FALLEN STAR is an Edgar Finalist

I woke up to the exciting news that FALLEN STAR is a finalist for the Sue Grafton Award from the Mystery Writers of America. This is especially meaningful to me because Sue was a friend of mine for years. We first met in 1985, when we were both guests at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference — her for B IS FOR BURGLAR (if memory serves) and me for one of my .357 VIGILANTE novels. We hit it off immediately and did many, many events together over the following decades. The highlight, event-wise, was when she asked me to interview her at her Kentucky Colonels Award banquet in 2009. I think the last time I saw her was at Bouchercon Albany in 2013, where I introduced her to my then-new friends authors Melinda Leigh and Kendra Elliot, who she immediately treated like old friends of hers, too. That’s the kind of lady she was.