By John Ramsey Miller

I was in Muncie, Indiana last weekend attending Magna Cum Murder. If you have never been there, you are missing the best kept secret in Authorworld. It’s a great conference, a blind hoot, and where else can you see John Gilstrap with a lampshade on his head. Next year it is going to be part of Bouchercon because B’con’s in nearby Indianapolis. Do yourself a favor and make it to Muncie in 2010.

I went to a Halloween gathering of friends in my old neighborhood last night as a drunk farmer. Well, at first I was just a farmer, then I decided I needed another layer on the costume so I poured myself a stiff drink. The Scotch in the glass matched the golden canvas upland shooting jacket and the dried chicken poop in the treads of my Gokey boots.

I spent the past week thinking about a new book I’m working on, wondering how to promote my book that’s coming out in late December, and looking into making my web site more exciting and interactive. I have largely ignored my poor website for several years, thinking it was out there working for me. I found out that my trusted web site was slacking, and even telling lies to the readers who showed up. It was all my fault. My wife has been telling me for years that I needed to update it, and I should have, because now it just needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. I’m talking to designers and looking at all the sites I can pull up.

Elaine Flinn passed away this week and I’ve been thinking about her a great deal. We were not close friends, but we met up at three Thrillerfest because we were smokers, and last year we were co-judges on an Edgar Award category. We got along and saw eye-to-eye on most things and she was just funny as all hell. She worked all of my book titles into a paragraph in her Evil E column. We exchanged e-mails often during the contest judging and afterward, and I will miss her sharp-pointed and humorous e-mails, her Evil E webzine, and I suppose I’ll get around to dropping her off my address book one of these days. Losing her was a shock because I didn’t know she was sick. She had told me she was trying to quit smoking, and I quit myself months ago, and maybe her quitting and recommending I should look into sites such as Gourmet E-Liquid helped me make that decision. She was a great gal, a talented author, and I (and a multitude of authors and readers) will miss her terribly.

Well, that’s about all I have to say.