Stuff I Learned at Malice--Announcing The Jane Eyre Chronicles--and a CONTEST!

Busy weekend up here in the DC area with Malice Domestic over, but the drive up to Festival of Mystery starts at crack o'dawn tomorrow. Malice always feels like a huge house-party, a get-together with 498 of your dearest friends. There are lots of hugs and chances to catch up with people you email or follow on Facebook, but only see once a year.

This Malice was particularly exciting for me because my agent had just announced my new series--The Jane Eyre Chronicles, which features Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth. I'll be writing these for Berkley. I met my new editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez. We had a lovely discussion about the books, and I can already tell Shannon will be a tremendous asset to my career. She's both thoughtful and insightful. My agent, Paige Wheeler, continues to astound me with her laser-sharp mind. She's just brilliant! What a dream team.

Here's what I learned this year at Malice:

1. Berkley hosts a great dinner for their authors. (I always wondered if it was as cool as I imagined. It was.)
2. Walking on grated sidewalks in high heels is not fun.
3.  If the Metro train you're in breaks down, they'll make all of you get out. The conductor will check to see that the cars are empty, and you'll have to wait for a new train.
4. Bethesda is a northern suburb of DC. Really, it's right next to DC. The NIH (National Institute of Health) is in Bethesda, and it has a huge campus.
5. Margaret Maron writes hilarious doggerel.
6. Nancy Pickard is always gracious and sweet. But not that nice. She loves killing Kansans. (Okay, the not nice part is a joke, people!)
7. Elaine Viets does amazing research. (Her PUMPED FOR MURDER came out in time for Malice. You can win a copy. Keep reading.)
8. Hank Phillippi Ryan once said Kryptonite when she meant Krypton and has never lived it down.
9. Dorothy Cannell's mother-in-law was a real piece of work. (That's putting it nicely.)

10. Sue Grafton has been knitting since she was in high school. She doesn't like to count, although she will, or use patterns, although she can do that, too. She was making a sweater for her granddaughter.

CONTEST--

You can win an autographed copy of PUMPED FOR MURDER. Just share with us...what did you learn this week?

After Malice

What could be better than Malice? With great panels, meeting old friends and making new, and the wonderful Berkley dinner, Malice is a tough act to follow. However, the folks at the Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont, PA, did just that. Each year on the Monday after Malice, they put on the Festival of Mystery.

I'd heard about this mythical one day event last time I was at Malice. Talk of many authors, many books sold in just a few hours. So Joanna and I climbed into their rental car and made the 400 mile trip to PA.

The next day a volunteer, Joyce Tremel (whose mystery is with an agent, fingers crossed for her), picked me up at my hotel and we drove through the rain-slicked streets of Pittsburgh to get to the first event, a tea thrown by the libraries of Alleghany county. We mingled with the librarians and locals, some book club members, some Friends of the Library and I introduced myself to authors I’d missed at Malice.

From there it was on to the Greek Church Hall for the main event. There was a line of people outside. Did I mention it was raining? I learned later that they’d come from all over and started lining up hours earlier.

We entered through the kitchen, glamorous as always. I found my name on a table piled high with my books. Right next to Elaine Viets and Heather Webber to one side and Heather Terrell and Marcia Talley to my right.

The doors opened and the place was packed. Readers, armed with their lists, gathered up books from their favorites. My books were new to them but many were willing to take a chance on a new author. I got the feeling that they’d discovered many wonderful authors at this event, and so were open to try new series.

After the first hour, Richard Goldman interviewed the authors on a little stage in another part of the hall. The audience, sated from their book buying frenzy, sat in rapt attention. He was a gracious host, as was Mary Alice Gorman. The event lasted four hours with all the authors being introduced and fans lingering even as clean up (by a crack team of volunteers) began. Afterwards, it was back to the bookstore for pizza and down time.

According to their email, over eighteen hundred books were sold, a 15% increase over last year. 8 books a minute!

What a wonderful event for both readers and writers! I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope Richard and Mary Alice continue doing this. One way to ensure this is to support them and other independent book stores. You can order directly from them at www.mysterylovers.com. I’m going to buy some of the books I saw last Monday night.