So my college classmate Tasha Alexander (left)came into Manhattan last week to meet with Morrow about the plans for the paperback release of her first novel, And Only to Deceive, as well as its sequel, A Poisoned Season, which is being published next spring. And since she was coming to town, her pal Kristy Kiernan decided to schedule her meeting with Berkley to discuss the plans for her novel, Catching Genius, so they could hang out in the city together. At which point they got in touch with me, and we all converged on Hudson Bar & Books to engage in wicked, wicked literary gossip over serveral bottles of rioja.

Among the tamer topics suitable for publication we discussed was the rise of the group blog, in which several writers band together and divvy up the days of the week so that a site has a steady stream of new content, but each contributor only needs to post about once a week or so. The Good Girls Kill for Money Club, the mystery writers' blog where Tasha hosts a "virtual cocktail party" every Friday, came about after a late night conversation at Malice Domestic, while Kristy put together The Debutante Ball because she wanted to create a space where first-time writers could take center stage. "I wanted to bring fresh voices together and present them to readers in a one-stop shop format and let them get to know about us and our novels in a unique way," she emailed me a few days after we met (because, let's face it, conditions were far from optimal for note-taking), "before they had to search for us in a bookstore full of the same authors they've seen for years and years." The half-dozen authors she's assembled are an eclectic bunch, with books that could be marketed as "chick lit" positioned with "literary" fiction, a YA novel, a romantic fantasy, and a murder mystery. It's a model that's proving popular for many debut writers; see, for example, the recent launch of Class of 2K7, a site where 40 children's and YA authors have pooled resources to promote each other's debut books.

"Group blogs are great for cross-pollination," Tasha observed in her own post-party email. "You get exposed to each other's readers, to authors whose work you might have otherwise missed. And being part of a group takes away the pressure that comes from blogging on your own. I can be pithy once a week, but beyond that can make no promises." I know the feeling; as you may have read earlier, I recently switched my own blog, Beatrice, to a group blog format, recruiting four other bookbloggers to help me keep the site current.