Death of a Cozy Writer, the first novel in the St. Just Mystery series by G. M. Malliet published by Llewellyn's mystery fiction imprint Midnight Ink, has won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery. The Agatha Awards are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write novels in the traditional method exemplified by Agatha Christie. Traditionally, these novels contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence, and usually feature an amateur detective and take place in a confined setting and contain characters that know one another. Awards are handed out in five categories: • Best Novel • Best First Mystery • Best Non-Fiction • Best Short Story,

Beginning tomorrow at 05:01 UT (Universal Time), Mercury turns retrograde in Gemini. Now, I'm fully aware that not everyone fears Mercury Retrograde quite the way I do (in fact, astrologer Marguerite Manning believes that these periods can actually be quite empowering), but I seem to have the worst luck when it comes to Mercury Retrograde. The last time Mercury was retrograde I was in the process of moving (poor planning on my part, I know), and somehow managed to not only lose a box of my fiancé's expensive masonry trowels but also dent the fender of one of our cars while backing up to the new house. I suppose things could have been worse; after all, I didn't accidentally send any