Stairway to the Bottom is now available on Kindle. Be the first in your neighborhood to have a copy! Please let me know what you like or dislike after reading it.
Thanks,
Michael
www.michaelhaskins.net.

My friend, mystery writer Mel Talyor

Deep Trouble

By Mel Taylor.

My friend Mel Taylor and I share more than just writing mysteries. We both have worked for ABC-TV and are members of Mystery Writers of America. And we're news  junkies!  Mel’s collection of three short stories is available on Kindle. His other books are available on Amazon. If you like a good mystery, from a writer who has covered South Florida for TV and knows what he writes about, these three are for you.

Double Trouble

A fishing trip takes a deadly turn. A murder on a deserted island. And a showdown in a courtroom that takes a twist. Those are the elements in three short stories set in South Florida in the collection from Fort Lauderdale author Mel Taylor. Mel is the author of two mystery novels from Avalon Publishing, Murder by Deadline and Encounter by Deadline. 

Edgar Award nominees . . . Children & books . . .

While Dec. 2008 found me busy and not blogging here are some interesting things (I think), My book "Chasin' the Wind" sold out of its first printing and I am waiting to hear if it will go into a second printing. My sequel, "Free Range Institution" is at the publishers and, agian, I am waiting to see if Five Star buys it.
Though I was not nominated for an Edgar, here are those lucky enough to be:

The 2009 Edgar® Award Nominees are...
Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce, as it celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television and film published or produced in 2008. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at our 63rd Gala Banquet, April 30, 2009 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

BEST NOVEL
Missing by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Night Following by Morag Joss (Random House – Delacorte Press)
Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
The Kind One by Tom Epperson (Five Star, div of Cengage)
Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (Hyperion)
The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)
Calumet City by Charlie Newton (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock (Random House - Doubleday)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
The Prince of Bagram by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney (Random House - Dell)
China Lake by Meg Gardiner (New American Library – Obsidian Mysteries)
The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli (Random House - Bantam)

BEST FACT CRIME
For The Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz (HarperCollins)
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum (Crown Publishers)
Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It To The Revolution by T.J. English (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Hans van Meegeren by Jonathan Lopez (Harcourt)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Company)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Company)
Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories by Leonard Cassuto (Columbia University Press)
Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction by David Geherin (McFarland & Company)
The Rise of True Crime by Jean Murley (Greenwood Publishing – Praeger)E
dgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Sterling Publishing – Metro Books)

BEST SHORT STORY
"A Sleep Not Unlike Death" - Hardcore Hardboiled by Sean Chercover (Kensington Publishing)"Skin and Bones" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by David Edgerley Gates (Dell Magazines)
"Scratch of a Woman" - Hardly Knew Her by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
"La Vie en Rose" - Paris Noir by Dominique Mainard (Akashic Books"Skinhead Central"
"The Blue Religion by T. Jefferson Parker (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown and Company)

BEST JUVENILE
The Postcard by Tony Abbott (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Enigma: A Magical Mystery by Graeme Base (Abrams Books for Young Readers)Eleven by Patricia Reilly Giff (Random House Children's Books – Wendy Lamb Books)
The Witches of Dredmoore Hollow by Riford McKenzie (Marshall Cavendish Children's Books)Cemetary Street by Brenda Seabrooke (Holiday House)

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd (Random House Children's Books – David Fickling Books)
The Big Splash by Jack D. Ferraiolo (Harry N. Abrams Books – Amulet Books)
Paper Towns by John Green (Penguin Young Readers Group – Dutton Children's Books)
Getting the Girl by Susan Juby (HarperCollins Children's Books - HarperTeen)
Torn to Pieces by Margo McDonnell (Random House Children's Books – Delacorte Books for Young Readers)

BEST PLAY
The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza (Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the story by Robert Lewis Stevenson (Arizona Theatre Company)
Cell by Judy Klass (International Mystery Writers' Festival)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
"Streetwise" – Law & Order: SVU, Teleplay by Paul Grellong (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)
"Prayer of the Bone" – Wire in the Blood, Teleplay by Patrick Harbinson (BBC America)
"Signature" – Law & Order: SVU, Teleplay by Judith McCreary (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)
"You May Now Kill the Bride" – CSI: Miami, Teleplay by Barry O'Brien (CBS)
"Burn Card" – Law & Order, Teleplay by David Wilcox (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)

BEST MOTION PICTURE SCREENPLAY
The Bank Job, Screenplay by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais (Lionsgate)
Burn After Reading, Screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (Focus Features)
In Bruges, Screenplay by Martin McDonagh (Focus Features)
Tell No One, Screenplay by Guillaume Canet, based on the book by Harlan Coben (Music Box Films)
Transsiberian, Screenplay by Brad Anderson & Will Conroy (First Look International)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD
"Buckner's Error" - Queens Noir by Joseph Guglielmelli (Akashic Books)

GRAND MASTERS
James Lee BurkeSue Grafton

RAVEN AWARDS
Edgar Allan Poe Society, Baltimore, MarylandPoe House, Baltimore, Maryland

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton (St. Martin's Minotaur)
The Killer's Wife by Bill Floyd (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer (Random House - Doubleday)
A Song for You by Betsy Thornton (St. Martin's Minotaur)
The Fault Tree by Louise Ure (St. Martin's Minotaur)

The Book: 'Still the Best Transportation Device'
"Well, I own a bookstore, and when kids come into contact with books, I see them loving them. But I think we have to be a little more passionate about getting books to children--which includes putting books in our own hands. I see a lot of parents not reading, but instead spending hours and hours on computers. It sends a strong message to kids that books are not important. The book is still the best transportation device to take us through time, to new worlds and ideas. Once you've tasted it, it's hard to give it up. I think we just need to give kids more opportunities to taste it."--Peter H. Reynolds, children's author and illustrator, co-owner of the Blue Bunny bookstore, Dedham, Mass., and co-founder of educational media firm FableVision, in a Boston Globe interview.

Al Roker's new pick for the Today Show Book Club for Kids is Change Has Come, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, with the words of Barack Obama (S&S, $12.99, 9781416989554/1416989552). The text consists of excerpts from speeches Obama has given, including his 2004 keynote at the Democratic National Convention and the election-night speech last November 4.

Cool Idea of the Day: on ReadKiddoRead.com, James Patterson and librarian expert Judy Freeman list their favorite children's books, "the ones that leave kids wanting more and more to read." The site includes a blogging community, interviews with authors such as Julie Andrews, Jeff Kinney and Rick Riordan, an "almost can't-miss sure shot books for boys" section and online resources for adults.

Friday's Forgotten Book

(When Patti Abbott asked me to write a blog about a book I thought had been forgotten, it didn’t take me but a nanosecond to know what book it would be about. When I pulled it off the bookshelf, I realized I couldn’t explain it without going into explanation of the author, because the book affected my teenage years and the author a good part of the rest of my life.)

Writer Dennis Lynds had many claims to fame in his lifetime; being one of the most prolific writers in America has to be the one that will remain on the record books for years to come.

If you are new to the mystery genre, the name may not be recognizable. But Dennis wrote under many names, the most popular being Michael Collins, the creator of the Dan Fortune series, but there were others: William Arden, John Crowe, Mark Sadler, to name only a few.

I discovered Dennis Lynds while I was a senior in high school and his book, UPTOWN DOWNTOWN, Signet Paperback 1963, had just come out and it affected the direction my life would take. It was the early ‘60s, the beginning of the end of the Beat Generation and the first inkling of the hippie movement and time of teenage angst.

UPTOWN DOWNTOWN is a story about Dave Garber, an up-and-coming executive in NYC, but at night another Dave Garber emerges, one who strums a guitar in Village bars, frequents free-and-easy parties in dim, beatnik attics.

The book fully portrays that time when writers and artists, experiments in drugs and sex and jazz, were all mixed together and you had an enthusiasm for life and living that was dying a slow death. It mirrored my weekend trips to coffeehouses on Beacon Hill in Boston.

UPTOWN DOWNTOWN influenced my decisions at the time, because I wanted to be a writer and part of a living movement, even if it was fading from the mainstream. The dropout attitude of the hippies held no appeal, where the live-life-to-the-fullest mantra of Dave Garber and the Beats did. The weekend coffeehouse-poetry readings I attended were right out of UPTOWN DOWNTOWN and I latched onto the tail end of beatnik movement, and dropped into life instead of dropping out.

Almost 20-years later I met Michael Collins at the mid-March writers social hosted by The Mysterious Bookstore in Beverly Hills – since then, it has moved to Westwood and no longer holds the social because it conflicts with other literary events in LA. I was a fan and asked to have my Dan Fortune books signed. We got to talking and I discovered Michael Collins was really Dennis Lynds; I did not connect the man and UPTOWN DOWNTOWN at the time. I did guess that he took the name Michael Collins because of the Irish rebel and leader in the rebellion against the English in 1916 and he laughed and said, “Yes, that’s why I took the name.”

We became friends and Dennis was always supportive of my writing. We attended Mystery Writer of America, SoCal, meetings and socials at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in the San Fernando Valley, often sitting in the bar afterward. When I discovered why the name Dennis Lynds sounded familiar, I told him and got a thank you and a smile.

Dennis was more than a friend, he was someone I looked up to. As Michael Collins, he was able to turn Dan Fortune, a one-armed private detective, into a successful and popular character and series, when the rest of us were writing about superheroes without limitations!

He did it with well-written, well-plotted stories that often asked hot-topic questions and just as often gave the answers; and he did it with some of the best writing in the genre.

I moved to Key West in 1996, but kept in touch with Dennis and his wife Gayle, and we often emailed back and forth about my sailing trips to Cuba and how he hoped to someday visit Havana and maybe meet me there.

In 1998 Hurricane Georges attacked the Lower Keys and blew my two-story floating home out to sea, with my more than 1,000-book library and worldly possession on it, never to be found. Think of it as a one-bedroom house on a barge.

I mentioned it to Dennis in an email and told him how I was starting over and had bought a sailboat to live on. A few weeks later, I received a plastic covered copy of UPTOWN DOWNTOWN in the mail. He had remembered after all these years!

My library is almost rebuilt, now that I am back in a house on solid ground, and books written by Dennis Lynds, no matter what name he used, sit on the shelf above my computer screen, so that I often think of him when I am writing. In between the hardback copies of books, bearing the name Collins, Sadler, Crowe and Arden is the small, plastic covered paperback, UPTOWN DOWNTWON, and it stares down overpowering all the others because it reminds of my youth and how it, and its author, helped direct me to where I am today.

Dennis wrote most everyday for eight hours, or more. How I envy him for that. He was driven and loved writing. And that paid off, because so many of us love reading him.

For more information on Dennis, his life and his writing, go to http://www.dennislynds.com/.

Michael Haskins
www.michaelhaskins.net