Ciào, to all of our Italian friends,

Hello and Aloha to everyone else out there. If you are one of our Italian friends reading this, you should make everyone else in litmock land some of your famous, delicious food. Some lasagna or spaghetti and gravy or some manicotti or something, isn’t it traditional to bring a dish to a party like this anyway? I mean, whaddaya’ thinking, coming to a community newsletter like this empty handed?

Ah, who am I kidding, nobody’s bringing nothing, I’m just hungry and craving some yummy Italian food. So anyway, on to business! It’s Hammer Time (HO-O, HO-O, break it down)!

Hmmm… though Hammer Time IS a blast from the past, perhaps it should stay in the past. Those pants are hideous. Okay. So lets get onto contests and activity. The Steve Hockensmith Mystery Contest is finally ready to begin. The award winning, best selling author has been busy lately, but we have the prizes here and we’re ready to go. We are giving 15 prizes away, including autographed Old Red and Big Red books, cash, and some excellent reading material penned by Mr. Hockensmith himself, and I mean Cadaver In Chief, written by Steve, not books that his Dad is giving away.

Steve has some very big news of his own in the coming months, so you should get submissions in (here) as soon as you can. I know a few of you I have talked to are working on some excellent entries, so I’d get a head start. You can edit them throughout the contest, with help from feedback you get from readers, because that’s what the site is all about. We are, however, getting ready to publicize this contest big time in the next few weeks, so we will be finding many new contestants to take advantage of the first ever Hockensmith Mystery Contest. Plus, as I said, Steve has been busy as well. He has some other irons in the fire that we’ll find out about in the Spring also.

It is a good time to be a mystery reader… or writer… but it’s never a good time to be IN a mystery, because you might end up dead or have your valuables robbed or end up in a gunfight or a train wreck. In the case of some of Hockensmith’s Old Red and Big Red stories, you might be involved in all of the above. And that is just not a pleasant day.

Anyway, this will be a wide open competition, so let’s get the ball rolling. I’d love to see some loyal, long standing Litmock members take home some prizes, but if talented newbies win, they win. I’ll enjoy reading and voting on submissions either way.

Onto local Litmock news, our good friend Prometheus isolated a submission problem. Our PHP wasn’t playing nice with some code thingy, or interfacing properly with a bunch of 0’s and 1’s or whatever, and Dave fixed it. Submissions are working fine now, though not hard enough if you ask me. Our good friend and long time member Dean M. Drinkel won an award at the Monaco Film Festival for best action screenplay and has been whooping it up ever since. Congrats Dean! Enjoy. Dean and I are working on a collaborative horror-comedy, which we started before he won, and we hope to give you some news on that soon as well.

I guess that does it for today. Star wanted to take our son out to play in the 2 feet of snow we were supposed to get, but we only got about 7” and it turned to slush quicker than a G.I. Joe doll melting in an Easy Bake Oven. I think I better go console them before they start dressing the poor dog up like a reindeer and riding him around the room like a demented Santa and a psychotic little helper.

So until next time,
Sayonara!