A compendium of recently published mystery news articles. Note that we're rapidly catching up on getting news items posted and once current plan on publishing once a week or so. This update includes news items from late July and early August 2008.
• The Boston Globe reported on an unusual joint marketing campaign for a mystery that links the book, its publisher, and the city in which the book takes place, Salem (MA). The Lace Reader was already somewhat rare in that it was originally self-published by its author, Brunonia Barry, before William Morrow purchased the rights for $2 million.
• In a press release, Don Bruns reflected on the 12 lessons he learned from reading The Hardy Boys mysteries. Don's second mystery featuring 20-something pals James Lessor and Skip Moore (Hardy Boys for the 21st century as it were), Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, is being published next month.
• In a press release, Her Interactive announced that Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice was the bestselling PC game in mid-July. They also announced the next title in the popular series, Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, expected to be available for sale in October, 2008. [MBN note: All Nancy Drew games are available for purchase or download from our partner site, Games of Mystery: Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew Strategy Guides are also available.)
• Here's a site we came across that we think may be interest: Distributed Proofreaders. Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of public domain books into e-books. Volunteer editors are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface. Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive. A fascinating and worthwhile endeavor!
• Nominations for the 2008 Ned Kelly Award have been posted on the Crime Writers Association of Australia website. [MBN note: For a list of previous winners of the Ned Kelly Award, as well as nearly 30 other awards, visit Mystery Book Awards.]
• Variety ran an article on one of the Grande Dames of mystery: P. D. James. "Somehow I've been very lucky that after each book the next idea just comes popping along," says James of her detective series. "But I'm 88, so they'll have to stop sooner or later." Her next Adam Dalgliesh mystery, The Private Patient, is due to be published this November.
• A press release announced the details of an interactive internet game, ClueChaser.com, that combines a mystery storyline and a series of unique puzzles with a message board which allows players to communicate with each other. The second game ran from August 5th through 9th and more are planned. Sample puzzles are available.
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