Earlier this week, the list of 2013 Agatha Award nominations was released. My locked-room mystery short story "The Hindi Houdini" has been nominated for an Agatha!

Thank you to everyone who has congratulated me this week on the nomination! The whole thing is a bit overwhelming (I'm still pinching myself), so I didn't take a step back and post the news here on the blog until now. Here's the scoop:

The Agatha Awards are given out at the Malice Domestic mystery convention that takes place every year in Bethesda, MD. The convention celebrates the traditional mystery — i.e. mysteries typified by Agatha Christie and other authors who wrote when puzzle plots were at the heart of mystery stories, and no gratuitous sex or violence was on the page.

My pet gargoyles with the anthology featuring my story.

This is my genre of mystery. I grew up devouring the books of prolific traditional mystery writers Elizabeth Peters and Aaron Elkins, who were writing clever twisty-turny plots with characters I adored. Books like that are why I wanted to become a mystery writer. And that's why this nomination means so much to me.

My nominated story, "The Hindi Houdini," is an impossible crime story starring Sanjay Rai, Jaya's magician best friend from the Jaya Jones treasure hunt mystery series. As a magician, he's the perfect person to solve locked-room impossible crimes, which he does in Fool's Gold as well. This story was published in Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology by Wildside Press in April 2013.

The Agatha awards will be given out on May 3, 2014, at the banquet at Malice Domestic. I love this convention, and this year it'll be even more fun!