Back to the Bay

Getting Historical with  Aubrey Hamilton, Diana R. Chambers, Karen Odden, S.J. Rozan

 I spent the last week in San Francisco, eating Rice-a-Roni and leaving my heart while wearing flowers in my hair.  Or something.

Actually, we were at Left Coast Crime, the West Coast's annual conference for mystery fans.  And we had a great time. 

Before I get into the details I want to say this: I mentioned the conference on FaceBook and a writer much better known than myself said that he had stopped going to cons years ago and it hadn't affected his sales.

I replied that I don't go to them for marketing purposes.  I go to be with my tribe, recharge my creative batteries, and maybe learn something.  All of which I did in San Francisco. 

Libraries Panel with Pat Sellers, Jenn Hooker, and Randal Brandt

I was on a panel about choosing the right period to write historical fiction about.  I also got to do a presentation about how my library spent almost two years investigating a crime and caught the man who had robbed over a hundred libraries.  And speaking of libraries, I moderated a panel on Libraries Helping Authors Helping Libraries.  It was great to see so many people interested in those institutions. One of our panelists, Randal Brandt, was the con's Fan Guest of Honor because of his work as the curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley.

Swag

Mysti Berry and I co-sponsored a table at the LeftyAwards Banquet.  Since a lot of my stories are set in New Jersey I provided all of our guests with Garden State magnets and a real Jersey shore treat: Berkeley Candy's molasses salt water taffy paddles robed in dark chocolate. A piece of my childhood!

We also attended Author Speed-Dating (and let me tell you, it is much more fun to sit at a table and let 18 pairs of authors come to you than to be one of the authors trying to repeat your pitch at 18 tables).  The highlight for that might be the author who said their publisher had had an astronomer choose their publication date.  

Loot

Another highlight is the New Author Breakfast sponsored by Sisters in Crime (interesting to see how some of the rookies are much more relaxed and practiced than others), and a bunch of panels.  And we brought home a ton of loot, all free (unless you count the cost of airfare, hotel, and the conference, so we won't).

I also bumped into two SleuthSayers, Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson, who did their panels brilliantly (naturally).

Of course, since San Francisco is one of our favorite cities we also  threw in some time for sightseeing, which I won't bore you with.*

But the biggest highpoint of the conference for me personally happened at a panel on short stories. Vera Chan mentioned that Rex Stout wrote two novellas that started with the same chapter, but she couldn't remember the title.  Now, I frown on people who, during the question and answer period, offer a comment instead of  a question, but I couldn't resist.  When Q and A time came I raised my hand.  "That Rex Stout story is 'Counterfeit for Murder.'" 

There was a smattering of applause and Catriona McPherson, the moderator, said: "That's a librarian!"

Which indeed I am.

Next time: words of wisdom from the conference.

 * Cable cars, the Embarcadero, the Ferry Building, the Exploratorium, Chinatown, North Beach, the City Lights Bookstore, cable cars, Congregation Sherith Israel, Fisherman's Wharf, Musee Mecanique, Ghiradelli Square, cable cars.  I like cable cars.

A Sense of Place

 I've probably made it clear - perhaps too clear - I'm a big fan of setting. A lot of times, many of the stories I've written came from traveling. In a former life, I made the trip from Cincinnati to Hilton Head. There were two routes, one I considered the scenic route. It went through Virginia and West Virginia, using US 52 (the source of a few Wile E. Coyote memes for the rock slides over by Portsmouth, Ohio) to return home. The bulk of this route is on I-77, which begins in Cleveland. Because of its proximity to Hilton Head, the trip down often included side trips to Savannah, Georgia. And Savannah fascinated me.

It resulted in Road Rules, a road trip caper that follows two high school friends as they attempt to deliver a collectible Cadillac to Miami. The final third of the novel takes place in Savannah, which makes a beautiful place for everything to go to hell.

All this from a handful of trips south and back.

It didn't stop there. I published three short stories about an ex-convict adopting a false identity and trying to make a new life as a restaurateur. His own past and the past of his mentor and former cellmate come back to violently upend his new life. But the prison take wasn't the inspiration. No, in 2007, I took two business trips to San Francisco and fell in love with the city. I stayed out in Walnut Creek (not far, I learned, from the home of one member of Metallica) and traveled into the city over weekends and on the day before I left. It was amazing, and I needed a way to put the city into a story. Eventually, I hit on the owner of a biker-themed bar looking to turn it into a chain only to have violent men from his or his cellmate's past come after him. Walnut Creek is not the most spectacular suburb in the Bay Area, but I managed not only to tie in a nearby park, but reference Altamont Speedway, the sight of the disastrous 1969 music festival shown in the movie Gimme Shelter. 

Has it stopped?

Oh, no.In 2019, my family went out west. My wife and stepson did the Route 66 trip they always wanted. I flew out to San Fran to meet them, then rented a car to drive back to Cincy. I wanted to drive across the country myself, with a detour south to Vegas.  The trip took me into worlds I did not know existed. The Sierras of California are not the Bay Area. It reminded me of some parts of West Virginia with much taller mountains. And peacocks. The town we stopped in for lunch swarmed with peacocks. Nevada, once you get past Reno, is almost an alien landscape: Scrub desert with old mining towns, some of which should have become ghost towns. A miscalculation had us driving 9 hours from Reno to Vegas instead of the six I thought it was. However, at night, Nevada becomes even stranger. I nearly hit a wild ass - I'm used to deer in Ohio - and saw the big empty that is the edge of Area 51. Vegas makes New York City at night look sleepy. Plus, as my stepson pointed out, we saw, um, workers in the intimate arts coming off a hard day's night.

Utah is the most gorgeous state I've ever been to. Wyoming is all ranches and oil fields, and we ended up so high into the Rockies that, on June 3, we drove past six foot snow packs. And life is different in these areas. Nevada is as close to the old frontier as you can get. Salt Lake City is monumentally chill. Wyoming offered us roughnecks, ranches, trains that stretched into the distance, and majestic mountains. 

And it became clear to us as we drove into Denver that the real dividing line between east and west is not the Mississippi. It's the Continental Divide. Denver, despite being a mile up and framed by peaks that are part of the sky, more resembles the cities of the east than it does places like Vegas or Salt Lake or Laramie. And there are a wealth of stories to be told from that trip alone.

Nor is this the end. Our first post-pandemic vacation this summer will be a drive through New England. The main stops, after a night in Niagara Falls, will be Lake Champlain and two nights in Bar Harbor, Maine. Along the way, the countryside will more resemble Stephen King's fictional western Maine than the industrial Midwest where I live. The accents, the food, and the layouts of towns will all change as we head east, then slowly back west from Hartford, CT to home. Will there be story fodder there?

Boy howdy!