Murder at the Holiday Inn

by Robison Wells

I haven’t murdered anyone for three years. Nor have I been murdered. No, for three years I’ve gotten all excited, thinking “Maybe this time it’ll be me!” and I’m repeatedly let down.

I speak, of course, of Covenant’s annual Murder Mystery Dinner. Evil genius Kerry Blair gathers up characters from many of Covenant’s latest novels, crams them all into one whirlwind of craziness, and inflicts it on the public. Last Friday this all took place at the Holiday Inn in Salt Lake City, in a room that was neither big enough nor ventilated enough for three hundred people. Fortunately, elbowroom and air conditioning are for suckers, and the party went on as planned.

At this event all of us author folk, who are terribly introverted and socially awkward, get to dress up like fools and act similarly. We each get assigned a character from another author’s novel. This year I was Luciano, a Brazilian rainforest native from Michele Ashman Bell’s YA series. Jeff Savage was The Catacyclist (from my latest book). Kerry Blair was the MC, Delilah Disaster. And Julie Coulter Bellon was a Mountie, or something.

Part of the fun at the dinner comes from the fact that we actors are only fed information in tiny chunks, as the evening progresses. None of us knew who the killers were, or who would end up as the next victim. It requires a lot of ad lib—no problem there, seeing as how we all write fiction and make up stories all day. In my case, Luciano was seen at the murder scene, and he was running. That’s all that my Character Card said. I had to make up the rest. And I had to make it all up while wearing a grass skirt and war paint. This, my friends, was a rad event.

I don’t think I’m going to try recap the story, but suffice it to say that Jerry Borrowman and H.B. Moore were both murdered (the former with a knife and the latter with a gun). This all took place at a wedding reception, and for some reason the police were never called, and the bride and groom continued to eat and party despite a dead body in front of their table. (Since Kerry Blair invented this story, one has to presume that she finds this sort of thing to be socially acceptable.) (Well, she is from Arizona.)

But it was a great event. It’s always good to see other authors, and there were plenty there. In fact, I can say without the least degree of exaggeration that I attempted to dance the Lindy Hop with Anita Stansfield, and that she couldn’t keep up with my l33t skillz. Frankly, for a woman who writes books called A Time To Dance, Dancing in the Light, and A Dance to Remember, she wasn’t that great of a dancer. (Either that, or I wasn’t, and I simply can’t imagine that could be the case.)

And did acclaimed LDS author Robison Wells win the Best Actor award? You’d better believe it, baby. I’m thinking of starting my own acting academy. Lesson one: Less is never more; more is more. Lesson two: Jump around and make loud noises. Oscars here I come!