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Do you live in or around or even close to Milwaukee? Then you ought to come to Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee this weekend. I will be there!

This is my first time at the conference—and I’m thrilled to be one of the featured authors. Look at this lineup! As a debut author, I feel very lucky. Like I snuck into a party I’m technically not cool enough for.

You can visit the Mayhem website to get all the details, including times and locations. My panel is at 3:15 p.m. on Saturday, and all the panels are packed with awesome, fun people.

The event includes an auction to raise money for Erin Mitchell, who has a heart condition and is facing some some very expensive procedures to correct it. Given my daughter’s heart issues, this is a cause that’s close to me.

You can see all the items being auctioned off here. I’m donating a character name in the third Ash McKenna novel, South Village, as well as a book from my own collection—Assassin of Secrets by QR Markham. This book was discovered to be plagiarized, and recalled by the publisher. I have a copy that’s signed by the author.

There’ll be some bidding by proxy, but if that doesn’t work out or you can’t make the event, you can also donate to Erin right here, and I would encourage you to do so.

She’s a swell lady and this is a twisted country, that someone could be sick and then be told they can’t be helped unless they come forward with an unreasonable amount of money.

Sometimes it’s up to us.

UPDATE: Congrats to the winner, Barbara Vitale!

My mom is running a Breast Cancer Bowlathon fundraiser at Rab’s Country Lanes on Staten Island.

One of the raffles will be an Ash McKenna prize pack—a custom New Yorked umbrella, a bottle of Jameson, and a signed advance reading copy of City of Rose, which isn’t due out until February.

Maybe some other stuff too!

Tickets are $5 and you don’t need to be present when the raffle is drawn on Oct. 25. To purchase tickets call the bowling alley.

All proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society.

It’s for a good cause! Enter early and often.

Available now: Occupied Earth, a science-fiction anthology edited by Gary Phillips and Richard Brewer. I’m incredibly proud to have a story in this: “How the Game is Played”, which is the first that I’ve tapped into my political background for a story.

The anthology is set 20 years after an alien race has occupied Earth. Humans and Mahk-Ra live alongside each other, but not always comfortably. There’s no question who’s in charge (spoiler alert: it’s not the humans).

There are a lot of killer stories in this collection, and even more exciting: It’s available from my regular publisher, Polis!

Want to learn more about the anthology? Want to find out where to get it? Click here.

Galleys are in for City of Rose!

If you’re a book reviewer, get in contact with me, or download it  from Edelweiss.

I’ve only got six hard copies. A few are already in the wind. But I’m holding one aside for a lending library.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

Contact me here. First ten people go on a list. I mail the book to the first person. That person reads it and mails it to the second person. Second person mails it to the third person, and so on and so forth, until the end. Last person mails it back to me.

In return, I kindly as that you consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, but that’s not a requirement.

It’s a fun way for me to cover a little ground with an otherwise limited resource. I very shamelessly stole this idea from Stephen Elliott, who did it for his very excellent book The Adderall Diaries.

So if you’re interested, get cracking. I’m excited for this one to get out in the world.

Are you going to the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday? Have you not yet acquired a copy of New Yorked? Then stop by the Mystery Writers of America table at 11:15 a.m. I will have books for sale and will also be signing them if you would like.

Where is the MWA table going to be? Good question. I have no idea and I pray that I am able to find it in time. The festival will be full of excitement and surprise.

Do you prefer having your books read to you?

Then you’re in luck!

New Yorked is now available as an audiobook from Audible.

Cheers to the narrator, Alexander Cendese, who did a fantastic job bringing this story to life.

Staten Island Arts has invited me to read/sign/discuss stuff in their culture lounge, located inside the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

This is very exciting. I am usually super depressed when I am in the ferry terminal because it means I am commuting to or from work and commuting sucks.

So now for once I get to do something very fun in the ferry terminal!

Sept. 10, 7 p.m. (though I’ll be there earlier than that—probably starting around 6:30 p.m. or so). Come on out, or just stop on your way home.

Mark your calendar or RSVP on Facebook here.

BookPeople is Austin, TX, is one of my favorite bookstores. In no small part because of their amazing crime and mystery section, MysteryPeople, run by Scott Montgomery. He posed a couple of questions to me for their blog. I was happy to oblige.

If you’re in or around Austin, you must go to this place.

Check that out here.

My short story from Thuglit, “How to Make the Perfect New York Bagel”, made honorable mention in this year’s Best American Mystery Stories edited by James Patterson. Scott Detrow read it for the Word Crimes podcast and did a stellar job.

Thanks for podcastmaster Erik Arneson for the invite.

Give that a listen here.

Two nice hits today: My first television interview as an author is running on NY1, and my first really long audio interview just dropped on the Booked podcast.

They are both, to varying degrees, mortifying.

I don’t think I performed poorly. But there’s a reason I’m attracted to being a writer. It’s easier to express myself when I can do it by myself. I could never be an actor. Being the center of attention is not something I actively seek out. I get embarrassed playing charades.

And yet, when you’re promoting a book, you’ve got to take every opportunity you can to talk about it. And yourself. And process. All these things you’ve been perfectly happy to not talk about for so long.

Despite my initial terror, and the fact that I will never listen to or watch either of these ever again, I did learn some stuff that’s going to be helpful going forward.

For example, practice, practice, practice. This is a lesson I learned earlier in the process (and I talked about at LitReactor): You need an elevator pitch ready to go. When someone asks you what your book is about you need to be able to explain it quickly and with confidence.

I stumbled a bit on Booked, so before the NY1 interview, which took place two days later, I wrote something out and practiced it until I had it down.

(They ended up not using that for the clip, but hey, at least I was prepared.)

Also, be careful of filler words. Like. Um. Y’know. Well.

Those words you use to fill empty space. Booked is full of them. Again, something I thought about a lot while recording and went into NY1 being thoughtful of. Because holy shit, it can make you sound like a bit of a goof.

They were both very different experiences—for the NY1 interview, we talked for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, and the whole thing is condensed down into one minute and 48 seconds.

With Booked, we talked for nearly two hours—not all of it made it onto the ‘cast (thankfully—there was some fun off-the-record riffing), but the overwhelming majority of it did. I listened to it on the way to work this morning, and it’s weird, listening to yourself, wishing you’d said things differently, or glad you nailed a thought that, until then, had escaped you.

I’m very fortunate to have landed both of these—and it’s given me some stuff to chew on, about how to be more confident as a speaker.

I will say, though, it was a blast. So thanks to Amanda Farinacci from NY1, and Robb Olson and Livius Nedin from Booked. All three of them asked a ton of smart questions, and were such good sounding boards that the whole process was that much easier.

Over at The Life Sentence, me and Angel Colon talk about writing and books and New Yorked and kids and how much of an asshole I’m going to be a year from now.

The Life Sentence is a very groovy new site dedicated to crime and mystery fiction. Add it to your reading queue—they’re putting out some killer content.

Check it out.