Tom, Rebecca and I spent much of our Friday the 13th at ThrillerFest, which I think is very fitting! Among the many mystery/thriller authors we saw on panels today were Gregg Hurwitz, Joseph Finder, Robert Dugoni and Karin Slaughter. Lee Child interviewed Megan Abbott, which was such fun. Their chemistry was amazing!
But the highlight of the day was a wonderful, lively interview with George R.R. Martin, who is this year's ThrillerMaster (which is ThrillerFest's lifetime achievement honor). Amusingly, just as he was introduced by his editor, the entire room went dark, as the lights went out for no apparent reason. Someone in the audience said, "Winter is coming," and everyone started laughing. Tom and Rebecca were thrilled to have a picture taken with him, which you can see above, at a book signing that occurred right after the interview. Meanwhile, I had my annual tea date with Keith Raffel, where he shared a very interesting book idea with me. We will have much more on the panels we attended and the authors we heard speak in next week's newsletter.