I’m off to the Association for Gravestone Studies’ annual conference, which is in Danbury, Connecticut this year.  Getting there is going to be grueling, but oh, so worth it.

Tomorrow we’ll be taking a bus tour to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, the one you see in every movie that looks from a cemetery toward Manhattan.  Miles Davis is buried there, as is Duke Ellington and Celia Cruz and many, many more. I’ve never had an opportunity to go before.

Thursday I’ll be talking about how I got my contract to write 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. (Spoiler: they wrote and asked me.) Of course, I think there should be many more cemetery books, so I’m going to do what I can to inspire other writers.

Friday is dedicated to exploring the local Wooster Cemetery and admiring their white bronze monuments.

Finally, Saturday is another bus tour, this time to see the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven. It’s one of the places in 199 Cemeteries that I really want to see.

Of course, there’s a full schedule of lectures that I’m looking forward to, and people I’ve only met online or briefly at a Death Salon or at the last AGS conference I went to, which was 17 years ago.  I am really looking forward to having my brain filled with beauty and information.

Best of all, I can fully enjoy the adventure, because I turned in the proposal for a book to follow up 199 Cemeteries on Sunday. Fingers crossed that I’ll soon have another deadline to drive towards.

Have you got some cemeteries that you’re looking forward to seeing this summer?