JanDunlap.com

Maybe I should rename March and make it Predator Month. The first weekend I was in Houston, MN, for the International Festival of Owls. Karla Kinstler and her team of fabulous volunteers put on a great festival as usual, although all the little kids with faces painted like owls probably tickled me the most. I met owlers from all over the region and got to connect with both old and new fans of my Birder Murder series, talking about birding experiences and mystery writing. This last weekend of the month I was in Wabasha, on my first visit to the National Eagle Center. Scott Mehus, one of the program directors there, told me they’d had about 14,000 visitors in March during their month-long celebration of the spring migration. It’s a ...more...

I don’t know about you, but I am now officially vampired-out.

Not that I was ever a vampire fan to begin with, but after the glut of blood suckers that have saturated every form of media in the last year or so, I am ready to have the world move on from its fascination with sickly-looking, socially-impaired undead creatures.

Kind of sounds like my composition class of college freshman during finals week.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Actually, when the craze started, I was happy about the millions of girls who were reading the “Twilight” series penned by Stephanie Meyer. As a book lover myself, I’m always delighted when other people get excited about reading; knowing how hard it is to compete with electronic entertainment, I’m ...more...

My publisher, North Star Press of St. Cloud, tells me that the third Bob White Birder Murder Mystery is scheduled for release on September 1, 2010. It’s titled “A Bobwhite Killing,” and I will be reviewing the proofs in a few weeks and finishing the back cover copy.  The opportunity to be so involved with the production of the book is one of the many reasons I love working with North Star. A few weeks ago, I participated in a small panel of mystery authors at Normandale Community College’s bookstore, and we compared notes about our input to our finished products. My two colleagues (both with large East Coast publishing houses) told me they have no authority when it comes to naming their books or making creative decisions about cover ...more...