Two Deadly Daughters Meet at a Deadly Mystery Conference

by Julia Buckley
 This is the second time I was able to meet up with Lonnie Cruse, my fellow Deadly Daughter, at a mystery conference. This time it was at Authorfest at the Schaumburg Library this past Saturday. Thank goodness for mystery conferences, I say! How else would we authors keep in touch?

Lonnie is a fun and interesting person, and we got to be on a panel together, attend sessions together, and talk in general about the odd business of publishing. Here's our panel audience.

I am happy to say that I did NOT spill water on her this time, as I did at Love is Murder last year, and I think Lonnie was grateful for that favor.

Here's a picture of Lonnie posing with Mary Welk, who was also on our panel. What a lovely couple of ladies. Who would ever guess that they write about gruesome murders? Which reminds me--we got to hear a presentation by Luisa Buehler and Kelle Z. Riley about what sorts of deadly poisons we can find in our garden and how we can use our knowledge of chemicals to make a death look accidental. Very informative, if a bit frightening. Who knew that many things were poisonous?

All in all it was an interesting day. Lonnie sold far more books than I did, so she is the queen. :)