Telling Lies

Last Saturday I took part in Mystery on the Menu at the nearby (and gorgeous!) Cerritos Library.

Simon Wood was my partner in crime (there were 15 authors in total, so we were two of many, but I drove him around all day). (As a side note, it felt like old times, as we talked cars and writing and making a living. Sometimes I miss our old blog, Two For The Road.)

Simon was also the moderator of the panel I was on, in which we played the liar's game. Meaning, everyone on the panel told an anecdote, and one of us (each round) lied. Then the audience voted on who they thought was the liar.

And they didn't guess me.

What does that say? I've got an innocent face? I concocted a good story (it even had a lesson-learned)? They weren't going to suspect the one female on a panel of shifty-eyed males?

I'm not sure, but I was perhaps inappropriately proud of having gotten away with it. Which is, come to think of it, exactly how I feel when someone tells me they were totally surprised by who the killer was in one of my books.

Which leads back to the point of doing a Liar's Panel: it could be said that we lie professionally. It's strictly true, in that we all write fiction and work hard to trick the reader. It simply feels less like lying when it's not face to face.

Here's a shot of the audience from the stage. I highly recommend attending the event!

Backstage and Onstage at Bouchercon

The epic Bouchercon - Murder at the Beach is over. I think it's fair to say it was epic, in a positive sense, for almost everyone. It was for me. It was also epic in terms of how I was busy almost all day every day (as part of the organizing committee) and how I felt responsible for everything going well. The hardest part was not taking personally any criticisms I heard (I didn't hear many, thank goodness).

I was fortunate to be on a couple great panels, including one on "the setting as a character" with the winner of all awards (for the fantastic Ordinary Grace) William Kent Krueger, as well as the ever hilarious John Connolly (not to mention Mark Pryor and Julia Spencer-Fleming). I was just happy to be on the same stage as the rest of them ... but even better, I came out of it with my favorite panel photo ever (l to r: Connolly, me, Krueger, Pryor).

A close second was my selfie with Jan Burke, fellow (and actually famous) Long Beach author, before the start of our panel on research.

I was also lucky enough to moderate the closing panel featuring all the guests of honor—and believe me, there was little for me to do besides point the ship. They were all funny and warm, true pros to the end. And I was able to get a photo with my pal, Simon Wood, and the delightful Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl books (you need to read them, trust me).

A few other good memories ... sitting in the bar/atrium area, chatting with friends and watching the mystery world walk by. Standing on the empty stage at the Terrace Theater, prepping for the Anthony Awards, and wanting to belt out "Starting here, starting now..." (but resisting the urge). I did take a photo of Ingrid, the convention organizer, however, with the empty house behind her.

Other memories? Cadaver dogs in a session (they sniff out bodies or people or bones). Hanging out with my friend Rochelle Staab and Bogie (in the women's bathroom at the Sky Room).

And watching my fellow Poisoned Pen Press author Reavis Wortham cheer with a team that gave us an impromptu show in the hotel lobby. See if you can pick him out of the crowd....

Then there was the backstage look I got at the awards—the really amazing Anthony Awards for this year, which featured a crow on a beachball, for murder on the beach (a murder of crows, right?). Here's a set of them awaiting nameplates. And then there was the box of murder.

But maybe my favorite photo of all about Bouchercon actually happened a week before the event. It was taken by Brittany Murray, a staff photographer for the Long Beach Press-Telegram, and it featured me and Ingrid Willis, the event chair. We laughed through the whole photo shoot, as we reclined on a pile of books and smiled for the camera. Because it's all about the books.

See you at Bouchercon 2015!

Playing Catch-Up

You make your lists, you plan your week, and then something silly turns everything upside down. Or many somethings. It’s been a strange last ten days….

On the disappointing and mildly annoying front: technology has not been my friend. My computer contracted a virus so terrible that it needed a week with Dr. Geek Squad to recover. So I tried to keep up with everything I was supposed to be doing using my husband’s decade-old, backup machine, crammed into a corner of his office. What’s more, the iPad I ordered, which should have arrived two weeks ago, was snatched away a mere three miles from my house! (OK, it was recalled; something to do with an ID hardcoded into the device.)

And then it rained in Los Angeles this morning. In JUNE! I’m not sure where summer’s gone, though I hear Texas might have found it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out the message in all of this: the universe is stating clearly: “Step away from the machines, Tammy. Step away, and read a book.”

At the same time, some very good things have been happening, on both a personal and professional front. My husband and I made a new friend (an old college acquaintance of his who we ran across recently), someone I hired at my day job is off and running in a very satisfactory manner, and there are exciting possibilities afoot for book promotion.

Most exciting is a new blog I started with fellow author Simon Wood (www.simonwood.net). Simon writes books that keep you up at night. He has an eclectic professional background, he’s British, and he’s a kick in the pants. He’s one of those guys who starts insulting you fifteen minutes into a conversation (and expects to be insulted right back). We get along fine.

The relevant bit is that Simon, too, has a mystery about a racecar driver coming out this year (it’s already released in Britain, but we don’t get it until September, which I don’t mind, because it means mine comes out first). So we started a blog together, all about racing. Or at least our opinions on it. I’ll blog Mondays, he’ll blog Wednesdays, and we’ll compare and argue about our opinions on different topics on Fridays. We hope you’ll join us and chime in at Two for the Road: twofortheroadblog.blogspot.com.