Thanks to all the Dead Guys for many entertaining and enlightening blog posts over the years - I'm sure I've read the vast majority of those 3,464 posts!

Agreed, Erin. I'm glad to hear you've never had security issues. Last year, the company whose security plugin I had been using was itself hacked! So no one is 100% safe... http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/ithemes-plaintext/

If you take Kristi's advice and go the WordPress route, I strongly advise hosting it on WordPress.com (you can have your own URL like myname.com forwarded to myname.wordpress.com). The reason is that WordPress and its plugins are CONSTANTLY being updated due to hacking threats, and if you don't stay on top of it, your site can be hacked and blacklisted. I've been working with WordPress for years and I spend WAY too much time dealing with security issues. Hosting at WordPress.com takes a lot of the responsibility off your shoulders. I will also say that I think SquareSpace sites tend to be a LOT nicer than Wix ones. I'd recommend SquareSpace. They often have free trial offers so you can give it a whirl before shelling out any money. Also, if you want to quickly/cheaply turn a regular HTML web site into a mobile site: dudamobile.com.

I can understand not going if you are charged separately for the banquet, but for conventions where the banquet is part of the registration fee, like Malice and Left Coast Crime? Sorry, I'm too cheap not to take advantage of food I've already paid for, even if it is hotel food (and I'm a vegetarian, so it's probably going to be an uninspiring pasta dish). Plus sometimes you get a killer toastmaster, like Lee Goldberg or Brad Parks.

Bob was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, and Jimmy held up the book and there was a close-up shot of the cover. I wish you could go on some national talk shows, but I guess being able to do dramatic science experiments is more enticing than just talking about a book. Still, it was some nice publicity!

When I was younger (and less discriminating), I'd often see 100 movies a year in the theater, but now I've turned into one of those boring middle aged people who sees two movies a year. I did see "Gravity." And "Frozen." (Don't judge.) I fall out of the filmgoing habit during the endless summers of superheroes, and then don't bother going back once the "quality" flicks come out in the fall.

"But how come when women indulge in the same kind of activity it's 'just in good fun'?" It's all about the power imbalance. Going back to my college women's studies classes here for a sec... Women "lack the institutional power to systematize their prejudice against men." There's a lot of interesting stuff out there on the web on this topic. (For what it's worth, I have never posted a beefcake pic anywhere, but depending on your friends' "brands" - i.e. are they romance writers? - I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate. I could probably come up with circumstances where it would be appropriate for a guy to post sexy photos of girls, for instance, if he was a photographer for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.)

And for San Francisco Giants fans: "When it's time for a change, think Speedy Oil Change and Tune-Up." It's always weird to watch one of the Fox games and NOT hear that when there's a pitching change. "Grab some pine, meat."

As I argued in this space a few weeks ago, the reason ebooks should be cheaper (I'd say 1/2 the cover price of a regular book) is because you don't actually "buy" them -- you license them. You download a file and the seller determines what you can do with it. I purchased an ebook copy of "Gone Girl," and when someone asked to borrow it, I had to say, "Sorry -- I can't do that, I'd have to let you borrow my e-reader" (I'm obviously not that good a friend!). If I buy a hardcover, I can turn it into a coaster, use it to build a fort, regift it, donate it to Friends of the Library, etc. If I buy an ebook, it sits in my e-reader, and that's it.

I haven't started reading the actual book yet, but the copyright pages in the front matter made me laugh out loud. That's a first!

While we're sharing Groucho clips... he duetted on Gilbert & Sullivan's "Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast" with his young daughter Melinda. If you know "The Mikado" at all, the idea of a tiny girl singing Katisha is pretty hilarious. She's supposed to be old, and therefore unattractive. (See how far we haven't come since "The Mikado" was written in the 1880s?) Anyway, Melinda is just ADORABLE. http://youtu.be/Jt9a4Dt8U9g

Janet, I agree... real books are still the best!

I belong to a mystery book group that meets every Tuesday night (we do break for 3 months in the summer and around the holidays). It sounds crazy, but it's been going strong since the 1970s. I joined 10 years ago and we have a core of 10-12 regulars who come every week. It's a huge commitment of time, and not everyone can read a book a week, but I enjoy it so much that I've stuck with it. I suspect my group is an outlier in the book-club world, though.

I felt the same way about Sara Henry's 'Learning to Swim,' which is also up for a lot of mystery awards -- even the cover art looks much more like literary fiction than crime. Still, they were both excellent books (and suspenseful -- maybe that's why they're being recognized in the genre?) and if the crime award nominations help them find a readership, so much the better.

A few weeks ago, my book group read a multi-award-nominated mystery published by one of the Big Six. The detective enters the murder victim's home to look for clues, and she notes that much has been removed from the apartment, including his refrigerator. A few pages later, she is dusting the refrigerator for fingerprints. The funny thing is that when I pointed out to the savvy readers in my group, no one else had noticed this huge error! Sigh... no wonder self-published authors don't think it's worth paying for an editor, when even the biggies make glaring mistakes.

I have a lot of signed books, including quite a few with inscriptions from authors I know personally, which, of course, I treasure. However, if I don't know the author, I would really rather just have a signature. Not because I'm going to sell it on eBay, but "To Sue, from [name]" isn't that meaningful to me. A few years ago, my husband & I went to a David Sedaris book signing (this was when you could still see him for free at smallish bookstores -- now I think he only speaks at ticketed events in large auditoriums). Sedaris asked us for our names and where we lived (which, at the time, was in Albany, Calif.). I thought he was just making conversation, but he signed, "To Sue & Joe, the whores of Albany. David Sedaris." That's probably the most bizarre signature I ever received!

I'm relieved that the eminent Neil Plakcy said a kind word about the TV show, because I enjoyed it too -- though perhaps because *my* dog is named Bibi, so the husband & I were joking about "don't trust the Bibi." Is the show destined to be a particular favorite amongst those who own dogs with "B" names? Oddly enough, the word "bitch" is spoken on the show, if not in the title. And at least it's better than "$h@! My Dad Says."

OK, I have a BRILLIANT idea!! Take the money raised by selling the badges and donate it to a literacy nonprofit. I was involved with this year's Left Coast Crime conference and we raised several thousand dollars for the Sacramento Library's adult literacy program. What better way to celebrate our love of reading than to help create new readers? I will also add that probably some of those non-book readers may be reading other things. My dad, for instance, almost never reads books but he does read 3 newspapers a day and subscribes to several magazines.

I concede the rest of your points, but the advantage of Print On Demand technology is that you DON'T need to wind up with boxes and boxes of unsold books -- you can have the books printed one copy at a time if you want.

Another example: people who got hooked on "The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency" may now be more willing to check out books by other African authors like Michael Stanley, Deon Meyer or Malla Nunn. And speaking of the Scandinavians, I read recently that almost all the translation work in crime fiction now is one-way -- Swedish/Norwegian/Danish to English -- because most Scandinavians are fluent in English and don't want to wait for books to be translated into their native tongue. Go into any bookshop in Scandinavia and there will be an enormous selection of books in English. Compare that with France, where the average bookshop has not a single book in a language other than French.

One of my local independent bookstores, Diesel in Oakland, frequently groups books by color -- for instance, yesterday I noticed a big display of books featuring jackets in the exact same shade of blue. It is eye catching, but of course the disadvantage is that the books don't necessarily have anything in common except for the color. (They do have plenty of more conventional displays, like the store's best selling titles.)

This post could have used a bit more BSP! Where is your bookstore? I clicked on your photo and the link just goes to an empty placeholder site.

I was feeling pretty darn good about having read 67 books in 2011 (exact same number as in 2010) until I saw that Sarah Weinman had Tweeted that she had read "340 books in 2011," and that was "a lot but not as many as in recent years."

I'm not Jewish, but since my husband & I are living thousands of miles away from our families, we don't celebrate a "traditional" Christmas. We used to do the movie/Chinese food thing, but we've noticed that the movie theaters are getting more & more crowded on Xmas, and it ain't just Jews. The last straw came a few years ago when we tried going to an early Xmas matinee showing of "Frost/Nixon" and it was sold out. This year, I jokingly suggested that we go to see the early matinee of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," because who else would want to go see a grim Nordic crime drama on Christmas Day? But it wouldn't surprise me if it was packed. Anyway, I can't wait to hear what you & the family wind up seeing. You couldn't drag me to "We Bought A Zoo" or "Tin Tin" (too uncanny valley!), but I do want to catch "The Artist" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."

You know, Jeff, Julia Spencer-Fleming has won ONE Agatha, and Louise Penny has won, like, a half dozen of them. So she might be jealous too. Who wouldn't want a whole shelf full of teapots?!