Breaking News--

December 6, 2007

You can see by the date that this has not been a good year for frequent website updates...because I've been too darn busy enjoying the success of my last book and getting the next one written.  :-)  The hardcover of Effigies was published on February 1.  By February 15, I heard from my publisher that stock in the warehouse was low...dangerously so, since I was in the middle of a huge book tour.  Frantic calls to various bookstores to make sure they had already received their books ensued, and the publisher rushed a trade paperback edition to press.  Heroic organizational coordination and split-second timing meant that I never arrived at a bookstore, only to find that they had no stock.  Some people were disappointed to miss the hardcover, which I suppose might now be considered slightly collectible, but the paperback got out in time to keep them from going home empty-handed.  My habit of throwing a couple of cases of books in the trunk of my car helped the situation substantially.  It was stressful, but how can running out of books be considered a bad thing, really?  I bet the publisher prints more next time.  And the bookstores pre-order more, to make sure they actually get them.  And the readers buy early and often, so they don't miss out.

During my March tour of Mississippi, my daughter and I visited my friend archaeologist Robert Connolly.  He has a podcast called Archaeology Overlooked that has achieved a certain level of notoriety due to a mention in USA Today.l  Robert interviewed me for his podcast, which was particularly fun for me, since a Ph.D. in archaeology will naturally ask different questions that the usual interviewer.  You can download the interview for free here.  And while I'm posting links to the sound of my own voice, you can listen to a recording of  the song I recorded for The Merry Band of Murderers here.  The song, "Land of the Flowers" won second place in this year's Will McLean Best New Florida Song contest.

More exciting developments for Findings remained.  In March, it was named a Book Sense Notable book.  The reviews were fabulous.  You can see them here.  And the educational interest in my work continued.  I was a featured speaker at a reading conference for the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute.  I was an invited presenter at the Kennesaw State University Conference for Young Adult Literature, at the Mississippi Association for Middle and Lower-school Education, and at the Georgia Council for Teachers of Mathematics.  A point of pride for me was the placement of all my books on Georgia state lists of recommended books for teaching both science and mathematics.  Two educational consultant groups in Mississippi are also recommending my books to schools.

Particularly close to my heart was an invitation to speak to the faculty of Choctaw High School, on the reservation of the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw.  They purchased a copy of Effigies for each student in the school.  I saw that book as a tribute to an old and enduring culture, and I was so pleased that they appreciated it.

Just this month, Effigies was featured in Mississippi magazine's Christmas shopping issue.  I was a little worried about writing about my home state.  There's always the chance that people won't like it, and then you can never go home again.  It seems that my worries were pointless.  That's a relief.

This brings me to the news of the hour--on Monday, I turned in the final draft of the new Faye Longchamp archaeological mystery, Findings.  I'm really happy with how it turned out, and the press has given it an amazing cover.  Check out the cover and a synopsis of Findings here.

I've always considered mystery fiction to be the "literature of justice," in the same way that science fiction is often called the "literature of ideas."  So if you asked me what my first three books were about, I would have had to say.  "Justice.  Fairness.  The concepts of "right" and "wrong."  I was writing the final chapter of Findings when I realized that it was about something else altogether.  Findings is about love.  There is hardly a character who is not touched, for good or for ill, by romantic love.  I tend to avoid romance in my work, because I've never been sure I could write it.  This time, it snuck up on me.  The next time you hear a reviewer or a professor pompously expounding on a book's carefully-crafted thematic structure, just be aware that sometimes even the writer doesn't know what she's crafting.  Oddly enough, I really think this accidental theme works.  We'll see what you think when we reach its publication date, July 2007.

As for personal news--my son graduates from college this month with a degree in mechanical engineering, a practically perfect GPA, and a most impressive job offer.  Best of all, that job offer is for a firm located a mere 100 miles from his mother.

My elder daughter is expecting a baby in May, so I'm adjusting to the notion that I'll soon be a grandmother.  Good heavens.  I think babies are God's greatest gifts, so I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival, but I'm busily doing my best trying not to look like a grandmother.  :-)   Come to my signings, so you can see whether I'm succeeding.

I've moved into a new house, which makes it rather amazing that I actually more or less made my deadline on Findings.  I'm having a blast getting it decorated and settling in...in my copious spare time.

Here are some photos you might enjoy:

Don Bruns, Jim Fusilli, me, and Claudia Bishop--Four members of the Merry Band of Murderers   Me and Christine Kling at the SIBA Book Show My elder daughter, her best friend, Leonard Nimoy, my younger daughter, my sister, and me.  Mr. Spock was just cool.       My biggest baby in its new home, and my smallest baby in her new room.  Like the colors?  The whole house was the color of oatmeal, but I was feeling adventuresome.   Another view of the living room, a shot of the fabulous back porch, and a "before" view of the world's ugliest kitchen.  It will be much prettier soon. The den, still the color of oatmeal, before I painted it pale yellow.  My youngest and her idol, Darth Vader.  And my mother, my sister, and me (at the keyboard) on Christmas 1963.

January 3, 2007

I'm entering the final pre-publication weeks for Effigies, and it feels like the ninth month of pregnancy.  I'm excited.  I'm tired.  And I know that I'll be a lot more tired after the "baby" comes, when I start touring.  Check out my ever-developing schedule.  You'll see that I'm scheduled to speak at some educational conferences, something I've been doing for a year or so now.  A growing number of teachers are recognizing that they can teach math and science and history relatively painlessly by using my books, and I'm enjoying the process of working with them to make their teaching lives easier.

Early reviews and comments have been fabulous.  Check out the Reviews page for some excerpts.  (I'm just too modest to repeat them here...)  Reviews of A Merry Band of Murderers have been similarly wonderful, and I've posted some excerpts on the same page.  The Merry Band performed at Bouchercon to an enthusiastic crowd who then bought out the book room and stormed us for autographs.  For a brief half-hour, all of us unassuming mystery authors got a little taste of what it must be like to be Mick Jagger.

And because even I don't work all the time, I'm posting a few photos here that you might enjoy.  My husband and I sang at a madrigal dinner last month, so I uploaded a photo of us in medieval gear.  Then I fast-forwarded to the 23rd century, posting photos from my recent foray into the world of Star Trek conventions.  My sister alerted me last fall to the fact that it was the 40th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek. (Which we watched during its original run, but we were little, teeny children.  Really.)  Even more exciting, she had found a convention headlined by William Shatner.  Since she, my youngest daughter, and I share a passion for Captain Kirk that could only be rectified by a time machine, we had no choice but to blast off to the convention.  Secaucus, New Jersey...the final frontier...

From the madrigal dinner--my husband and I are on the right, looking a whole lot like the King and Queen of Clubs.	Captain Kirk, in the flesh...	Me, Joanne Linville (who played the Romulan Commander, the first female starship captain in the Star Trek universe--pretty cool for 1969), and my youngest daughter, whose internet code name will be Yeoman Muffin.  Ms. Linville, a very gracious lady, took time to talk to Muffin.  "Muffin, you should practice a firmer handshake.  When women are running the world, you'll need that.  You tell your friends that the Romulan Commander told you to stand firm."  Muffin's mother is now a big fan.

Me, Muffin, and my sister, who was channeling Captain Janeway.  We told people that our Captain had *two* yeomen, figuring that this was the ultimate Starfleet status symbol.	Live long and prosper, people of Earth...

August 8, 2006

The final draft of Effigies is at the typesetter, so I am in that exciting but vaguely nervous-making gestational stage--it's too late to change the book, but too early to start organizing my promotional travel.  I'm amusing myself by plotting the next book and spending time with my younger daughter, who will enter middle school this month.  My other two children are college students with apartments of their own, but they're both still in town, so my husband and I still see them often.  How time flies...

My publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has opened a branch in the UK, so my books are coming out "across the pond," which seems very cosmopolitan to this Mississippi-bred girl.  Artifacts came out in August, Relics is due out in September, and Effigies will come out in April 2007, shortly after its US publication date of February 2007.

Two of my short stories will be out in anthologies this month--"Land of the Flowers" will come out in A Merry Band of Murderers, and "Mouse House" will be in North Florida Noir.  I also have an essay called "The Caves of Steel" in Mystery Muses, a collection of essays by mystery writers discussing classic books that have influenced their own writing.

I've started blogging, a development that has stunned my offspring.  "Mom.  A blog?  But...what will you write about?"  My answer:  "Don't worry.  I won't write about you.  Much."  I blog with four other mystery-writing women and we call ourselves "The Lady Killers."  Check us out here: 

http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/

On the personal front, I've traveled a bit since I last updated this page.  In April, I enjoyed a week-long book tour with one of my blogmates, Rhys Bowen, as we took a slice through mid-America, traveling from Pennsylvania to Indiana to Kentucky to Tennessee to Alabama to Florida.  In May, my husband and I took a fifteenth-anniversary trip to Hawaii (delayed 11 months due to our respective schedules, but at least we got it in before our 16th.)  And, in June, we took our youngest child on a two-week trip through Italy, accompanied by 13 other Evanses.  (Italy has survived invading armies before, and it apparently survived us.)

On the way home from Italy, I had quite a medical adventure.  Imagine emergency-room level abdominal pain.  Imagine you are 35,000 feet in the air and will continue to be there for 12 hours.  Imagine that your ten-year-old daughter is sitting next to you.  (When she asks, with her little brow furrowed, "Are you okay, Mommy?"  what can you do but slap on a smile and say brightly, "I'm fine!  Mommy's just fine!"?)  When we finally landed, I had my first ambulance ride to a hospital near Washington DC.  Sparing you the gory details, let's just say that I left my gall bladder there.  And then I had some kind of endoscopic thingie to fetch some hard-to-reach stones.  And then my pancreas objected to its ill treatment. (Pancreatitis is something I highly do not recommend.)  Ten days later, the hospital finally let me go.  Whenever I wonder how sick I really was, I ask myself, "My insurance company okayed ten days in the hospital????"

I'm recovering spectacularly well, but the doctors told me to cancel my appearances for two months, so if you were planning to come see me on my North Carolina tour, I'm sorry.  I'll reschedule it next spring, after Effigies comes out.  I was supposed to volunteer, along with my mother and my youngest child at an archaeological dig at a very important site in Indiana called Fort Ancient, but I had to cancel that, too.  I'm sure we'll get over the disappointment someday...

I'll be back to normal and back on the road in September, appearing at the SIBA Book Show in Orlando; at Bouchercon in Madison; at Magna Cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana; and at the National Council of Teachers of English convention in Nashville.  And probably other places, so watch this site.  I don't like to let grass grow under my feet.

February 28, 2006

I shipped the rough draft of Effigies off to my agent last Friday, so I have time to do things like update my website.  (And organize my closets.  And clean my oven.  And start doing my income taxes.  Notice what I chose to do first.  :-)   )

Relics has been out for seven months now, so you'd think that the exciting news would have stopped coming.  But, no!  In December, Relics made the IMBA's (that's the International Mystery Bookseller's Association, for the uninitiated) bestseller list.  And it didn't drag in at 10th place, either.  It was tied for third, right up there with Michael Connelly.  (When I start pulling in royalty checks like Michael's, I'll let you know.)

Then, in February, I learned that Relics had been nominated for the SIBA Book Award.  (Again, for the uninitiated, SIBA stands for the Southeastern Independent Book Alliance.)  This is a very literary-oriented group.  To be nominated for such a prestigious award is nice recognition for my work and for the quality of modern mystery writing .

You may recall from my last entry in this very slow-paced blog that I'd turned in a recording and a story, both called Land of the Flowers, for an upcoming anthology/CD called A Merry Band of Murderers.   On a lark, I sent a copy of the recording to the Will McLean Festival's Best New Florida Song contest.  The judges, who were apparently also on a lark, awarded it second place.  So I'll be traveling to the Will McLean Festival in Brooksville, Florida on March 11 to perform the song and pick up the award.

I've sold another short story called "Mouse House," which will be in an anthology compiled by Pottersville Press called North Florida Noir, to be published in August 2006.

And I have an essay in an upcoming reference book called Mystery Muses published by Crum Creek Press.  In this book, 100 current mystery authors will pay tribute to a book that has influenced their life as a writer.  Not one to think inside the box, I chose a book that you'll never find on a library's mystery shelves:  The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov.  Generally regarded as the first detective novel to be set in a futuristic science fiction world, it was written in 1954.  I think it still stands up to critical scrutiny today.

I mentioned my recent surgeries in my last post, so here's the good news:  I'm completely recovered.  So if you come to see me on the road, I'll be moving more comfortably and smiling even more.  Thanks for your interest in my work!

December 5, 2005

Hmm.  At least two entries in this pseudo-blog seem to have disappeared into cyberspace, which somehow doesn't surprise me.  I'll try to reconstruct the events of 2005, which have been many and varied.  Relics hit the shelves in August, along with the new trade paperback edition of Artifacts and they both continue to sell well.  Relics is getting wonderful reviews, which I've posted on the "Reviews" page of this site..   

Another wonderful development  from Ingram Books, a major distributor of books in the US.  They select about two novels every month to feature in their e-newsletter, the Advance Handseller.  This publication is intended to call booksellers’ attention to books with the potential to be “the next big thing” or a “sleeper hit,” as they say on their website.  Out of all the books published in August, they chose Relics as one of their picks.  I went to Ingram's Nashville headquarters in September where my publisher Rob Rosenwald and I met and greeted buyers for libraries and bookstores, giving away a tremendous stack of books.  Besides Nashville, I've signed Relics so far in 11 states, with a few more left to go.

The next Faye Longchamp mystery, Effigies, is under contract to Poisoned Pen Press, which plans to publish it in January/February 2007.  I'm about a third of the way into it, with my deadline still several months away, so things are looking good.  It will be set in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and it will explore the conflicts between archaeologists who want to study and preserve cultural artifacts, landowners who want to preserve their property rights, and Native Americans who object to having their ancestors' graves disturbed.  I'm a native Mississippian, so I'm happy to be "going home" with this one.

I have a short story in a new anthology called A Kudzu Christmas.  This is my first story in print, which is quite gratifying for a writer who wrote a tremendous number of rejected stories during her formative years.  The story is called "A Singularly Unsuitable Word," and I'm happy to e-mail a copy to those of you who are Anthony or Agatha voters.

I've submitted my story and song, both called "Land of the Flowers" for an upcoming anthology with accompanying CD called  A Merry Band of Murderers.  All the writers have been professional musicians at some time in the past, and we all wrote and recorded original songs to go with our stories.  I'll remind y'all next September when it comes out. 

I had articles in the September issue of Mystery Readers' Journal and the October issue of Mystery Scene, which made me feel like a contributing member of the mystery community.  Attending Bouchercon and Magna Cum Murder had the same effect.  We mystery readers are a fun, warm, and welcoming bunch, and I'm proud to play my small part in that.

A non-work-related highlight to the year was our recent trip to the Galapagos.  A non-work-related lowlight to the year was my recent neck surgery, from which I'm recovering very well.  Then I'll have jaw surgery for Christmas (pureed turkey for Christmas dinner, anyone?), and when all that's done, I hope to be free of some chronic pain issues that have put a damper on the last few years.

I've got upcoming events in St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Delray Beach, Gainesville, Safety Harbor, and Panama City, Florida; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Columbus, Georgia.  Come see me if you can--I love to put names to faces!
 

January 29, 2005
Well, Relics is off to the typesetter and we have an official publication date: August 2005. I'll be planning a fall tour soon, so if you have a favorite bookstore or library, let me know. I visited 14 states while promoting Artifacts, so the odds are good that I'll be visiting a city near you.

Artifacts was listed as an Adult Mystery with Young Adult Appeal by Voice of Young America (VOYA), which means that it is being read in high schools, which I'm absolutely thrilled to hear. The mass-market paperback of Artifacts exceeded sales expectations, which means that they're completely sold out. If you're still hoping to get a softcover edition, Poisoned Pen Press will be issuing a trade paperback in March.

While waiting for Relics to come out, I'm plotting out more adventures for Faye and tackling smaller writing projects--most notably, a short story that will appear in a Christmas mystery anthology featuring southern authors being published by River City Press. More detail will be posted here as I have them. I'm very happy with the story, called "A Wholly Unsuitable Word."

 

August 29, 2004
Well, it's been a long strange summer, folks. First, and most exciting, Artifacts won the Benjamin Franklin Award in Mystery/Suspense. This is a national award given by the Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) to recognize excellence in small and independent publishing, and I was simply thrilled to receive it. It was presented in Chicago at the PMA's annual awards banquet in a very Oscar-esque kind of ceremony. As the nominees for each category were announced, the cover art for each nominee was projected on a huge screen behind the dais. After the "and-the-envelope-please" moment, the winner's cover grew and filled the screen. Très Hollywood. I had a blast at the ceremony, as well as during a whirlwind tour of Chicago given by my friend and fellow Franklin nominee, Libby Hellmann. (She wrote An Eye for Murder, A Picture of Guilt, and An Image of Death. All good books, you should check them out.)

Why is it taking me so long to tell you this great news? Because I left immediately after coming home from Chicago for a long-anticipated trip: three weeks in Italy and Greece with our two older children. Our younger daughter stayed in Mississippi with her Mamaw because she's just too young to withstand our travel style. We fly tourist (for free--God bless frequent flyer miles.) We sleep cheap. We linger in museums. We think taxis are for wimps. If you have older teenagers, I encourage you to travel with them before they leave home. Young adults are interesting people, particularly for parents who remember when those self-same people called them Muh-muh and Pop-pah. And the rewards keep rolling in. Our son started college this week. He'll be taking Art History, studying works of art he just saw in person, and Modern Greek Politics, learning about a society he just visited. I don't think the trip will influence him much in Calculus, though...

Since returning from Italy and Greece, I've been to Tennessee and to Mississippi three times. (Yes, I've traveled more than four thousand miles by car in the last two months.) And in the meantime, I'm nearly finished revising Relics. In other authorial news, my first published short story, "Starch," will appear in Plots with Guns ( http://www.plotswithguns.com ) this fall, and my essay on the relationship between mystery fiction and the art world, "Stealing Mona," will appear in Mystery Readers Journal in early 2005. I've been a busy woman, but that's a good thing. Who wants to get bored?


April 22, 2004
I've had two pieces of wonderful news this month. First, Artifacts was given the Patrick D. Smith Florida Fiction Award by the Florida Historical Society. This award was established to recognize the valuable contributions made by writers of Florida fiction in stimulating the promotion and study of the Florida’s history and heritage. My husband David and I went down to Melbourne last week for the awards banquet and found that the historical society is just full of gracious and knowledgeable folks. I'm so proud that they liked my book.

The second piece of news is just as exciting. Artifacts is one of three finalists for the Benjamin Franklin Award in Mystery/Suspense. It's a national award given by the Publishers Marketing Association to recognize excellence in independent publishing, and the winner will be announced at a gala banquet in Chicago on the eve of Book Expo America. One of the other nominees is my friend Libby Hellmann, who is also a Poisoned Pen Press author. We'll both be attending the banquet, glad to be finalists and hoping for a win for Poisoned Pen.


March 23, 2004
Since I last updated this page, I've toured the eastern seaboard, finished the first draft of Relics, and made a goodly number of personal appearances all over Florida. I'm deep in revisions for Relics, and I'll post a definite publication date as soon as I know it.

The exciting news of the moment is the mass-market paperback edition of Artifacts, which will be in bookstores in April. I think the mass-market cover is suitably atmospheric, and I daresay that the $6.99 price tag sounds a lot better to most people than the $24.95 price for the hardcover. It's being published by iBooks, a division of Simon and Schuster, so the odds are quite good that you'll find it in your local bookstore. If, by chance, you don't see it on the shelves, your bookseller can have it in your hands in a couple of days, so just ask.

I've posted a new contest, and I'm giving away copies of the new paperback. Click here to register for my e-newsletter. When you register, you'll automatically be entered in this contest. As long as you stay on my e-newsletter list, you'll be automatically registered for any contest I run, so there's no telling what you may win. On April 15, I'll pick three names on my e-newsletter list and those people will receive the paperback edition of Artifacts. If you don't enter, you can't win...

I've also posted a new review (click above on "What People Are Saying" that I think you'll find interesting. The gentleman who wrote it is an archaeologist who seeks out popular fiction on archaeology, then reviews the books he finds on the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse website. I'm sure you can imagine how pleased I am to find that practicing archaeologists enjoy Faye and her exploits.

October 31, 2003

Wow! The past four months have blown by. I can't believe I haven't updated this page since then. I'd blame my webmaster, but she is me. I've been in the eye of a hurricane of signings and conferences and interviews. I've also been trying to find time to write the next book, Relics. The biggest news, I guess, is that Poisoned Pen Press is planning to publish Relics next summer--assuming I make my deadline. (Never fear. I worked for many years as a consulting engineer. I may forego, sleep, food, social interactions, and many other pleasures of life, but I always make my deadline.)

Artifacts has sold very well. (Collector's notice: There are very few first editions left. Run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and get a copy while you still can.) The large-print edition is also doing well, particularly in libraries. Since Christmas is coming, I'll mention that many folks are finding the large-print edition to be a thoughtful gift for elderly relatives, which I think is rather sweet.. I think it's very nice that Poisoned Pen Press is now publishing many of their hardcover mysteries in large-print.

I leave next week for my Busting Out of Dixie tour--if you're near Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC, or Boston, check the Schedule page of this website. This will be a new experience for me. I'm from Florida, you know, so I had to mail-order a coat suitable for northeastern temperatures. Besides signing books at a slew of bookstores, I'll be recording interviews to be broadcast in New York City and in Oregon. If you're in those areas and want to be notified when those interviews air, e-mail me at maryannaevans@yahoo.com and I'll keep you posted. Best of all, I'll get to finally (after 6 years) meet my agent, which will be fun.

June 12, 2003
The first copies of Artifacts landed on my doorstep on May 14, and I've been too busy to even sit down and update the website. The books themselves are absolutely gorgeous, so I spent a little time just looking at them. I took them to the High Springs Mystery Readers group and flashed them around. (And a few other places, too!) Then I had my first signing at Goerings Books here in Gainesville on Sunday, May 18. They sold every book they had. Then they sold every book I had. Then they took orders for more. This is a wonderful town, and a lot of wonderful folks live here.

Then I spent about a week working on the next Faye Longchamp novel, Relics, before heading for Omaha where I pulled a twofer: visiting my sister and her lovely family and experiencing Mayhem in the Midlands. Mayhem was a blast. I met authors and readers that I only knew by their e-mail addresses. I participated in some fun and entertaining panels, moderated one, and enjoyed several from the audience. And I was honored to sign a very goodly number of copies of Artifacts. This author gig is a good one.

Since I returned from Omaha, I've had very successful signings at the High Springs Woman's Club and Wild Iris Books. Much of my time has been devoted to preparations for my first tour. I have a friend with a humongous RV and an analytical chemistry lab to market. We have another friend with an environmental consulting firm to market. We will be driving across Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, stopping at contamination sites and bookstores. We call it our "Terrorizing Dixie Tour." Check the "Schedule of Appearances Page" for details, and come see me if I'm coming near your town.

Since I am my own secretary, my own publicist, and my own publicist's secretary, I am very proud of this tour: twelve bookstores in eleven cities, four television appearances, and radio interviews that will air in eleven markets. And some degree of newspaper coverage but I have found that, where newspapers are concerned, you find out about your coverage when it is published and not before.

Watch this page in July for a complete report on the "Terrorizing Dixie Tour."


May 6, 2003
Artifacts will be mailed from the printer tomorrow. The pre-publication reviews are excellent! (I've posted some of them on the "What People Are Saying" page of this website.) I'm booked for more than a dozen signings in May and June. I just found out that there will be a large-print editions, which I think is really cool. And who knows what other surprises wait around the corner?

 

March 24, 2003

Artifacts is due back from the printer by April 30.  It can be ordered directly from the publisher at www.poisonedpenpress.com at that time.  If you pre-order now, your copy will be autographed, then shipped directly to you.  It should be on the shelves of mystery bookstores by May 15.  If your favorite bookstore doesn't have it in stock by that time, just ask for it--they should be able to get it for you within a couple of days.  And it will be available from all the major online booksellers, as well.

My first public appearance came as a complete surprise--Lesa Holstine at the Lee County (Florida) Book Festival contacted me on March 6, hoping I could fill in for an author who'd had to cancel at the last minute due to a family emergency.  While I was more than willing to help out, it was a bit nerve-wracking to pull myself together and make the 5-hour trip to Fort Myers, with little more than 24 hours' notice.  But I got there on the afternoon of March 7, in plenty of time to attend the Authors' Reception and, afterward, to make some notes to prepare to sit on two authors' panels.  My first efforts as a panelist went pretty well, considering that I'd never actually seen an authors' panel discussion.  Check out http://www.bookbitch.com/reading_festival.htm for a report on the entire festival (a large and exceptionally well-run affair) and several mentions of this humble author.  I particularly enjoyed meeting P.J. Parrish, David Morell, Randy Wayne White, and Jonathon King, all of them extremely kind to a brand-new writer.

Close on the heels of the Lee County Book Festival was SleuthFest, a conference for published and aspiring mystery writers.  It was an exciting and information-packed weekend.  Some of the highlights for me were hearing Sue Grafton speak on 12 Things That Are Probably Wrong With Your Manuscript, attending Daniel Keyes (of Flowers for Algernon fame) speak on plotting, and hearing Dr. Henry Lee discuss forensic science.

 February 20, 2003

Publicity is tough for an engineer/writer, two introverted professions if there ever was such a thing.  But thanks to my friends at the High Springs Mystery Readers Group, the High Springs Herald published a very nice piece before ARTIFACTS even hit the streets.  Here's a picture of us mystery readers, and if you live near High Springs and want to join us, e-mail Beth Slater, our charming librarian and mysterian-in-charge, at this address:  bslater@exchange.acld.lib.fl.us