Coincidence? Accident? Or merely the working out of the Zeitgeist?

I’ve seen this happen often. Oddly, it’s the one area of human affairs through which novelists must tread with caution: coincidence only works in real life.

When The Janissary Tree won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in NYC last year, I was in Glastonbury. This year, it’s The Snake Stone which has been nominated for a Macavity Award for the best Historical Mystery and the publishers – FSG/ Picador – are very sweetly shipping me out to Baltimore. The full list of nominees is here  http://www.mysteryreaders.org/macavity.html

Win or lose, it will be fun to be there – especially as I’m appearing on Saturday morning, the 11th October, on a panel chaired by Janet Rudolph. It’s called ‘Been Around the World’ and I’ll be talking alongside Charles Benoit (India, Thailand, Egypt),  Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland) and Michael Stanley (Africa). 

Barbara Peters will be getting a Lifetime Achievement Award – she runs the Poisoned Pen bookshop in Phoenix, and a huge lot more.