As the northeast gets hit again with a snowstorm and the rest of the country is cold, we have a good way to keep warm.

That would be 2011 Sleuthfest.

Sleuthfest, sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, begins March 3, 2011, with the Third Degree Workshop and continues March

4-6. Editors, agents, authors and forensic experts will be on hand to discuss writing.

And Fort Lauderdale in March is pretty darn nice. Even if we have a cold snap, it is a lovely time to come to South Florida.

Unlike other conferences, Sleuthfest is a writing conference, geared to aspiring writers and published authors. And fans are welcomed, too.

Registration is $255 for MWA members; for nonmembers, $275. The rate includes some meals. One-day attendance also is available. Information and registration is at www.sleuthfest.com.

This year's guests of honors are Meg Gardiner, author of “The Liar's Lullaby” and “The Dirty Secrets Club,” and multi-award winner Dennis Lehane, author of “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island.”

Gardiner won the 2009 Edgar award for Best Paperback Original for her novel “China Lake.” Lehane built his career with Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, who returned in his recent novel “Moonlight Mile.”

In addition, mystery authors S.J. Rozan, James W. Hall, Michael Koryta, Dana Cameron, Deborah Crombie, Lisa Unger, Julie Compton, Marcia Talley, and more will attend. Les Standiford and Joe Matthews will launch their nonfiction book "Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America," about the Adam Walsh case.

The announcement from the Mystery Writers of America just dropped into our email and we're posting it asap.

Later, we'll comment on it and offer some perspectvie but for now, here's the information. Congratulations to all the worthy nominees.

Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce on the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2010. The Edgar Awards will be presented to the winners at our 65th Gala Banquet, April 28, 2011 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

BEST NOVEL
Caught by Harlan Coben (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Faithful Place by Tana French (Penguin Group USA - Viking)
The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books)
I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva (Tom Doherty Associates – Forge Books)
The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron (Minotaur Books)
The Serialist: A Novel by David Gordon (Simon & Schuster)
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
Snow Angels by James Thompson (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard (Random House - Bantam)
The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn (Henry Holt)
Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur Books)
Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)
Ten Little Herrings by L.C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press)

BEST FACT CRIME
Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime and Complicity by Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry (University of Nebraska Press – Bison Original)
The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in Jim Crow South
by Alex Heard (HarperCollins)
Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery
by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr and the International Hunt for his Assassin by Hampton Sides (Random House - Doubleday)
The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science
by Douglas Starr (Alfred A. Knopf)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
The Wire: Truth Be Told by Rafael Alvarez (Grove Atlantic – Grove Press)
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran (HarperCollins)
Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder (Wiley)
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendevouz with American History by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton)
Thrillers: 100 Must Reads edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner (Oceanview Publishing)

BEST SHORT STORY
"The Scent of Lilacs" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Doug Allyn (Dell Magazines)
"The Plot" – First Thrills by Jeffery Deaver (Tom Doherty – Forge Books)
"A Good Safe Place” – Thin Ice by Judith Green (Level Best Books)
"Monsieur Alice is Absent" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
by Stephen Ross (Dell Magazines)
"The Creative Writing Murders" – Dark End of the Street by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)

BEST JUVENILE
Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon (Candlewick Press)
The Buddy Files: The Case of the Lost Boy by Dori Hillestad Butler (Albert Whitman & Co.)
The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee (Feiwel & Friends)
Griff Carver: Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg (Penguin Young Readers Group - Razorbill)
The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman by Ben H. Winters (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

BEST YOUNG ADULT
The River by Mary Jane Beaufrand (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)
Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (Random House Children’s Books – Alfred A. Knopf)
7 Souls by Barnabas Miller and Jordan Orlando (Random House Children’s Books – Delacorte Press)
The Interrogation of Gabriel James by Charlie Price
(Farrar, Straus, Giroux Books for Young Readers)
Dust City by Robert Paul Weston (Penguin Young Readers Group - Razorbill)

BEST PLAY
The Psychic by Sam Bobrick (Falcon Theatre – Burbank, CA)
The Tangled Skirt by Steve Braunstein (New Jersey Repertory Company)
The Fall of the House by Robert Ford (Alabama Shakespeare Festival)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
“Episode 1” – Luther, Teleplay by Neil Cross (BBC America)
“Episode 4” – Luther, Teleplay by Neil Cross (BBC America)
“Full Measure” – Breaking Bad, Teleplay by Vince Gilligan (AMC/Sony)
“No Mas” – Breaking Bad, Teleplay by Vince Gilligan (AMC/Sony)
“The Next One’s Gonna Go In Your Throat” – Damages, Teleplay by Todd A. Kessler,
Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman (FX Networks)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD
"Skyler Hobbs and the Rabbit Man" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
by Evan Lewis (Dell Magazines)

GRAND MASTER
Sara Paretsky

RAVEN AWARDS
Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, Forest Park, Illinois
Once Upon A Crime Bookstore, Minneapolis, Minnesota

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 27, 2010)

Wild Penance by Sandi Ault (Penguin Group – Berkley Prime Crime)
Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)
Down River by Karen Harper (MIRA Books)
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Live to Tell by Wendy Corsi Staub (HarperCollins - Avon)

Every airport, every doctor's office, darn near everywhere, I see more and more people reading on a device.

Maybe people finally learned how to work all those reading devices they received as holiday gifts.

And the proof of the devices' popularity is in the sales.

USA Today recently reported that the "the e-book outsold the print version for 18 of the top 50 books on the newspaper's bestselling books list, including all three Stieg Larsson novels. The week before, 19 had higher e-book than print sales. That was the first time the top 50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print."

Wow!

More proof?

Charles Todd's newly released A Lonely Death sold approximately the same number of e-books as it did physical books.

Happy reading.

James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia) has never been sublte in his crime novels. Now he brings that lurid tabloid look at the world to television with James Ellroy's L.A. City of Demons beginning tonight (Jan. 19) at 10 p.m. on the Investigation Discovery channel.

In this six-part series, Ellroy will give a documentary-style look into L.A.'s dark past and its high-profile murders. Along for the ride will be a bus full of television journalists.

The series will include the 1958 unsolved murder of his own mother, which he wrote about in his memoir My Dark Places. He'll also touch on the stabbing of Lana Turner's mobster boyfriend, by her own daughter, as well as other celebrity-related crimes.

Ellroy has always been a no-holds barred type of writer, anxious to shock as well as tell a salacious story.

I've seen a couple of clips of his new series and it has the look and feel of his documentary-style film James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction, which

went from being tabloid lurid, emotional to downright odd.

In other words, pure Ellroy