As a murder mystery writer, I leave some people feeling squeamish. I’ll never forget when I asked my neighbor, a trainer of paramedics, if he thought someone could be killed if plastered with enough nicotine patches. Writerly curiosity on my part, the kind any mystery writer would understand, but which caused my neighbor to regard me as unhinged.
So, at our annual joint Sisters in Crime/Mystery Writers of America holiday party, it is such a pleasure for me to visit with my murder mystery colleagues–people who automatically understand not only morbid curiosity, but also the joy and frustration of writing. For the last couple of years Borderlands Books, a delightful mystery/sci-fi bookstore on Valencia Street in San Francisco, has hosted our get-together. Here I am with my guru of marketing, author Cindy Sample, with a tote advertising the latest in her “Dying for” series.
My cohorts from misterio press are spread across the United States, but I’m happy to have one, Kirsten Weiss, who is also a Northern California Sister in Crime. She met my many questions with such good grace! I look forward to reading her latest, Hoodoo Detective.
Below I am pictured with Jenny Carless, a mystery who also hails from Santa Cruz. She and I and a few other mystery writers from the Santa Cruz area have started to meet informally.
The party also allows me to rub shoulders with well known authors like Cara Black and the 2014 Macavity Award winner, Terry Shames. Below Terry signs a copy of A Killing at Cotton Hill for me. Only when I got home did I notice that it was already an autographed copy. *blush* Oh, well, it made for a nice photo op.
