In Agatha Christie's book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Roger is murdered on September 17. Matt Newbury, the Creative Director of the International Agatha Christie Festival, challenged festival attendees to bring their copy of the novel and have a group photo taken. Since we were not going to be in Torquay, England this year, we asked Matt if there would be a virtual photo event. He was too busy to organize anything, but gave us his blessing if we wanted to. So we did.
With the back-and-forthing, we didn't have a lot of time to put it together, but we did our best. The biggest hurdle was figuring out how to make it super easy for people to participate and for us to gather their photos. Don, my husband, publisher, and tech wizard, did the resesarch to find a tool that did what we needed without a huge cash investment. And then we focussed on getting the word out on Facebook and Instagram, even creating a Roger Ackroyd Day Facebook page and event.
We belong to several Agatha Christie interest groups online and posted on them. We also talked about it at the Printers Row book event. And of course, we mentioned it in our newsletter, on our website, and on our own social platforms. Over the week, the Roger Ackroyd Day page had over 850 views and just one of the Instagram posts had 1,624 views! Lots of people "liked" the posts, but not as many actually posted photos, which I suppose is how these things go.
Still, we had a really nice group of people who shared selfies with their Ackroyds. Some were people we met when we were at the International Agatha Christie Festival in 2024. Some were people we became acquainted with virtually. One was a young woman who bought a book from us at Printers Row! And others were strangers until we "met" them on Roger Ackroyd Day.
The Festival even called us out in a post as "our friends in the States," which was awful nice! It was a bit of a whirlwind, but great fun. Maybe next year there will be a new opportunity for those of us who can't travel to England to still be a part of the International Agatha Christie Festival. And if you aren't familiar with IACF, do check out their website to see all of the fabulous speakers and events they offer. For any Agatha Christie fan, this should definitely be on your bucket list!