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Since 1998, the Short Mystery Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—named after the popular pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories and people who've greatly advanced or supported the form. Nominees and winners are selected by members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. The 2018 winners will be announced on May 15, so if you are an SMFS member, read these stories and vote!

Last year I published my first two short stories ever, and both of them have been nominated for Derringer awards! This is a huge, huge, honor for me!

National poetry month is over in the calendar but not in my heart. I’ve spent the last few days savoring Be Brave: An Unlikely Manual for Erasing Heartbreak, by J. M. Farkas. In Be Brave, Farkas applies her black permanent marker to the entirety of Beowulf.

Vice Enforcer, the second book in S.A. Stovall’s thriller and M/M romance series is now here! The series began with Vice City, which I wrote about here. That book went received the Rainbow Award's Honorable Mention. Congratulations, S.A. Stovall!

THE STORY

A MYSTERY FOR EVERY MOOD

Regular readers of this blog already know that I’m a huge fan of Elaine Viets’ Death Investigator series, starring the intrepid Angela Richman. You can read about that series here. Now Viets comes back with her light and humorous, bestselling and now classic, Dead End Job Series. 

In this interview, the author of the newly-released Rainbirds shares how she become a full-time writer:

THE VALENTIN VERMEULIN SERIES

Michael Niemann's third book in the Valentin Vermeulen series has just been released by Coffeetown Press.

Llewellyn Worldwide,  Jan 2018

paperback

Turn your writing roadblocks into helpful detours — that’s what author and psychotherapist Bryan Robinson promises with his book of motivational entries for writers, Daily Writing Resilience. Bryan’s book includes entries with titles like:

Henery Press, 2017
ebook, hardcover, paperback

The Lila Maclean academic mystery series, in which an assistant professor worried about getting tenure has to deal with murders and other crimes on her campus, consists of three books:

Desert Kill Switch

Mark S. Bacon
Black Opal Books
Pub Date: Sept. 30
320 pages
ebook and trade paperback

Desert Kill Switch is the second book in the Nostalgia City mystery series that began with Death in Nostalgia City, an award winner at the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival.