What a day! I was at the Crimes, Creatures & Creativity conference (the C3 conference) most of the day on Friday (well … half the day and into the night) appearing here and there.
My books! 🙂
After leaving books with the bookseller (including an old third edition of Identity Crisis), I gave my talk on Social Media & Online Marketing to a fairly good-sized group of people. Not exactly packed, but still … not empty, either.
I took a photo and Instagrammed it that night. Amazing!
This behavior would have been unthinkable for me at one time.
Me with David Swinson.
I even texted David Swinson a photo of us Rick took. Wow! I’m actually developing the most minor of smartphone skills.
I met Dana King—who actually remembered my failure to appear at Bouchercon in New Orleans due to the creeping crud. Later that evening, he appeared at the bar in The Dude’s bowling shirt. Now that was awesome.
The Dude abides! 🙂
David S got to meet Rick, which was way cool! He also introduced me to Jeffrey Deaver—that thud you heard is a big name being dropped—who expressed an interest in being on the Crime Cafe. Um … yes, please!
Oh, look! It’s Jeffrey Deaver and Jonathan Maberry! 🙂
And then there was Peter Blauner who gave the dinner speech. He’s not only a good friend of the awesome Reed Farrel Coleman, but he’s from Brooklyn and has actually written for TV and shot scenes in my old neighborhood in Queens.
I told him about my first 12 years in the housing project in Queens and he said, “Where?” And I said, “Do you know Astoria Blvd.?” And he nodded and said, “Oh, yes.” At which point, I added, “You know the cul-de-sac at the end, after you go past the junkyard and there’s a warehouse across the street by the East River …?” And he was nodding, he totally knew the place. And I was just like, “That’s where I lived.”
It looked like this!
And he said something about “shot there” and I said, “You were shot there?” And, of course, he said, “No, we shot a scene there” or words to that effect. But, hey … in that neighborhood, you never know.
Oh, and then we talked about the Mets. I told him that I always liked the Mets, because they were the underdogs. I couldn’t stand the Yankees, because rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for gravity. And I had a Mets crying towel and everything.
I brought this up, because he’d mentioned Jimmy Breslin during his talk. Jimmy Breslin wrote a book about the ‘62 Mets. And now I have to read that, because Breslin sounds like my kind of writer (certainly I’ve heard of the man).
But there I go rambling.
Did I mention that David Swinson’s book, The Second Girl is totally awesome? Because it is! 🙂
To be continued … eventually! 🙂
