Week-End Visitors [SOLI]

Wow.  What a weekend!

As I type this, I'm on my plane back to St. Louis.  The BSI Birthday Weekend is now over but I am still finding it hard to put everything into words.  But my big news from the weekend is I am now an invested member of the Baker Street Irregulars!  

I've heard many people tell the story of their night of being invested and not remembering what was said about them.  I can add my name to that list.  Michael Kean cited my profession as an elementary school teacher and my role on the Beacon Society, and things are blank after that.  I remember going on stage and thanking him and posing for a picture as he announced my investiture to the crowd, "Elementary."  Michael really seemed to know about each of the fourteen people invested this weekend and I have thirteen amazing classmates.  I mean, just look at these names!

Laurence Deloison - "Claridge's Hotel"

Jim Hawkins - "The Hans Sloane of My Age"

Heather Holloway - "Atlanta"

David Humphries - "Chicago Central"

Tim Johnson - "Theophilus Johnson"

Mark Jones - "Peter Jones"

Tiffany Knight - "Knight's Place"

Crystal Noll - "Crystal Palace"

Rob Nunn - "Elementary"

Aaron Rubin - TBD

Jonathan Tiemann - "The Bank of England"

Janice Weiner - "Scotland Yard"

Karen Wilson - "Bartholomew Wilson"

Joanne Zahorsky-Reeves - "Toby"

Although Scott Monty wasn't in attendance this year, I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere did a great job getting the list of investitures out to everyone as well as the rest of the weekend's honors.

And if being invested wasn't enough, The Finest Assorted Collection: Essays on Collecting Sherlock Holmes was also released!  Seeing a book with my name on the cover in a bookshop is an unbelievable feeling.  The Mysterious Bookshop sold out of their stock of the book this weekend.  In fact, I had to ask someone if I could borrow their copy so I could take this picture.

The Finest Assorted Collection was moving very briskly at the Wessex Press dealer's table on Saturday morning as well and Peter Eckrich and I got to sign lots of books.  As far as I know it's not yet on their website for purchase, but I will be sure to update everyone once it's available.

But as we all know, the BSI weekend isn't about accolades or sales.  I got to spend time with so many wonderful people in New York.  I could list dozens of names here who were so much fun to be around and rattle so many topics we talked about that this blog post would go on forever.  Just know that if I got to spend any time with you this weekend, I really enjoyed it.  And if you weren't in New York, you were greatly missed.  

I'm absolutely exhausted from such a great few days so I will wrap this up with all of my pictures that I tweeted out over the weekend.  Have a great week, everyone!