Put The Bleme On Meme, Boys

Hmmmm. Seems we’ve been designated a ‘schmoozeworthy blog’ by Peter over at Detectives Beyond Borders, and thus the honour / duty of nominating five blogs we consider ‘schmoozeworthy’ falls upon our collective shoulders. Pesky memes, eh? Chain letters with cookies, say we. Oh well, here goes:

Critical Mick
It’s A Crime! Or A Mystery!
The Rap Sheet
Petrona
After Dark My Sweet

As for the all-important definition of ‘schmoozeworthy’, quoth Peter:

“I’m not quite sure the creator of the award used schmooze quite correctly. To schmooze, or to schmooze someone, means to engage (someone) in a warm, pleasant conversation. Later, it came to mean to talk to with the purpose of gaining advantage for one’s self – to suck up to, in other words. In any case, I assume that the creator of the prestigious Schmoozeworthy Blog award meant to honour blogs worthy of being talked, or schmoozed, about, which does not quite meet either meaning of schmooze. Yiddish words often get used more for their sound than their sense.”

Over to you, folks …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of Interweb Stuff ‘N’ Such

Huzzah! Critical Mick (right) is back-back-BACK! From his Uncle Travelling Critical Mick travels!! With a newly updated and much expanded Irish crime section on his not just essential but damn vital interweb page thingy!!! But Mr Critical Mick Ambassador sir, with all this extra info, you are surely spoiling us … Declan Hughes fans should scoot on over to Mystery File, where the hottest Declan since modesty forbids is currently being profiled … Via the ever-brilliant Rap Sheet comes the tip-off that Pulp Pusher is carrying an interview with last week’s Theakston’s Old Peculier winner, Allan Guthrie, where they ask the really hard questions – i.e., what does a non-boozer do with a barrel of free grog? Do we hear the words 'party house'? … The latest edition of Thuglit is on the electronic streets since last week, boasting some rather intriguing titles: Amphetamine Logic by Nathan Cain, Death Don’t Have No Mercy by William Boyle, and – our favourite – We All Come From Splattertown by Hugh Lessig … The superb Aussie crime fiction site After Dark My Sweet has the short-list for the Ned Kelly Awards. Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist is probably best known of the list up topside, but keep an eye on Barry Maitland’s Spider Trap. The results will be announced on August 29 at the Melbourne Writers Festival … Via the very fine Detectives Beyond Borders comes a question from Dave’s Fiction Warehouse, to wit: “Can you think of anybody writing crime fiction today who might still be in print 165 years from now?” Our money is on John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things, given its capacity to effortlessly rejuvenate timeless folktales, myths and legends … Speaking of whom, the vid below is one John Connolly, terrorising a group of innocent readers at a meet-‘n’-greet and wibbling on about blackening pages courtesy of www.BookVideos.tv … And that’s it for another week, folks. Thanks for dropping by and see y’all next time around, y’hear?