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  You're invited
to attend the official publication party of a new
anthology of short stories -- ONCE UPON A CRIME
at 7 PM Thursday, August 27 at, you
guessed it, Once Upon A Crime Bookstore, 604 W. 26th Street in Minneapolis
(1/2 block east of Lyndale). Call 612-870-3785. Refreshments will be served.
Once Upon A Crime is both a tribute and a labor of love for the wonderful
mystery bookstore that bares its name as well as for Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze,
the booksellers who own it. It features 24 stories by myself and some of the
finest crime writers in the business - C.J. Box, Michael Stanley, Libby Fischer
Hellmann, Gary Phillips, Anne Fraser, Pat Dennis, Pete Hautman, Chris Everheart,
William Kent Krueger, Lori Lake, Gary R. Bush, Reed Farrel Coleman, Mary Logue,
Lois Greiman, Terri Persons, Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins, Sujata Massey
and S.J. Rozan with an introduction by Vince Flynn.
Other Events
You can find me promoting the anthology as well as my own books at the following
locations:
Noon Thursday, Sept. 10 - Barnes and Noble Bookstore at 801 Nicollet Mall
in downtown Minneapolis. Call 612-371-4443.
7 PM Thursday, Sept. 10 - South St. Paul Public Library at 106 3rd Avenue North
in South St. Paul, MN. Call 651-0554-3240.
7 PM Tuesday, Sept. 15 - Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the Har-Mar Mall at
2100 North Snelling Ave in Roseville, MN. (Anne Fraser will be joining me.) Call 651-639-9256.
9:30 AM Saturday, Oct. 10 - Twin Cities Book Festival at the Minneapolis
Community and Technical College, 1501 Hennepin Avenue South, in downtown Minneapolis.
6:30 PM Tuesday, Oct. 13 - Monticello Public Library at 200 West 6th Street
in Monticello, MN. Call 763-295-2322.
I've been renewed!
My good friends at
St. Martin's Minotaur has agreed
to extend my contract for another two more books - which means you can now
look for new McKenzie novels in May 2010, 2011 and 2012.
I'll teach you everything
I know about writing a novel. Most
people will tell you that should take about 20 minutes, but we've managed to
stretch it into 12 two-hour sessions at the Loft Literary Center in downtown
Minneapolis. Times are 1 - 3 PM Tuesdays, Jan. 26 - April 19, 2010. The
course will explore the elements that make up a well-written novel - idea generation,
plotting, structure, character development, dialogue, setting, point of view, and
research - through lectures, assigment critique and in-class writing exercises.
Particular attention will be paid to turning "real-life" events into stories with
a bite. And we'll also spend some time on the publishing process. For more
information contact the Loft at 612/215-2575 or visit
www.loft/org.
What do I read next?
According to Mary Lou Metzger, program
specialist and librarian at Sterling Heights Public Library in Sterling Heights,
Michigan, it's the Rushmore McKenzie and Holland Taylor mystery series. Her
email reports that both series will be included in the SHPL's upcoming What Do I
Read Next, Mystery III program. She says the books are "hot ticket items." Yowzer!
Check out
www.SHLP.net for details.
A Chair For Me?
It's true. Because they say I have visitied their
store more often than any other author, Jo Gilbertson and the good folks at Barnes
and Nobel in Eden Prairie, MN (3000 Eden Prairie Center) have tagged a very nice,
blond-wood chair with the name "House" in my honor. They pull it out for me every
time I'm there. How cool is that?
A historical note.
The Anoka County Historical Society
here in snowy Minnesota has recommended Tin City
to readers during I Love To Read Month at the Anoka County Library (that
would be February for those scoring at home). After spending several paragraphs
praising the book, it concludes "While certainly not in the class of a book like
War And Peace, Tin City is fun and set among places we all know" -
which is true enough, I guess.
Another historical note.
Mary Anne Grossman of the St. Paul
Pioneer Press has listed Tin City among her Top Ten Mysteries written
by Minnesota Authors in 2005. So I have that going for me.
Hooray for Hollywood.
Empire Pictures, an independent
production house, has purchased the film rights to my novel
Practice To Deceive.
These are the good folks who brought
you Barry Levinson's film Bandits starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and
Cate Blanchette and who released The Big White starring Robin Williams,
Holly Hunter and Woody Harrelson. I'm afraid I can't give you any more details
at this time, but watch for an announcement soon in Variety and
Hollywood Reporter.
Jabbo and Me.
That's
the title of a brief memoir I wrote for the Feb./March edition of
Crime Spree Magazine. It tells the tale of how as a young man
I met the great Jabbo Smith and became a jazz fan for life. You might also be
interested in a brief sidebar I added which features a list of eight classic jazz
albums from my personal collection. These are not necessarily my best albums nor
my favorite. But if you don't like these, you don't like jazz. The articles
will accompany a much longer piece exploring the birth of jazz by mystery author
David Fulmer (JASS).
A man of mystery.
That's what my high school alma
mater - Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota - calls me in the Fall 2004
issue of Traditions Magazine. Which was awfully nice of them considering
all the silliness if perpetrated when I went there.
I'm still looking for
a home for THE DEVIL AND THE DIVA,
a novel my wife, writer and theater critic Reneé Valois, and I completed
recently. It's a romantic adventure mystery fantasy thriller that follows the
trials and tribulations of a plucky nightclub singer who is being pursued by a
shadowy international crime syndicate that wants to use her voice in one of its
schemes and her protector, an enigmatic man known as "the demon" - among other
things - who hides his face behind a black mask. There are sword fights, dungeons,
secret passageways, smoky jazz joints, spies, chases through the Minneapolis
skyway system, gunplay over the ice flows of Lake Superior, ex-Nazis longing for
the good old days, Viet Cong guerrillas turned entrepreneurs, voodoo-practicing
Haitians, urbane crime lords who collect 1920's gangster paraphernalia, and
ghosts. It's exciting and great fun and we have high hopes for it.
It's a great honor
to learn that my novel
Penance (that's the one that
earned the Edgar in '96) is being taught in the mystery writing class at the
Roseville Area High School in Roseville, Minnesota (where I now live).
Be sure to visit
my friends at Once Upon A Crime
bookstore for the latest titles.
e-mail David Housewright
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