For your Agatha consideration

My nominated short story, "The Night Things Changed," is here.

Thanks for your consideration!

"The Night Things Changed" nominated for an Agatha!

The Malice Domestic Agatha nominations were announced today, and I’m proud, shocked, humbled, delighted—did I say shocked?—to tell you that “The Night Things Changed,” in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, was nominated for Best Short Story.

I'm honored to find myself in such company. The other nominees are:

"Killing Time" by Jane Cleland, Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine - November 2008
"Dangerous Crossing" by Carla Coupe, Chesapeake Crimes 3 (Wildside Press)
"Skull & Cross Examination" by Toni Kelner, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - February 2008
"A Nice Old Guy" by Nancy Pickard, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2008

And in the other categories:

Best Novel:
Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (St. Martin's Minotaur)
A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (St. Martin's Press)
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)
I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel:
Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (St. Martin's Press)
Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
Paper, Scissors, Death by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co.)

Best Children's/Young Adult:
Into the Dark by Peter Abrahams (Harper Collins)
A Thief in the Theater (A Kit Mystery) by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishers)
The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Children's Books)
The Great Circus Train Robbery by Nancy Means Wright (Hilliard & Harris)

Thanks to everyone for your support!

(And I thought it was going to be a good day because I had apple-cinnamon pancakes for breakfast!)

Sorry, TSE: February is the cruelest month

It’s been too long since I swung by here. I blame the groundhogs. They must be writers, because they’re all saying “put me down, put me down, turn those cameras off and let me retreat to my burrow so I can work!” Or perhaps I’m projecting. It’s been a busy winter.

I’ve been working on a first draft of my first Fangborn novel (which my faithful first readers are critiquing, even as we speak). This is based on the characters and situations from my short story, “The Night Things Changed,” which appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by the wonderful Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. That was a lot of fun—and a lot of work. With nonfiction, you are constrained by the data (but there are data there to get you started). With fiction, you have no constraints (but you have to create your characters whole cloth, even if you are writing something very close to RL). With fantastic or speculative fiction, you may not even have the constraints of biology or physics, so there’s a lot of marble to create, before you can start sculpting it (as one of my writing teachers once said).

Since the holidays, I’ve been doing a lot writing. And a lot of shoveling and I had the nasty cold that was going around here. Traditional New England winter fare. On the happier side, I recently had a great visit with the amazing SJ Rozan, while she was up thisaway promoting Shanghai Moon. I’ve been reading some books about Greek archaeology and touring. But mostly writing.

I can’t read OPF (other people’s fiction) while I’m writing. I get worried that I’ll be intimidated and that will keep me from work. So I read a lot of nonfiction, and save the fiction for vacations, travel time, and the brief moments in between projects. But what I do indulge in is marathons sessions of watching serialized dramas. I don’t know why watching amazing TV writing doesn’t derail me the same way as the printed forms, and since I still require distraction and amusement, preferably in the form of a fictional narrative, I turn to my DVDs and On Demand. So we’ve been consuming the whole of Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Rome, Firefly, and reviewing True Blood. May even turn to I, Claudius, once we finish Rome (Rome ends, quite sensibly, where I, Claudius begins), but that will take me well into spring. I hope to be out and about before then. Stupid ground hog.

Tell me, please: how do you get through the long, evil tail-end of winter, when there are not even hints of lilacs?

Hallie Ephron visits the Femmes Fatales

Swing on over to the Femmes Fatales' blog to check out Hallie Ephron's guest post. It's all about her fabulous new book, Never Tell A Lie.