Muncie Cum Murder

heavy rain, cool, temps 55

loads of rain today - had a quiet morning reading more of Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, which I'm loving. Dick Kennison picked me up at 11:30 and we went off to Ruby Tuesday for burgers. Then to the convention centre for the start of Magna Cum Murder. they've set up a coffee bar with flavors to add ourselves - like vanilla and raspberry and caramel. I did a praline flavour with whipped cream on top. Yum.

then I was asked to interview an author with a debut author - Wilfred Bereswill. the persdon who was supposed to be involed showed up late, so I agreed to step in...20 years of CBC Radio interviewing paid off...and it's always a pleasure to help out a new author.

Then there was the author dinner and after that Jim Huang, who owns and runs The Mystery Company bookstore in Indianapolis and Ronald Tierney another author and I ran a discussion with all the registered guests and authors about the state of mystery reading and writing today.

By 8:30 tonight I was ready to come back to the hotel - pooped. My sessions start at 8 tomorrow morning and end with a signing at 9pm tomorrow, after dinner. including being the feature interview over lunch and a TV interview somewhere in there. Might need to carb up.

But this is an extremely well run conference, and that makes a HUGE difference. No stress about whether things will be ready, or I'll be picked up, or if something isn't going to work. Unexpected things always happen, but here I know they'll be taken care of. Someone is paying attention. A massive difference to my enjoyment of the event.

Sleep well - probably won't blog tomorrow but will try on Sunday.