WHO BURIES THE DEAD Book Tour!

Yes, it's really happening: Penguin is sending me on a book tour the first week of March, 2015, for the release of WHO BURIES THE DEAD. Here are the bookstores, cities, dates, and times:

NEW ORLEANS

Tuesday, March 3

6:00PM to 7:30 PM CT

Garden District Bookstore

2727 Prytania St. 

New Orleans, Louisiana

PHOENIX 

Wednesday, March 4

7:00 PM MT

Poisoned Pen

4014 N Goldwater Blvd

Ste 101

Scottsdale, Arizona

HOUSTON

Thursday, March 5

6:30 PM CT

Murder by the Book

2342 Bissonett Street

Houston, Texas

PORTLAND

Friday, March 6

7:00 PM PT

Powell's City of Books

3415 Cedar Hills Blvd

Beaverton, Oregon

SEATTLE-TACOMA

Saturday, March 7

12:00 PM PT

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

117 Cherry Street

Seattle, Washington

So what do you think? I think that at the end of that week, I'm going to be dead.

The 2011 American Library Association Meeting in New Orleans

Billed as the "world's largest and most dynamic library conference and exhibition," the annual American Library Association Conference will be coming to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans from June 23-28. I'll be on a panel entitled "Mystery and Horror at Your Library" on Sunday morning, from 10:30-12:30, in Room 268 in the Convention Center. Although it's billed as a "panel," the instructions say "each author has been asked to speak for 12 minutes," so I'm not sure if this is going to be a typical panel with questions asked of all or some sort of serial individual presentation. And I don't know who else is on the panel because I can't seem to find it on their schedule.

At any rate, we're told that a "booksigning will follow after the panel, and one of the Penguin staffers will be there to facilitate the signing."

Then, at 1:00pm- 2:00pm, there will be another signing at the Penguin booth, #1422.

The ALA had their convention in New Orleans the summer of 2006, less than a year after Katrina. It was the first organization brave enough to return to New Orleans after the hurricane, which means the ALA holds a special place in all our hearts. When I signed that year, I was still living as a refugee and the city was such a mess we were wondering if it would ever be made right again. How much things have changed in just five years.

So any of you coming for the conference, please stop by the panel room or the Penguin booth and say "Hi."

And it's nasty hot down here, so come prepared for some heat.

Bouchercon by the Bay

**

I love Bouchercon! As conferences go, it's fun and low key and very different from, say, RWA National. Part of that difference comes from the mix of people. Bouchercon is a lot of writers and booksellers, editors and a few agents, a few unpublished writers, and many, many fans. RWA is all published or unpublished writers, agents and editors, with the result that there is more of an air of desperation and less a spirit of fun. Of course, the fact that RWA is virtually all women and many Bouchercon attendees are male also makes a difference. Ahem.

My experience at this Bouchercon was very much in contrast to Baltimore's Bouchercon, where I was staying in the hotel and didn't know anyone, which forced me to get out and network (something I don't do well). This time I was staying with my sister (author Penelope Williamson, who lives in Mill Valley) and driving in every day with Tracy Grant. Both of them have been in this writing business even longer than I have, so along with the experience of the conference I was also able to spend hours and hours dissecting both the conference and publishing in general.

I'll talk more about the individual events in a later post, as I thought I'd just give an overview here. Thursday began with some great panels, followed by the opening ceremony that evening, after which Harper Collins hosted a reception where some fifteen or twenty authors were on hand to sign and give away copies of their books. Danielle, my publicist, had set up my table right next to the bar, so I got a lot of traffic and ran out of books fairly quickly. (I snapped these pics with my phone before the function actually began; I have more photos that I'll post once I get them off my camera.) The huge poster Harper Collins provided was gorgeous, so hopefully even people who didn't get a copy will remember the cover.



Friday came more panels, and then the NAL cocktail party followed by the famous Lee Child "Reacher Party." My panel was on Saturday, followed by a booksigning (where people actually bought my books), and then the Harper Collins party followed by the Touchstone party, which I also attended since Catherine Coulter was riding in from Mill Valley with us that day. The weather was glorious until the end, when the fog came rolling in and this little New Orleans hothouse flower froze to death.



I brought home all kinds of gossip and lots of ideas and thoughts to sort through, and what feels like an incipient case of pneumonia. More later!