The Miami Noir reading at Murder on the Beach -- great fun. There were a dozen of us authors present. From left to right: Lynne Barrett (my thesis director), Vicki Hendrix, the friendly guy whose name I can't remember right now, me, and Barbara Parker. Check out my socks! (What are we all looking at?)

John Dufresne, John Bond, David Beattie, and Les Standiford were also there.

After the discussion, we strolled down the street to have dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. I sat next to Barbara Parker and we discussed her current novel. She said something interesting about crime fiction writers vs. MFA students: people who write mysteries and crime fiction look at their writing as a job. They take it seriously. MFA students (at least in my experience) are more like a band of drunken vandals -- they don't seem to take writing as seriously. Maybe because MFA students, particularly poets, don't have a prayer of turning their work into money. And crime fiction writers do.

Interesting. I wonder if my second book contains enough crime to be commercially successful?