Things to discuss

I will be attending the Left Coast Crime convention in March and I just found out that I will be participating in two panel discussions. On Thursday, March 11 I will be on the 'Pulp Fiction' panel (moderated by Robert Fate) which is very exciting to me. No idea how many people will be there at 2 in the afternoon on a Thursday but it sounds like a panel I would go to whether I was on it or not. Also on Saturday the 13th at 4:45 I'll be a part of the 'Meet a New Author' panel along with Rebecca Cantrell, Ken Mercer, Sharon Rowse and Gabriela Vazquez.  It will be moderated by Eric Stone.

I'll be excited to meet a few fellow authors I know from the web but have never met in person. (No, not JB Kohl. The mystery is still alive!) I'm really excited to meet Deborah J. Ledford and give her a proper thank you for all her work as unofficial editor of One Too Many Blows To The Head. She will be there discussing her book Staccato, which is one you should pick up. (also from Second Wind Publishing)

On the opposite coast JB is doing a few appearances in the next few weeks too including a big piece in her hometown newspaper. Not where she lives now but the town she grew up in in Nebraska. She describes it as a one-horse-town kind of place which only makes me want to set a book there. Myself, I am an Iowa boy. I spent only a few years there but as they say, you can take the boy out of Iowa but you can't take the Iowa out of the boy. Somebody must have said that once.

I love the small towns and out of the way places there. I haven't been back since my Grandmother's funeral and don't know when I would go back but I have scratchy Super-8 memories of life there. Summers spent fishing on the Mississippi with my Grandfather, getting a haircut in my Grandmother's beauty shop which was right off the kitchen in their house. Catching fireflies with all the cousins in the yard at Nana's house. It absolutely seems like another life I am remembering from seeing a movie once a long time ago but it all happened to me. Weird.

Since then I've lived in the silicon valley, suburban Connecticut, Manhattan, Boston and Los Angeles. Quite a far cry from Johnson County Iowa. Most of my stories try to steer me to being set there though. My first novel was set in Iowa. No idea why. I guess I figure people have done the coasts and done it better than I ever could.

But for a few days in March the Left Coast is where I'll be. Okay, that make a nice callback but really I live on the Left Coast so I'm here all the time. Come and see me.