Amazon Best of the Year

The Shining Girls made Amazon’s Best of the Year 2013 in Mystery & Suspense along with Stephen King, JK Rowling (as Galbraith) Joe Hill, George Pelecanos, John Grisham, John Le Carré, Lee Child, Ivy Pochoda (just bought Visitation Street – it looks amazing) and some other very, very fine authors and books. Happiness!

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Literary Hunger Games & Best Interviews 2013

Zola Books got their staff to propose a literary Hunger Games, nominating their favourite characters from novels that might stand a chance in a literary death match.   I’m thrilled that Kirby from The Shining Girls made the list of tributes (hey, catching fire, shining, same thing, really), up against the likes of Scott Pilgrim […]

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Under My Skin

There’s a quote in Zoo City: “Fashion is only different skins for different flavours of you.” I see it come up a lot – out of context: tweeted by fashion store twitter accounts, in the top hits on “quotes from the novel” on GoodReads or popping up on Pinterest or Tumblr linked to a playful couture image, perhaps […]

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Finalist in RT Book of the Year

A happy thing! RT Book Reviews has named The Shining Girls as one of the finalists in their Editor’s Choice Book of the Year awards AND in the 2013 Suspense/Thriller category.   This is from their original review: “This intense thriller packs punches that will leave you reeling. The seemingly random time-travel device keeps you […]

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Violence as a first language

I lost my cool in this interview with Zola Books, particularly talking about how we depict violence and serial killers and a friend’s murder that still makes me upset. But I also say nice things about indie bookstores (my local, The Book Lounge, in particular) and narrative view points and mapping out murder across multiple […]

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Goodreads Choice Semi-Finals

Super-stoked that The Shining Girls made the semi-finals of GoodReads Choice Awards Best Books of 2013 in the Mystery & Thriller section.  There are some very fine books on the list (and in the other categories, including some of the books I loved most this year). If you have a moment spare, click through to […]

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The Power of Reviews

Sometimes reviews tell you things you hadn’t realized about your book, that you can later nod sagely and claim, “Oh yeah, that’s totally what I was doing. Planned it all along. Glad you picked up on that.” Sometimes reviews teach you cool new words, like uchronia, which was casually bust out in this write-up by […]

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Here Be Deskcats

Free to good home.* 1x adorable desk cat. Ginger. Male. Seven years old. Very sweet tempered and affectionate. Mostly. Answers (sometimes) to “Boy” or “Sputnik”. Definitely does not bite your fingers when you are trying to type your frigging book. Definitely not.   (*Not really really, we’ll keep him, thanks. But if my new novel […]

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