Tag Archive for: dru’s book musing

a little of this and that

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I had a post all ready in my mind, that is until I discovered that the updated document is at my office. Anyway, I recently attended the ADCOLOR Conference for marketing and media minority and diversity professionals. Can you imagine walking into a conference and seeing hundreds of “like” professionals that look like shades of you? It was an awesome experience. This year’s topic was “moment of truth” when you realize that you have to do what is best for you when others at the “table” won’t let you in. It was very inspirational. I did have some takeaways –

  • Allow fear and don’t fear failure
  • When you inspire, you give life
  • Create a safe place to be yourself
  • Just because it is popular doesn’t mean it is the best
  • It doesn’t matter where you are now, you can create light from darkness and that light will take you anywhere you want to go.


Anyway, between the conference, I was able to hang out with several of my friends who just happen to be authors.

Then came home and had lunch with more friends who again, happens to be authors

Last but not least two Raven Award recipients out on the town

That’s all from me.
Dru Ann

Bouchercon Bound

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In less than two weeks, over one thousand crime fiction fans will converge in St. Petersburg, Florida for one of the largest reader fan convention. . . Bouchercon.

Bouchercon is our annual world mystery convention where every year readers, writers, publishers, editors, agents, booksellers and other lovers of crime fiction gather for a 4-day weekend of education, entertainment, and fun! It is the world’s premier event bringing together all parts of the mystery and crime fiction community, and is pronounced [bough’•chur•con].

There are so many people who volunteer their time and effort to put on this massive affair and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Without this convention, I would probably be a hermit or even a recluse.

Anyway, before arriving at the event, there is so much do to on our, my end to prepare oneself. First and foremost, everyone should enjoy the convention and have fun.

You don’t have to go to all the panels that interest you. . .I did this at the first convention I attended and it nearly wiped me out.

Some of the best times and one-on-ones I have had with authors and other readers is passing one another in a hallway, near an elevator, or standing on the coffee line, was chatting with them and forgetting the panel I wanted to go to. That time was precious and there you are bound to develop a long-lasting friendship.

Wear comfortable shoes and clothing. Walking back and forth from panels to bookrooms to side activities will take a toll on your feet. Also bring a light jacket or sweater as it may get cold in the meeting places.

Because most of us are more likely introverts, it’s okay to go to our room for a recharging session. Too many people, too much noise wipes out my energy quicker than the Energizer Bunny Rabbit.

Don’t be afraid to approach authors and readers that you have met on social media. We are a friendly bunch, even though I’m still afraid to approach some as well.

Because this is my ninth convention, I plan meet-ups with friends I only see once a year, so I try to get my meal and social activity card filled up as much as possible. My first year, I probably spent more time in my room eating my meals. Now, not so much.

As for the panels, again, I pick out the ones I want to attend, of course there are few that are “must-attends” for me such as New Author Breakfast, Author Speed-Dating, Anthology Signing, Opening Ceremony, Anthony Awards and frequent visits to the book room and the hospitality suite. I just have to make sure I attend the panel I’m moderating.

This year is special as my blog, dru’s book musings is a 2018 Anthony Finalist for Best Online Content. I’m so honored for this nomination and congratulates all the other nominees in this category.

So, are we ready for Bouchercon? – you betcha.

I hope to see some of my fellow Stiletto Gang members at some point – hopefully to get a group photo.

So, who is going to Bouchercon? I hope to see you there and again, HAVE FUN!

Happy Thoughts for Memorial Day

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by Paula Gail Benson

Good morning and best wishes for a happy Memorial Day!

Hopefully, you can enjoy this day with some good reading. I’m going to recommend that you consider some offerings from my blogging partners here at The Stiletto Gang.

If you haven’t already begun Shari Randall’s Curses, Boiled Again!, check it out. It features injured ballerina Allie Larkin who is assisting her Aunt Gully with a lobster roll competition on Memorial Day when the judges are poisoned. Allie is spunky and delightful. The action is fast paced and the food descriptions will make you hungry!

Two of our blogging partners are celebrating Anthony nominations.The Anthony Awards, named for Anthony Boucher,
are presented each year at Bouchercon, and recognize excellence for novels, short fiction, nonfiction, and online presence. Congratulations to Dru Ann Love for her nomination for Dru’s Book Musings and to Debra H. Goldstein for her short story nomination.

Because the Anthonys have nominations for both individual and collected
short stories, they introduce readers to a variety of wonderful short fiction. Following are this year’s nominees, who will be celebrated in
St. Petersburg, Florida, this fall:
BEST SHORT STORY
·      
The Trial of Madame
Pelletier by Susanna Calkins from Malice Domestic 12: Mystery Most
Historical [Wildside Press]
·      
God’s Gonna Cut You
Down by Jen Conley from Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the
Songs of Johnny Cash [Gutter Books LLC]
·      
My Side of the Matter
by Hilary Davidson from Killing Malmon [Down & Out Books]
·      
Whose Wine Is It
Anyway by Barb Goffman from 50 Shades of Cabernet [Koehler Books]
·      
The Night They Burned
Ms. Dixie’s Place by Debra H. Goldstein from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery
Magazine, May/June 2017 [Dell]
·      
A Necessary Ingredient
by Art Taylor from Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining
Sea [Down & Out Books]
BEST ANTHOLOGY     
·      
Just to Watch Them
Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, Joe Clifford,
editor [Gutter Books LLC]
·      
Killing Malmon, Dan
& Kate Malmon, editors [Down & Out Books]
·      
Coast to Coast:
Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, Andrew McAleer & Paul D. Marks,
editors [Down & Out Books]
·      
Passport to Murder,
Bouchercon Anthology 2017, John McFetridge, editor [Down & Out Books]
·      
The Obama Inheritance:
Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, Gary Phillips, editor [Three Rooms
Press]
Read and enjoy!



A little of this, a little of that

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It’s my turn to write a post and I really have nothing.

Next week will be a busy one as Malice Domestic convention is upon on. Some will trek to Bethesda, Maryland to attend panels and listen to honored guest and be one with the reading/writing universe. I look forward to attending this convention as it was the first one I ever attended.

I will also be attending the memorial for Sue Grafton on Tuesday. Later that evening I will be at the Mysterious Bookshop for the 2018 Edgar Awards celebrations where I will be hobnobbing with 2018 Edgar Award nominees, authors, and people in the publishing industry.

That’s all I have. Oh wait, did you know that there are five separate areas on my blog? From Monday – Saturday and sometimes Sunday, my “day in the life” feature is showcased. I save the Saturdays for non-cozy titles. Sundays are for cover reveals (although lately I had a couple in the middle of the week), reviews, and releases.

You can check out my blog at drusbookmusing.com.

Mystery Conference Talk

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I recently attended a MWA-NY event “Making The Most of Mystery Conference” held at the Club Quarters in New York City. Triss Stein and Radha moderated this event with Nancy Bilyeau, Edith Maxwell Jeffrey Siger, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, talking respectively about ThrillerFest, New England Crime Bake, Bouchercon and Malice Domestic.

Each panelist was introduced with a recap on how they became involved and the one key factor that played in most was “the bar.” So, if you want to become part of the inner workings of these mystery conferences, head to the bar.

Then during the next 30 minutes the audience got to hear about each: Malice and Bouchercon are reader/fan conventions while New England Crime Bake and ThrillerFest are writer’s conferences.

Bouchercon is the only one of this group where the location varies each year. This year, the conference is being held in St. Petersburg, Florida, while New England Crime Bake is in Boston, ThrillerFest is in New York City and Malice Domestic is in Bethesda, Maryland.

At the fan conventions you get to mingle with authors and other readers; you attend panels and have a cornucopia of activities for your choosing. Same holds true for writer’s conferences as well as learning more about the craft of writing.

To be on a panel at Malice and Bouchercon, you have to check the box when filling out your registration. At New England Crime Bake, authors are invited to be on a panel and at ThrillerFest, they try to accommodate all authors attending.

In terms of sizes, Bouchercon is the largest with 1,500 attendees, followed by ThrillerFest with 800; Malice at 600 and New England Crime Bake at 300. All numbers are approximate.

They also talked about the costs and it can be a bit expensive: New England Crime Bake ($199 for SinC/MWA members; $229 public); Bouchercon ($225 for St. Petersburg, FL); Malice ($345 includes banquet; $295 Basic) and ThrillerFest (ranges from $150-$1,000+).

All in all, it was a good talk and gave me more clarifications between these four conferences which I was lucky to have attended.

On dru’s book musings, I posted a list of 2018 mystery conferences, click here.

What conferences have you attended in the past? Are you going to any this year? I am and I look forward to seeing you there.

Literary Weekend

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As the non-writer of this group, I really had nothing to say for my blog post today. But then I thought about my girl’s weekend and how we met and it was quite literary.

Thanks to Joanna Campbell Slan, Yifat C., Marla H. and I met when Joanna hosted a gathering of her beta readers to explore the setting of her Kiki Lowenstein series. So off I went to St. Louis, Missouri and had a wonderful weekend of exploration and crafting and I’ve bonded with the two women mentioned above. Bonus is that Yifat and I are both from New York and her husband grew up in the same neighborhood as me. We’ve kept in touch and every year when we had a beta babe event, off we went. . .to Florida to check out the location of Cara Mia, Joanna’s other series and last year, we went to Washington D.C. So, as you can see, books brought us together. Literary.

This year it was just us three women headed out to Boston for a girl’s weekend and as we are walking around the hotel’s neighborhood, who should we walk into. . .Joanna Campbell Slan who was meeting a classmate. Since Joanna’s had some spare time, we invited her to join us in our foray of Boston. How does literary work into this scenario. . .well, we took one of those highlights tour and the first statue that we see is Edgar Allan Poe. How appropriate to see this – my first thought was the Raven Award that was in my possession. Literary.

Edgar Allan Poe

One of the sites I’ve wanted to see was Paul Revere’s house. . .so near to closing time, there we are, with no crowd, checking out his house and I was impressed that he had 16 children who at any one time lived in the house. Then we followed the Freedom Trail to see The North Church which was the site of the light, and the “one if by land, and two if by sea” and it is a magnificent building. Literary because of the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Paul Revere’s house

Other Boston sightings

Signage on wall in front of Paul’s house

The front of Paul’s house

The North Church steeple

Signage on The North Church
The North Church

And in Boston, one must visit the Cheers bar and if you can, eat there as well. The food was delicious.

Headed to Cheers for dinner

Have you ever visited the location of a book that you’ve read? Did it live up to your expectation?

Rambling

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It’s my turn again and I have nothing. So I’m going to ramble a bit about nothing.

It occurred to me the other day that I’ve been to twice as many conferences this year than ever before. January I was in Honolulu, Hawaii with Left Coast Crime – had a blast and able to cross this trip off my bucket list. April saw me stateside in Bethesda, Maryland for the annual Malice Domestic Convention. This convention will always be in my heart as it’s the first reader/fan convention I’ve ever attended. The first week of June I was on a Marketing/Social Media panel at the one-day Mystery Writers of America/New York Chapter’s Fiction Writers’ Conference held in Stamford, Connecticut. That was a fun excursion as it was my first time taking Metro North and going to Stamford. Two weeks ago, I attended the Deadly Ink conference in Rockaway, New Jersey. This is mostly a writer’s conference but readers do attend. This was also the first time I took a different New Jersey transit train, normally I’ve traveled on the NE Corridor.

So if you’re counting I’ve been to four conventions/conferences so far and I’m not finished. Next up I’ll be in Toronto, Canada at Bouchercon and I’m looking forward to that and last but not least I will be attending for the first time, the New England Crime Bake conference held in Woburn, Massachusetts. They have pizza parties and I heard something about a red carpet.

So all in all, that’s six author/reader-related conventions this year and this does not include the book signings, the MWA monthly events where I get a chance to meet readers and authors. Oh there another conference, ThrillerFest which is held in NYC, I may not attend any events, but I do hope to meet up with authors. I already have a lunch set up with fellow Stiletto Gang member Kay.

Okay, I rambled enough and it was about something.

So do you have anything to ramble about?
What are you looking forward to?
What’s on your bucket list?
 

Short post

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This week is an exciting week for me as I will be awarded the MWA Raven Award on Thursday. I have to give a speech. Too frightening for me, but I’m going to do it. I wrote it. I read it out loud. Made changes and I hope I don’t ramble when I get up to the podium. All my life, I shied away from public speaking. This will definitely be a stepping out of my comfort zone moment.

So, tell me, how do you cope with stepping out of your comfort zone?

Joyful Joyful

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It’s my turn today and I had nothing, so I asked Kay for suggestions and she mentioned writing about “things you do that help you find joy in everyday life when you live in a great but stressful city.“

I found a scale that identifies stress in your life and my score was very low. (The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale). In another article (The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory), the top five ways cited to relieve stress are:

  1. Reading novels or magazines
  2. Watching TV
  3. Renting and watching a video
  4. Learning a new craft or hobby
  5. Camping

Guess what? I do all of them except camping, unless we can call staying at a five-star hotel camping because I did do that.

What things do I do to find joy in my everyday life?

  • I love reading.
  • I love sending a positive message every morning on social media.
  • I love reading the posts that authors write up for dru’s book musings and I always love seeing it when it posts.
  • I love helping authors spread the word about their work on social media.
  • I love *being* with my friends on Facebook.
  • I love traveling, yes, this introvert who would rather be in her own home, love to travel, especially when it is to meet up with friends, old and new.
  • I love being happy.
  • I love fine dining.
  • I love discovering new-to-me authors.
  • I love hanging out with my friends, although few and far between.
  • I love attending mystery conferences and exploring the new cities that I’ve never been to before.
  • And I love that the Mystery Writers of America is honoring me with the Raven Award.

With what is happening in America today, I’m so happy that I still have my books to read and the anticipating of traveling across North America to meet up with friends and talk about books.

So, tell me, what activities do you pursue to relieve stress in your life?

Our Very Own Dru Ann Wins the Raven Award

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by Linda Rodriguez
On April 27th at the 71st
annual Edgar Awards Banquet in New York City, The Stiletto Gang’s own
Dru Ann Love will receive the prestigious Raven Award. The
Raven Award
is
a special award
given
for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of
creative writing.
This award was first given in 1953. People and organizations, such as
Dorothy Kilgallen, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock,
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Eudora Welty, Angela Lansbury, Bouchercon Mystery
Convention, Bill Clinton, Otto Penzsler, Center for the Book in the
Library of Congress, and Sisters in Crime, have won this award. And
now Dru Ann wins it for her dedication to the field and the
contributions her wonderful book blog, Dru’s Book Musings, has made
to the field of the mystery.

Dru
reviews a huge number of books every year, and her reviews are all
based on careful reading and high standards. She also hosts a series
called “A Day in the Life,” where authors write a post from the
viewpoint of a major character to give the reader a taste of that
author’s voice and characterization skills. Her book blog is a major
player in the strong field of book blogs that have replaced the
vanished book review sections of newspapers and magazines.

Those
of us who know her know that Dru Ann is a true aficionado of crime
fiction. She loves the field, the individual books, and the authors.
A fixture at the major conventions and a great supporter of the
entire field of crime writing, she’s kind and funny and smart as a
whip and a real professional. She’s also much loved by the crime
writing community, so this will be a very popular choice for the
Raven Award.

All
of her blogmates here at The Stiletto Gang have been very excited
by this news, and we all send her a huge CONGRATULATIONS! We couldn’t
be happier to see her reaping well-deserved recognition for the
important work she does. And on April 27th,
we’ll all be raising a glass of champagne to our dear Dru Ann as she
receives her award. 

Well done, Dru!