Monday, May 08, 2017

Malice Domestic 2017

The last weekend of April, I was at Malice Domestic for the second year in a row.  This is the annual convention for writers and readers of the traditional mystery.  The most popular form of the traditional mystery these days is the cozy, you know the type of mystery I read 95% of the time.

The convention is always in Maryland right outside of Washington DC.  I didn’t try to add any days for sightseeing this year, but flew out on Thursday and back on Sunday.  I was also staying at the convention hotel this year, which was so wonderful.  I was leaving my books to get signed in my roommate and popping in there whenever I needed anything.  Yes, I was very spoiled.

Thursday, I did get together with some friends from the Trixie Belden boards who live in the area.  And another Trixie friend was actually coming to the convention, so I had breakfast with her one day and talked to her the next afternoon.

I said I was going to cut down on panels this year, but I didn’t.  There were too many I wanted to go to.  But I still managed to talk to the authors I had hoped to catch.  Some of them were only for a few minutes, however.  I really would have liked to chat with some of them longer.  There just isn’t enough time period.

One highlight was hanging out with a group of mostly authors after the banquet the final night.  We were hanging out chatting until midnight, when security asked us to move since where we were was right outside some rooms.  We weren’t being loud, but it was polite.  I went to bed at that point, which was good since I was trying to make the new author breakfast at 7 the next morning.

I even had three authors and two other attendees on my flight out and back.  We weren’t sitting near each other, but we did hang out chatting in the airport before our flights took off.


I had so much fun it felt like I was only there for one day at most.  It is a lot of money by the time you factor in airfare and hotel, but I really would like to go again.  We’ll just have to see if it works out next year.

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