Crooked Prayers comes out next week (Wednesday March 16th!) and I’m neck deep in publishing prep. This means I am not writing, at least as much as I’d like to normally. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. After spending a solid year on Crooked Prayers, I needed a break.

Here is a good quote from poet May Sarton on the importance of rest:

“I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.”

Here are 3 crime fiction links, 2 quotes, and 1 question for this week:

3 LINKS

• True crime is having both a moment and a bit of a crises. Are authors and readers getting royalties and entertainment at the expense of the victims and giving the killers more notoriety? It’s a murky moral area but there are true crime books using that attention for the better. Cristina Rivera Garza wanted to shed light on the life of her sister, killed 30 years ago. Her book, part of a larger call for justice by women in Mexico, helped locate the suspect.
  
  
• I am a big audiobook fan and the COVID era has only spurred that fandom to new heights. The annual audie awards were handed out this past week. Do you agree with the winners in the mystery, thriller, and suspense categories?.
  
  
• Because I will watch anything Hitchcock, here’s a supercut of all the myraid times that Hitchcock used stairs in a scene from his more than 50 years of movie-making.

2 QUOTES

Quotes from Alfred Hitchcock this week:

• “Never Climb A Fence If You Can Sit On It.”

• “Intelligence. Nothing Has Caused The Human Race So Much Trouble As Intelligence.”

1 QUESTION

• Are you a Hitchcock fan? What is your least favorite Hitchcock film?

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Until next Thursday, happy reading,

Mike

Author the Max Strong thriller series