The Edgar awards, and horses (huh?)

The Edgars award winners for 2008 are at http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html

I had a grand time at the Edgars banquet, especially since I wasn’t a nominee so there was no nerves and quivers, just hanging with friends and catching up on publishing life with people in the business.Â

But I’m tired and it’s after midnight, and I doubt I’ll have much time to post in the morning before I go visit my Picador publishers, so as a treat I’ve written a post for a friend’s blog,

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One of my rare pleasures is seeing friends, both because I’m so locked down into work I can’t get away, and because friends, well, ditto. But I had a lovely brunch the other day with my fellow writer Laura Crum.

Laura writes a series around an equine veterinarian. I met her a lifetime ago when she had her first book coming out and I had maybe two on the shelves, and we shared not only publishing houses but editors (St Martin’s Press, and Ruth Cavin.) We live a few miles apart, which means I see more of her than friends who live in Alaska or England, and even come across her in the grocery store from time to time.

So, as I say, we managed to carve an hour out for lunch, and in the course of that Laura mentioned that she’d been asked to join a group blog.

Now, Laura and I are pretty different, professionally. She plans her books, she populates them with real-life friends and animals, and she writes mostly in Santa Cruz County, with actual neighborhoods and restaurants (although she tends not to have people poisoned in any café she knows and loves). I do none of the above.

I go to conferences, I tour every new book, I keep a blog and a Book Club and a newsletter, and I break my neck to do a book a year most years (sorry about 2007, friends.) Laura, on the other hand, has a life, in which writing is one part, but not an enormous part.

And, Laura knows horses. I know…well, I know what they look like standing in a field.

Anyway, I offered to write a guest post at her blog, and since it’s a blog about horse fiction, horses are what I’ve written about. You can find it at http://equestrianink.blogspot.com.Â

And if you want to know more about horses, don’t listen to me, listen to them.