gets to the bottom of things.

It’s very cool to see the new content added every month to Penguin’s Most Wanted crime site, and this month there’s Andrew Taylor talking about the pitfalls of full-time writing, John Rickards on the resurgence of noir fiction, Michael Ridpath on the joys and perils of research, and Clare Clark on discovering her historical fiction debut was really a crime novel (and a damn good one at that.)

And finally, argh. I cannot believe what I am seeing outside my window. Make it stop!!!