CrimeFest 2011

You know (or hope) you are participating in a crime fiction conference when you hear someone saying:

´... and then I put the poison in his haemorrhoid cream´
´you got to kill people somehow´
´I do like blowing things up´

In two words; my first CrimeFest was absolutely overwhelming!  I did take a few photos, but most of the time my husband had the camera. And Saturday, the only day when I had it, the battery went flat rather unexpectedly.

Karen Meek of Euro Crime

As I mentioned the other day, one of the very best experiences was to meet some of my blog friends and get to know them even better. The panels were also very interesting, and it was such a pleasure that the crime writers I have read - and read about - for so long, were so kind and forthcoming. They really seemed to like meeting their readers :)

So apart from Martin Edwards, our walking crime fiction encyclopaedia, whom I mentioned the other day, I had plenty of opportunity to chat with Len Tyler, Christine Poulson, Quentin Bates and Kate Ellis to mention a few.

I wish I could participate every year, but unfortunately May and June are the busiest months of our school year so I won´t win any popularity contests by running off, leaving three days of external examinations to my colleagues again.


Here you see my CrimeFest spoil - I bought the ones by Len Tyler and S.J. Bolton myself, the others are books I won or was given for free.

Back home from CrimeFest

Came home from a wonderful event last night (twenty past one so forgive me if I write sheer rubbish).

CrimeFest in Bristol was absolutely overwhelming.
First of all I met a couple of blog friends, and of course they were just as kind and interesting as I had expected. Norman (Crime Scraps), Kerrie (Mysteries of Paradise) and Karen (EuroCrime), it has been so great to get to know you and spend three-four days together with you. And thank you to Martin Edwards not only for being just as kind and charming as Daniel Kind, but also for winning the pub quiz for us Thursday night. It was a good feeling to participate in my first pub quiz ever - and ´win´ it.

As my husband has been sightseeing in Bristol, I only have a few pictures of the people I met, but I promise to post them later (when I have had time to catch up with life, work and my blog round). If you follow the links to Norman, Karen and Martin´s blogs above, you will see some of us in Bristol, though.