And for us writers, before we strap ourselves to our computers to finish that novel we started back in the spring.

This is a day not to labor, so I’m taking off. Thus no post about writers and books.

Now where did I put my tackle box?

Tomorrow: Anniversary for a bookstore

The pronoun “her” suggests Parrish is one person. She’s actually two – sisters, Kristy Montee of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Kelly Nichols of Houghton Lake, Michigan.

Montee is a former newspaper writer and editor, and Nichols, of all things, was at one time a blackjack dealer.

Don’t ask me how the sisters do it, come up with such good books while writing at great distances from one another . . . well, I know how they do it. They swap electronic files. Thank you, Internet.

And they talk a lot via Skype. Again, thank you, Internet.

Still, theirs has to be a world of compromises, but Montee and Nichols make co-writing work. They have the book sales to prove it, and they have the honors. They’ve collected 11 major crime fiction awards, including two Shamus awards, an Anthony, and an award from International Thriller Writers.

You can meet P.J., or one-half of her – Kelly Nichols – tomorrow afternoon if you’re in the Chicago area. She and four other crime writers will be at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, talking about their books.

And he’s got a stack of true crime books to his credit, ranging from his history of the Chicago Police Department – To Serve and Collect . . . collecting bribes, you betcha – to Shattered Sense of Innocence, a study of the 1955 murders of Chicago elementary students Anton Schuessler, John Schuessler, and Robert Peterson. The Schuessler/Peterson case was the Chicago PD’s largest investigation up to that time.

Gloria Jean Sykes shared in the writing of that book.

Lindberg’s latest is a biography of the old Chicago political boss, Mike McDonald, the book titled The Gambler King of Clark Street. It came out last year from Southern Illinois University Press.

Lindberg is a man you’d like to sit with in a bar and have a beer. He can regale you for hours with stories of Chicago corruption and where the bodies are buried. Because of the knowledge he’s accumulated and his gifts for sharing it, television producers come calling regularly. Lindberg has appeared on “History’s Mysteries,” “Cities of the Underworld,” “Justice Files,” “Mobsters,” “American Justice,” “Masterminds” . . . gotta take a breath here . . . also two documentaries about Chicago gangland for the Travel Channel and an Irish Public Television documentary on Chicago gambling boss Mike McDonald – remember the book? – plus two episodes of “Evidence” on the Discovery Channel.

And he’s been on WGN Radio’s Extension 720, Milt Rosenberg’s talk show, more times than Lindberg has fingers and toes.

You can talk with him Saturday morning if you’re in the Chicago area, maybe not over a beer. Lindberg and four other crime writers will be at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Oak Forest doing a panel presentation on crime writing and their books.

Tomorrow: Meet P.J. Parrish

Once again Emily Cabot is McNamara’s amateur detective.

Cabot appeared in McNamara’s first mystery out a year and a half ago, Death at the Fair. If you know your Chicago history, you know “the fair” is the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition – called by most of us the Chicago World’s Fair. In that book, Cabot was a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s, in the sociology department. She solves a murder one of her professors was accused of having committed.

In Death at Hull House, Cabot has been expelled from UC and now works for Hull House. This time she’s up to her elbows in solving a murder that takes place at the house.

Yes, there will be a third in the series of historical mysteries. Number 3 is Death at Pullman.

McNamara, like most writers, has a day job, as a librarian at the University of Chicago. When the weather permits, she escapes from that and from writing by racing sailboats on Lake Michigan.

If you’ve not met McNamara, you can meet her Saturday morning, not out on the lake, but at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, Illinois. She’s a member of a panel of crime writers who will be talking about and signing their books. Show time is 11 AM.

Tomorrow: Meet Richard Lindberg

All right, Donald Evans the-Chicago-crime-writer is not well known. He only broke into the club of published Chicago crime writers two and a half years ago when Atomic Quill Press brought out his first novel, Good Money After Bad.

Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman said of Evans and his book, “Combining the blue-collar, neighborhood-anchored aesthetic Chicago writers are known for with a touch of suavely boozy noir, a sliver of medical-thriller action, and loads of charm, Evans tells a rascally and edgy cautionary tale.”

A rascally and edgy cautionary tale.

That pretty neat.

Evans’ novel is a story of gamblers and gambling, all set in Chicago.

He knows that world, says he was once a serious gambler and a part-time bookie. Maybe, or that could be hype for the book. He did at one time write sports for the Chicago Sun-Times. He now teaches film and literature at Westwood College’s O’Hare campus.

That’s a one-night-a-week gig. During the days, Evans is a stay-at-home dad. He sandwiches his crime writing in at odd moments or at night when everyone is asleep.

Evans first got noticed in the publishing world back 2001 when the editors of the anthology, Best American Short Stories, selected his short story, “An Off-White Christmas”, for a place on its list of 100 most distinguished short stories published that year.

What more can I tell you? Oh, yes, Evans wears a porkpie hat – like Mickey Spillane, a mystery writer who made it big a half-century ago.

If you’re in the Chicago area on Saturday, you can meet Evans in person at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Oak Forest. He, Frances McNamara (Death at Hull House), Richard Lindberg (Gambler King of Clark Street), Donald Terras (Lighthouse of the Chicago Harbor), and I will be there at 11 a.m., talking about our books, all a part of the store’s 20th anniversary celebration.

Tomorrow: Meet Frances McNamara

Twenty years in the book biz!

What are the numbers? Sixty percent of start-up businesses don’t survive their first year, and 90 percent are gone before the end of their third?

So to make it 20 years, a business has to be really good.

Augie Aleksy has made Centuries & Sleuths vital to people in Forest Park and the nearby Chicago burbs who buy books, who find the chain bookstores a bit cold and remote because of their size.

You come here for mysteries and histories, the store’s specialties and Augie’s interests.

Fantastically loyal fan groups, reader groups, and writers groups meet here – a mystery discussion group, a history discussion group, the Chicago chapter of the G.K. Chesterton Society, the Chicago chapter of the Dickens Fellowship, the Chicago chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the Midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Those two local groups – the history discussion group and the mystery discussion group – do exceptional programs for the store. The history discussion group has presented a series it calls “Meeting of the Minds.” In that series, members have portray famous people in history talking about the issues of their times – Napoleon, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Martin Luther, Mark Twain, Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc, Isabella of Castile, and F.D.R., to list off just a few.

And the mystery discussion group has conducted a trial of Richard III; an impeachment hearing for FDR; two great debates with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay; and an imaginary debate between U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis. The group also has presented historical culinary programs and mystery plays.

Writers come here to do book talks and signings – lots of writers. During September, 42 of us crime, mystery, and thriller writers will be here on weekends, talking with the store’s readers and our fans about our books.

Forty-two!

You’ll meet some of them right here on my blog over the next four weeks.

Tomorrow: Donald Evans

We loved that three-pound Sunday newspaper and all the good reading it contained. The slim Saturday paper, well, most of us skipped it.

And we still do . . . even though the slimmed-down book section is there.

Yes, we know why the publishers of big and medium-size papers either reduced their book sections or shucked themselves of them. Not enough advertising to support the sections. So it’s a delight to find that smaller papers – or at least some of them – have retained their book sections.

I found one during a recent sojourn to Pennsylvania for a family reunion.

The Lancaster News.

A page and a half in the Sunday paper, and that half-page filled totally with local book events and reviews of books by area writers.

Sadly, though, not one ad to pay for the paper and ink.

I picked up one of his books – An Inconvenient Book, really, that’s the title – Beck’s observations of things going on in the world . . . his observations intended to be funny. I bent a couple of pages and didn’t laugh once.

The Overton Window, published by Threshold Editions in June, is a thriller set in New York and Washington, D.C.

Said Washington Post critic Steven Levingston, the book has no literary value and contributes little to the thriller genre.

“Thrillers are often marred by laughable prose,” Levingston wrote in his review, “but few have stumbled along with language as silly as this one. When [Arthur] Gardner’s son, Noah, meets patriot Molly Ross early in the novel, Beck writes: ‘Something about this woman defied a traditional chick-at- a-glance inventory.’”

Time magazine reviewer Alex Altman was even more damning – “insufficient suspense”, “plodding”, “a half-baked plot” overburdened with sermonizing.

Well, Glenn Beck has a following from his radio and television programs, and his fans bought the book. They pushed it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list the first week out.

May they have found at least a little pleasure in it.

Tomorrow: Newspaper book sections disappearing

My problem is life interferes, so I can’t do it every day. Not even every other day.

I envy mystery/thriller writer Joe Konrath. He shuts down everything for the month of February and writers his next Jack Daniels mystery. In round figures, he writes 3,000 words a day during that month . . . writes, rewrites, and polishes. On the last day, Joe has a finished manuscript.

I stopped at the Zane Grey Museum in Norwich, Ohio, a couple weeks ago. As you know, Grey wrote lots and lots and lots and lots of books – westerns and fishing books. A note one of the panels said he wrote 100,000 words a month.

Longhand.

Imagine the volume he could turn out were he alive today and wrote at a computer keyboard.

So how many words a day do you write?

A page’s worth?

A couple?

Five thousand words for a chapter?

What’s your production?

Tomorrow: Glenn Beck writes a novel

“It is about sex,” the interviewer responded.

The episode’s premise is that Bones has written a mystery – the characters based loosely on herself and her colleagues in the fictional Jeffersonian Institute forensics lab – and that the book has sold like the proverbial hot cakes, sold around the world, or at least in Japan.

In the book, there is a particularly hot sex scene on page 158 involving Bones’ forensic anthropologist and her FBI agent, Andy.

“This is you and Agent Booth, isn’t it,” the interviewer says.

“No, it’s not. We’re just friends,” Bones says.

She then goes on to say she wrote the book to help readers understand how forensics works, and she gives some examples.

The interviewer stops taking notes.

“Why aren’t you writing this down?” Bones asks. “This is important.”

“The sex is important. What’s going to happen between you and Agent Andy in the next book?”

It’s happened to you, hasn’t it?

You’re at a book event, talking about the important things in your terrific novel, and someone in the audience makes a comment or asks a question about something you think is quite minor in your book . . . and you discover, ohmigosh, this is really important to your readers.

What do you do?

Really, fellow writer, what do you do?

Tomorrow: How fast a writer are you?