Great Guest Blog Month, Week Two

Just like last week, this post will appear at the top of the blog for the rest of the week with guest blog contributions below this one – until the Weekend Update returns to its rightful position on Sunday (or unless I decide, for the hell of it, to blog on Friday. It could happen. Honest!)

So by way of introduction, here are this week’s fabulous guest bloggers:

Martyn Waites, who’ll be your host on Wednesday, is one of my favorite crime writers right now. Period. His books take his hometown of Newcastle and uses it as a backdrop for tales bursting with emotional honesty, gut-wrenching writing and all that is good about noir with none of the cliches. He first impressed with his debut, MARY’S PRAYER, went for bigger canvases with BORN UNDER PUNCHES and THE WHITE ROOM, and has really found his voice with his new series, starting with THE MERCY SEAT, which has been out in the UK since January and the US since April. He’s also scary good at readings (actor training, dontchaknow) and entirely too much fun to be around.

I first met Thursday’s guest blogger a little over a year ago at a shinding held at one of my favorite Thai restaurants. She impressed the crowd – which included many of HarperCollins’ finest – with her uproarious tales of the people she knew and the culture she understood best. Which is a finessed version of saying that Lisa Respers France is very funny and several people – myself included – hope she’ll get that damn novel finished because it has to be as good, if not better, than the story she contributed to BALTIMORE NOIR. A former Baltimore Sun reporter, she’s made New York home for the last few years.