Austin S. Camacho is the author of four detective novels in the Hannibal Jones series and two novels in the Stark and O’Brien adventure series. Active in several local writers’ organizations, Camacho is the current president of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Virginia Writer’s Club. By day, Camacho is a public affairs specialist for [...]

Beth Groundwater’s first mystery novel, A REAL BASKET CASE, was published in March, 2007 and was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The second in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, will be released this month. It is set in Breckenridge, CO and opens with a death [...]

A 2004 Edgar nominee for Best Short Story, Shelley Costa is the author of The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Her stories have appeared in Blood on Their Hands (Berkley, 2003), The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories (Forge, 2004), Crimewave (UK), The Georgia Review, and The North American [...]

Mary Jane Maffini is the author of the Camilla MacPhee books, the Fiona Silk mysteries and the Charlotte Adams series. Her latest book, Death Loves a Messy Desk: A Charlotte Adams mystery (Berkley Prime Crime) will be out in May 2009. Visit her at

DONIS CASEY was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A third generation Oklahoman, she and her siblings grew up among their aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents on farms and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering state. Donis graduated from [...]

Today’s guest blogger, Betty Webb, is the author of DESERT CUT, DESERT WIVES, DESERT RUN, and other mysteries by
Poisoned Pen Press. Starting this month, she has a new series, beginning with THE ANTEATER OF DEATH.

Writing novels is tough. Writing novels is especially tough when you’re already writing full time at a different job.
For 20 [...]

A Lil’ Blog welcome to Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett, also known as Lorna Barrett
As a wide-eyed, unpublished author, I used to hope and pray some big-name author would discover me and give me a helping hand on the road to publication. Hope is a powerful thing, but in this instance, it was wasted. It [...]

Ken Kuhlken’s stories have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He has been a frequent contributor and a columnist for the San Diego Reader.
His novels are Midheaven, a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award [...]

Timothy Hallinan is the author of nine published novels, most recently the highly praised Bangkok thrillers featuring “rough-travel” writer Poke Rafferty and his cobbled-together Thai family. Hallinan also wrote a series of six private-eye novels set in Los Angeles during the 1990s. The current Bangkok book is THE FOURTH WATCHER. Coming next [...]

Ann Littlewood was a zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, for 12 years, working with a wide variety of mammals and birds. After a stint in corporate America, she is delighted to be back in the zoo world, at least mentally, writing the Iris Oakley mystery series.

Tuesday night, a long improbable chain of [...]