Bouchercon: The Crime Fiction Family Reunion

By Jon Jordan

The world is an ever changing place and, as we’ve seen in the last few years, so is the world of publishing. The rise of e-books, the failure of Borders -- and any number of other changes -- have people speculating on the future and how it will impact us, both as fans and contributors to the genre of mystery that we love.

Well, change is constant. Without change we whither and stagnate. Change is good, it gets people thinking in new ways and opens up new doors.

Is print dead? Of course not. Will there be fewer books published each year? If publishers are smart, yes.

In truth, the high that publishing experienced and, by default, chain bookstores and even Amazon enjoyed was a false high. It wasn’t an indication that sales would keep going up, up, up. It was an anomaly.

In reality, maybe there were just too many books being published. The volume of bookstores in this country was staggering. And while as a book lover I enjoyed the options, maybe losing a retail chain like Borders will benefit us in the long run. Independent stores who know their customers should benefit in the end, if my high school economics class taught me anything.

Amid all the changes there remain constants. People love stories -- in books, on TV and on the big screen. Stories in all forms remain popular. There are still huge numbers of readers out there picking up books, regardless of the format, and enjoying great storytelling.

If you are the type of fan I am, you also love talking about the books you read. You like to hear authors talk about their books and the writing process. You enjoy being able to look an author in the eye and say “I loved the book” or “Thanks for writing these great stories.”

And this is the heart of Bouchercon. We celebrate mystery and crime fiction. We gather together for four days and attend panels about mystery. We eat with people and talk books. We have drinks together and compare recent reads. This common thing binds us together. Whether you are reading legal thrillers, private eyes, amateur sleuths who garden or supernatural detectives, we all love to read parts of this genre.

Good characters and good stories transcend the labels the sub-genres are given. Thrillers are really just the adventurous older sibling to mysteries. The similarities are far greater than the differences in all aspects of the genre. Because of this, when we gather together at Bouchercon, and other conventions, we are all united by the love of the tales we read. We share a frustration when an ending cheats, or the sadness when a character we love gets killed off. We share the excitement when our favorite authors have new books out. We share the thrill of sitting down and reading the first page of a new discovery.

In life you are born into a family. As you grow and develop, you start to form a second family, one of like-minded people who understand you and accept you. In this sense, Bouchercon is really more of an annual family reunion. Yeah, we have some weird cousins and a couple of uncles who get a little loud. But we also have older sisters who always make us feel better just by talking to them and brothers who will stand up for us.

At my first Bouchercon, a lot of magic happened for me -- not the least of which was meeting my wonderful wife, Ruth. There was also the magic of meeting people who share my passion for something, who understand staying up all night to finish a book and forgetting to eat because you are so engrossed in a story.

Every year I go back to Bouchercon, and the magic is still there, year after year. Every year, my extended family grows. With all the change that surrounds me, the community of mystery fans is a constant in my life.

If you are coming to St. Louis and it’s your first Bouchercon, welcome to the family. If you have been before, well, we can’t wait to see you again.

Previously, at Bouchercon:
Top photo: Family gathering -- Jon, Charles and Ruth.
Middle photo: Band of brothers -- Ali, George, Jon and Simon.
Bottom photo: The big smooch -- Jon and Ruth.


Jon Jordan is the publisher of Crimespree Magazine and the host of Bouchercon 2011. In the coming months, he will be "Blogging Bouchercon" on the SinC blog. For more information on Bouchercon, see http://bouchercon2011.com/. Jon can be reached at Jon@bouchercon2011.com.

SinC Launches Updated Website

Sisters in Crime continues the celebration of its 25^th year anniversary with an update to its website, www.sistersincrime.org.

The site features a Home page redesign that offers a more welcoming landing page with a number of new additions.

If the page seems a bit wider, you're not seeing things. We've expanded to the right and the left, in the areas formerly used as wide side margins.

We've moved the World Cat search engine for author, title or subject searches to the top of the SinC home page.

And we've added a new marketing "banner" -- or box -- focusing on the latest SinC programs of emphasis, such as:

• The American Library Association’s Library Champions program in support of America’s libraries.

• The Sisters in Crime We Love Libraries! book-fund give-away.

• The latest SinC professional development tools including Shameless Promotion for Brazen Hussies, an updated edition of the 154-page book currently available to members only.

• Member announcements, such as meeting notices and dues reminders.

Currently, the marketing banner focuses only on the We Love Libraries! lottery. You’ll see the box's revolving dissolves in action as we load more content to the site this week.

In addition, the SinC site now features a streamlined and upgraded Recent News section. You’ll also find easier-to-access links to SinC on Facebook, Twitter and the Sisters in Crime blog. In addition, a “Latest from the Blog” box provides links to the four most recent blog entries for a quick click-through.

And, finally, the Home page offers a Quick Links box for easy access to:

• Our Mission

• Join SinC Today

• Renew Your Membership

• SinC Chapters

• Recent News

• SinC Authors

• Join the National Listserv

• Membership Profile

• Membership Directory

• Contact SinC
  
  
• Media Contact
  
  You can help our efforts to update the Sisters in Crime website by forwarding your best photos of your chapter in action for inclusion on sistersincrime.org. In addition, some of your shots may be used for the inSinC quarterly bulletin and the Sisters in Crime blog. If you’ve got a photo you’d like to share, please send it to KathieFelix[at]aol.com. Include a brief caption and the name of the photographer for a photo credit.

  SinC into a great mystery!

A Useful Tool for the Writer

By Dana Stabenow

[Originally posted at: http://www.stabenow.com/2011/03/16/a-useful-tool-for-the-writer]


One of the most useful online tools for the writer is Google Alerts.

With Google Alerts, Google monitors the Internet for mention of your name. (Or any topic you choose, but for the purposes of this post, you the writer are looking for mentions of your name on line). They send the results either to your email address or to your reader, your choice.

There are three drop-down menus which help narrow search parameters and frequency of delivery, Type (Everything, News, Blogs, Videos, Realtime, Discussions), How Often (as-it-happens, once a day, once a week), and Volume (Only the best results, All results).

My name is my search term, set at Everything, once a week, Only the best results. I could do Alerts for each title of my book, too, but the idea is to have Google Alerts help me manage my time, not chew up more of it. Besides, I don’t think it’s necessary. Read on.

My Google Alert lands in my inbox every Thursday morning. Last Thursday, it looked like this.

In the past, my Google Alert has, ah, alerted me to, among other things, illegal electronic downloads of my books, blog mentions, sales of my books on eBay, tweets about me, a blog post excoriating bad formatting of one of my e-books on Amazon, and reviews.

See that item down at the bottom? Here, let me single it out for you.

Before last Thursday morning, I’d never heard of the Washington Independent Review of Books, or that they had reviewed Though Not Dead.

Alerted, I contacted them to ask permission to reblog it. They said yes, and I did so, right here.

Best of all?

Google Alerts is free.

Dana Stabenow is the award-winning author of the 18-book Kate Shugak mystery series, the four-book Liam Campbell mystery series and the three-book Star Svensdotter science fiction series. The most recent title in the Kate Shugak series is Though Not Dead, a mystery set in contemporary Alaska that includes more than a passing mention of Dashiell Hammett's Army days in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

And the Beat Goes On: Creating Characters with Legs, Part 2 of 2

By Mary Kennedy

[Originally published in the February issue of The Heartline Herald, the newsletter of the New Jersey chapter of the Romance Writers of America.]

Recently, I sat down with four best-selling authors and asked for advice on creating characters that will go on forever. My own character, Dr. Maggie Walsh, has starred in three Talk Radio Mysteries, but naturally I want her to have a very long life! Carolyn Hart (Death on Demand series), Denise Swanson (the Scumble River series), Avery Aames (the Cheese Shop Mysteries) and Krista Davis (the Domestic Diva Mysteries) shared their secrets and gave me some intriguing answers.


Q: Do you ever get any feedback from readers about the main character's personality – do they want him to stay the same, do they suspect that he's changed? Do readers object if they feel that the character is somehow shifting gears on them?

Avery: I have received a number of emails from readers telling me how much they adore Charlotte¹s commitment to family. Though she’s plucky, she’s not particularly snarky. She rarely says anything bad about someone, though she might think a slightly snarky thought every once in a while.

Denise: The vast majority of readers that I've heard from love that Skye remains the person they like, but changes enough not to become stale or predictable. One of the very few negative emails from a reader was for book #5, Murder of a Barbie and Ken, when Skye finally has sex with her boyfriend. The reader called me the Spawn of Satan because my character had had sex without being married. On the other hand, the mystery must have been a compelling one because, although her minister made her stop reading and throw the book away, she wanted me to tell her who the murderer was. Being the Spawn of Satan, I told her that Dad had said not to tell her (you know he likes to torment people).

Krista: Being a domestic diva is all about home and family and friends. One reader posted a couple of negative reviews about Sophie's willingness to be helpful. Ironically, I think that's the thing to which many of us relate, since most women have people who depend on them. Otherwise, I have only received positive feedback about Sophie. Her character hasn't really changed, but she has grown from her experiences.

Q: What are the advantages of writing a series with recurring characters?

Carolyn: Recurring characters mean the author knows the terrain and understands the characters' mores. It can be great fun to chop through the forest and blaze a new path, but there is charm and comfort in following a familiar path.

Denise: The biggest hurdle is that Skye always has to be front and center, and in my case can't do anything that would make the reader dislike her. The advantages are numerous in that I don't have to create a whole new world and population every time I write a new book.

Avery: Populating a town with not only the lead character but with all her family and friends is extremely difficult. She needs a real world, not just those people at work, but also those people who live in the town, who run the shops, the diners, and the police precinct. Another challenge is to make sure that the protagonist remembers past incidents in the same way in each book. As the author, I must keep the protagonist’s thoughts at the forefront, so the reader feels each action is justified.

Thank you, ladies, I look forward to your new releases.

Mary Kennedy is a psychologist in private practice and the award-winning author of The Talk Radio Mysteries. Her latest release is Stay Tuned for Murder.

And the Beat Goes On: Creating Characters with Legs, Part 1 of 2 Parts

by Mary Kennedy

[Originally published in the February issue of The Heartline Herald, the newsletter of the New Jersey chapter of the Romance Writers of America.]

Recently, I sat down with four best-selling authors and asked for advice on creating characters that will go on forever. My own character, Dr. Maggie Walsh, has starred in three Talk Radio Mysteries, but naturally I want her to have a very long life! Denise Swanson (the Scumble River series), Carolyn Hart (Death on Demand series), Avery Aames (the Cheese Shop Mysteries) and Krista Davis (the Domestic Diva Mysteries) shared their secrets and gave me some intriguing answers.

Q: How do you keep your characters fresh and interesting?

Carolyn: Dead by Midnight, the 21st in my Death on Demand series, will be published in April. Are Annie and Max Darling still fresh? I hope so. If readers find them lively, the answer may lie in my relationship with Annie and Max. Some years ago my daughter drew my husband aside and said quietly, "Daddy, I'm worried about Mother. I'm afraid she thinks those people are real." He looked at her in surprise and said, "But they are."

Krista: The motivations of the murderers and the other characters drive the books. Sophie usually gets involved to help someone, which isn't a driving force, it's more of a reaction. The other characters are the catalysts for the plots! It's interesting to come up with new characters whose lives drive them to murder.

Q: Does your main character change and evolve over the course of the series?

Denise: Definitely! It's extremely important for the protagonist to grow and learn from his or her experiences. In the first book of my Scumble River series, my sleuth, Skye, is forced to move home after losing her job, maxing out her credit cards, and being jilted. Her original plan is to slip into town, save some money, get a decent job reference and leave Scumble River as soon as possible. I'm now on book #13, Murder of a Bookstore Babe, and she's learned to appreciate the town and her family, while still not always being happy with them.

Krista: Yes. Sophie doesn't have a major breakthrough or a great epiphany, but she does evolve, particularly in her relationships with other people.

Q: Do her core values remain the same?

Krista: Absolutely! Sophie is a very well-grounded person. She has her insecurities, like we all do, but her core values are quite strong and don't shift.

Avery: Absolutely. First and foremost, Charlotte is about family and friends. When her cousin and his twin girls need a roof over their heads, she takes them in. When her grandmother is accused of murder, she comes to her defense. When others think her friend is involved in a murder plot, she surges forward to get to the truth. When another friend writes a play that many think is offbeat, she stands by her side.

Denise: It is essential that the character's core values remain the same so that, although that character has grown and evolved, he or she is still the same person the reader originally met and liked.

Carolyn: That is at the crux of the mystery novel. The protagonists want to live in a good and decent world and always strive to do the right thing.

To be continued...

Mary Kennedy is a psychologist in private practice and the award-winning author of The Talk Radio Mysteries. Her latest release is Stay Tuned for Murder.

Dorothy B. Hughes: Ghost of Honor

By Jeffrey Marks

This year, one of Left Coast Crime's Ghosts of Honor is Dorothy B. Hughes, one of my favorite authors. The conference is being held March 24 - 27 in Santa Fe. I’d love to be leaving the cold behind to head for New Mexico but, alas, I’m going to be admiring from afar. I sent off a basket of books to the conference, mainly novels by Hughes.

Hughes and I share bonds in the mystery world. First, she so very kindly offered her assistance to me when I was writing my biography of Craig Rice. I corresponded with her about Craig and their common bond of being women authors in the 1940s. Hughes shared stories of sitting on the front porch with Craig and Anthony Boucher, drinking lemonade and talking about books and reviews. She was generous with information that helped to round out Craig’s character.

After her death, I wrote about Hughes in Atomic Renaissance, devoting a chapter to her works, her Hollywood career, and her decision to give up writing to care for her family. Her last novel, The Expendable Man, is a work of art. For 50 pages, we see the nervous energy of the protagonist as he picks up a blonde who is later murdered. His anxiety is so palpable that you wonder as a reader why he’s so paranoid, until Hughes lets you in on his secret. I can’t tell you the secret, because it would spoil the novel, but it’s definitely worth reading for yourself. For a last novel, it was a wonderful way to go.

I was amazed at some of the fantastic works (Dread Journey, The Blackbirder and others) by Hughes that hold up 50 years after their publication. Of course, she is best known for In A Lonely Place, a masterpiece that is overlooked too often. It covers the anxiety and darkness of the men who have been taught to kill in World War II and who must return home to fit into a society that no longer appreciates that skill. If it wasn’t for the Bogart film, the book would likely not be remembered at all.

Finally, Hughes and I have one more bond in common. We’ve both written a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner. Her book in 1978 used significant parts of Gardner’s own memoirs, while mine is hoping to cement Gardner’s place in the genre with more analysis of his work in the field. Hers is done — and I am immensely jealous of that! I’m still writing the 1950s, but working to finish that decade in the next few weeks. And off to Mississippi in a few weeks for more research!



Jeffrey Marks is the award-winning author of Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery, Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s, and the Anthony Award-winning Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography. He is also the author of the U.S. Grant mystery series that includes The Ambush of My Name and A Good Soldier. Marks lives in Cincinnati.

Writing: Time to Hang it Up or Time to Ignore the Voices of Doom?

By Ellen Byerrum

[Originally posted at http://ellenbyerrum.livejournal.com]

The times are changing for writers and they are dire. You might as well hang up your pen and paper, shut off your computer and go wait tables -- at least according to news reports swirling all around us.

These are some of the tidbits I keep hearing:

• Women’s books are not getting reviewed as often as men's books.

• Women are not being published as often as men.

• With Borders closing hundreds of stores, it will be murder on the mystery midlist, and many writers will have no (or one less) champion in their corner.

• With e-books making their mark and publishers afraid to take chances (unless of course there is a high celebrity bimbo quotient), the ground is rapidly shifting beneath our ergonomic writing chairs.

• Publishers will continue to look for blockbusters and celebrities and not take a chance on "smaller" books and lesser-known writers who take time to build an audience.

• Writers must have a website, they must relentlessly tweet and blog and Facebook and Skype and make video book trailers for YouTube and hand out bookmarks and postcards and dance on the high wire of publicity (not to mention the head of that pin) and attend every conference and meeting they can find all over the country. At their own expense. They must be able to entertain a crowd and drop one-liners like a pro on the comedy circuit because nobody wants a boring, or heaven forbid, a shy writer. The only thing they don't have to do is make balloon animals. Not yet anyway. But writers must also keep up the high quality of their work. However, that’s really secondary, hardly important at all. It's all about successfully navigating the endless sea of social media.

Is that all? Really? Phew, I’m exhausted.

Was it really any different in the past? Aside from the relentless social media chores, has publishing ever been anything but a ship of disaster and heartbreak ahead? Full of cautionary tales for anyone who wants to be a scribe, or for that matter, an artist, a musician or a dancer? Hasn’t it always been a tricky proposition for women? Seriously, is it becoming harder, or is it just transforming into something new, easier in some ways, but harder in new and unexpected ways?

It seems to me that writing a book has always been daunting and difficult, the Impossible Dream. When I started writing my first book about Lacey Smithsonian, mixing fashion and crime, a little mystery, a little comedy, a little romance, a little snarky social commentary, there were no books like mine out there. No heroine like Lacey. I had no idea whether anyone would publish me or read me, I only knew that this was the book I had to write, because it was the book I wanted to read. I also had to shut my ears to my critics, both external and internal. Yet that book, Killer Hair, was published and is on at least its tenth printing. And the seventh book in the series, Shot Through Velvet, was just released in February. All seven are still in print and on bookstore shelves, and I'm up to my ears in writing Book Number Eight.

Maybe it takes a bit of idealistic innocence (or sheer ignorance) and a stubborn spine to succeed; maybe it takes a belief that, no matter how ridiculous the odds, you might just be the one to make it, as crazy as it seems. The one to make it past the gatekeepers and past the pitfalls and find an audience and a home in the publishing market. On a fool’s errand, perhaps only the fools win.

And what will I do in this brave new publishing world? All I can do is keep my head down, square my shoulders, and march forward into the winds of change. And no matter how compelling it is, maybe, just maybe, I should stop reading every dismal prediction of doom that comes my way.


Ellen Byerrum is the author of the Crime of Fashion mysteries. Two of her books -- Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover -- were adapted for film by the Lifetime Movie Network. The seventh and latest installment in the series is Shot Through Velvet.

Recycling, the Literary Version

By Sandra Parshall

[Originally posted in April 2010 at poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com]


I was happy to hear Ian McEwan on the radio last week, describing his habit of saving deleted passages from his novels because they might contain “nuggets” he can use in later work. I don’t have much in common with this renowned writer, but we’re alike in one way: we both practice a literary version of recycling.

I don’t reuse only the nuggets, though. I recycle characters, subplots, whole scenes. Like one of my cloth tote bags, many elements of my books used to be something else.

When Disturbing the Dead was published, I wrote about the transformation of a character who first appeared in a manuscript titled Outside Agitators, a story about young antipoverty workers and the Appalachian people they tried to help during the War on Poverty. I worked on that novel for years and never turned it into a coherent story with a proper ending. But I’ve been carving away chunks ever since and using them in other books.

One of those chunks was a teenage mountain girl with red hair and freckles and the unlikely name of Lana Turner. She longed to leave the poverty-stricken hollow where she grew up and move on to a better life.

When I wrote Disturbing the Dead, I kept Lana’s dreams but made her a little older and gave her a Melungeon – mixed race – heritage, which meant changing her coloring to olive skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. My agent told me I would also have to change her name, because some editors disliked characters with famous people’s names. Lana became Holly Turner.

I wasn’t finished cannibalizing my old unfinished manuscript. In the original, I wrote about antipoverty workers as young idealists, well-intentioned but naive about their power to effect change in a region where gigantic energy corporations control the economy and politics. When I began working on Broken Places, I asked myself what some of these people would be like decades later, if they had stayed on after their government service ended and tried to continue their activism on behalf of the poor. Maybe they would have had some small successes over the years. Most likely, they would have experienced far more failures and been forced to swallow a bitter dose of disillusionment.

I plucked Cameron and Meredith Taylor from the pages of Outside Agitators, fast-forwarded to the present, and made these two disappointed idealists my murder victims. Meredith, I learned for the first time, had a secret ambition to be a writer, and her final – unfinished – manuscript was titled (ta da!) Outside Agitators. In its pages, Captain Tom Bridger of the Mason County (VA) Sheriff’s Department discovers clues to the motive behind the murders.

Mrs. Lily Barker, the self-educated woman from Disturbing the Dead who believes she has “the sight” (that’s what Appalachian natives call the ability to see beyond the tangible world), wasn’t lifted from any earlier work of mine, but she was inspired by a minor character in Outside Agitators who was too colorful to discard. Mrs. Barker proved popular with readers, and a woman who attended one of my library events made me promise to bring her back, so she returns in Broken Places and also shows up in the book I’m currently writing.

Mason County, my invention, is similar to the mountain community in the original Outside Agitators, but it’s in southwestern Virginia rather than West Virginia, and even the coal companies have largely deserted it by now. In my work in progress, though, Tom will pay a visit to a mountaintop mining operation. Other writers may favor idyllic small communities, but I’d rather write about places where sudden gashes of ugliness mar the natural beauty and decades of lies and rivalries and betrayals simmer just under the surface, ready to erupt and bleed all over the present.

All those years I poured into Outside Agitators, with no end in sight and little hope of ever seeing it published, have paid off richly, and I suspect I’ll use still more chunks of it before I’ve exhausted its possibilities.

When I delete a passage from a work in progress, I’m careful to stash it in a file rather than throwing it out. There must be some reason I wrote it in the first place, and if it doesn’t seem to fit now, it might be just what I need to fill a hole in a future story.



Sandra Parshall is the author of the award-winning Rachel Goddard mysteries; the most recent title in the series is Broken Places. Sandra also serves on the SinC/national board as Chapter Liaison.

Breakfast at Malice Domestic

Sisters in Crime hosts its annual breakfast at Malice Domestic at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, Maryland on Sunday, May 1, from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m.

The event offers a chance to toast the 25th birthday of Sisters in Crime, meet new friends – and even win a fun door prize.

Advance reservations are required. The cost is $20 for members and $30 for non-members. You can register online at www.sistersincrime.org.

Will you be at Malice Domestic this year? We hope you'll join us for breakfast!

SinC into Cyberspace: Re-launching the Internet Chapter

By Nan Harrington

Internet chapter? I didn’t even know we had an internet chapter! And, for that matter, why do we even need such a chapter?

Sisters in Crime does indeed have an internet chapter and it fulfills many vital purposes that no local chapter can achieve. The internet chapter exists to offer support, information, activities, interviews, resources, and interaction for all those who live where there are no local chapters; for those who are unable to attend because of illness or bad weather (remember this past February?!); or for members of local SinC chapters who want a “SinC supplement” between their local chapter meetings.

After nearly “closing our doors” in November, we realized that we offer crucial services that are valuable and unique to our SinC community.

As I live most of the time in Cuernavaca, Mexico where, needless to say, there are no local chapters even remotely close, having a cyber-community is of utmost importance to me. But, one doesn’t need to live in Outer Mongolia to choose to become a member of the internet chapter! We exist for some, not as a replacement for their local chapter, but as an addition to it.

In the next few months, we will launch our “new-and-improved” web site. We plan to include: guest interviews (authors, agents, editors, experts, booksellers); monthly member profiles; critique groups; guest blogs; weekly activities and tips; “soon-to-be-published” books by our members; a calendar of upcoming events, contests, retreats; a resource library; links to booksellers; and most importantly… information on how to join!

Now comes the Audacious Appeal for Aid! Anyone who has launched a new chapter, assumed the presidency of a local chapter, or revamped the format of their current chapter is well aware of the initial – and often quite daunting – impediments to dazzling success. We do need your help. Please consider offering yourself as a potential interviewee, blogger, expert, or participant for our internet chapter!

Since we exist in cyberspace, you don’t need to leave the comfort of your home to render assistance and encouragement! I should have mentioned that in addition to being audacious, this call for support is quite blatant. But truly needed!

My email address is: nan.harrington[at]gmail.com.
Our “in-process” web site will be: www.sinc-ic.org.



Nan Harrington, President of the Internet Chapter of Sisters in Crime, is a 5th generation Texan, a retired university professor, a wanna-be crime writer (her new passion!), and an inveterate traveler. She lives in Dallas and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Celebrating 25 Years of Sisters in Crime

Beginning this month, Sisters in Crime is celebrating more than a year of milestones marking the organization’s 25 years of promoting the professional development and advancement of women writing crime fiction.

The seeds were sown in March 1986 at the first conference on Women in the Mystery organized by B.J. Rahn at Hunter College. During the session, Sara Paretsky spoke on the growing use of graphic violence against women in mysteries.

“Remarks I made at the conference set off a firestorm around the mystery world,” she said. “Women began calling me from all over the country with their personal histories of treatment/mistreatment.”

Later that year, Phyllis Whitney turned up the volume for the voices of women writing mystery and crime fiction when she wrote a letter to Mystery Writers of America pointing out that women authors weren’t being nominated for awards.

The group that would become Sisters in Crime made its debut in 1986 at the Baltimore Bouchercon when Paretsky convened the initial meeting of women interested in the project. During the session, she pointed out that books by women crime fiction writers weren’t being reviewed at a rate matching their participation in the publishing industry.

Nearly six months later, during Edgars Week in the spring of 1987, a breakfast meeting at Sandra Scoppettone’s New York loft brought women in the mystery and crime fiction industry together for additional discussion and the formation of the organization.

The first mission statement of the organization was “Sisters in Crime is committed to helping women who write, review, buy or sell crime fiction. Our ultimate goal is to become a service organization to address issues of concern to everyone involved in the mystery field.”

The initial steering committee members were Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Susan Dunlap, Betty Francis, Charlotte MacLeod, Kate Mattes, Sara Paretsky and Nancy Pickard.

The organization’s first elected President was Nancy Pickard. Margaret Maron served as Vice President.

Founding member Carolyn Hart created the backbone of the organization’s communications program by creating and compiling the Sisters in Crime mailing list.

“Some of my best memories are of the true support that grew from nothing to a nationwide network,” Maron said.

Plans for the 25th anniversary celebration will be discussed at the Sisters in Crime Presidents’ meeting next month at Malice Domestic in Bethesda, Maryland. If you’d like to attend that meeting, contact Chapter Liaison Sandra Parshall.



Historical information originally compiled by Lora Roberts.

The Prison Warden's Job: A 'Mentor Monday' Report

Today’s blog post provides a look at a past Sisters in Crime Mentor Monday conversation with Ms. Tekla Dennison Miller (pictured at left), former warden of a men’s maximum security prison and a women’s maximum/close custody prison near Detroit. She is a national speaker on women’s issues and criminal justice and the author of two memoirs – The Warden Wore Pink and A Bowl of Cherries – and two novels – Life Sentences and Inevitable Sentences.

The complete Mentor Monday session can be found archived on the SinC listserv. If you are writing about prisons, this file offers some extraordinary detail in terms of warden insights, sociological perspective, prison employee and prisoner motivation, substance abuse issues in prisons, statistics and additional resources for more information.

Access to the listserv is a Sisters in Crime membership benefit. For information about the listserv, go to www.sistersincrime.org.

Below are a handful of questions and answers from the day’s session:

Q: How does a woman maintain control over a group of male prisoners Is being female a plus or a minus in that situation?

A: Sadly, I – as most women working in prisons – had more difficulty with the male staff than the prisoners. Although great strides have been made by women in this field, corrections remains the most gender-biased, sex-segregated and male-dominated component of the criminal justice system.

I encountered this when I became the warden of the men’s maximum security prison. The male deputy warden, my subordinate, told me that no woman should or can run a men’s max. Also several male employees felt like they had been demoted because they had to work for a woman warden.

… Of course, not all the men who worked in the prison felt that way. Some even were glad that I came aboard because the culture changed to a more tolerant one for everyone. This brought about less violence. Those who just couldn’t work for me I helped transfer to other prisons. By the time I retired, the men working at the facility asked me to stay.

As for the inmates, a study done in the mid-90s showed that the presence of women working in a men’s prison reduced assaults against employees and other inmates.

Q: If this [location and setting] isn’t realistic, could you tell me why and make a suggestion as to how to still get her dead as needed within the confines of typical prison routine?

A: In your scenario, having the victim in an isolated area is realistic. Sadly, many assaults take place in the bathrooms. Even more take place on the yard when the attack is obscured by all the other prisoners milling around. The shank normally used in the attack is usually dropped on the ground once the prints are wiped from the handle. That way, no one can identify who had the shank or who assaulted the victim. Too many inmates present and no prints.

Q: I frequently drive past both the private prison, Corrections of America, and the U.S. federal prison in Leavenworth. I’m curious, what determines whether a convict is sent to one or the other?

A: Corrections Corporation of America is the largest company that builds and manages prisons for corrections in both states and federal systems. They also manage the largest prison transportation system.

Private prisons became popular when the number of prison beds available could not keep up with the incarceration rates. Not all states have private prisons. However, most are medium custody or lower. Each corrections department develops a contract that controls how the private prison will be managed.

Q: … We had an escape a few years ago that was a bit of a comedy of errors. The friend who had arranged to pick up the escapee on the highway near the hospital got pulled over for drunk driving, so didn’t make it. The guy jacked a car (luckily not hurting anyone) and drove to Kansas City. When he saw himself on TV, he asked the bartender to turn it down. He’s back inside now.

A: In regard to the escape and comedy of errors, this is not uncommon. One case I know of is – when an armed robber approached a bank teller and demanded money, the teller asked for ID, stating it was policy. The robber showed her his ID. Another robber was found because he left a trail of candy (he also stole) wrappers.

Q: Do women end up in prison because of abuse situations in their lives?

A: Most of the women in prison who have committed murder are there because they have murdered their abuser. Defense attorneys and many judges are trying to change the way we handle/prosecute such cases. But little has changed. Physical or sexual abuse statistics are below:

57% report being abused
69% of those reporting said the abuse occurred before they were 18
Most were abused by male members of the immediate family or a partner
56% committed a crime to please an abusive partner
45% committed a crime to get drugs for an abusing partner

Women prisoners basically see no hope in their lives and feel they either deserve a life of abuse or that there is no alternative.

Nine Must-Have Clauses for Digital Rights Contracts

By Michael Stackpole

Originally published at:
http://www.michaelastackpole.com


I knew it would happen. It had to happen. There is money to be made and, whenever there is money to be made, people will rise up to make it.

I don’t, in this instance, refer to hardworking authors, but the parasites who are looking to make a fast buck by making low-rent investments in properties they believe they’ll be able to exploit. To what am I referring?

Digital rights to authors’ backlists. There are a variety of individuals — traditional publishers included — who are buying up the rights to backlists for little or no advances against royalties, with no firm schedule for publication, with no distribution deals in place, and with little or no expertise in how to actually create an ebook. And yet, writers who have complained for eons about how badly they are used and abused by publishers are turning around and selling off these assets for a pittance.

This is what the landscape looks like right now:

Traditional publishers are offering 25% of the NET on electronic sales, zero for advances, with no pub dates attached. If any publisher made such an offer for a paper publication, they’d be laughed out of the marketplace, pure and simple. While the royalty might sound great, the lack of an advance and the lack of a publishing window means the publisher has zero investment in getting the product out in a timely manner. They’re snagging the rights so they’ll have something to sell at some point.

By way of example, three of my novels are now available for the iPhone: A Secret Atlas, When Dragons Rage and The Grand Crusade. Random House sublicensed the electronic rights to those books to ScrollMotion, Inc., the creators of the Iceberg reading apps. The App itself has several screen shots to help sell it, the first being a picture of the cover of my book. The next three screen shots show the interface and provide glimpses of text which I did not write — and would never have written on my worst day on the job. I hope no one mistakes it for text from the book.

The pre-2009 contracts with publishers grant authors 50% of the NET, which is a better deal, but this is still the NET. Let’s look at A Secret Atlas for a breakdown here, shall we? The App costs $6.99. This means that ScrollMotion, Inc. is paid $4.89 per copy sold (70% of retail price). I don’t know exactly what ScrollMotion, Inc. is making on the deal, but let’s assume 10%. They send $4.40 on to Random House. And then Random House sends half of that, or $2.20, on to me.

Under the new 25% royalty deals, I’d only be getting $1.10.

In three to nine months after the sale.

Conversely, selling the same book for $5 myself off my website, I’d make $4.55 per copy. Immediately. Selling it myself via the Kindle, I’d make $3.50 in 60 days. Selling through the iBookstore directly, I’d make the same as the Kindle deal and, selling through third parties, I’d pull at least $2.50. So, by controlling the rights myself, I’m going to make out better than the best deal anyone else is offering me.

Authors are now being faced with choices that are not easy, but they need to ask one question whenever offered a backlist deal: “If it is that valuable to them, how valuable is it to me?” By way of example, last month alone, ebook sales for Talion: Revenant via the Kindle, earned me over $400. That may not seem like much, but if someone is offering a token amount of money, like $1K, to snap up the rights to books, and yet one can turn around and make almost half that in a single month, you have to be crazy not to think about doing this stuff yourself.

If your reply to the above is, “But I don’t know enough about computers to be able to make an ebook,” stop and think about it this way. Making ebooks isn’t rocket science. It’s easier than dealing with copyedits on a novel, and you’ve done that. And this is a job that will pay you back. Instead of being happy someone is giving you a fish, this is your chance to learn to fish; and who’s going to be more motivated than you to let your fans know your books are available again?

If, on the other hand, your reply is, “I don’t want to learn how to make ebooks,” well, fine. Just don’t turn around and complain about how you’re being handled in the ebook realm.

Realistically, here are the things to demand in any ebook contract:

1) A cash advance equal to an estimate of the first two years royalties. (If this amount cannot be calculated because “this is a new market,” then don’t go for the deal. This person is speculating. Let them do that with someone else’s work.)

2) A six-month window for publication of each book under contract. (Estimated time to prepare a book as an ebook is 20 hours from scan to publication. If they do not have the staff or equipment for this, don’t go for the deal. It’s a hobby for them, not a business.)

3) A sunset clause on the contract, preferably two years, after which the contract will be renegotiated at the author’s option. (The technology is changing too fast for you to be locked into a long-term contract without hope of renegotiation.) It is a seller’s market and will continue to be so, as new formats and platforms develop, royalties to authors will increase, not decrease. Do not get locked into a longterm contract for peanuts.

4) Clearly define which formats are to be used. At this time there are three: Epub, Kindle/Mobi and PDF which should be provided. All other formats, including smart phone apps and gaming console applications, should be treated differently and negotiated for in good faith. (Think of formats as foreign languages and this all becomes very clear.)

5) Copies of all files, including source files, are to be delivered to the author for his use beyond the life of the contract. Copies of the books should be DRM free, and the author has the option to make “review” copies of said books available for the purpose of publicity.

6) Electronic rights to the books are limited to one language only (i. e. English). Translations and electronic publication of translations are to be negotiated separately.

7) Where there are multiple books in a series, the negotiations should include royalties on a per volume basis and on an omnibus basis, with the publication of an omnibus edition being mandated.

8 ) Royalties should be calculated and paid every 60 days (within the Amazon and Apple pay windows).

9) The files will be made available to the author to sell from his own webstore, with him paying the publisher the equivalent rate as Amazon, with accounting every 60 days. (Because electronic sales are inherently immune to audit, only by selling work directly can an author have any idea of a) true sales figures and b) failure-to-deliver rates which might address why bandwidth-per-file figures do not match sales perfectly.)

I’m sure I’ve missed out on a couple of provisions that should be included. I know many of these will be considered dealbreakers by publishers. So be it. If they want to sell ebooks, they have to have ebooks. I know they can get them from someone else, but if they want mine, they’ll find I’m not giving them away.

And, quite frankly, no other author with enough neurons to form a synapse should either.


Photo by: Michael C. Pearo

Michael Stackpole is a New York Times bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy and a game designer. He is the author of BattleTech and Star Wars novels, as well as original fantasy novels such as Talion: Revenant, the DragonCrown War series and the Age of Discovery series.

Writing in Paradise

By Marcia Talley

My friend, mystery novelist Elaine Viets who lives there, says that Ft. Lauderdale is the farthest south you can live and still get meaningful work done.

I’ve checked the maps, and my present location — 26° 35.51 N, 77° 00.36 W to be precise — is exactly 28 minutes of latitude (approximately 32 miles) north of Elaine’s condo in Lauderdale, so as a novelist, I figure I’m safe, but it’s not always easy writing while living in paradise.

We’re in a rented house on Dickie’s Cay, a tiny strip of land that forms the harbor that protects Man-o-War Cay, a settlement of boat-builders and church-going people with a year-round population of approximately 150. There’s a hardware store —“if we don’t have it, you don’t need it” — where items that went on the shelf 20 years ago are still for sale with their original price tags. There’s one sit-down restaurant — best bacon cheeseburgers in the world at the Dock-n-Dine, my husband says — a couple of gift shops, a sailmaker’s shop where four ladies sit at ancient sewing machines turning out the most beautiful and practical canvas bags, and two groceries that don’t sell cigarettes or booze. No law against it, they simply don’t.

Albury’s Harbour Market, where I shop, is the size of your average two-car garage, but I can’t think of anything that Phyllis doesn’t have — even half-and-half! — in that tiny, neat-as-a-pin store. Yesterday, just as I was leaving with my purchases, her husband, Jeff, came in with some fish he’d just caught; an immediate change in dinner plans! I shop, Phyllis puts it on our tab, and we pay up at the end of the month. With a tab, I feel like I really belong.

No TV, no daily newspaper. There are no ATMs. The bank is open on Tuesdays from 10 to 2. And few cars; rush hour is two golf carts meeting on The Queen’s Highway, an eight-foot-wide strip of concrete that bisects the narrow island.

There are no roads where we are on Dickie’s Cay, and our family “car” is an Avon dinghy. To go shopping or to eat out, we walk out to the end of the pier, climb down a wooden ladder, fire up the outboard and putt-putt across to Man-o-War.

I couldn’t resist setting my eighth Hannah Ives novel, Without a Grave, in these islands, although I took the very great liberty of sandwiching my fictional islands between Scotland Cay to the north and Man-o-War Cay to the south while pushing Fowl Cay a bit further out into the Atlantic Ocean. I must apologize in advance for an inconvenience this will cause to cruising sailors.

My office is in “Lookout,” a cottage that’s cantilevered out over the Sea of Abaco. Across the water you can see Sandy Cay (occupied) and Garden Cay (unoccupied, but with a neat little cove and a house abandoned, Mary Celeste-like, as if the owners simply walked away leaving pots on the stove, beach towels draped over chairs, and dirty laundry in the corner). I feel a novel coming on!

On the screen of my laptop right now are the page proofs for A Quiet Grave, Hannah’s 10th adventure. My last chance to make changes!

Counter-clockwise from my ‘return’ key is a yellow pad with the opening pages of a fourth “Marjorie Ann” short story, my iPad (including eight Edgar-nominated novels downloaded to my Kindle app), a folder bought at the Bodleian Museum Shop in Oxford following the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery weekend last summer that holds important papers like my upcoming flight information for SleuthFest, a Roget’s thesaurus (the only true edition, IMHO, the one with numbered categories), a notepad where I’ve scribbled my grocery list and a Bahamian school notebook with a picture of Sir Milo Boughton Butler, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., first Governor-General of the Bahamas on the cover. Inside this notebook are some disjointed ideas that may or may not turn out to be Book 11.

There’s a nice selection of paperback books, too, left at “Lookout” by visiting friends. The conch shell resting in the window is blown every day — with varying degrees of success, depending on how far we are into cocktail hour — at sunset. Hey, it’s always five o’clock somewhere!

A sudden rainstorm followed by a rainbow, a sunset that sets the horizon ablaze, a mysterious motor yacht anchored off the island (excuse me while I grab my binoculars), a hummingbird checking you out. Yes, there are distractions while working in paradise, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Top photo: Lookout Cottage hovering over the Sea of Abaco.

Middle photo: Marcia Talley at Hope Town Harbor, Elbow Cay.

Bottom photo: A writer's desk in paradise.

A longer version of this essay, “Hannah’s Excellent Vacation,” appeared in Mystery Readers Journal, Island Mysteries, Vol. 26, no.3, Fall 2010. http://www.mysteryreaders.org/Issues/island.html


Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of All Things Undying and eight previous Hannah Ives mysteries. The 10th book in the series, A Quiet Death, will be published this summer. Marcia's short stories appear in more than a dozen collections. She is the immediate past president of Sisters in Crime.

Have You Paid Your Dues?

Your membership in Sisters in Crime helps the organization to fulfill its mission to promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers to achieve equality in the industry.

Please take a moment this weekend to make sure that you’ve paid your Sisters in Crime dues for 2011.

A two-tier dues structure is now in place; members may register in either the Professional or Active membership category.

A Professional member may be one of the following: an author pursuing a career in mystery writing, a bookseller, a publisher, a librarian, an editor or any individual with a business interest in promoting the goals and purposes of Sisters in Crime, Inc. The annual dues for Professional members: $40.

An Active member may be a fan, a reader or any member who does not have a business interest in promoting the goals and purposes of Sisters in Crime, Inc. The annual dues for Active members: $35.

Both membership categories have access to a range of membership benefits, such as:

• Local and Internet-based chapters (including an Internet chapter for members of all interests and a chapter that provides support and critique group options for unpublished members)

• A national members-only listserv that offers an ongoing online conversation – and special guests for “Ask the Experts” sessions on “Mentor Mondays”

• SinCLinks, a monthly digest of industry news from a range of sources

• The inSinC Quarterly, the Sisters in Crime news bulletin

• Access to the annual SinC Publishers’ Summit Reports
  

• An author-finder listing at www.sistersincrime.org

• Access to the SinC book club database

• Reports from the on-going SinC review monitoring project that watches media coverage to quantify the coverage of authors by gender
  

• Advance members-only access to SinC-published books on writing and other professional development topics, including Breaking and Entering: The Road to Success and Shameless Promotion for Brazen Hussies.

• Grants for special events

• Special conference programs/member discounts

• Networking and mentoring opportunities -- and fun

To pay your dues, go to SistersinCrime.org, look under the “Quick Links” menu on the right hand side of the Home page, select “Renew” and follow the prompts to renew your membership. You may also click here to renew.

We hope you’ll continue your journey in the world of mystery and crime fiction as a member of Sisters in Crime.

Write Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

By J. J. Murphy

I’ve always been outnumbered. I was the only boy in a family with four girls. I now have a wife and twin daughters, so my dog and I represent the male minority of our female-majority family.

For the last few years, I’ve been one of only a couple of men in the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. I’m a Mister with an overwhelming number of wonderful Sisters.

When I decided to write a mystery, it was natural to pick a female protagonist. (And not just any female protagonist, but legendary writer and wisecracker Dorothy Parker. More on her in a minute.)

But here’s the interesting thing: My choice to use a female protagonist was not only a creative decision but also a “business” one. Why? Because women read mysteries, and women readers naturally prefer women protagonists. If I was going to get published, I reasoned, I had to find a female sleuth.

But here’s something I didn’t count on: My editor asked me to use a “gender neutral” name. Huh?

“We don’t want anyone to have to think twice when they’re considering whether to buy your book,” she explained. And women readers might think twice about buying a book written by a man but featuring a woman.

All righty! Whatever it takes to get published, I thought. I’ll be a woman. I’ll be a platypus, if that’s what it takes.

We settled on using my initials. (Call me J.J.! I’m in good company. On Sunday mornings I get together for coffee with J.D. Robb and J.K. Rowling. And then I wake up.)

Now I face something else I didn’t count on: I’m lumped into the mystery subgenre of “cozies,” a category largely ignored by the literati and book reviewing powers-that-be. Meanwhile, it feels like James Patterson and Tom Clancy can pump out a book a week, which gets instant best-seller status, prime positioning in the book store, reviews in every newspaper, and an option for the movie rights.

What’s up with that? What separates those big boys from us? Our frilly book covers and lack of violence (and heightened vocabularies), that’s what.

Again, we’re in good company. My gal Dorothy Parker faced the same problem daily. She was one of the only women accepted into the boys’ club that was the Algonquin Round Table. (You know Dorothy Parker. Even if you don’t know Dorothy Parker, you do know her. She coined such phrases as “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”)

We can take courage from Dorothy. She matched wits with guys from the Ivy League, yet she never went to college — never even graduated from high school. Now, 90 years later, she’s the most well-known of the members of the Algonquin Round Table. (Can you name any others?) Her collected works have never gone out of print.

So, I’m fine being a woman. I’m honored to count myself as a Sister. Just don’t ask to borrow my size 13 high heels.

And speaking of Dorothy Parker, which current actress would you select to play her in a movie? Vote here: http://www.roundtablemysteries.com/cast_the_movie.html.


Top photo: J. J. Murphy and spouse at the launch of Murder Your Darlings.
Bottom photo: A young Dorothy Parker.


J. J. Murphy is an award-winning health care writer in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Murder Your Darlings, a humorous historical mystery featuring Dorothy Parker, a dead body under the famed Algonquin round table and New York in the Roaring 20s. For more information on J. J., go to www.roundtablemysteries.com.

Blogging Bouchercon, Part 1

Greetings mystery lovers!

I'm Jon Jordan and I'm hosting this year's Bouchercon in St. Louis.

I've been a fan of the convention for a long time. I thought it would be nice to pay it forward and so, along with David Thompson, I decided to put in a bid. As you may know, David passed along last September. And while he can't be replaced, I'm making an effort to fill his shoes by bringing in a lot of people to help out.

A big part of the convention is the panel sessions. This year's panels will be put together by Judy Bobalik and my wife, Ruth Jordan. (Contact info here: http://bouchercon2011.com/programming.php)

To be considered for a panel, you of course need to be registered. We're also asking people to fill out a short questionnaire to make it easier to place folks on panels.

Many people seem to get into a comfortable zone when doing panels, always doing the same type with the same people. Our hope is to mix it up a bit and, hopefully, expose fans to authors they haven't read yet -- and expose authors to fans they may not have reached yet. Just because you may write books involving a lawyer, that doesn't mean there may not be other panels for you to do.

Judy and I have put together panels for a number of Bouchercons and have helped with other conventions as well. What this means is that we've heard a lot of feedback from fans -- and Judy, Ruth and I are getting really good at this.

We make an effort to play to individual strengths, but we also want people to do something a little different if possible. If you are on a panel, but at first glance aren't sure why, trust us, there is a reason. It's our hope to put panelists on a panel that will entertain the fans and bring new readers to authors.

Not everyone will get a panel; there are just too many authors signing up these days for Bouchercon for us to place everyone. Because of this, we will also be doing a number of craft sessions and the 20-on-the-20. To increase your chances, it helps to be available for all four days of Bouchercon. The more available you are, the better the chance of us finding a place for you.

I know that not all authors love the early morning panels -- but you know what? The fans are there and ready to go.

We know that authors love being on panels and we try to put as many authors on panels as we can. But panels aren't the only reason to come to Bouchercon. The sheer volume of attendees means connecting with fans, booksellers, other authors and any number of other people in the biz.

To sum up, I guess what I'm saying is that the panels are a big part of this, but don't hang your success at Bouchercon on a 50-minute panel you share with four or five other people. There's a lot more to it! Bouchercon is about celebrating the mystery genre, and we hope you'll be celebrating with us!


Photo: Jon and Ruth Jordan.


Jon Jordan is the publisher of Crimespree Magazine and the host of Bouchercon 2011. In the coming months, he will be "Blogging Bouchercon" on the SinC blog. For more information on Bouchercon, see http://bouchercon2011.com/. Jon can be reached at Jon@bouchercon2011.com.

Two More SinC Library Grants Awarded

The Folsom Public Library in Folsom, California, and the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Library in Goldsboro, North Carolina, are the most recent winners of the Sisters in Crime “We Love Libraries!” book-buying lottery.

Each library was given $1,000 for the purchase of books of any kind for the library collection.

To date, the SinC “We Love Libraries!” project has awarded $1,000 to 14 libraries in the U.S. The library lottery program began in January 2010.

To Participate

Libraries may participate by completing the online entry form at www.sistersincrime.org and uploading a photo of one or more staff members with three books in the library's collection written by Sisters in Crime members. A list of SinC author members can be found by clicking here.

At the end of each month, a library winner will be selected in a random drawing from the entries submitted online. Libraries must be located within the United States to be eligible to participate in the program.

Only one entry per library is required. Once the entry is on file with Sisters in Crime, it will remain active in the lottery selection process for the duration of the program.

Previous Winners

The 2010 “We Love Libraries!” winners include:

The Kingstowne Branch of the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library in Alexandria, Virginia (January 2010)
The Kraemer Family Library, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado (February 2010)
The Pineville-Bell County Library in Pineville, Kentucky (March 2010)
The Cresco Public Library in Cresco, Iowa (April 2010)
The Seminole County Public Library in Casselberry, Florida (May 2010)
The Bartram Trail Regional Library in Washington, Georgia (June 2010)
The Newton Falls Public Library in Newton Falls, Ohio (July 2010)
The St. Joseph Township-Swearingen Memorial Library in St. Joseph, Illinois (August 2010)
The Yuma County Library District in Yuma, Arizona (September 2010)
The Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts (October 2010)
The Lenox Township Library in New Haven, Michigan (November 2010)

Your Own Library Donations

And while we’re thinking about books for libraries:

Have you donated money or books for library circulation?
Do you have any tips to offer on the subject?