Enjoying Killer Nashville

Stacy Allen, Riley Miller, Kay Kendall

My family and I have special connections with Nashville. Those were enhanced by my first trip to Killer Nashville, a conference for mystery and thriller readers. Riley Miller, an 11th grade teacher and excellent writer, invited me to travel and room with her. We had a wonderful journey and hated to see it end on Sunday night. Here she is in the lobby of the Omni hotel, as we were preparing to leave, posing with Stacy Allen, whose debut novel Expedition Indigo was released on August 18th, and Kay Kendall, author of Desolation Row and working on Rainy Day Women.

Carolyn Hart's Death on Demand series

Carolyn Hart, Oklahoma native, has produced an endearing and enduring series about a fictitious South Carolina coastal island, Broward’s Rock. Mystery readers would enjoy vacationing  there to visit Annie Darling’s Death on Demand bookstore, catch a glimpse of Annie’s husband Max in action, and guess at the books depicted in the paintings featured at the bookstore. Bill Keogan, Reference Librarian at St. John’s University in New York, has compiled a bibliography of the mystery authors and books Hart mentions in each of her twenty-four  “Death on Demand” novels. His comprehensive work provides a great “to be read” mystery books list!

Kathryn Wall's SC Lowcountry

Kathryn Wall retired with her husband to Hilton Head, after living and working in the northeast and mid-western US. She set her Bay Tanner mysteries in the South Carolina lowcountry. The first novel in the series, In for a Penny, was self-published. A regional publisher reprinted it and published a second. Then, a St. Martin’s Press editor visiting relatives in nearby Beaufort discovered the novels and offered Kathy a contract. Since that time, eleven more Bay Tanner books have appeared. Kathy’s website features a photo gallery of places her protagonist might encounter, including an artist’s rendering of Bay’s ancestral home.

An Upstate Excursion

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to the Upstate Sisters in Crime chapter about writing short stories. The presentation took place at the Runway Cafe, next to the Greenville airport.

Runway Cafe

A number of the members wrote short stories, so we had an interactive session, trading lots of good information. While in Greenville, I had the opportunity to visit Fiction Addiction, an independent bookstore on the Eastside, and meet the owner Jill Hendrix.

Fiction Addiction

I dined at Mary’s at Falls Cottage and Passerelle (the French word for “footbridge”), a casual bistro in Falls Park. The downtown area was vibrant with young folks and families.