News and photos

Issue No 48:
19 June 2008

Welcome to our forty-eighth PartyChitChat.

Here is our news:

• I am sorry this newsletter is a bit late. I have been on a research trip to the USA.
• I hope to finish the mystery set in Hawaii by the end of the June. I went to Hawaii on my way to and from the USA, so now I have enough material to finish it. My apologies for the delay. I am just waiting for my creative juices to kick in now that I have recovered from jet lag. Please let us know if you would like to be informed when this new luau mystery is ready by emailing info@merrimysteries.com.
• Due to increasing expenses, we have had to raise the price of our meet and mingle mystery party game kits by $5 US. We have raised the price of the versions for 17 to 100 guests by $10 US.
• We have two of our mystery party games available on CDs: "Celebrity Celebrations" and "Who Killed Santa?". The CDs contain the same files as the normal kits you download from our website – so host's guide, invitations and clue files. But they contain the small standard versions for 8 to 16 guests and the meet and mingle version for 17 to 30. As a special offer for readers of this newsletter: we are going to send out these CDs for the old price of $34.95 US and with free postage within Australia and the USA. But you must order these before 1 August as the CDs will increase in price after this date. To order these, within Australia phone 07 3103 3815 during business hours, within the US phone 707 994 5067 Mon–Fri 12 Noon–2:00pm Pacific Standard Time. Each of these CDs would make a great birthday or Xmas gift!

• While I was in the United States, I met some young students called Geoff Boothby and Cullen Thomas. I was studying video with them. Using volunteer actors they have created a wonderful movie which you can download and watch for free as 9 short episodes via their website http://theskyisfree.com. The movie is called "Wormtooth Nation" and I highly recommend it. It certainly got me in after the first couple of episodes. And the original music is also great. After you watch it, you may also like to watch a little via youTube although the quality isn't as good, but this will help their ratings. These two very creative individuals are about to graduate, so if you need their help, please contact them via their website.
• In the coming months we are going to be looking at some of our kits and seeing if we can make them more educational with the help of an educational psychologist. So we may create more school versions and versions for younger teens. Please let us know if you would like to be informed when these new versions are ready by emailing info@merrimysteries.com.

In this issue, we have articles about:

• Our photo competition winners
• Our decoration competition.

Our photo competition winners

Our winner is Candace Russell (USA). Normally we have 3 winners but she was our only entrant this time.

We are commencing a new competition with a closing date of 15 July 2008 (see photos.htm for details).

Decoration competition

Our winner is Candace Russell (USA). Candace went to a lot of trouble with the body of the victim for her "Celebrity Celebrations" party. And she also created beautiful place settings for each guest (see photos below).

We are commencing a new competition with a closing date of 15 July 2008 (see decor.htm for details).

Here are some of Candace's photos from her "Celebrity Celebrations" party:

Candace sent in this feedback about her party

"I did the Celebrity Celebrations party for my sister’s 29th Birthday it was more than just a hit. Everyone is still talking about it. We did this party at a restaurant that let me decorate a hall they use for business meetings. People were seeing everyone coming in and asking if they could see what we were doing. Excellent script as well. Very self explanatory and no need to stress about anything it tells you in step by step instructions. I did something a little different though instead of using the pictures when I sent everyone there information sheets on who they were I included the evidence (they didn’t know that is what it was) and I had the Virgil collect it during the party. I am attaching some of the pictures and hope that it goes through.

Thanks a million,

Candace Russell"