Happy summer!
So much for the summer slowdown… Whew! That was exhausting! I’ve just gotten through the edits of next winter’s mystical cat cozy, A Spell of Murder, and have been looking forward to some lazy summer days. (More on that here.) Then the calls and emails started. Yes,...
read moreThe wayward clue
I missed it the first time. The second and third time. My agent missed it, so did my beta readers. So did my editor. But there I was, reading through the revised, edited manuscript of A Spell of Murder one final time before sending it back, and I saw it: Wait a...
read more“Epic in scope” Thank you!
The Bookblog of the Bristol Public Library reviews Cross My Path concluding: "While each book has its own mysteries from start to finish, it’s obvious in this entry that Simon has a larger story arc going on, one more epic in scope. It’s possible that there is a...
read moreWriting about music, writing about the world…
Wynton Marsalis seeks respect. When the Celebrity Series brought his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Symphony Hall on Sunday to perform the music of Duke Ellington, the program was in keeping with Marsalis’s overall mission to establish (enshrine?) jazz as...
read moreThank you, Booklist!
"Series fans [as well as "readers who love bossy cats, don't mind ferrets, and can accept an animal psychic as a protagonist"] will lap it up." So says Booklist on my upcoming (July 1) Fear on Four Paws. Thank...
read moreNot all cozies are cat mysteries…
And not all cat mysteries are cozies! As I ready to launch two of my own kitties of a different color (the snarky Fear on Four Paws and the positively dystopian Cross My Path), I blogged about animal cozies of all species for Booklist...
read more#MeToo and my op-ed in today’s Boston Globe
As many of you may already know, I have an op-ed in the Boston Globe today, talking about "The Americans" and, more to the point, the aftereffects of rape. I wrote this piece because of a theme that seemed obvious to me – how the trauma of rape can derail a person and...
read moreFor cat lovers!
Publishers Weekly weighs in on Cross My Path: "Cat-loving fans of grim postapocalyptic tales will best appreciate Simon’s third Blackie and Care mystery..." it begins, concluding, "The disparate plot lines combine in a fiery...
read moreThe bodies don’t stay buried…
A friend reading World Enough recently asked me how much was fiction and how much true. Tara's learning curve as a rock critic is largely mine, I told him. The band anecdotes are largely lifted from life: the crazy drinking, the drugs, the partying. And the underlying...
read moreWhat’s in a name?
"How do you come up with the names?" That's what my wonderful mother-in-law Sophie always wants to know. "Dulcie and Pru, and now Care? Tara? Where do they come from?" "I'm not sure," I've told her. And she shakes her head in wonder. "I make them up," I say. Although...
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