When I was at the library last night I picked up a round robin mystery called The Sunken Sailor. I haven't started reading it yet but it's set in an English village between WWI & WWII. Authors are Simon Brett, Jan Burke, Margaret Coel, Deborah Crombie, Eileen Dreyer, Carolyn Hart, Edward Marston, Francine Mathews, Sharan Newman, Alexandra Ripley, Walter Satterthwait, Sarah Smith and Carolyn Wheat. I've read books by some, not all of the writers that participated. Anyway, the writers are members of Malice Domestic.

Salon's lead feature today is an interview with Alan Moore.

Beware! There are Watchmen spoilers. I advise those who haven't read it to skip the paragraph on the first page beginning

Similarly, "Watchmen," Moore's groundbreaking serial that blew the comics genre wide open

and the first question and answer on the fifth page.

Yes, it's old, and no, it doesn't give away the villain, but part of the enjoyment of reading it came from not knowing what was going on, and I wouldn't want people to have that experience tainted.

too late. :-(

Good article, though.

That was a terrific article. Thanks for posting it, joe.

Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha! Le Roi en Juane is MINE! And, appropriate to the subject matter, I had to get up at 5 am to seal the deal due to transatlantic time differences. Soon, I will have an excuse for all my eccentricities...

PLEASE keep us posted. I am agog that a French original exists.

Or so the "translator" says. While I suppose it's possible that Chambers got the name from an actual obscure play he came across in his art school days in Paris, it's far more likely that Ryng is a big genre fangeek and wrote his own version of the play like James Blish did, using the conceit that it's a translation of the original found version as a marketing tool. Certainly I've found no historical basis for a flap over the publication of such in 19th century Europe, as the short stories indicated.

Whatever the case, the near impossibility of tracking down a copy of a 500 print run limited edition from a press that went out of business made it challenging and fun enough to be worth the price. I look forward to seeing how Ryng's version differs from the ones Blish and Lin Carter wrote.

I was in Borders today, and there was a couple looking at the Summer Reading selections, trying to find books to read, and for their teenage kids to read. And I single-handedly convinced the woman to buy Anagrams and pushed her towards Slaughterhouse-Five and got her intrigued by Ella Minnow Pea, though I'm not sure whether she ended up getting it. And I pushed the man to 1984 and made a sale off Einstein's Dreams. And their kids will soon discover the wonder and brilliance of Edward Eager's Half Magic. All because of me.

It was odd; they were just looking for books. Something to read, you know? And they weren't voracious book-readers, as evinced by the woman's being impressed at how many of the books I'd read, so somehow, they were willing to take the recommendations of a stranger who sounded like he knew what he was talking about. There's something about this dynamic that's interesting and worth exploring, but I'm not feeling intellectual enough to truly analyze it, just make the observation.

Salon is publishing a Sean Steward novel in. . . what do you call it? Serial form? Perfect Circle is the title, there are three chapters up.