Monday, March 10, 2008

Left Coast Crime Report - Part 1

I had a wild and wonderful long weekend at the Left Coast Crime Conference, but had to take a day to recover before writing my report. The week started off with food pickups for the hospitality suite that the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Sisters in Crime (RMSinC) hosted at the conference, because I was the food chair. Also, I met my editor, Denise Dietz, who flew in early to visit a friend prior to the conference, for lunch and to buy book T-shirts together. Mine said "A Real Basket Case" on the front and "going... To Hell in a Handbasket" on the back. Needless to say, I got a lot of comments when I wore it at LCC on Thursday!

Wednesday, Deni and I drove up to Denver from Colorado Springs in the morning to arrive in time for a noon - 2 PM LCC preview signing at the Barnes & Noble store on the 16th Street Mall with seven authors from Five Star participating. We had a great time chatting with each other and selling books, and the store left an end cap up for us during the conference. It worked, because on Saturday when I stopped by to check, the four copies I had signed were all sold, so I signed four more. After checking in to the hotel with my roommate Pat Stoltey, Mike Befeler helped me cart all the food up to my room and we headed out to dinner with twenty other 4MA members at the Appaloosa Grill. I enjoyed matching faces to names, and I made plans with Jan Long, who needed a ride back down to CO Springs, to take her with me.

Thursday morning, I took Tiffany Schofield, the author representative and acquisition editor for Five Star, shopping for party supplies for our Five Star "meeting" that evening, then chatted with Ron & Nina Else of Who Else Books and Tom & Enid Schantz of Rue Morgue while checking books in with them. I caught the Sidekicks panel with fellow Five Star author Maria Hudgins, but missed the next set of panels while trying to straighten out some issues with the hotel about the hospitality suite. The "Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard" panel with friend, Mario Acevedo, was a hoot, as I knew it would be.

Thursday evening, I joined a group of about 30 led by the Elses to dine on fried chicken and mashed potatoes at the Denver Press Club. At 9, the Five Star party began, with drinks and snacks and a Q&A session with Deni and Tiffany answering questions from the 20+ Five Star authors in attendance. A contingent of 4 romance authors who joined us needed detailed directions via cell phone to locate the room in the world's most confusing hotel, but the intrepid explorers eventually found us. There were goodie bags for all of us, and again, I enjoyed matching names to faces. Pat and I stumbled back to the room after 11 PM.

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