So another Thrillerfest comes to a close.
Today began quite early, with the Debut Authors Breakfast at 8am. Since the gifted and very sweet Hilary Davidson was among this year’s class, I forced myself out of bed and slumbered into the banquet hall where each of the 40+ authors, including Hilary, pitched their novels to the 100+ in attendance. Some of these novels sounded absolutely terrific, and I wish I had endless pockets of ducats with which to purchase them all.
Good evening from the Grand Hyatt, where the room temperature is a very pleasant 68 degrees and yours truly is six inches away from a six hour nap. But first, a recap:
Today was a good day.
Breakfast consisted of decaf coffee. While drinking, I ran into my friend Sophie Littlefield, who was about to host a panel on relationships in suspense fiction and the panelists were none other than JT Ellison and Erica Spindler. The panel was mainly for aspiring writers, but I snuck it anyway. The panel went quite well and provided a wealth of information for everyone. My personal highlight came near the end when a member of the audience asked about maintaining tension in a novel and JT singled me out as a writer who was able to sustain tension effectively over a long period of time. What a nice thing to say.
So this is what happened:
Last Wednesday, my great-aunt Rosie, who is 94 years-old and lives alone in a tiny 1-bedroom apartment in Pawtucket, RI, was getting up from the couch in her living room when she fell. As she fell, she accidentally knocked over a side table, which then landed on top of her.
She was trapped under the table for four days.
Hello from West Warwick, RI, where I am detouring for a night on my way to the Grand Hyatt in NYC for Thrillerfest 2011. I actually flew into LaGuardia and spent more time in NYC already than I’d planned today, mostly due to construction and traffic, but complaining about construction and traffic on I95 is like complaining about the lack of oxygen on the moon.
Today my mother turns 62. Her cancer turns 3.
Numbers are so haughty. Numbers are the aristocracy of time and they know it. “Without us, how can you measure a life?” they say. “Without us, how can you identify change?”
My mother has stage 4 ovarian cancer. This means that the tumors in her body are greater than 2 cm. in diameter. Tumors, like children, receive grades, from 0-3, in rising scale of malignancy. My mother, always the overachiever, carries around inside of her, along her pelvis and liver and pancreas and lymph nodes, a veritable symposium of Grade 3 tumors.
8 chapters down, 22 to go.
Spoiler alert: Word #24,305 is “lilacs.”
This morning, I arrived at the conference at 10am. Mom took the day off, preferring instead to stroll around Rockefeller Center. I first stopped by the Harlequin booth to say hi…and ended up signing about 100 books.
After this, it was off to the Horror Writers booth, where I hung out with Vince Liguano and Nancy Holder and signed another 50-or-so books. It was here (naturally, I suppose) that I encountered my one actual oddball, a woman who insisted that the Statue of Liberty was not only black but a gift to the United States to reward us for “winning the Civil War.” Unfortunately, we also lost the Civil War, but why quibble?
So I met Margaret Atwood. How was your day?
To be honest, the highlight of the day, really, was having my mother with me, walking the endless floor of the Javits Center. She browsed books, picked up some nice galleys, and during my two signings, she was allowed to sit.
Speaking of my signings, holy crap. I signed 150 books at the Harlequin booth, one right after the other, and then, shortly thereafter, signed another 50 at the Mystery Writers of America booth…and tomorrow plan on signing a bunch at the Horror Writers Association booth. Please note: these are not complaints. These are just the observations of a writer excited to have new readers.
Hello from New York City, where the day could not have been more beautiful…once we arrived.
Yes, oh yes, there were delays. There were delays in boarding the aircraft – which I’ve dealt with before and which are reasonable – but then there was the infamous stuck-on-an-airplane-on-the-runway-for-an-hour delay. Now, this would have been OK too, more or less, had the flight crew not forbidden our use of electronic devices while we waited.
