catch up – Life of Cri.me

So I’ve been away for a little while. I’ve been reading a lot, but I’ve also been celebrating a lot too. I recently turned 40 and have spent three weeks, catching up with friends, attending festivals, going on holiday, and attending parties. It’s been fabulous.

It started with CrimeFest where I had an absolutely amazing time as always. There were some interesting panels, some strange and wild conversations, author meet and greets, awards announcements, gala dinners, publisher drinks parties, oh and free books…. but most of that paled into insignificance as over the course of the weekend, I got to go out for lunch with Lee Child. I think I forgot most of everything that happened after that, including getting an author to write a guest feature for me! (oh the horror….)

There’s even more fantastic author news lined up, but I’ll save that for closer to the time it’s due to happen as I really don’t want to jinx it.

After CrimeFest, I flew to Las Vegas, I *almost* touched David Copperfield (my huge teenage crush), and I walked. A lot. When they say the hotels are big, you really just cannot comprehend. They are beyond huge. It took 20 minutes to walk from our hotel room through the MGM Grand and Casino to The Strip, but every blister, and night falling into bed with tired and sore feet was worth it.

I’ve been out and about in ‘that London’ with friends to celebrate the actual day, drunk an awful lot of champagne, and avoided writing the reviews and publishing the articles I usually do, because I’ve simply not found the time.

But now the hiatus is over, watch this space, as I catch up with events, competitions, reviews, awards and more.

Well I’ve just finished reading my fiftieth book of the year, annoyingly almost a month later than I managed the same feat last year, so I really am going to have to up my reading level if I’m going to beat last years total of 130.

That said, I’ve found a great little feature on the Kindle app for my iPad that has encouraged me to get through several e-books this month. It’s a little feature that displays at the bottom of you page that tells you how long it will take you to finish reading the book given your current pace of reading.

If it tells me I have “3 hrs and 11 mins left in book” I want to see how accurate it is, so I am now constantly trying to race it.

It also means I’m a little behind on my reviewing as I keep starting another book instead of writing about the last one. I’ll be aiming to catch up with these over the next week or so.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, because I know some of you will be, book number fifty was Land of Shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall.