I started to headline this one “Malicious Memories” but that sounds like some ill thoughts brewing, doesn’t it?
This year’s Malice Domestic was much fun in so many ways—and I was especially pleased to help celebrate my buddy Barb Goffman’s big weekend, both as Toastmaster and as the recipient of this year’s Agatha Award for Best Short Story for “Beauty and the Beyotch,” her third teapot, hooray!
Among the highlights of the weekend were two events with Barb, both our Friday short story panel, along with Cynthia Kuhn, Lisa Q. Mathews, and Richie Narvaez, and then the Toastmaster chat on Sunday afternoon, delving a bit more into the person behind all those great short stories.
And what a joy to welcome our son Dash Taylor to his first Agatha Awards Banquet—ultra spiffy and sharing some time with Malice Guest of Honor Hank Phillippi Ryan (he’s a tremendous fan of hers). We had a great time hosting the kids table (along with LynDee Walker’s daughters), and Dash got a photo with Korina Moss too, celebrating her Best First Novel teapot!
A couple of other highlights for me:
- The short story editors panel, with Deb Lacy moderating Michael Bracken, Carla Coupe, Linda Landrigan, and Josh Pachter—great insights into editing and anthology-making and more
- The Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast recording with Vaseem Khan, Abir Mukherjee, Jeff Cohen, and Catriona McPherson—everyone said it was great fun and very funny, though I felt like fumbled too many times myself!
- And getting together with so many folks in-between times, lunches, dinners, drinks, and more—far too many to list here!
Speaking of lists though, shout-outs to so many people who helped make this year’s Malice such a success: Verena Rose, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Angel Trapp, Krista Linthicum, Jack and Judy Cater, Anne Murphy, Cindy Silberblatt, Jim Huang, Leone Ciporin, Robin Agnew, Deb Lacy, Harriette Sackler, and so many more!
Looking forward to next year already!