Mystery Readers International has announced the finalists for this year’s Macavity Awards, and Big Red and Old Red (and I) are in the mix. “Curious Incidents,” a “Holmes on the Range” novella from the January/February 2021 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, is among the nominees for Best Mystery Short Story. I’m up against a bunch of my writer pals, so I’m happy no matter how things turn out. Check out the full list of finalists!
The fine folks at Black Cat Weekly have reprinted my story “Frank,” which originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine way back in 2012. I’m in good company in the issue: It features a bunch of top genre writers, including the late great Manly Wade Wellman. (How could he not be great with a name like “Manly Wade Wellman”?) Check it out!
Shawn Pollock has kicked off a new series of book reviews on YouTube, “I Read the Best Mystery,” and guess which novel he choose to feature first? Why, it’s good ol’ Holmes on the Range! Shawn did a great job encapsulating the book. Even the pictures he picked for Big Red and Old Red are perfect. Check it out!
It’s been a long time since I did a book event. Feels like maybe the last one was in the 1980s…? It was a couple presidencies ago, that much I know. So it’s exciting to have the Bay Area Book Festival to look forward to. I’ll be there Sunday, May 8, at 1:30 for the panel “How to Write a Mystery” with Laurie R. King, Dale Berry, Catriona McPherson and Gary Phillips. I’ll also be signing books and hanging out in the Mystery Writers of America booth later that afternoon, so if you’re in NorCal come find me! Check out the details!
Uh oh – does this mean I’m old? The new anthology Death of a Bad Neighbour: Revenge is Criminal, released today, marks my 25th anniversary as a professional short story writer. Death of a Bad Neighbour features my oddball mystery story/parable “The Book of Eve.” Check it out!
The new issue of Black Cat Weekly features stories by such legendary writers as Charles Beaumont, Frederik Pohl, Richard S. Prather, James Blish and (blush!) me. (Not that I'm legendary. Just ask my wife. I'm quite real. Unless I'm a product of her imagination...) My contribution is a story of skullduggery in the 1990s called "Where the Strange Ones Go." If that sounds familiar you might have read it when it first appeared in Ellery Queen a few years ago. If you missed it then, now’s your chance to check it out!
Two new stories by me just hit the newsstands: one in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and the other in Alfred Hitchcock. If you’re a try-before-buying type you can read a lengthy excerpt from the Ellery Queen tale — a “Holmes on the Range” novella — on the magazine’s website. Check it out!
Interested in creating stories that combine skullduggery and the supernatural? (You know…like my tarot mysteries?) Join me at 2 p.m. on All Hallows Eve Eve (a.k.a. Oct. 30) for “Things That Go Bump on the Page: Writing the Paranormal Mystery,” a free Zoom discussion with fellow writers Margaret Dumas, Melissa Bourbon Ramirez, Nancy Cole Silverman, Margaret Lucke and Maggie Toussaint. Check it out!
The fine folks at the new book-focused website shepherd.com asked me to write about fave books in the genre of my choice. The result: “The Best Westerns That Will Transport You to the American Frontier.” Check it out!
July 23 through July 27 the ebooks of my mysteries The White Magic Five and Dime and Holmes on the Range are free on Amazon. And the Holmes on the Range Mysteries Box Set, which collects the first five novels in the series, has been marked down from $9.99 to $6.99. Act now while supplies last! (Don’t worry. Amazon never really runs out of ebooks.)
This was a ton of fun! I got to be a guest on a podcast I listen to regularly: the Western-themed "Six-Gun Justice." Get the scoop on the origin of the "Holmes on the Range" series as well as the new Western novel I'm this/close to finishing. Check it out!
Saturday, July 17, I’m moderating a panel on mysteries for kids with authors Pat Canterbury, Janae Marks and Beth McMuellen. It’s a Mystery Writers of America (MWA) event but free to all. The fun starts at 1. Check it out on the MWA NorCal Facebook page!
As a bonus for folks coming to my MWA Facebook chat about mystery short fiction June 12, I've made two of my story collections — Naughty and Blarney — free on Amazon from now through June 15. Get 'em while they're hot (and, more importantly, free)! Check out Naughty! And Blarney!
Saturday, June 12, at 1 p.m. PST I’ll be doing a Facebook Live talk about mystery short stories. Why write ’em, how to write ’em, where to sell ’em. Sponsored by Mystery Writers of America’s NorCal chapter but open to all. Come for the writing advice, stay for even more writing advice. Check it out (on June 12)!
My story “The Death and Carnage Boy” from the July/August 2020 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is a finalist for the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Award. I’m thrilled! Check it out!
Interested in writing mysteries but not sure how to begin? Well, now I can tell you: Start by buying the Mystery Writers of America’s new how-to handbook for would-be crime scribes. They even let me contribute a page. Check it out!
What’s the deal with the springtime jingle bells? “The Last Noel,” a Christmas crime story that first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine a few years ago, is now available for e-purchase under the “Barb Goffman Presents” banner on Amazon. Just plunk down your 99 cents and you’ll be feeling holly jolly all over again. Check it out!
Yo, Holmes on the Rangers! (That's my new nickname for Holmes on the Range fans. Think it'll stick?) The latest issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine features a new HotR story, "Curious Incidents." For a limited time you can read a nice and looooooong excerpt on the Ellery Queen website. Check it out!
Years ago, I wrote a zombie novella with a then-wacky set-up: What would a presidential campaign look like during an apocalypse? Wild, right? Well, here’s something wilder: An audio adaptation of “Cadaver in Chief” is now being presented free on Podbean. The first 20 chapters went live today. Check it out!
“From that headline there must be some books on sale,” you say. “What books AREN’T on sale?!?” I say. Or shout, really. Because this is a big, BIG ebook sale. The kind that calls for ALL CAPS!!! Holmes on the Range is FREE on Amazon. The White Magic Five and Dime is FREE. Lots of other books are, like, so cheap they’re PRACTICALLY free. (You don’t see “practically” in all caps often, do you?) Check ’em out!