Mystery Day at Kepler's

Kepler's Book Store in Menlo Park, California had it's annual Meet the Mystery Authors Day with Catriona McPherson, Laurie R. King, Cara Black, Keith Raffle, David Corbett, Paul Draker, Seth Harwood, Steve Hockensmith, Terry Shames and Mystery Readers International Editor and Mystery Fanfare blogger, Janet Rudolph. Kepler's is a wonderful independent bookstore and they have great events - author signings, author days and book swap events. 

Catriona and her husband, Neil, were gracious enough to send us some photos and tell us about all about the day. Catriona writes the Dandy Gilver series and several stand alone novels published by Midnight Ink. Her next comes out in September and is called The Child Garden.

In the photo above, Keith Raffle (his most recent book is called Temple Mount) ask panelists whether they plan their books in advance (called "plotters" among those in the mystery writing community) or just write (called "pansters" because they write by the seat of their pants). Cara Black and Catriona admitted to being pansters while Steve Hockensmith and Paul Draker said they were plotters. 

Catriona says, "Pantsers won on the clapo-ometer, but Paul made a really good point - we all write, rewrite, plot, polish language, and research before we're done but we all hop on the merry-go-round at different points. So ultimately we hugged it out. (But we beat them)."

Mystery writer's aren't afraid to take on the tough topics. Catriona says, "Seth Harwood, Terry Shames, David Corbett and Laurie R. King were in fine fettle talking about writing across differences - of race, gender, sexuality and age. Laurie made a topical point (to thunderous applause) when, asked about writing sex and relationships from a different point of view, she said there's no such thing as gay marriage now - just marriage - and that's the point: people are people and love is love. (What a hippie!)"

Laurie R. King's latest novel is Dreaming Spies. 

But the day wasn't all so serious. Catriona says, 

"The trivia quiz was a hoot: questions ranged from the easy - who wrote The Maltese Falcon - to the middling - what was Mary Westmacott better known as - to the truly impossible - whose character was aging Major League baseball player Johnny Adcock. No one got that right, but everyone had a ton of fun."

Big thanks to Catriona for a great report and to Neil for the fabulous photos.