You Want News? You’ve Got It

• I forgot to mention the winners of the Lovey Awards, given out last weekend at Chicago’s Love Is Murder conference. The Best Novel commendation went to Lifelines, by C.J. Lyons. Libby Fischer Hellman’s Easy Innocence was named the Best P.I./Police Procedural. And Tasha Alexander’s A Fatal Waltz won for Best Historical. A full rundown of the winners can be found here.

• Elmore Leonard, who’s better known these days for his crime fiction, has been designated as the 2009 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for his lifetime contribution to western literature. He’s scheduled to be given that prize on June 20 at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma.

• Victor Gischler’s bizarre tale of a post-apocalyptic America, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, has recently been optioned for the Hollywood treatment.

• Vince Keenan is covering the Seattle version of San Francisco’s Noir City film festival, which began last night and continues through Thursday. He also points me to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer piece recalling my hometown’s “gift to noir,” Howard Duff, who was born in nearby Bremerton, Washington, in 1913, but was “raised in Seattle, graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1932 (where he became interested in drama after being cut from the basketball team) and served his stage apprenticeship in the old Seattle Repertory Playhouse.” Duff went on to play Dashiell Hammett’s private eye, Sam Spade, on radio, have a “tempestuous” affair with the fair Ava Gardner, and marry actress Ida Lupino. He breathed his last in 1980. In case you were wondering ...

• Beat the Pulp’s latest weekly short story offering is “The Toll Collectors,” by Chris F. Holm.

• One of the coolest things I’ve seen in the blogosphere of late is the first of Brent McKee’s posts recalling classic fall preview editions of TV Guide. The opening installment looks back at U.S. shows debuting in the fall of 1971. That was the year prior to my own initial interest in prime-time television, and also the year in which the NBC Mystery Movie, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, and Cannon all premiered. Unfortunately, other interesting shows, including James Garner’s second Western series, Nichols, and James Franciscus’ Longstreet, were also introduced that fall but didn’t have the same staying power. I look forward to further entries in McKee’s series.

• And speaking of venerable old TV crime dramas, click here, here, here, and here. And oh, what the heck, for nostalgia’s sake, why don’t you go ahead and click here too.