LEFTY AWARDS: Left Coast Crime San Francisco Schemin'

Left Coast Crime 2026 San Francisco Schemin' presented the Lefty Awards in four categories at our 36th annual convention. The categories were: Humorous, Historical, Debut, and Best. Congratulations to all!

2026 Lefty Award nominees for books published in 2025:

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel: Catriona McPherson, Scot’s Eggs 

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel for books set before 1970. 
(The Bill Gottfried Memorial): Rob Osler, The Case of the Missing Maid 

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel: Adrian Andover, Whiskey Business 

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories): James L’Etoile, River of Lies 

Left Coast Crime Conventions are annual events sponsored by mystery fans, both readers and authors. Held in the western half of North America, LCC’s intent is to host an event where readers, authors, critics, librarians, publishers, and other fans can gather in convivial surroundings to pursue their mutual interests. Lefty Awards have been given since 1996. 

Returning to The City, where Left Coast Crime held its first two conventions, the 36th Annual Left Coast Crime Convention took place in San Francisco, February 26 – March 1, 2026. This year’s Guests of Honor were authors Robin Burcell and Gary Phillips. Randal Brandt was the Fan Guest of Honor, and author Leslie Karst served as Toastmaster.

Left Coast Crime is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation holding annual mystery conventions in the West. Each LCC convention raises money to support a local literary organization, and is staffed entirely by volunteers. This year the charity was the San Francisco Public Library literacy program.

For more information on Left Coast Crime 2026, please visit www.leftcoastcrime.org/2026/

Dr Seuss's Birthday & Read Across America Day!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! March 2nd is not only Dr. Seuss's Birthday, but it's also National Read Across America Day, a national program to support and encourage children's reading. NEA's Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of children's author Dr. Seuss. Having been a reading teacher in a former life, I know how important it is to get children reading when they're young. This is a fabulous day, and since I also have a Chocolate Blog, you can enhance the day with chocolate, but that's my bias.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. 

The more you learn, the more places you'll go." 

— Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Even though Green Eggs & Ham is the most popular of the 'food' Seuss books, and, by all means read it and make some green eggs and ham, since it's Dr. Seuss's Birthday, read Happy Birthday to You and Bake a Cake!  Check out a copy from your library or buy a copy and read it to or with a child. To enhance the experience, bake a few chocolate cakes, cupcakes, or buy a chocolate Sheet Cake, and have the children decorate.

You could also read Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose and serve Chocolate Mousse sprinkled with red candy hearts.

Here's a classic recipe for Cat in the Hat Cookies: Melt white chocolate in the microwave. Dip a round cracker or cookie in the white chocolate, place on wax paper and top with a marshmallow. Allow to cool. Pipe bright red icing as rings around the marshmallow and cover the top.

And from Parents Connect, here's a recipe for  Dr. Seuss's Sneetch Treats. Perfect as a companion to reading The Sneetches.

Dr Seuss's Sneetch Treats

Ingredients
8 ounces butter, melted
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups uncooked, 1-minute oatmeal
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup golden raisins
2 chocolate bars, chopped into squares
6 large marshmallows
Wooden skewers soaked in water or BBQ forks

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°
Combine melted butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a bowl. Mix well.
In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add to butter mixture.
Add oatmeal, walnuts, and raisins. Mix well.
Drop batter (1 Tbsp at time) onto ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten each cookie slightly with the back of spatula.
Bake 12 minutes until golden and firm. Remove cookies to cake rack to cool.
Once cookies have cooled, put square of chocolate onto each cookie.
Heat up grill (or smoker... or fire pit... or oven).
Place marshmallows on skewers or BBQ forks. Slowly roast marshmallows over grill until golden on each side.
 Carefully slide marshmallows off forks and onto t chocolate-covered cookies.
Place another cookie on top of the Marshmallow.

Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist best known for his classic children's books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. With millions of books in print, and nearly all of his titles still available for sale, Dr. Seuss was, up until his death in 1991, one of the most prolific living writer behind Barbara Cartland. His Green Eggs and Ham is the third largest selling book in the English language. He wrote 44 children’s books. His best-sellers included: Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who!, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Seuss’s first book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was published in 1937 after being rejected almost 30 times.

Check out this cute Cat in the Hat Birthday Cake from Christine Guzman, owner of The Quaint Cake Co in Boca Raton, FL.  It was a chocolate cake, of course! They're no longer making cakes, but be sure and check out their gallery...site is still up for your enjoyment!

Cartoon of the Day: Dogs

 

MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL NEWS FOR 2026: Subscribe now!

Mystery Readers Journal Subscription for 2026

It’s time to subscribe (or renew) your subscription to Mystery Readers Journal for 2026. 

Themes in 2026. Volume 42, Mystery Readers Journal. 

Fetes, Faires, and Festivals (Volume 42:1)
Mysteries set in France (42:2)
Cross-Genre Mysteries (42:3)
Mysteries set in India (42:4)

Each issue (80-100 pages) is filled with articles, author essays, and reviews on a specific theme!   

 

PDF SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 42) will be going digital (PDF) for all subscriptions. Price remains the same. $15/calendar year.

You will receive download instructions as each issue is published. First issue in 2026 will be out in late March.

SUBSCRIBE HERE

https://mysteryreaders.org/subscribe/

PRINT EDITIONS:

We know that many readers enjoy a PRINT COPY. We will be setting up Mystery Readers Journal, starting with Volume 42:1 (2026), offering print-on-demand. The quality of the print-on-demand issues will be exactly the same as the past printed issues with our same unique size and perfect binding.

As each issue is published, people who prefer print copies will receive an email with a link on how to order that individual issue. In addition, the website will have the links for each issue as published. 

You do not have to subscribe to the PDF subscription to order 2026 print-on-demand issues of MRJ. 

Of course, if you do subscribe for a PDF subscription and still want the print copy, you can always take the PDF to your local printer.

Hope you will support Mystery Readers Journal, now in our 42^nd year.

For more information on past themed issues of Mystery Readers Journal

 

Writing Beyond The Fields You Know: Guest Post by Christopher Huang

Letterbox. Gosh-darn, bloomin’ letterboxes. 

It’s a bit too late to change this, I’m afraid, but apparently I have allowed a little hint that I am not, in fact, a native of 1920s England to creep into my latest book, A Pretender’s Murder. An advanced reader review has pointed out that the correct British term for the slots in doors that postmen drop your letters through is “letterbox,” not “mail slot” as I’d written. These mail slots or letterboxes aren’t really a thing anywhere I’ve been in North America, so I thought that any English-language word for them would be the British one. Now I must assume then that there exists some Anglophile corner of the US or Canada that has these things … or do North Americans simply insist on having their own words for things they do not have? 

Such are the pitfalls of not writing in your own world. Not that I’m going to let that stop me. I’ve already corrected the one instance of “mail slot” in my next book and I’m immersing myself right back into this period I’ve never lived in and this place I only ever visit. 

I’m hardly alone here. H.R.F. Keating was an Englishman who set eight or nine novels in India before actually setting foot in India; and then, only because Air India took note of his novels and extended an invitation to fly him to Bombay. But if Keating’s books are loved, it is because of the care he took in portraying the setting and the compassion he had for voices not his own. He did the best he could with the resources available to him at the time, and succeeded. So I, with the internet at my fingertips and centuries of British literature for reference, have no excuse. If you’re writing in a culture outside your own, you had better be the best reflection of that culture as you can possibly be. 

Remember, when Ronald Knox wrote that “no Chinaman must figure in the story,” it was meant as a shot against lazy stereotyping and the exoticism of the “other”, far too common in the “yellow peril” thrillers of his time. We do not want Chinamen, no: we want Chinese people. As such, you get a pass if you write your “Chinamen” — shorthand here for any characters of a different race or culture from you — as human beings. And you want that pass. It represents the difference between cultural appropriation (bad!) and cultural exchange (good!). Keating got that pass, and I think the key there is equal parts curiosity and humility. You learn and you keep learning. You remember that you are a student with limited knowledge, not an all-knowing professor. You accept the invitation to visit Bombay, and you care when someone points out that you’ve gone and called your letterboxes by the wrong term. 

Also, you amplify the voices of those who know through lived experience rather than through mere scholarship. Though that’s probably not much of an issue when, in your case, the “voice of lived experience” is Agatha Christie. 

But now you must be wondering, why do this at all? The writing gurus all say to “write what you know.” And even if you do manage to win the Chinaman pass, the risk of losing it again never really goes away. Is that really what you want? 

Well, see, there’s actually a peculiar advantage to writing outside of your place and time. To explain, let me begin by saying that I lived the first twenty years of my life in Singapore, and the last thirty in Canada. You’d think I’d therefore be more comfortable writing about Singapore in the 1980s or about Canada in the present day. But what if I were to make the same “letterbox” mistake writing about either of these settings? A mistake about 1920s England can be dismissed as a minor research failure. One must study so many things about foreign settings that one or two errors are bound to slip through. But a mistake about 1980s Singapore as one who claims to have lived the entire decade there? Fraud! Pretender! 

No, no. It’s much easier to write about a place where, for the most part, I know what it is that I don’t know. It’s easier to be humble and curious about a thing when one is not automatically expected to have known it all through lived experience. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, and the absolute last thing you want as a writer is anything approaching contempt for your setting. I have to admire, therefore, the writers who find magic and mystery in their present-day surroundings, but I was built for complacency and require a little added distance to spark fascination. 

Besides, it has happened once before, and I’m sure it can happen again: somewhere around my eighth or ninth book, perhaps British Airways will take note and extend an invitation to fly me to London, free of charge. I will keep a watchful eye on my (ahem!) letterbox. 

***

Christopher Huang was born and raised in Singapore, and now lives in Canada with a terminal case of Anglophilia and a degree in architecture that seems to translate more into fictional worldbuilding than into real-world buildings. He is the author of mysteries set in 1920s England: A Gentleman's Murder and its sequel, A Pretender's Murder, featuring the Anglo-Chinese amateur sleuth Eric Peterkin; as well as the stand-alone mystery Unnatural Ends.

Cartoon of the Day: The Muse