The Great Link Catch-up
As reviewing ethics is one of my all-time favorite topics (those who attended the panel I moderated at Bouchercon can attest to this) Sharon Burnside’s article in the Toronto Star is of considerable interest to me. I’m not 100% sure that all the ideas she tosses out are necessarily viable – in a conglomerate- heavy world, is it really feasible for a writer to recuse his or herself from reviewing books from the same house that publishes his or her work? – but it’s a great jumping-off point for discussion. (Bookninja has lots more on this, and Critical Mass asks pertinent questions too.)
John Kenyon catches up with James Sallis and the results are well worth a look.
At the Rap Sheet, Denise Hamilton reveals that her current work in progress delves into the 1949 disappearance of Jean Spangler – just like Megan Abbott’s marvelous THE SONG IS YOU. But because the writers have such different sensibilities, it’s a very good bet the treatments of the case will be entirely different, too.
The Charlotte News-Observer asks various writers, including Clyde Edgerton and Katy Munger, for their thoughts on the Regulator Bookshop.
Heather Graham started life as a romance writer, but over the years, she tells the Sun-Sentinel, she realized that branching into different genres was just as fun, if not more.
Going to Tuscany? Have a book you need to complete? Then Baronessa Beatrice Monti is your woman, if you can take her demands, as New York Magazine’s Alex Mar discovers.
Bat Segundo has a MySpace page. Be very, very afraid…and keep plying him with tequila.
RIP, Betty Comden. Jeez, that’s truly the end of an era.