So, Saturday was the annual LA Times Book festival at the UCLA campus. As per tradition, Angelique and I met up there and hung out all day. She's wonderful to hang out with because she lets me drag her to the same booths over and over again to met up with authors so I can chat for a few minutes. :)

I was a good boy and only bought 5 books. And they were all books I'd aproved myself to buy before hand. How good is that? I'm actually rather impressed with myself, too. I did take some other books with me and get them autographed. And one of the books I'd bought because I knew the author would be there. But I probably would have bought it any way.

The saddest part of the day was saying goodby to Glynn Marsh Alam. She's the excellent writer of Dive Deep and Deadly, amoung others. I just love her books. She's retiring teaching here in LA and moving back to Florida. The bright side? I hope this means she'll write more. :)

The best part of the day? That's hard to tell for sure. One highlight was seeing Trixie for the first time at the festival. And on a shelf between Nancy Drew and Harry Potter, too. That's pretty good company if you ask me.

The weather has really decided to heat up, with temps in the 90's for the last few days. You can bet that took a lot out of me. But it was so worth it.

Both Angelique and I noticed something interesting, however. Everywhere we went, we found lots of recent best sellers that were anti-Bush. We only found one conservative book all day. Bias at all, anyone? Of course, what do you expect from something put on by the LA Times and UCLA?

Yesterday was a nice, lazy, stay home and rest day. Finished O' Artful Death. This was a wonderful book. Great mystery with plenty of red herrings and twists to keep me guessing. I think I suspected just about everyone as being guilty at one point or another, so I'd say I was right. But I never would have guessed the motive in a million years. It's up for an Agatha for best first novel at this weekend's Malice Domestic convention, as is Murder Off Mike, which you may remember me raving about in January. Frankly, I can't decide which I want to win. They're both great books.

I may be even more confused soon. I've started Dealing in Murder last night. It's a third nominee for the same award. :) After 16 pages, I'm not even going to hazard a guess, however.