My Friend Gay Kinman

During the night I remembered Gay, a fellow author and our many adventures.

We met via email and she asked me to be her roommate at an Epicon--Epic was an online organization for e-published authors, and the conference was being held in Bellingham, Washington.

This was the first time we met in person. Her husband had sent her flowers and I thought the room smelled like a funeral parlor. 

We hit it off friend wise--a friendship that has lasted many years. 

One night I'd been invited to dinner by a young true-crime writer. We dined across the street. In great detail, he described several gory murders. The waiter was not thrilled about coming to our table.

It snowed during the conference.

Gay and I are quite different. She's very attractive but never seemed to notice the attention given to her by men. She's extremely well-educated. and far more intellectual than I am. Her husband was merely months younger than I was. They never watched TV shows, only the news and educational programs.

Gay and I flew to New York together to attend Edgar week. Though she didn't know how we should get to Manhattan from the airport (there was a bus outside we paid a ticked for) or where we should get off the bus (a New Yorker helped us), we managed to find our hotel. 

We wandered around, I was impressed, we walked by the New York library and ate dinner in an Irish pub, all the wait staff were from Ireland. Gay knew how to snag a cab. While in New York, besides the Edgar week offerings we went to a museum right beside Central Park. We saw beautiful Bibles, and a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural display and lots more.

One evening we went to an agents and publishers' cocktail party. Mary Higgins Clark was there. I'd met her years before at a mystery conference in a rustic campground. She recognized me and called me other and chatted like an old friend--and introduced me to her then new husband.

Gay and I both dressed up for the very impressive Edgar dinner and ceremony.

The next day we went to Grand Central Station to take the train to Washington D.C. and another mystery con. She only had one small suitcase, I had one big one and a smaller one. She dashed ahead and I tried to keep up and my smaller suitcase fell of the big one. While struggling to put it back together, one of the conductors helped me and asked where I was going. I told him I was following Gay. He grabbed my stuff and caught up with her. He made sure we had a cart waiting for us at the D.C. station and a taxi at the curb.

We were roommates for other mystery cons, and I stayed with her once to attend the big Los Angeles Book Festival.

The last time I saw Gay, my husband and I met her and her husband for breakfast at Black Bear Diner before they headed up to the mountains to stay in a Bed and Breakfast and then were headed to a state park to see the big trees.

Both of our husbands have since passed away. 

We enjoyed each other's company.

Marilyn