Out of Hiding!

In case you haven't noticed, we've been laying low here at Sleuths Spies & Alibis for these past few months! We took the summer off from blogging to devote more time to our own projects. The truth is, we all have double identities: we're not only kidlit mystery bloggers, we're actively publishing novelists. We're also wives, husbands, moms, dads, aunts, employees . . . and like just about everyone, we're all struggling to balance it all.

When we started this blog several years ago, we were debut authors, still months or years away from seeing our books on shelves. Through blogging here, we've learned a lot from each other, sharing ideas for writing mysteries for young people, and we've gotten more great reading recommendations from each other than we can keep up with! (We hope you have too!) We've also loved celebrating each other's publication dates here, and we've all become friends in the process -- even though some of us have never met in person!

But. As I was saying . . . we're busier than ever now. Deadlines loom. Many of us are writing our second, third, fourth books, and we're on a different schedule. Our families and friends in real life clamor for our attention. Our pets look at us with their sad eyes. Don't blog. Feed me.

Yes, we're busy. But after a great deal of discussion and soul-searching among us, we've decided to return to the blog and keep it going. This fall marks our FOURTH (!) year of blogging about new kidlit mysteries (including our own), favorite mysteries, writing tips and challenges, and author interviews. The internet is full of dead blog carcasses, but we are still alive! Muahahahaha. To our knowledge, we're still the main go-to place online for kidlit mystery/thriller info. And we hated to think of shuttering the blog just because of this silly little technicality of none of us having any spare time to blog!

We are sad to lose three of our members: Lamar Giles, Ashley Elston, and W.H. Beck, are now sleuths-at-large. It has been a real joy to blog with these fine writers, and we wish them the best of luck with their new ventures--an MFA program for Lamar, and new book deals for all three!

The remaining ten of us will continue to blog here, adding new content once a week -- but Sleuths Spies & Alibis will now be more focused on author interviews (our popular Interrogation Room series), as well as highlighting more new and upcoming titles/authors in the mystery genre. We'll make our archives easier to navigate so if you're interested in our longer, thoughtful, essay-like posts about the craft of mystery writing, you'll be able to find those. We'll soon be updating our list of YA and MG mystery/thriller writers. And some of us may still occasionally write those longer, thoughtful, essay-like posts just to mix it up a little! But in general, we are streamlining, paring down, acting more as a resource center for kidlit mysteries.

We hope you'll stay with us and follow our blog through the change, and we hope you'll continue to interact with us on Twitter too (@kidlitmysteries). We'd love to hear what YOU'RE reading and what YOU'RE writing, because we are ALWAYS looking for more great mysteries!

Thanks, as always, for being our partners in crime!

[here are a few pics of our books spotted in the wild!]