Psyched about Malice

[Julie Lomoe]

Hooray, I finally booked my flight from Albany to Crystal City for Malice Domestic. My friend Marilyn Rothstein (aka M.E. Kemp) booked our room in the conference hotel months ago, and I'll be on my first national panel. All that remains is to figure out the logistics of getting my books there to sell, and getting my website up and running so that after I hand out my beautiful new postcards, people will be able to access the site printed on them.

I'd also been planning to attend the 2007 Edgar Symposium in NYC tomorrow, but when I clicked on the website this morning, I learned it had been sold out. I'm somewhat relieved - the jaunt down to NYC and the registration would have set me back over $200, whereas I can get a CD or DVD of the day's events for a fraction of that - including Stephen King's guest-of-honor speech.

I attended an Edgar Symposium a couple of years ago. I had a good time and made a handful of contacts at the cocktail party that followed, but Malice - which I've never before attended - sounds much more friendly to new authors. I'm interested in what others think, so I started a new forum topic on the subject. So glad there's now a "Schmooze Lounge" where it's OK to talk about marketing and promoting. Heretofore, some folks on Crimespace were vocal about their distaste for BSP. Now it should be easy for them simply to avoid it by staying out of that room of the bar.