Crimefest Day 3

Needless to say, having stayed up rather late last night it meant that I am behind on the blog! So I am now playing catch up. My fellow Shotsmag contributor and all round crime fiction man Ali Karim has been posting pictures to his Facebook page so please have a look!

After the late night that I had the first panel that I managed to get to was The Grass Is Greener: Thrillers - UK Vs US. This panel was ably moderated by Nick Sayers of Hodder & Stoughton and had on the panel Charlie Charters, Simon Conway, Matt Hilton and Zoë Sharp. Surprisingly of the four authors on the panel only one of them is not published by Hodder & Stoughton. I know which author it is but do you? I was rather disappointed in not being able to attend any of the earlier panels which were Room for One More: Debut Authors which was moderated by Peter Guttridge and Suspicion: Spies Coming in From The Cold which was moderated by Michael Ridpath.

Rather sadly I also did not manage to get to any of the other panels that were being shown in the morning. It was not however for lack of trying! I kept on (in a very nice way) getting hijacked by people who wanted to talk to me. The ever effervescent Sam Eades of Headline took a party of us out to lunch. This consisted of the Shotsmag team, Jake Kerridge, Colin Bateman, Katherine Armstrong and Conor Fitzgerald whose novel Dogs of Rome was one of the fe books that I picked up as a result of Declan Burke talking sbout it. I am looking forward to reading it a lot. I spent the afternoon trying to ensure that the blog is up to date and thus did not have the opportunity to go to any of the panels this after noon. The one tht I did regret missing was Lindsey Davis being interviewed by Lauren Henderson.

One of the highlights of Saturday night is the gala dinner and for once I do not have to worry about what I am going to wear! A number of awards will also be given out and I shall let you know the result. Anyway, I am off to get dressed for the dinner.

So far I have been having a wonderful time at Crimefest. It has been so much fun catching up with various people that rather sadly the time has gone past rather quickly. So, before I forget I would like to say a huge thanks to Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey for once again putting on such a splendid event.