Speechless. Tongue-tied. Thunderstruck. Bowled over. Wordless. Dumbfounded.

[Sisters In Crime]

You get the idea. That’s me when it comes to writing. It’s also me in the presence of those of you who write--especially those who write crime fiction--for your livelihood. So it’s a great honor and privilege for me to have been elected to follow the incomparable Doris Ann Norris as Sisters in Crime’s Library Liaison.

With two major library conferences on the calendar, 2008 is an especially promising year for bringing together Sisters in Crime authors and libraries. Not only does the Public Library Association hold its biennial conference in Minneapolis in March, the American Library Association’s capital-“B”-Big annual conference will be held in Anaheim in late June. Sisters in Crime will continue to take an important part in both these conferences by hosting booths in their respective Exhibitors spaces. The booth provides terrific opportunities for SinC authors who attend the conference to meet librarians and talk with them first hand about your work.

Even if you can’t come to the conferences, you can still send promotional materials for your books. I can promise you, speaking as a library conference attendee, we collect those bookmarks, business cards, and postcards with a passion. Once home from the conference we use what we’ve gathered to help make purchasing decisions for our libraries.

It’s not too late to send promotional materials for PLA, and I’ll soon be posting more details about ALA to the listserv and newsletter. In the meantime if you’d like more information about either conference (or if you just want to say hey) please email me at [e-mail].

The two big library conferences are just a start. I am looking forwarding to working with the members of SinC to find even more ways to connect mystery writers and their books to libraries and readers.

Is this the world’s best job, or what?

--Mary Boone

Library Liaison, Sisters In Crime