People laughed and it broke the tension in the room. Eryk invited me to respond and I was like, “Ma’am, I understand that you miss that period of time but, you know, for people who look like me, that period of manners and etiquette wasn’t so great…” I was a bit of a smartass. At the end of the event, a lady got up and made an obtuse, somewhat racist comment about the south and how she missed the manners of the antebellum period. A friend of mine, Eryk Pruitt, was a moderator for a panel about southern crime fiction and he asked me to be on it. I went down there to promote My Darkest Prayer, handing it out to anyone who would listen. There’s a worldwide mystery convention called Bouchercon in Florida. So what happened between My Darkest Prayer and Blacktop Wasteland ? I spoke to a friend who said: 'If you sign with him it will change your life.' My friend was right It was very much a catch-as-catch can sort of existence. I was riding around in my car with a trunk full of books, going around bookstores, events. My first crime book, My Darkest Prayer, came out with them and when you’re working with an independent, they do as much as they can, but you have to do a lot. I was working with a small independent publishing firm, really good people. You were already a writer, but what was life like before?
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