If you are a mys­tery writer, maybe even if you are a ded­i­cat­ed mys­tery read­er, you know what Mal­ice Domes­tic is. Or, maybe you don’t. It’s a fan­tas­tic con­ven­tion filled with mys­tery authors and even more mys­tery read­ers. It’s a grand week­end to put the two togeth­er. There are pan­el dis­cus­sions, shared meals, auto­graph ses­sions, and award pre­sen­ta­tions. And I attend­ed my first one the first week­end of May at Bethes­da, Mary­land.

An in-per­son con­fer­ence intro­duces you to a lot of peo­ple. New faces. New names. But, since I’ve been a mem­ber of the writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the mys­tery writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty, for quite some time as a read­er AND a writer, I know many names. I’ve seen many faces look­ing back from web­sites and blogs on my com­put­er. And, won­der of won­der, some of those names and faces know who I am from see­ing my posts on those web­sites and blogs. I have even met a few of the writ­ers in per­son.

A gath­er­ing of 500 or 600 peo­ple can be over­whelm­ing. The thing is, you can’t be shy. (Bit of a prob­lem with that, as I’m sort of a nat­u­ral­ly shy per­son, but I over­come it quite well, I think) I met peo­ple I’d nev­er heard of before, and peo­ple who I already thought of as friends, even though I’d nev­er met them before.

I belong to the Gup­py chap­ter of Sis­ters in Crime, so I knew they were plan­ning to lunch togeth­er on Fri­day. Meet by the hotel front door, I’d read. So, I grabbed my cam­era, met, and lunched with the Gup­pies. We were spread out over sev­er­al tables. Here’s a few pic­tures of that event.

Late that Fri­day after­noon, I chat­ted with a few peo­ple. When I met Chloe. she had din­ner plans, but asked me to come along. So I end­ed up hav­ing a love­ly din­ner with five ladies from Neva­da. Besides Chloe, they were Mar­i­an, Martha, Susan, and Judy. They wel­comed me into their group, and, of course, I took a pic­ture.

I attend­ed the Sis­ters in Crime break­fast on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. As I came in I glanced around at tables fill­ing up and saw a lot of unfa­mil­iar faces. I was gra­cious­ly accept­ed at the clos­est table, and as oth­ers joined us, I dis­cov­ered I was seat­ed with two of the hon­ored atten­dees, Lau­rie R. King and Lau­ra Lipp­man. (I did­n’t have my cam­era with me. Sor­ry about that.)

Sat­ur­day night was the big blast–the awards ban­quet. As I milled among the

mul­ti­tude at the pre-din­ner cock­tail par­ty, meet­ing quite a few writ­ers that I knew in per­son or elec­tron­i­cal­ly, I heard my name. There were my five Neva­da friends. They’d scored a table for six, and had a chair with my name on it.

I’d signed up to sit at one of the Hen­ery Press tables, so I met more peo­ple. And, I had my cam­era when one of their authors won the Agatha teapot for Best First Mys­tery.

Sun­day after­noon as I sat in the lob­by wait­ing for my hus­band to pick me up, I chat­ted with authors I’d met ear­li­er dur­ing the con­ven­tion. Of course, I went home with a ton of new books, for, as a mys­tery author, I’m def­i­nite­ly a mys­tery read­er. I tru­ly enjoyed attend­ing pan­el dis­cus­sions and lis­ten­ing to authors tell about things their books had in com­mon. One was cooking–with sam­ples. One was the invis­i­ble woman sleuth. There were so many, I could­n’t pos­si­bly attend all of them. How­ev­er, it was great to meet and greet new authors and new readers–probably my favorite part of this con­ven­tion.

How about you? As a read­er, or pos­si­bly as a writer, do you go to con­ven­tions and con­fer­ences? What is your favorite part? The class­es? The pan­els? The dis­cus­sions? Or, like me, meet­ing oth­ers who share your pas­sion.