Today in Mystery History in EQMM

Bill Crider is a wonderful writer and an all-around nice guy. This is the first paragraph of his Blog Bytes column in the latest Ellery Queen's: "Since this is the January/February issue of EQMM, it's time to think of calendars and to remind you of Rob Lopresti's Today in Mystery History. It was updated only intermittently toward the end of 2016, but perhaps it will return to its regular daily schedule in 2017. You'll find authors' birthdays, dates of first publication of famous crime stories and novels, dates well-known crime movies opened, and more. That's the kind of trivia that's hard to resist."

Black Orchid Memories

At Trace Evidence, the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine blog, they asked winners of the Black Orchid Novella Award to tell what they remember about the event.  I am proud to be included.

Jaffalogue Shows Good Taste

Just spotted a review of "Street of the Dead House" on Jaffalogue's site.

This clever tale re-imagines the Rue Morgue [“Street of the Dead House” in sign language] from the POV of the orangutan. And while in Poe’s original, the ape is a brute. Here, the intelligent creature has been trained like Koko and yet plays dumb...

Some interesting thinking here about my tale.

I move to Great Jones Street

There is a new app that wants to be your "Spotify for stories."  Lots of great stories for your Kindle or Android.  Among them are two of mine: "The Present" and "Crow's Feat."  Free, at least for now.  Try it out at Great Jones Street.

The best comes home.

Got my copy yesterday.  My "Street of the Dead House" shares pages with Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Kathryn Kristine Rusch, Art Taylor, Evan Lewis and a lot of other cool folks.  First time I have ever been reprinted in a  mystery collection of any kind in English.

Publishers Weekly shows "Street" Smarts

"Short story fans will find much to enjoy in series editor Otto Penzler’s highly readable 20th annual best-of anthology."  So begins Publishers Weekly's review of Best American Mystery Stories 2016.  And just like Kirkus yesterday, they pick my "Street of the Dead House" as one of the highlights.  

Thank you, Edgar Allan Poe, Nancy Kilpatrick, Caro Sole, Elizabeth George, Otto Penzler, and NPR's quiz show Says You, which is where I got the idea.

Kirkus likes my orang-outang

The first notice I have seen of Best American Mystery Stories 2016 is in Kirkus Reviews.  They like it: "There isn’t enough Xanax in anyone’s medicine cabinet to calm the jitters these 20 skillful stories will unleash on a worried world."

And in commenting on their favorites in the book the anonymous reviewer says: "Robert Lopresti’s 'Street of the Dead House' shows that even for the supposedly lower species, the ultimate escape isn’t from imprisonment but from the mystery of one’s own mind."  Yeah, what he/she said.