It feels a bit like there are a million billion trillion writing events on this weekend. And I’m going to one of them.

This time last year I attended the Brisbane Writers’ Festival. I was enroute to Italy and fortuitously stopped-over for the weekend to attend a few activities, which was excellent as one of my main reasons for going to Italy was to attend a writing retreat in Tuscany. *sigh*

The Brisbane Writers Festival is on again this coming weekend. And I understand the Melbourne Writers Festival also has a number of events scheduled.

I – however – am off to BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival.

Initially I’d been tempted by Terror Australis Murder She Wrote in Tasmania in October/November cos I love me some Agatha Christie (and Jessica Fletcher #natch) and the workshops in the lead-up to the weekend look amazing. It was more logistically challenging though and – as a number of my fave authors are attending BAD19 – I decided I’d head to Sydney for a long weekend. (I should also note I had a travel voucher I needed to use before it expired!!!)

My flights and accommodation aren’t cheap though (I did splurge a little on the accommodation as I haven’t been ‘away’ since Italy last September – October) so I had to be more frugal in my choice of sessions at BAD19 and am only going to eight.

One of those is the Ned Kelly Awards and I am sooooo excited re that evening. Of course I’m going by myself so I might be wallflowering – though another book blogger I know is going.

I’m also attending a session that day involving interviews with some of the awards finalists, a session on ‘Country Noir’ and one on ‘missing children’. And seriously… how many books do I read involving missing kids, returned kids, never-to-be-seen-again kids?! (That was rhetorical by the way, cos the answer is A LOT.)

I’m actually only going to two sessions on Saturday and Sunday so may be bored shitless miles from home given my limited interest in playing tourist and the extent to which I despise shopping. However, the two sessions on Saturday feature a couple of faves: Aussie author Sarah Bailey and Val McDermid ). And Sunday I’m off to sessions about fictional detectives and a debate – and looking forward to hearing from Michael Robotham and Candice Fox, both of whom I’ve seen and met before; and are very entertaining.

I’ve since (ie. this morning) signed up to attend a ‘B List bookclub’ event with Bri Lee and Rick Morton tonight… and thanks to the lovely Denyse Whelan for bringing it to my attention; so I will not be holed up in my hotel room with a bag of corn chips, a fistful of chocolate and bottle of wine recovering from my flights!

PS.  The writers’ / writers thing kills me. I feel it should be a possessive plural. But think titles of things usually get to drop the apostrophe, so… *clutches pearls*
PPS. I think the official hashtag is #badcrimesydney. I may be forced to re-install Instagram on my phone for the weekend cos… well, does being there even count if you don’t have share the pictures to prove it?

I don’t actually know Sydney well. Any advice re inner-city eateries or cafes?