Back from Crimefest 2011-great to meet fellow crime writers and some fans of DI Andy Horton

I'm back from having a great time at Crimefest 2011 where I was delighted to meet fans of my DI Horton crime novels and my thrillers from the USA, Australia and the UK. It was also a pleasure to meet up with my fellow crime writers and my publisher.

After arriving in Bristol at 7.15 am after a very early start from the south coast of England, I was in good time to meet up with my fellow panel members for our panel event, the first one on the programme for that day at 9am on 20 May called Operation Petticoat: Jobs For The Girls. I discovered that the title of all the programme events were named after some of Cary Grant's films, who, as Archibald Alexander Leach, hailed from Bristol. Cary Grant is one of my all time favourite stars and shares space on my office wall above my desk with Harrison Ford, Roger Moore and Humphrey Bogart. So while in Bristol I just had to say 'hello' to Cary.

He was just over six feet and I am just over five feet, so a pretty life sized statute, eh?

My fellow panelists were crime authors Linda Regan, Leigh Russell, Aline Templeton with the participating moderator: Ruth Dudley Edwards who did a fantastic job of keeping us all in check. We discussed many aspects of crime fiction, crime writing and our characters and the audience asked lots of great questions.