I'm 8,000 words into Crescent City Murder, book 8 in the Jill Quint series. I'm loving the story and enjoying my writing and learning more about New Orleans as story quirks arise. But a word of caution, never, ever, sit next to me in a bar. When I visited there last fall, I tried to talk to as many people as possible about life in New Orleans. It's my way of soaking up the culture with the thought of material for a future book. I spoke with my servers in restaurants, my barte

Last week I returned from New Orleans where I took in the annual Mystery Writers of America conference known as Bouchercon. It was my second trip to this annual convention and as always I found it instructive. Exploring the city of New Orleans was a blast. I would have guessed that there were 500-700 authors in attendance including the some of the biggest best-selling mystery authors. The other attendees were fans of the genre and perhaps numbered 1500. New this year was a bo