New travel website www.hotelcashback.com

FYI if you post to a blog or forum, the first 200 people to email them to show a link to the post are promised a $10 American Airlines certificate.

So is that why I'm mentioning it?

Well, that's one reason. The other is that I like to know about useful travel sites. This one looks new and still forming so we'll see if it turns into a helpful website.

meetingacrosstheriver

We're back from Bouchercon. Here's the scoop.

Barbara Seranella was there, thank goodness! She looks great and is as funny and quick as ever. For those of you who didn't know, Barbara has had not one, but TWO liver transplants in the past two months and the idea that she would be able to attend Bouchercon seemed to me to be completely far-fetched. She had 500 onions wrapped in netting along with a note that said something along the lines of "You can have the onion. I'm keeping the liver." Now, that's an upbeat personality!!

We saw a number of the other contributors to MATR (in alphabetical order): Cara Black, CJ Box, David Corbett, Steve Hamilton, Gregg Hurwitz, William Kent Krueger, Eddie Muller. We heard that Wallace Stroby was there but never ran into him. Sorry to have missed you, Wallace!!

M Is For Mystery sold more of our books from the supplies Richard brought to Chicago. Cara told us that she signed a number of copies of MATR at Bouchercon.

It was a great show, a terrific weekend and, best of all, we're glad to be back home.

meetingacrosstheriver

meetingacrosstheriver

Richard Brewer and I are at Bouchercon in Chicago, a mystery convention which is filled with mystery writers, publishers, booksellers, fans, you name it. Check it out at bouchercon.net.

First of all, Chicago is a wonderful city and the weather is perfect - not too hot with a bit of a breeze yesterday. Richard has never been here and he's loving it. The architecture alone is incredible.

We picked up our badges yesterday and as we checked in we saw one of our contributing authors, Steve Hamilton, so that was a nice way to start off!

At registration they handed us a Bouchercon tote bag filled with books. I mean FILLED with books. Glad I didn't take much along for reading on this trip but I do wish I'd used a larger suitcase. The contents of each bag is different, to some extent, so Richard and I did a little oohing and aahing over them. Oh, thanks to Bouchercon for the souvenir pin too - it's like the pins people collect at the Olympics. We ran into a woman in the book room whose convention badge was covered with pins - some were Bouchercon, she said, and some were DorothyL (a great listserv for the mystery community). How does one get a DorothyL pin? Inquiring minds want to know.

The book room is basically tables with mystery books and thrillers manned by booksellers from all over. It was a treat to find out the M IS FOR MYSTERY had sold out of our book - in fact, the last one sold in front of our very eyes. I was totally amazed.

Richard had the forethought to take some copies to the show so we will replenish the store's supply. After all, yesterday was just the first day of the show.

There are panels galore at Bouchercon. We arrived too late to attend any yesterday but today and tomorrow there are so many that it is tough to choose, but choose we must because there are several during each time period. You can see the list on the bouchercon.net website.

This is a very high-energy convention. The personalities are strong and vibrant and there is a great deal of joie de vivre in the air. These are people who love what they do and appreciate each other (or at least they talk about each other!).

Next year it is in Madison, WI. I'm looking forward to it, not only because this is a great convention but also because Madison looks like a pretty city AND Wisconsin is one of the three US states I've yet to visit. Look out, North Dakota and Alaska!

meetingacrosstheriver

One of my clients, Tom Morgan, has a really great new blog, greatunknowns.blogspot.com

Please visit it and learn about him and about his writing, which is really wonderful.

You won't be sorry. Really!

amazon addiction

I doubt I'm the first author or editor to blog about this but I keep checking amazon to see the ranking of Meeting Across the River (MATR). It's like playing the stock market. One moment you're up, then you're down. Then up again. At least so far, there has always been an "up again."

One thing that makes it both easier and, in some ways, even more gratifying/depressing, depending upon up or down, is publishersmarketplace.com, a very affordable site which gathers information for the publishing community. One of their features is the ability to track books. I have 5 or 6 books I'm tracking, and what that means is that I can see, with the click of a mouse, the ranking of my book but also the ranking of the other books I'm tracking, and the rankings are both for amazon and bn.com.

So sometimes MATR is ahead of the other books and that's a great feeling because all of the other books I'm tracking are good but a couple are actually quite successful. Of course, often it is NOT ahead of the other books.

It's up there with instant messaging and talking on the cell phone as an electronic age addiction. Come on, you know what I'm talking about. You do it too!

meetingacrosstheriver

meetingacrosstheriver


If you have an idea of what would make a great basis for our next short story collection, let us know. If you could give the same story idea to 20 writers, what would that be?

Southern California book signing events

Thursday, July 7, 7:00 p.m. at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90069 (310.659.3110). Both editors, Jessica Kaye and Richard J. Brewer, will attend, along with contributors Gregg Hurwitz, Aimee Liu, Phil Reed, Martin J. Smith, Michael John Richardson.

Saturday, July 9, 6:30 p.m., in Westwood at Mystery Bookstore, 1036-C Broxton Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90024 Phone: 310/209-0415

Important note: If you cannot attend either signing but would like an autographed book, please phone the bookstore of your choice and notify them in advance of the signing. There may be autographed books available for sale after the signing as well.

Meeting across the River

hi, welcome to the first posting of meetingacrosstheriver, the new blog for and about the new book, Meeting Across the River, an anthology based on the song of the same name by Bruce Springsteen, from his Born to Run album. There are twenty stories from twenty contributors, each with a different story inspired by the song. Take a listen to the song (not online here, I'm sorry, but come on, don't you own it already?) and see what stories it inspires for you! From Atlantic City to Tokyo, Japan and points in between, our writers came up with a great variety of ideas. We had fun with it and hope you enjoy it as well.