Using Real Life in Fiction

As writers, we often mine our lives for bits and pieces we can incorporate into our stories, from setting them in places where we have lived to basing murder victims on despised employers. Sometimes, though, our lives provide much more than incidental inspiration.

I’ve had two stories published this year that draw heavily on events and experiences from my youth, and both were written in response to convention anthology calls for submission.

“GLASS BEACH”

Work on the first story—“Glass Beach,” published in the January/February 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine—began when I read Bouchercon 2020’s call for submissions for California Schemin’, in which each story has a California theme.

I spent a great deal of my childhood and teen years in California and, when no story ideas sprang immediately to mind, my wife suggested I write about my childhood. So, I wrote a paragraph about how my stepfather spent his free time:

Glass Beach, abutting MacKerricher State Park near Fort Bragg, California, is a tourist attraction visited by tens of thousands of people each year, but it wasn’t always. It started life more than a century ago as the town dump, and, in the early 1970s, not long after the dump officially closed, my stepfather played a key role in transforming it into the attraction it became. He spent weekends combing the beach for scrap metal and sorting what he found into cardboard boxes kept in the trunk of his 1966 Chrysler New Yorker.

This is true, and this paragraph became the opening paragraph of the story. Later, I added the second paragraph, and this is where a true story about my teen years starts being fictionalized:

The extra money my stepfather earned selling the scrap metal allowed us to eat a little better and dress a little better as he struggled to pay off my mother’s medical and funeral bills. I was a teenager then, plodding my way through high school, and I had no appreciation for all that he did. A stocky ex-Marine thirteen years older than my mother—thirty-three years older than me—he belonged to a generation I neither comprehended nor respected, and it was clear he felt the same about mine.

Though my mother died during my senior year of high school and I lived with my stepfather for several months after her death, “Glass Beach” begins the summer before the protagonist’s senior year, his mother having passed away during his junior year. But the relative ages of the characters match that of me, my mother, and my stepfather, and my stepfather was a “stocky ex-Marine.”

And there the story sat until well past the deadline for California Schemin’. I had a beginning, but I had no story until one day I decided the protagonist and his stepfather uncover something at the dump that ties into a long-ago crime. The two of them—along with the protagonist’s best friend and his best friend’s widowed mother—must deal with the consequences of that discovery.

Throughout the rest of the story, I write about Fort Bragg, California, and my high school years as filtered both through a memory that may have grown foggy with age and the need to create a compelling piece of fiction.

When I finally finished the story, I had missed the anthology deadline by more than a year. I ultimately placed “Glass Beach”—after revising the end based on suggestions from Linda Landrigan—with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

“UNDER THE PROCTOR STREET BRIDGE”

Work on the second story—“Under the Proctor Street Bridge,” published in Time After Time (Thalia Press), March 2026—began after I read the call for submissions for Left Coast Crime’s 2024 anthology A Killing Rain, which was to include stories set in and around Puget Sound.

I lived in Tacoma, Washington, beginning the summer before sixth grade and continuing until part way through ninth grade. I returned after my mother’s death to live with my grandparents for a year before moving to Illinois.

So, I again wrote about my childhood. Similar to how I began “Glass Beach,” I placed the events in a historical perspective:

There is so much I know now that I didn’t understand during the summer of 1971. I was thirteen then, soon to start ninth grade at Mason Junior High School, and I spent most days with Tommy O’Connor, the third of seven children—and the only boy—living in a three-bedroom house across the street from the home I shared with my widowed father. The Vietnam War was winding down, Richard Nixon was running for re-election, and many teenaged veterans were more than a year away from voting in their first presidential election following the July passage of the 26th Amendment.

I didn’t pay much attention to the news, and Tommy’s mother wouldn’t let him and his sisters watch it for fear they might learn what their father was doing halfway around the world and why people spit on him and other soldiers when they returned home.

Like the protagonist narrating the story, I was thirteen in 1971 and soon to start ninth grade at Mason Junior High School. One of my friends lived across the street with six siblings (though not all girls as in the story), and his father served in Vietnam.

So, the first two paragraphs are mostly true and truth is mixed with fiction throughout the rest of the story. For example, I often found bicycle parts under the Proctor Street Bridge, and I built Frankenstein bicycles from them. But bicycle parts aren’t the only things the protagonist and his friend find under the bridge.

(Only years later did I realize that the parts I found likely came from stolen bicycles, which helped inform “Under the Proctor Street Bridge.”)

This time, I finished the story before the anthology’s submission deadline, but it didn’t make the cut. It did, however, meet the needs of Time After Time, an anthology of mysterious tales inspired by history.

OTHER EXPERIENCES

Other stories mine my experiences—the Morris Ronald Boyette private eye stories, for example, take place in Waco, and many of the settings are real or fictionalized versions of real places—but no stories draw as much from my life as do “Glass Beach” and “Under the Proctor Street Bridge.”

* * *

Boots, BBQ, and Bloodshed, which I edited for Sisters in Crime North Dallas, releases July 1.

Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked gets new life in a July 1 rerelease by Audecyn Books.

In The Zone

 I've been reluctant to bring up this topic because it smacks of woo-woo and I am a dedicated anti-woo-woo person.  In fact when I ride my bike around town people point at me and whisper to each other "There goes a dedicated anti-woo-woo person." At least that's what I hope they're whispering.

I just read an interesting quote from Frederick M. Knott.  He was the author of two classic plays of suspense which were made into classic movies of the same: Dial M For Murder and Wait Until Dark. Knott wrote: 

There was a time when this play was becoming more and more complicated so I stopped everything and reconstructed it, which is an agonizing problem bur it has certainly paid off. A reverse process seems to have set in now and it seems to get more and more simple, and I am getting what I call the bonuses, i.e., good little things that grow naturally out of the writing, more than I bargained for and that is always a good indication that one is on the right tack at last.

What interested me was his comment about those bonuses.  I believe he is describing what I think of as being in the zone.  Here's a definition from Crossidiomas: "Being 'in the zone' is a term that describes a mental state where an individual is fully immersed in their task or activity. It’s a feeling of being completely present and engaged with what they are doing, without any distractions or interruptions. When someone is in this state, they may feel like time has slowed down or even stopped altogether."

It's usually used to describe athletes but it applies to writers as well.  For me it is the experience when pieces of your story fit together unexpectedly, making connections you didn't expect.

A favorite example: Back in 2015 Bouchercon was held in Raleigh. They announced that they would have an anthology and I decided to send them a story.  The problem was that the story I had ready, "On the Ramblas," was about a pickpocket  in Barcelona.   Nothing wrong with that, but I figured a story with some connection to Raleigh had a better chance of making it into the book. 

The name of the Bouchercon was Murder Under the Oaks, so I thought I might increase the odds of connecting to the book if I could fit something about oak trees in.

I should explain that the first sentence of my tale was: "Tourists wandered down the Ramblas like sheep waiting to be fleeced" and there were several other places where tourists were metaphrically compared to animals. 

I looked on the web for "Spain AND oak" and guess what? It turns out that that country brags that it has the best ham in the world because of pigs that forage under oak trees, living on acorns.  And there was my connection between my metaphorical animal/tourists and the theme of the book.  Bonus! My story is the last one in the book because the editor Art Taylor liked the ending so much he wanted it to be the last thing readers read.

Here's another example I have written about before.  When my sister Diane Chamberlain began work on her first novel, Private Relations, she decided that most of the characters would live in a big house in Mantoloking on the New Jersey shore. She found an appropriate house, took photos, and used them for inspiration.

Later, looking at photo collections at our parents' house, she found a picture of herself, age 16, in front of that same home.  Of course, this was part of the subconscious mind, what I call the Miner, helping her out.  

 And now I am working on a short story whose plot requires a bunch of characters to sit around talking for a few minutes.  Problem was I had no idea what they should be chatting about.  But darn it, I needed them talking.  So I literally wrote FILL THIS IN and went on with the story.

A few pages later, wouldn't you know it, I realized I had another problem.  I planned to send this story to a mystery magazine, which of course meant there had to be a crime in it.  And there was, but it wasn't revealed until the ending. I knew that the average mystery reader, clever and sneaky, would wonder why no crime had appeared, which might lead them to suspect exactly what I was up to.

And then I saw that Problem 1 was the solution to Problem 2, and vice versa.  The characters would chat about various crimes! While the readers were trying to figure out which anecdote being discussed was the one the story was really about they wouldn't notice the rabbit I had up my sleeve.  Bonus!

As I've said before, sometimes writing is a hard slog, but when you're in the zone, it can be magic. Tell me about when it has happened to you...

Awards, Competitions, Prizes and Honors

When my first story for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine appeared in 2018, I'd long been a reader of short mystery fiction, but was only newly a writer of it. Suddenly I was hearing about a panoply of awards with confusing and sometimes similar names:  Edgars, Anthonys, Agathas, Derringers…Macavitys?  Wasn't Macavity one of T.S. Eliot's cats? 

 Barb Goffman also made her EQMM debut in this issue, with Bug Apétit, which earned nominations for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards!

I got my first taste of glory when a story placed fifth in EQMM's annual Readers Awards - something I'd never paid much attention to. A subscriber for decades, I'd certainly never bothered to vote! Fifth, but okay! That meant somebody had read it, and liked it. Many somebodies! Then a story that is somewhat a departure for me - it could almost be classified as a "cozy," though darker than most of that genre - was suddenly in the running for a variety of prizes, from EQ's Reader Award to the Thriller to the Macavity. Schrödinger, Cat, didn't take any top honors, but I surely enjoyed the banquets and cocktail parties! And when It's Not Even Past was nominated for a Derringer, I was hooked. Derringers are awarded to short fiction writers by short fiction writers (and readers) - a true jury of one's peers!  

I began to read about all the prizes, honors, and competitions open to mystery writers. There was a lot to learn, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to share some of that info with those who might also be toward the origin end of their learning curve. 

A few notes before we begin: I have not included every prize category of every award here - rather, I've given an overview. If a description intrigues you, check it out - that's why God made websites. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I've tried to include the biggies, especially those that particularly honor mystery and crime fiction. And I've focused on prizes and awards available to writers in the United States, working in English. When a prize or award requires an entry fee, I've so noted. 

Any errors are my own, and I'm sure there are some! I invite you to post any corrections, and to provide additional information, insider notes, gossip, and asides in the comments. 

The Agathas are awarded by Malice Domestic, an annual convention that takes place near Washington, DC. The Agathas celebrate cozy mysteries - those that do not contain explicit sex and minimize gore, violence, and foul language. Members of Malice Domestic nominate, and conference attendees choose the winners. Six categories of prizes include novels, children's, nonfiction and short stories. If you win, you get a fancy teapot and a lifetime claim to fame.  Malice Domestic also sponsors grants, competitions, and anthologies that may be of interest.  

Here's Ashley-Ruth Bernier with the Agatha awarded her short story Six-Armed Robbery from The Malice Domestic Anthology Mystery Most Humorous!

The Anthonys are awarded to  novels, short stories, children's and young adult fiction, and nonfiction. Works are nominated, then voted on, by attendees of the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. This is a highly- coveted award that can provide a nice career boost. Bouchercon moves year–to-year - the next convention will be in  Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 

The Barry Award is conferred annually by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, honoring various categories of book, but not short stories. I was unable to get more information prior to deadline.

The Daggers are awarded by the Crime Writers' Association to books published in the UK.  

The Derringer Award is presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, recognizing excellence in short stories of the mystery and crime fiction genres. Categories are differentiated by length - flash to novelette -  and there are also specialty prizes, including The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer, and the Silver Derringer for Editorial Excellence. In 2025, an award for best anthology was added, although collections are not eligible.  (Anthologies are by multiple authors; collections are by a single author.) Membership in the SMFS is free, and members may submit one or two works, in one category or two. Medals are presented at the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. The Short Mystery Fiction Society is entirely volunteer-run and their daily list-serve provides a wealth of information about writing and publishing - as well as the occasional insidery-tidbit from well-known writers.

Janet Hutchings, legendary editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1991 to 2024, was awarded The Silver Derringer in 2025. (photo, Laurie Pachter)

In 2020, Josh Pachter became the first person to receive the Golden Derringer and win a competitive Derringer (best flash) in the same year. His story, The Two-Body Problem, appeared in this issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

 

The Edgars are presented by the Mystery Writers of America annually in New York. The Edgars are awarded in a number of categories, from short stories and book-length works of fiction and non-fiction to theatrical genres. There are also special awards; The Robert L. Fish Memorial Award honors the best first short story of the year, The Lilian Jackson Braun Award highlights a cozy mystery novel, The Sue Grafton Memorial Award is for a series novel featuring a female protagonist, and there are also the Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the much-coveted Grand Master Award.  MWA confers two separate awards - with nice cash grants - for unpublished and published Black writers, in honor of the late Barbara Neely. Typically, publishers submit stories and books for consideration, but authors may also submit, and there is no limit to the number of entries one may make, nor an entry fee. However, authors in the short story categories must have been paid for their work, and all publishers must be on the MWA-approved list. Winners receive a ceramic bust of Edgar Allen Poe, but bragging rights are the real prize here - the Edgar is the most prestigious award specific to our industry. 

Kate Hohl at the 2024 ceremony, where she won the Fish Memorial Award for The Body in Cell two (EQMM).

The Dashiell Hammett Prize, a bronze statuette by Peter Boiger, is presented annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. The prize, awarded to a traditional novel, nonfiction book, or graphic novel, is announced in the fall of each year. Submission is free, but authors or publishers must snail-mail hard copies of the work to various committee members. Details are given on the IACW/NA site.  

The Dilys Award,  presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, is no longer extant. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

The Hillerman Prize is also defunct. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

Killer Nashville awards a number of prizes at its annual convention, notably The Claymore Prize, celebrating a work in progress, and The Silver Falchion, for published works of fiction and nonfiction, both in a variety of categories. As with most of the awards included in this round-up, there's no cash award, just a handsome medal and a very nice claim to fame. But there is a charge to submit - sixty to $100 bucks, although one free submission is included with conference admission. Killer Nashville also bestows The John Seigenthaler Legends Award upon "an individual who has championed First Amendment Rights and advocated for writers in the publishing industry."

The Macavity Awards are presented annually at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.  Winners are nominated and voted for by fans, readers, and mystery enthusiasts who belong to Mystery Readers International or who subscribe to Mystery Readers Journal. Categories include  several novel categories, nonfiction, and a short story award.  

 

Janet Rudolph founded Mystery Readers International. The first Macavity was awarded in 1987.

The Reader Awards presented by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are decided by readers' votes, and the top three honorees are celebrated at an invitation-only cocktail party held in Manhattan shortly before the Edgars ceremony. EQ's sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, does not offer a reader's choice award, but they do co-host The Black Orchid Novella Contest, in partnership with The Wolfe Pack, an international organization of devotees of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. The BONA prize is a thousand dollars and publication in the magazine. 

The Shamus trophy is awarded by The Private Eye Writers of America in categories that include hardcover, paperback original, first novel, short story, and a lifetime achievement award, The Eye. There is no charge to submit a novel or story, but eligibility is tricky: the Shamus is for  works that feature a paid private eye who is not a police officer or in law enforcement. Lawyers and reporters who do their own investigative work qualify, but not amateur sleuths. 

John M. Floyd's Mustang Sally, which appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, won the Shamus for best PI Short Story in 2021.

The Thriller Awards are sponsored by International Thriller Writers (ITW) and are conferred at an annual convention held in May in New York. Prizes are awarded in several categories, including best short story and best novel. Authors who are active members of ITW may submit their work directly, but are asked to check with their publisher first to avoid duplicated submissions. (Membership is free to authors who meet eligibility requirements.) NB: ITW gets so many submissions that they stagger due dates; check their schedule. The prize is a cool trophy (and a nice fluffy feather in your cap!).

 

Here I am  grinning madly before a poster with my name on it at The Thrillers!  Catherine Steadman took the 2023 prize for Stockholm.

The "Best ofs" are not exactly prizes, but being included sure feels like one! Inclusion in Otto Penzler's The Best Mystery Stories of the Year or Steph Cha's The Best American Mystery and Suspense can provide one heck of a career boost. Both Penzler and Cha invite big-name authors to co-edit each year's volume. A new anthology, The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year, edited by Michael Bracken, has just released its first edition.

Billie Livingston says of her BMSY inclusion, "It's overwhelming to find yourself in the company of your literary heroes!" 

Many small literary journals offer prizes that range from a frameable slip of paper to a significant amount of cash. Don't count them out! Yes, many do charge a submission fee, being lovingly put together on a shoestring by volunteers and interns. Professional writers have a variety of opinions about those fees. My personal view is that I don't enter any competitions I don't feel qualified to win. I don't mind a reasonable fee going to create a prize pool or even to cover publication costs. Other reputable writers have very different opinions. Regardless, winning a prize sponsored by a lit journal can lead to much greater exposure than publishing strictly "in-genre." And many lit journal editors are eager to see crime fiction and mysteries, if they are written well.

So what about the really, really big stuff?  Well, the Edgars are pretty significant in our mystery world - in fact all of the prizes I've noted here are -  but what about The Pulitzer, The Nobel, The Booker, et al? Don't laugh! Truman Capote was famously disappointed when In Cold Blood, though nominated, did not win a Pulitzer in 1966. (It did win the Edgar for best "fact-crime novel.") Though usually classified as "literary fiction" or "psychological fiction," Ann Arensberg's Sister Wolf could certainly be considered a mystery. It won The National Book Award for Best First Novel in 1981. Mysteries and thrillers are regularly nominated for the Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker), but unfortunately only books published in the UK are eligible. Motherless Brooklyn took The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1999 and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 won the fiction award in 2008. Numerous mystery and crime fiction novels have been finalists, including hardboiled noir by Michael Chabon in 2007.

Okay, but surely a mystery writer could never win (gasp) The Nobel Prize, right? Wrong. 2018 Laureate Olga Tokarczuk 's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead centers on a woman investigating murders in a Polish village, and is most definitely a mystery. The Nobel is awarded for a body of work, not a single novel, but Drive Your Plow is a significant part of Tokarczuk's oeuvre. 

And a closing fun fact:  you (or your publisher) can submit your book for Pulitzer consideration for only seventy-five bucks. I know this because Lightscatter Press submitted my poetry collection, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky, in 2021.  (To my tremendous surprise, I did not win.) 

What a thrill to be interviewed by the literary powerhouse Adriana Trigiani, a great lover of poetry!

  c. 2026 Anna Scotti all rights reserved

Anna Scotti is a mystery writer, young adult author, poet, and writing instructor living in Southern California. She has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors (some noted above). She has two short stories collections coming in 2027. Find her at annakscotti.com.  

Sara Paretsky and Me

I met Sara at either the first Edgars Awards Banquet I attended, in New York City or maybe it was the first Bouchercon I attended in San Diego. Anyway, it was way back in the 1900s sometime. I'd read her first two or three V.I. Warshawski books and since I was trying to write a female private eye novel I was thrilled to meet Sara in person. I probably said something like "I'm so thrilled to meet you, will you autograph my copy of your book?" Except it most likely sounded like "gluoompargoondetoosly."

I am a very out-going person, easily speaking to a stranger or standing up to speak to a crowd, full of known or unknowns but as an aspiring writer with a couple of barely published short stories to my name, I was suddenly tongue-tied. Yet, somehow she forgave me. Perhaps I did manage to say I owned a mystery bookstore in Austin, Texas, so maybe the gobbety-goop,the oh so flustered me, had blurted out, was normal when I mentioned the store.

Sara's V.I.Warshawski was the kind of female PI, that I was trying to write. Smart, tough but with a touch of smartassery and maybe a bit of the romantic thrown in.

I also admired Sara for helping to push women mystery writers forward in the world by founding Sisters In Crime. The first organization to call out the genre's lack of reviews of women's mysteries in major magazines & newspapers. Helping show publishers that women wrote strong best selling, enjoyable books, most as good, if not better than some males. And pushing for women to get paid in line with male mystery writing contemporaries. This was in the 1990s, you understand.

I've learned through the years of our friendship of her wonderful 48 years of marriage to Courtenay Wright. He was a  Canadian born man with an intriguing life as a physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. The two personalities meshed into one special couple (united as only true love can be.)

Sara came from hardy Jewish ancestors who barely got out Europe ahead of Hitler. Her family eventually landed in Kansas in farm country although her father was a scientist, not a farmer, and her mother was a librarian.  She was the only girl with four brothers and learned quickly that women's voices or opinions didn't count

Sara's first V.I. Warshawski novel, INDEMNITY ONLY, was published in 1982. V.I. always manages to be involved in current social issues which endears her to many female readers who might not otherwise read mysteries.

I always loved that V.I. would fight anyone, male or female in order to save herself or her downstairs neighbor Mr Contreras or the two golden retrievers Mitch and Peppy, who live with her or stay wih Mr. Contreras when she's on a job. Definitely for someone who's hired her services because she's one tough woman Private Eye.

She's also has a funny bone which shows up in each book without fail. However a posting on FB in 2020  really cracked me up.

Sara posted this:

 A few days ago, Alafair Burke raised a question on Twitter about whether knowing a writer has lied on her (his? their?) bio should affect your view of their work. I don't know the answer to that - there are writers whose horrible personality flaws affect my view of their work and maybe that's not fair.

However, as I thought over Alafair's question, I suddenly remembered my mother's obituary. Three weeks before she died in 1998, she asked me to write it for her. She had a funny bone, and also dreams of glory, so I wrote one for her that celebrated her role as an advisor to General de Gaulle during WWII. I said she had worn not only the Order of the Garter but also the Order of the Garter Snake, that she had the Nobel Peace Prize - I can't remember the rest of it now.

One of my brothers had moved in to care for her in her last difficult months (I flew in once a month from Chicago). I typed it on his computer. When she died and he called the funeral home and they asked for an obituary, he saw the file labeled "Mother's Obituary" and sent it to them without reading it. They in turn sent it to all the newspapers in eastern Kansas (1998 - still a lot of local newspapers). The Topeka and Lawrence papers printed it as was, without any questions.

My mother came from a small town in downstate Illinois, and their local paper picked it up from the wires, since I mentioned the town - Roodhouse - by name - it was where she spent the war while my dad was overseas, and it was there that (allegedly) General de Gaulle had visited her. For months after her death, old friends from her childhood wrote, saying, "We always knew Mary Ellen was special, but we never knew how very special she was." When I got the first letter, I wrote back, trying to explain, but after that, I thought - it's making people happy to think they grew up with an unsung heroine, so I let it lie. Hmm - I don't know if that counts as lying about my bio - after all, how many people have ever had a mother who was entitled to wear the Order of the Garter Snake? Only me and my four brothers.

My friend, Sara Paretsky, has a new book coming out, titled BAD COMPANY, due on November 10th starring a new character, an ex CIA agent named Lily. An older or what may truly be called a senior lady.  Wanna bet she has a bit of the smartassery in this one? You can preorder BAD COMPANY now.

— respectfully submitted by Jan Grape

Con Me!

Attending crime fiction conferences and conventions is often part of the writing life and can sometimes play a role in propelling a writing career forward. So, the decision to attend or not attend them is important, and it’s important to understand the difference between them and to be prepared for some of the things that make a conference or convention more or less successful.

Michael and Temple,
dressed for the
Malice Domestic awards banquet

Each conference and convention has a different vibe, and, if you are a writer, the vibe you feel may depend on where you are in your writing career, whether you are at a craft-based event (a conference) or a fan-based event (a convention), how appropriate the facilities are for the event, and how the event is organized.

FAN-BASED CONVENTIONS

At fan-based conventions, the superstars may be fêted, make presentations, and participate in panels. Their time off stage may be spent with agents, editors, and publishers, and fans will seek them out for autographs, conversation, and occasional fawning.

A mid-career writer will participate in a panel or two, might meet with an agent, editor or publisher, and may have a fan or two seek them out.

An early-career writer—someone with a single book from a small press or a few published short stories—will be lucky to snag a seat on a panel and will likely be among the fans seeking autographs and conversations with the superstars and mid-career writers.

A beginning writer—a writer who has yet to see publication in any form—is unlikely to participate in any panels or presentations unless they have specialized knowledge to share (medical examiners discussing autopsies, for example). Beginning writers attending a convention are, essentially, fans.

CRAFT-BASED CONFERENCES

The vibe is different at craft-based conferences. Everyone in attendance is there to teach others how be better writers or is there to learn how to be better writers. The implied student-teacher relationships reduce the differences between writers and increases the interactions between writers at all levels, especially at smaller conferences.

These are excellent opportunities to improve one’s writing skills and make connections with agents, editors, publishers, and other writers.

COMBINATION EVENTS

Some conventions offer writer-centric sessions in addition to fan-centric sessions. Even so, because the fan experience takes priority, opportunities for writers to improve their craft are limited.

At a conference with multiple sessions on craft and business, a new or beginning writer may spend much time attending sessions and learning. A superstar writer may present one or more sessions and will engage with numerous new and beginning writers interested in learning at the feet of the masters. A mid-career writer straddles the mid-point between the two ends of the spectrum. They may have little interest in attending the presentations, not because they think they know it all, but because chances are they’ve heard it all. At the same time, they have the potential for engaging conversations with writers at all levels of experience.

FACILITIES

Facilities play a significant role in how writers experience a conference or convention. If the meeting rooms are too large for the audience, if the rooms are a significant distance from restaurants and bars, if the hallways are too wide, and if it is easy to be anywhere but at the event (for example, returning to one’s room or leaving the hotel to sightsee), opportunities to meet and interact with other participants is minimized. This puts shy and socially awkward writers at a disadvantage.

ORGANIZATION

An event with one or two presentation tracks keeps attendees confined to a small area, potentially increasing interaction among attendees. While a large event with multiple tracks has attendees frequently shifting from room to room, which increases opportunities for impromptu hallway meetings, a large event spread over multiple rooms and multiple tracks decreases the odds of unplanned meetings with specific people.

VALUE

Few writers have the time and money to attend multiple conferences and conventions each year. So, how might writers make decisions about where to spend their time and money?

If the goal is to sell one’s books or to meet and interact with fans and/or potential fans, a convention is likely the best use of time and money.

If the goal is to share knowledge or to gain knowledge about the business and craft of writing, a conference is likely the best choice.

There are conventions that try to appeal to the entirely of the mystery reading and writing community, such as Bouchercon, and others that appeal to specific subgenres, such as Malice Domestic and ThrillerFest.

There are conferences that try to cover the entirety of crime writing, and others that concentrate on novel writing or short story writing, such as ShortCon.

There are both conferences and conventions that appeal to writers in specific geographic regions, attended primarily by local fans and/or writers.

COST

And then there is the cost—not just the registration fee, but hotel, travel, and meals, as well as time away from family and the day job.

Some of us earn enough from our writing to pay for the (tax-deductible!) expenses of attending conferences and conventions, but most of us do not, and the choice between attending Bouchercon and taking the family to Disneyland is a real-world dilemma.

Attending mystery conferences and conventions can have a significant impact on one’s writing career. Attending might mean meeting an agent, editor, or publisher you later work with. Equally important, attending will put you in an environment that—unlike your day job and daily life—surrounds you with people who do what you do, read what you read, and enjoy what you enjoy. That alone may motivate you and inspire you.

VALUE

So how do you determine the cost/benefit ratio when applied to your writing career?

Attending conferences and conventions has led to numerous opportunities I would never otherwise have had. I’ve created and/or pitched anthologies at Bouchercon and SleuthFest; I’ve co-authored stories with writers I met at Bouchercon and Malice Domestic; I’ve co-edited anthologies with writers I met at Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. I’ve worked in various other ways with editors, writers, and publishers I’ve met at these and other conferences and conventions.

And though I highly value these opportunities, I must be honest: The cost of attending these events is greater than the dollar value of all the projects that have come my way because of my attendance.

Ultimately, writers must weigh the costs vs benefits themselves to determine if and which conferences and conventions they should attend, if they attend at all.

So, how about you? What opportunities have you had that you likely would not have had if you had not attended conferences and conventions? What factors do you include in your personal cost/benefit analysis when considering future attendance at such events? And what makes a conference or convention more enjoyable or less enjoyable?

Things I Heard at Malice Domestic

This year's Malice Domestic mystery convention was held a few weeks ago, and it was a good time, as always. I usually jot down interesting quotes I hear during panels, then share them here. This year is no exception. 

Thanks to Rob Lopresti for first putting this idea in my head years ago when he shared quotes from, I think, Bouchercon. And thanks to this year's Malice panelists for their words of wisdom. 

And away we go!

 

"When I read suspense and thrillers, I think: At least my life isn't that messed up." - Jennifer van der Kleut 

"It's not necessarily the terrible thing happening--it's the threat of the terrible thing happening that propels the story forward." - LynDee Walker

"Good things can come out of rejection." - Kate Hohl 

"The most important thing you can do to be asked to submit again to an editor is be willing to be edited." - Josh Pachter 

"Learn to use Microsoft Word and learn to use track changes. Your editor will love you." - Carla Coupe

"Work with your editor. Your editor is trying to make your work the best it can be." - Michael Bracken

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a eunuch." - Smita Harish Jain

"After you castrate a few people, you get a reputation." - also Smita Harish Jain 

"I don't want to kill people in a real small town because I thought people might take offense to that." - Annie McEwen

"When reading suspense, I think most people like to be mostly right but a little bit wrong. The thrill of not knowing what's going to happen is what pulls us along to keep turning the pages." - LynDee Walker 

"You don't wait for your muse. You say: Muse, c'mon, sit down." - Korina Moss 

"I do not like unreliable narrators. I just want to punch them." - Jule Selbo

"A short story is not a novel. It's not a love note. It's not a poem. They have their own rhythm." - Smita Harish Jain 

 

Change of Direction

     My turn to blog has circled around again. Originally, I had planned to use this space to talk about Malice Domestic. I'd rhapsodize about the forums I attended, impart the things I'd learned, congratulate the award winners, and, naturally, laud the high-level conversation conducted at the panel in which I participated. 

    The rough draft turned out to be a pretty boring read. Consequently, I've switched directions. 

    The longer I work at writing, the harder it is to find value in the planned events at a conference. Occasionally, I glean a nugget. And I still believe there is merit to an occasional refresher course on the lessons I should already know. But the thunderclaps of insight are becoming increasingly rare. 

    That's not to say that I didn't benefit from attending Malice Domestic. Rather, at this stage, the value I gained was subtle and harder to articulate. I renewed many old friendships, established several new ones, and plotted some future opportunities. None of the details fit well to a column like this.     

    Some months back, Michael Bracken modestly proposed in a SleuthSayers blog post that writing conferences should schedule less time for panels and more time for standing in the hall. The hallway, outside the meeting rooms, he noted, was where the real business got done. 

    More than ever, I found that I concur. But it is hard to talk about afterward. 

    And perhaps, it should be so. 

    The word "hall," according to Etymology Online, comes from the Old English heall, meaning a large space covered by a roof--think Beowulf's great hall or a market hall. The word later morphed into a term for a passageway as a castle's private rooms became separated from the common areas by doors. 

National Archives College Park Public Domain

    The heart of the word heall seems to be the roof. It protected the space from the elements. In some explanations, the roof concealed or shielded the room's occupants. The hall, in its oldest form, was a place of cover, protection, and concealment; it's only fitting that what happens in the hall, therefore, stays in the hall. 

    Fully geeking on the etymology of conference words, I spent a little time researching "panel." 

    Seamstresses and fans of craft cozies shouldn't be surprised to learn that the word panel comes from a French term meaning a piece of cloth, generally a rectangular one. The same root word is used for a glass pane. 

    Sometime around the 15th Century, panel made the jump to refer to those summoned by French authorities to serve as jurors. Once called, jurors' names were inscribed upon a rectangular piece of parchment (cloth). By the late 16th Century, this notion of panel had been diluted to include any group of people who gathered together to advise and consider. 

    And now, a distinguished foursome sitting on a dais behind a cloth-covered table holding forth and sharing their insights has become a panel. But the word remains particularly apt for Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, or any of the other mystery conferences. 

    Remember the original meaning of panel as a rectangular square of cloth? Heavy fabric made a great wall covering. The word panels also developed in that direction. Panels became the term for specific wall or door sections. And it's here that things started to take a dark and nefarious turn. 

    Bordellos and other disreputable places would be outfitted with panels. In these seedy establishments, at least one could be slid back and allow for customers to be robbed, beaten, or possibly killed. By the 19th Century, a panel-house had become slang for a bordello. 

    Panel, therefore, has the twin traditions of an erudite gathering combined with a dash of thievery and bodily harm. 

    Halls and Panels--two words with suggestions of secrecy. Perfect words for a mystery conference. 

    Until next time. 

  
 BSP: Panels do provide a great time to tout new works. Thanks to all who helped me release The Firefall by attending one of the launch events. I appreciate your support. 

Together alone.

            It’s received wisdom that writers are the world’s most inveterate introverts.  Who else could spend hours, days, years alone hunched over a keyboard or pad of paper?  It’s so obvious.  Most normal human beings couldn’t stand it.  Which is why most normal human beings don’t become writers, for their own sakes. 

            And yet, most of the mystery and thriller writers I know are more than agreeably sociable.  If you want proof, just hang out at the rambunctious hotel bar during Bouchercon, or any of the regional writers conferences that take place around the country. 

            Thinking about this, I was reminded of my college era playing in a rock and roll band.  We performed constantly throughout the school year.  After a while, some patterns

I'm hoping a guest singer will remember the lyrics

emerged.  Parties contrived to bring dispirit groups together took forever to get rolling, while the close-knit communities, like fraternities and sororities, launched on the first chord.  Thursdays often produced wilder nights than Saturday or Sunday.  I’m not sure why, unless it was anticipation of the coming weekend, or the thrill of rebellion – launching youthful mania while there was still a day of classes in the offing.  

Another high point was the first party after the end of exams.  Our college had a disproportionate number of pre-med and pre-law students, people we rarely saw during the passing months, having sequestered themselves in feverish study.  But after exams, with nothing left to prove, they’d emerge, pasty and unclean, and go completely nuts.  Their undeveloped social skills didn’t help, nor did a deep unfamiliarity with the plentiful intoxicants available at the time. 

So it could be that writers are a lot like college kids who spend their undergraduate years, and their parent’s tuition money, actually studying (I held down the other end of that curve).  Since we’re biologically pack animals, long periods of time isolated from human contact probably creates a pent-up demand.  A chance to re-engage ones vocal cords after hours in monkish silence.  An irresistible need to satisfy the intraspecies fellowship programmed into our DNA.

        That’s probably true, but I think an even greater impetus is mingling with people who do the same thing you do.  As with any reference group, be it police chiefs or philatelists, common experience short-circuits all the meandering, and stilted, searches for common ground that characterize social interaction.  Blessedly, when hanging with writers we don’t have to parry the usual inane questions, like “Have you written anything I heard of?” or “When are they going to make a movie out of your book?”  None of us is really very interested in the other’s childhood inspirations, choice of writing software, or process, whatever the hell that means.  In fact, most of my casual conversations with writers have absolutely nothing to do with writing at all.  Sometimes the travails of promotion come up, or an impending book launch, or a new project/agent/publisher, but usually we just talk about our kids and dogs, and recent vacations, just like everyone else. 

Still, I think common sense dictates that writers lean toward introversion, though there are plenty of exceptions.  Somehow a monstruous, flaming ego like Earnest Hemingway managed to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.  As did Winston Churchill, no one’s idea of a wall flower.  I could easily provide a list of mystery and thriller writers who could have

succeeded as standups or late-night talk show hosts (though Johnny Carson was, in fact, an introvert; deviations litter every argument.)  The most flamboyant of my closest friends started out his career as a freelance journalist.  I imagine someone had to strap him into his chair until the article was finished. 

Introverts do have one clear advantage.  While extroverts are shaking hands, kissing cheeks and angling for attention, introverts are watching the room.  They notice little slights and flirtations, they size up personalities and sniff out phony posturing.  Their nerves tingle from the social dynamic, registering envy, vanity and lust.  All of this gets stored away on mental file cards for future use.

        Most of the writers I know fit this description, yet they have a small contingent of people to whom they are very attached.  They prefer to go deep rather than wide.  I’ll cop to being one of those. 

We can turn it on when we need to, then quietly slip back to the keyboard. 

Hardy Like a Fox at a Crime Scene

This month, some musings on recent reads/listens, followed by a piece of news I find pretty exciting.

THEY CERTAINLY ARE HARDY, THOSE BOYS

I like to listen to audiobooks on my daily walks, and often I choose to listen to favorite books from my childhood. The sense of nostalgia is a welcome break from the daily grind, and it's always fun seeing exactly how much I remember. I've listened to all fourteen of L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, Treasure Island, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Westing Game, Pippi Longstocking, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Once and Future King, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wind in the Willows, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Lord of the Rings (in a new reading by Andy Serkis so good I've listened to the whole thing twice).

Last month I listened to a package of four of the early entries in the Hardy Boys series by "Franklin W. Dixon." I'm sure I'm not the only crime writer whose first introduction to the genre was these books (or Nancy Drew--but I'm old enough that, in my youth, boys reading Nancy Drew simply Wasn't Done). I had, if memory serves, a set of the first seventy or eighty novels, in their distinctive blue-spined hardbacks with the painted covers. Encyclopedia Brown probably came along at about the same time, and then The Three Investigators (much better books, as I recall) and the McGurk Mysteries (which nobody but me seems to remember). Then came Sherlock Holmes, followed by Agatha Christie . . . well, you get the idea.

(An aside: I wonder what happened to the original paintings the publisher commissioned for the covers of these novels. Were they, like so much commercial art, discarded and forgotten? Are there people who collect them?)

It's been decades since I read the Hardy Boys, and I found listening to several in a row a little startling. It rapidly became clear, first of all, that the audiobooks were not the versions I read in the 1970s, which had been heavily edited and, as much as was possible, updated. Those blue hardbacks filling my shelves always had exactly twenty chapters, for one thing, while the audiobooks had 23 or more. They were clearly the originals, from the 1920s and 30s, which made things a bit disorienting. It's hard to identify everything that was different, but there were more scenes with the Hardys simply hanging out with their friends, and even going to school, than I recalled. Also, I really don't think the Frank and Joe I knew were quite as accustomed to toting guns, which their earlier incarnations very casually bring along on several of their adventures. They never actually shoot a person--at least not in the books I listened to--but they cheerfully dispatch large numbers of snakes and wolves in ways that modern, ecologically-conscious readers might be a bit uncomfortable with.

I should say, by the way, that the readings, by Gary McFadden, were quite good--even given his choice to make the Hardys' chums Chet Morton and "olive-skinned Italian-American" Tony Prito (who's described that way literally every time he appears) sound like, respectively, Gabby Hayes and Chico Marx. Chet, the primary chum, is the only one given anything more than a single defining personality trait (Biff Hooper is athletic, Tony Prito is Italian, Callie Shaw is pretty). I remembered Chet as being a) fat and b) cowardly. In the originals, though, he's a) fat and b) a practical joker, whose jokes usually backfire on him.

I did definitely remember the extremely limited and repetitious vocabulary employed by "Dixon." Friends are always "chums." Fired revolvers invariably "crash." Cars are either "roadsters" or "jalopies." On the other hand, there were some turns of phrase I found quite novel. Several times, expressing enthusiastic agreement with a statement just made, Joe breaks out not with "I'll say!" but rather "I'll tell the world!"

Plotwise, the books are . . . let's be generous and call them thin. They're not really mysteries, as the bad guys (gangs of thieves or kidnappers, generally) are immediately obvious from the first page, and it's just a matter of tracking down their hideouts. There were two things I found very striking about the books. First, storms. I listened to four books, and in every single one of them the Hardys (and usually some of their chums) are put into moral peril by a sudden hurricane-level storm or, if it's winter, the worst blizzard in decades. These are always preceded by Frank casting a worried glance at the gathering clouds, but deciding that the boys probably have time to do whatever detective task they're engaged in before the storm hits. He's always wrong. As a variation on the theme, there are cave-ins, which happened three times in the four books. The minute Frank and Joe decide to go into a mine, the supporting timbers immediately age by several hundred years.

The other thing that was impossible to ignore was probably one of the main elements that had been updated for the 1970s versions. In the originals, the Hardys live in an America that is still overwhelmingly rural. Trains are the main way to get from town to town; most roads, outside city limits, are unpaved; airplanes are still a novelty. Most families grow at least some of their own food. Odd hermits can built themselves cabins in the woods not far from town and go unchallenged. Teens go ice skating on frozen rivers. Placing a long-distance telephone call requires lengthy negotiations with operators and a bit of luck. Outside their hometown of Bayport, the landscape for hundreds of miles in every direction is farmland, dotted with occasional small villages that generally aren't even named. I found it all quite fascinatingly alien. 

I don't think I feel the need to listen to any more of the books, but revisiting them was fun. Maybe I'll try a couple of Nancy Drews. I've been told that, on average, they hold up better. Anyone want to vouch for that?

THE SHELF YOU LIVE ON

While I was listening to Frank and Joe, the actual physical books I read over the last few weeks were just a tiny bit different, being new novels from a couple of titans of American literature who have been around since the 1960s: Fox, by Joyce Carol Oates, and Shadow Ticket, by Thomas Pynchon.

Of the two, I found Fox more successful and compelling. It concerns the murder of a popular teacher at an exclusive New Jersey middle school who, it turns out, was also a serial pedophile. It's a long book, and most of it is concerned with putting us in the heads of the characters--including, in a number of chapters that sometimes get very difficult to read, the pedophile. The structure of the central plot, though, is a fairly straightforward murder mystery, and while Oates leaves more plot threads dangling at the end than is typical in such a work, she does ultimately provide a satisfying answer to the question of whodunit.

Shadow Ticket, meanwhile, is about Hicks McTaggart, a Milwaukee PI in the early 1930s who gets caught up in the search for a missing heiress--the daughter of "the Al Capone of cheese." The quest eventually takes him, against his will, to Eastern Europe, where people are more concerned with a certain political uprising that it's getting harder and harder to make fun of. Does this plot reach a satisfactory resolution? Hard to say because, as in most of Pynchon's novels (and especially his recent works), the very structure of the book seems designed to undermine the idea of plot. Or causality. Or logic. There are vast global conspiracies that may or may not exist, phantom submarines, vengeful golems, Hungarian biker gangs, vigilante autogyro pilots, spies, counterspies, and swing musicians, and after a while it's pretty much impossible to tell what any of them are trying to do or if they manage to do it. This is a book that openly mocks the idea that anyone is going to try to make sense of it. You just go along for the ride, and if you're a certain kind of reader, the absurdity and humor make it worth your time. It worked for me for a while, but I can't say I was sorry to get to the end.

So, what we have here is a murder mystery and a PI novel--and yet, I'm sure the vast majority of bookstores will put them on the general fiction shelves, not the mystery shelves, mainly because of the names of the authors. A lot of Oates's books in particular involve murder or other serious crimes, and she's been in Best Mystery Stories of the Year and Ellery Queen many times, but I don't often see her books alongside those by Richard Osman. I don't know that I have a point here, beyond noting that a lot of "serious" or "literary" fiction is really just crime writing wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of wire-rimmed specs.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

Hey, speaking of books on shelves . . . 

I try to avoid vulgar self-promotion in these columns, but there are times I can't resist.

It's been fifteen years since I published my first crime story. In that time, I've hit a number of milestones that I found thrilling. First sale to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. First sale to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. First award nomination. First acceptance to an open-call anthology. First award win. First inclusion in an invitation-only anthology. First Honorable Mention in Best Mystery Stories of the Year, followed by the first actual inclusion in the volume. First Bouchercon. Joining SleuthSayers. Becoming the president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Of course, I haven't notched nearly the number of publications and impressive achievements that many of the other columnists on this site can boast, but I'm having a blast chasing them. I figure I only have to live another 500 years or so to publish as many stories as John Floyd has, for example.

This past week I hit another personal milestone, and one that's especially meaningful to me, when Level Best Books published Crime Scenes, my first collection. Not too long ago, I thought such a thing would never happen, but here we are. The book includes twenty of my stories, including finalists for the Edgar, Derringer, Thriller, and Shamus Awards, two winners of the Al Blanchard Award, and several selections from Best Mystery Stories of the Year. 

Even if I never have another book published under my name, I'm thrilled to have this one out in the world. I didn't publish my first piece of fiction until I was in my forties. For many years, I thought being a published author was a dream that would be forever out of reach. Now I've got something I can put on the shelf to show that I made it after all. I'm proud of that, and also extremely grateful--to Level Best, to every editor and publisher who ever accepted my work, and most of all to the readers who have enjoyed it.

Because it turns out that actually being a writer is a lot more fun than dreaming about being one. I'll tell the world!