Karen's blog

As long as you don't take them too seriously.

Monday of MWF week was, however, spent reading, drinking tea, talking, reading, blogging, reading and generally slothing around.  We needed it after a very hectic weekend.

Tuesday was, however, part "work" in that we went food shopping (oh and book shopping) and tonight we're off to the local Pub Trivia Night - so it was sort of rest sort of work.

We'll upload the next pile of books in the photo album soon:  http://www.austcrimefiction.org/image

One of the aims that we had for this year's Melbourne Writers Festival was to emulate the tradition that 4MA members have of an opening dinner.  We decided to have ours on the first Saturday of the festival and we were keen to find a venue that had something a little different about it.  We finally settled on trying Tjanabi - a newish restaurant on the edges of Federation Square - not that far from the Malthouse Theatre.  Interestingly enough, next year the Festival will be moving to Federation Square.

One of the big bonuses of this year's MWF is the free events that are popping up at the venue.  Yesterday we were lucky enough to be hanging around in the Festival Club when Rory Ellis appeared.

http://www.roryellis.com/new/home.html

Rory is a local musician that I have heard before, but as with a lot of things, when you move out to the sticks - you lose touch with the old music haunts.  Great to hear a bit of the back story of his new album (and some of his old songs) and even better to hear him play.

Well the first weekend of our 2007 MWF celebrations has been and gone and we have started again with a bang - or at the very least some desperately sore feet from strolling and sore ribs from laughing.

A link to SOHO Crime's newsletter arrived in my mailbox this morning - and Garry Disher and Colin Cotterill head up the entries.

Have a look at the newsletter:

http://www.sohopress.com/crimenewsletter.html

The Ned Kelly's will be presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival (we'll be there again this year) on the evening of Wednesday 29th July, 2007.

Best Crime Novel

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher (Text Publishing)

The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham (Little, Brown)