Morgan Richter
@morganrichter.bsky.social
660 followers 390 following 980 posts
Author of THE DIVIDE and THE UNDERSTUDY, both from Knopf. Gen-X pop culture maven, Duran Duran aficionado, Miami Vice expert. Failed screenwriter, retired YouTuber. https://morganrichter.net/
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Awfully nice to see THE UNDERSTUDY in the New York Times, and in some very good company, too.
This month’s Crime & Mystery column reviews new books by Victor Suthammanont, Morgan Richter, Joe Lansdale, and Randy Wayne White.
The Art of Murder
www.nytimes.com
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.❤️
Last month, I got covid + flu + shingles (dose #1) shots all at the same time! The next day, I did stay in bed and cry a lot (I hear that's mostly the natural effect of the shingles vax), but I will say in all seriousness: worth it.
I've lived in Seattle for eight years now, and I still have to pause and think before saying "Alki" or "Leschi." I'm never 100% sure on those final "i"s.
If you're wondering about it, you quite possibly are! The "kane" part is pronounced like "can" instead of "cane." It's counterintuitive.
I once chatted with a friend who mispronounced "Spokane," i.e. he pronounced it as it's spelled. I told him the correct pronunciation, and he said, "When I visited there, I heard it both ways." No. No! No, sir, you did not, unless you were talking with someone who was messing with you (possible).
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
Reposted by Morgan Richter
Bookshop.org (the best Amazon alternative) is having an anti-prime sale today. Free shipping on books including mine :P bookshop.org/a/88357/9781...
The Anti-Prime Sale at bookshop.org. 17 more hours.
Reposted by Morgan Richter
The paperback edition of A Natural History of Empty Lots is out today from Timber Press @hachetteus.bsky.social! Thanks to all the readers who have picked up the hardcover and ebook over the past year (or listened to the audiobook) and spread the word 🙏📖💚
Paperback editions of A Natural History of Empty Lots in a box
Yes, it's the perfect meal if you need to get a week's supply of sodium in a single serving!
Canned corn beef hash. Fry it up and pile it high on a buttered English muffin, and it is a god-tier breakfast item. Few agree with me on this. I was rereading Chandler's The Little Sister last night, and way back in 1949, Philip Marlowe was complaining that canned hash is disgusting.
What foods do you love that you fully acknowledge make you a pervert for loving them?
Authors beware! I've been bombarded with AI-based scams this week -- the book club one John Scalzi mentions below, plus I've been targeted by a whole bunch of scammers offering to write Amazon reviews in exchange for cash. I'm sending them all straight to the trash.
The new writer scam hotness is the email that purports to be from a book club that meets on Zoom, who invites you to discuss [title of yours plucked from an AI database], and who needs you to pay a "small reservation fee" to participate. Gotten three just today. Fuck that noise, plonk it into spam.
Reposted by Morgan Richter
SCAM ALERT!

I've been contacted by several authors; someone is impersonating me, offering to make their book an official selection of our club in exchange for a small fee.

No reputable book club charges authors a fee.
Thank you for mentioning this! Got one yesterday and meant to post about it, because I'd never seen this scam before -- very glad you're exposing this absolute nonsense for what it is. (First email seemed legit, I emailed back, and they hit me with the "tiers of engagement" I could buy. Asswipes.)
Reposted by Morgan Richter
AUTHORS: It’s time to submit your claims for the Anthropic copyright settlement.

1. Look yourself up here: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

2. File your claim here: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Form asks for ISBN and copyright reg # for each work. Can find in step 1.
🚨AUTHORS: The judge has approved the settlement in the Anthropic copyright case. By 10/2 you will be able to look up your name/works on the settlement website to see if you are eligible for payments. Which Authors Guild explained will be split evenly between authors/publishers who both hold rights.
What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement - The Authors Guild
Background  Bartz v Anthropic is one of the major copyright lawsuits brought by authors against an AI company for using books without permission to train large language models. It was filed by nonfict...
authorsguild.org
Reposted by Morgan Richter
I can't say enough good stuff about Morgan Richter and her very exciting books!
If you enjoy a mystery and you haven't checked out THE UNDERSTUDY yet, you are missing out!!
Had a great time at Broadway Books in friendly, peaceful, quirky, lovely Portland chatting with the amazing @wnwagner.bsky.social. The crowd may have been small (my sister, my second cousin, my old friend Dave, Wendy's spouse, and one cool stranger), but everyone was lively and engaged.
Interior of Broadway Books in Portland, where I'm signing copies of The Understudy at a table while the fantastic Wendy N. Wagner stands nearby. Quick plug for Wendy's eco-horror book Girl in the Creek: It's wonderful, and everyone should read it.
Reposted by Morgan Richter
Q&A with Morgan Richter about her new novel, THE UNDERSTUDY.
tinyurl.com/4a46f3z3
@morganrichter.bsky.social
Had a great time at Broadway Books in friendly, peaceful, quirky, lovely Portland chatting with the amazing @wnwagner.bsky.social. The crowd may have been small (my sister, my second cousin, my old friend Dave, Wendy's spouse, and one cool stranger), but everyone was lively and engaged.
Interior of Broadway Books in Portland, where I'm signing copies of The Understudy at a table while the fantastic Wendy N. Wagner stands nearby. Quick plug for Wendy's eco-horror book Girl in the Creek: It's wonderful, and everyone should read it.
I'm really looking forward to Thursday! This is going to be so much fun!!!
Great review of @wnwagner.bsky.social's very cool novel, which has stuck with me long after reading it. Her book is ecologically-minded body horror, a microgenre I didn't know I needed until I read it.
Random gymnastics routines in '80s videos: one of my favorite things.
I remember! I got into a weird fight in a bar with some random angry dude on this very topic! From my blog: morganrichter.net/blog/todays-...
Excerpt from a blog post I wrote on "Take On Me": "The video for “The Sun Always Shines on TV” is a direct sequel to “Take on Me,” transforming “Take on Me”’s romantic optimism into bitter tragedy: At the start of “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” Bailey and Harket’s characters experience momentary bliss in the real world, and then Harket is sucked back into the comic book, presumably for eternity, leaving Bailey bereft. Because Americans by and large don’t know much about A-ha, I got into an argument on this very subject with some random dude at a bar in New York a small handful of years ago: “Take on Me” came on over the sound system, his girlfriend and I started gushing about the video, I mentioned the existence of the sequel, and he jumped into our conversation to angrily insist that I must be talking about some kind of fan-made project, because the “Take on Me” video has never, ever had a sequel. I am not the kind of person who gets into arguments at bars, to put it mildly, and this experience—having my calm factual knowledge flat-out refuted by some dude who didn’t know a blasted thing about the subject matter but was nonetheless absolutely certain he was more qualified to weigh in on it than me—was a unique one to me at the time. Then I started a YouTube series devoted to analyses of Miami Vice episodes, and I quickly became accustomed to angry dudes yelling at me about how I am wrong, wrong, wrong."
Reposted by Morgan Richter
As the great @morganrichter.bsky.social once wrote, "Between Napoleon’s tendency to flirt with anyone within winking distance and Illya’s ability to inject a jolt of freeform polysexual chemistry into everything he does, simple scenes between them can turn complicated very fast."