C is for Crime Bake!

This weekend was the 8th annual New England Crime Bake. Sue Grafton was the GoH, and I can tell you (as so many other people will), she’s just lovely. We sat next to each other at breakfast, we talked cooking and Thanksgiving, and her talk at lunch was all about her hints about writing. It gave everyone, readers and writers, plenty to ponder--and a lot of laughs. You can see her, albeit a bit blurrily, below, to the left of Hallie Ephron.


There were great panels on bestsellers and forensic evidence. Kate Flora, Ruth McCarty, David Zeltserman, Toni Kelner, and I discussed our strategies for hanging in there on the “P is for Persistence” panel. I hope everyone enjoyed it; I figured it went well because I left there charged up and ready to face the cold, hard world of writing again. My agent Janet Reid recaps a little of it here.


Then there were the people at our dinner table, Hillerman House (aka The House on Hillerman...in 3-D). Oh, dearie me. MWA’s Margery Flax, Toni Kelner, Steve Kelner, Jedediah Berry, Paul Tremblay, Maggie Barbieri, Peg Patten, Eileen Forster Keck, and Rachel Beyer Brady. When we didn’t win the prize with our house song we felt we could still hold our heads up. The Kelners crafted our anthem “We Want Bloodshed” to be sung to the words of “We Are the Champions.” Yes, heaven help me, I sang in public, as far from the mike as possible, but with great gusto. We rocked it down to a little nub.

Is it any wonder I’m hoarse now? All that laughing and singing and writerly enthusiasm in one weekend? Better sign up for next year, when Charlaine Harris will be the GoH, and see what I’m talking about.

AND! Friday started off right, when Toni Kelner gave me copies of Wolfsbane and Mistletoe in German. Yay, Toni! You can see a copy of the cover at her website. The cool thing is, even though I have about six words of restaurant German, I could follow my story a bit (but mostly because I’d written it). Did you know Fangborn translates as “Fangzahngeschöpf?” I bet you did.