The heart wants what it wants, Woody Allen said, and to J. R. Ackerley, the English memoirist and editor, it was Queenie. She was everything he wanted in a lover. She was also a German shepherd. For 30 years, the Cambridge-educated Ackerley (1896-1967) was a cultural gatekeeper at the BBC. As literary editor of the […]
What’s this? Sherlock Holmes turning Japanese? Is this cultural appropriation? If it is (and I don’t care to be honest), it’s done right. Introduced in September on HBO Go (but also found on YouTube, at least for now), “Miss Sherlock” (8 episodes) reimagines Conan Doyle’s duo as women sharing a flat in Tokyo. The recipe […]
A few years back, Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin created the Dead Man world and let a number of great writers play in their horror series. They were pretty nifty shockers, definitely R-rated, and I enjoyed them a lot. When Kindle Worlds opened, they let other writers join in, and I contributed “Hell’s Casino.” I […]
As y’all know, I have a pash for Dorothy L. Sayers. She is one of my favorite mystery writers. While I haven’t been keeping up with the Wimsey Annotations as I should (I have been trying as of late, but that is another post), people still seem to find it useful. But she was not […]
Agatha Christie seems to be undergoing a mini-revival of sorts. Last year, we had Kenneth Branaugh’s all-star version of “Murder on the Orient Express” (in my top 2 of OE movies, vying neck-and-neck with David Suchet’s). We saw this in the theater, because that’s the best way to tell Hollywood to bring us more movies […]
Mixing business with pleasure, we attended the Scintillation of Scions 2018 at a hotel near the BWI airport recently. Rather than drive down Saturday from Hershey, Teresa and I elected to spend the night at the hotel. This gave us a chance to scout out the location and meet some of the Sherlockians who will […]
Going to festivals can give you ideas about how best to market, brand, and sell your books. Think about it: There are a hundred storefronts vying for your attention and your money. How do they present themselves? I could see this last weekend at the Hershey Culturefest. There were probably a dozen vendors selling jewelry. […]
Saturday was a long day. We hauled out the canopy, the books, the catalogs, and the cookies and drove to downtown for Hershey Culturefest 2018. This was the first show run by the historical group after they split with the downtown merchants group last year. I told you about the Artfest and flower show in […]
We’re spending today getting ready for the first Hershey CultureFest. Teresa spent the week sewing the logo on two shirts, supervised by the now-recovered cat Olga. Later this evening, I’ll move the books, canopy, and other equipment from the basement to the living room, then get the car loaded for the first trip. This year, […]
The separation between the two Hershey groups that ran the Art on Chocolate festival gave vendors the opportunity this year to attend two festivals. First up was Hershey Artfest 2018, run by Hershey Derry Twp. Historical Society over Mother’s Day weekend. Held the same weekend as previous Art on Chocolates, Artfest faced the same threat […]