The Advocates: Honoring Janet Rudolph & J. Kingston Pierce

The Thrill Begins is running a new series of posts, The Advocates, with mystery writers honoring people who support and inspire the mystery community. The first post gave shout-outs to David Nemeth, and this week I’m offering thanks to Janet Rudolph and J. Kingston Pierce. (Next week features another person I’m thrilled to see honored—but shhhh! I can’t say who!)

Here’s an excerpt from my post:

When I was asked to contribute a column to “The Advocates” series, my first thought wasn’t, “Who should I write about?” but rather, “How can I write about _______ and leave out…?”—with those ellipses trailing toward too many people throughout the mystery community who champion and support and encourage and inform and…. And I can’t help but use another set of ellipses, because there seems no end to the myriad ways our best advocates celebrate and serve the writers and readers of the crime fiction world.


Not only are Janet Rudolph and J. Kingston Pierce among the best experts on and strongest advocates for the mystery community, but they’ve taken the lead there for many years now—a long-standing commitment that’s the reason I’ve chosen to spotlight them today.


You’ll notice that I didn’t tag either name above with any quick descriptor (“blogger at,” for example, or “editor of”) in part because so many people likely know their work already but also because of the difficulty in pinning either of them down to one chief thing that they do.

Read the full essay here. And thanks to Ed Aymar for giving me the chance to contribute.