Walter Mosley at Kepler's - Quite the Character

Walter Mosley just got the 2016 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. This is an award that started in 1955.  And Mosley is the 1st black author to win.  He made sure we knew that!  As I indicated in the title, he is a really interesting guy to listen to.  He was in conversation with T. Geronimo Johnson, an author in his own right, at Kepler's. Here's a recap of what he had to say:

1.  He writes every day.  If he finishes a book on Tuesday, he starts the next one on Wednesday.
2.  All of the old authors that are considered writers of classics - e.g. Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain - were actually popular writers in their time.
3.  He starts writing and that tells him in what direction he's headed.
4.  He writes about black characters in a realistic way.
5.  He spends an hour lying on the couch every day in order to "free associate."  Harlan Coben said the same thing.
6.  You probably can't tell from looking at his picture, but he said he was a hippie.  That's definitely possible since he's now 64 (since I'm 66, almost 67, I know that he was definitely in the hippie timeframe!).

We had 2 esteemed writers in the audience.  Laurie King, who is very well known for writing a series of Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and Ellen Kirshman.  Ellen is a 30-year police psychologist who has written a number of non-fiction books about first responders.  She has also written 2 books of fiction about a police psychologist named Dot Meyerhof.  And, most importantly, she was our RBC author back in February!  Ellen is definitely an author that I am very happy to know.

Big crowd

Clayton Moore, Kepler's event manager

Mosley is (obviously) on the right.