A Weekly Roundup - and Input Requested

Wow! Where in the world did August go? It seems to have just zoomed by. The days are getting shorter again, which means the cold weather is just around the corner. I saw some leaves turning colors, and I was stopped by the school bus twice this past week on the way to work. It wouldn't be bad if the stop was ONCE, but no, it's about 5 times in less than 50 yards. The bus usually has 20-30 cars lined up behind it before it turns off that main road. I didn't miss the school buses over summer. Going to have to leave about 5 or 10 minutes earlier again so I can have a better shot at beating the bus now.

In book news, however! This was a fun week with another great six-word memoir round-up and a guest post on "Madcap Noir." And this week the visitor counter topped 19,000. That's amazing to me. After year #1 of Jen's Book Thoughts it hadn't quite hit 5,000. So, yes, I'm doing the requisite little happy dance over here in Lorain, Ohio. But there's fun stuff going on elsewhere that I'd like to tell you about, too.

My friend Corey over at The Drowning Machine has announced a crime fiction short story contest called "The Watery Grave Invitational". And he's rustled up some big time judges for this contest, too. So, all you writers make sure you hustle over to Corey's blog and find out the details to enter your short stories!

I know it may seem like a long way off, but the blog for Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis is live now. I, of course, am already making plans for this one since Robert Crais will be one of the guests of honor! The hosts include David Thompson and Jon Jordan; I have a feeling it will be a hoppin' time in St. Louis Sept. 15-18, 2011!

I've started to hear rumblings about panel assignments for Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis, so if you've been assigned a panel, let me know so I can start making out my plan. Since this is my first B'Con, I'm a little obsessive! ;)

Also don't forget that Tim Hallinan is going to be in Westerville at FOUL PLAY Bookstore on September 23rd. I hope you'll make plans to come out if you are in the vicinity. I'll look forward to seeing you there!

This week has also been full of Book Blogger Appreciation Week work. I will again be participating in the blogger interview exchange, so I'm getting to work on that. I'm working on one of the award panels and that's keeping me busy. I submitted my links for my own award nominations. That was a killer! I appreciate all the input people gave me on what posts they most enjoyed. It helped me a lot; I discovered that trying to pick your favorite posts is like trying to pick your favorite child! Again, I thank all of you who submitted nominations for me. I'm not really expecting the nominations to turn into me being on all the short lists - there are a lot of great blogs nominated. It's an honor just to receive a nomination. Thank you.

Thanks also to everyone who voted for Hershey and Nestle in the Dog Days of Summer photo contest. Hershey managed to snag 2nd place and Nestle got 3rd. The two of them together actually had 50% of the votes. Maybe I should have found a picture of them together, huh? Literate Housewife, Jennifer, did an awesome job on coordinating the theme week. And she planted some seeds in my little brain as well.

And finally on tap for today is a question for you all. I've been doing author interviews for about a year now. I enjoy doing the interviews and hope to keep highlighting fun crime fiction writers for you. So, I'd like to know what kinds of questions you enjoy hearing responses for. A lot of the questions I develop have to do with my own curiosity. But what types of things are you curious about? Are there questions I seem to have stopped asking that you'd like me to fit back in? Are their questions I ask that you couldn't care less about? What peaks your interest? You can leave your responses in the comments section or you can always feel free to email me.

And I think that's about all I have for today. Hope your weekend is a great one, and happy reading!!

Bouchercon countdown: 47 days!!