The Hangman

I have finished re-reading Body Perfect and now I am ready to start the revisions. It was exciting to read the story again after about six months hiatus as we finished Madelaine. From the beginning Liz has said that this could be a series. The characters are strong and could just as well move on to the their next case with no problem at all. I did not find much I wanted to change in the story and not much grammar and typo errors. We will see what my partner says and start work on the conclusion with a natural move to the next in the series.

What a learning curve this has been for both of us. I subscribe to oodles of magazines on writing and search the internet. Of course my library is full of help from different authors and editors but I find I learn the most from the books that I enjoy and now try to emulate.

The nominations for the Arthur Ellis Award. (Arthur Ellis is the nom de travail of Canada's former official hangman.) These awards are for the best crime novel in Canada and I am excited about three of them as I have met them personally at one time or another.

Louise Penny who we hope to chat with at the conference. She is nominated for her latest book " The Murder Stone". Wonderful book in the Armande Gamache series.

Linwood Barclay is a former Toronto Star humorist. He has been nominated for his second stand alone thriller called "To close to Home". His previous work was called "No time for Goodbye"and was the best selling novel in Britain in 2008. I will try and read his latest book before the conference. He was a speaker at the Elora Festival where I first met Louise Penny.

The other author is Maureen Jennings. I met Maureen at "Word on the Street". A super festival that they hold at Queens Park every summer where you can listen, meet and greet all your favourite authors and find all things literary. Maureen was manning a table with a slew of books all with her name on them. I bought one that looked interesting and asked some inane questions like, "How long have you been writing". Well it should have been obvious as she was very prolific. I was not familiar with her work. When I was at home that evening settling down to watch some television a series came on I had not seen before. It was the "Murdoch Mysteries".
Maureen is their creator.
Good luck to all of them.

Talk soon,
Pam