The Suffolk Author’s Festival

Instead of blogging about books, I thought I would talk about the Festival. I’ve gone many years running; this is one of my favorite festivals. The staff is great, I love the area, and I really enjoy meeting the readers.

I also always sell quite a few books.

This year I also served on a panel. Moderated by Christine Trent (author of Lady of Ashes and the Florence Nightingale mysteries), the panel discussed Balancing Fact and Fiction. Also on the panel were Ellen Butler, Nicole Glover, Stacie Murphy, and Katharine Schellman. Of the panel members, outside of Christine, I’ve read only Katharine Schellman. Expect reviews of the other authors’ books to come. I bought eight books while I was there.

Other old friends I connected with: Heather Weidner and John Dedakis, both of whom have new books out in their series. (For Heather, it is the Pearly Girls.) Some authors I met last year: Maggie King and Mike Marsh I met last year and got reacquainted with this year.

New authors for me: Esme Addison and Lee Clark. I expect to read books by these authors as well.

The headliner was Tonya Kappes who has written more books than I can count.

This festival is such fun I hope to attend again next year.

Suffolk Mystery Convention

Very excited to announce that the Suffolk Mystery Convention will be held on March 6. I will send along information in a week or so.

I will be discussing my new Novel Death in the Great Dismal.

It is an appropriate choice since Suffolk is the town nearest the swamp.

It is an amazing experience to go from the streets of Suffolk and the small peanut farms nearby to the alien environment of the swamp. It is also very buggy!

Death in the Great Dismal

In the ninth entry in the Will Rees Series, Will and Lydia travel to the Great Dismal Swamp to help a friend. Several murders occur – of course since these are murder mysteries.

This is a peat bog and in some places the peat is fourteen feet deep, Although we went in September, it was still really buggy. It is hard to imagine people living here, raising families and, on the drier places, trying to farm.