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 Fall, 2006 - Vol. 4, Number 2
ALL POINTS BULLETIN
By William Kent Krueger
By the time you read this, the Crime Wave will have just returned from a meeting of murder most foul—in a word, Bouchercon.
This is the annual international mystery convention usually held somewhere in the United States. This year it was Madison, Wisconsin. Next year is Anchorage, and the year after that Baltimore. Although the largest gathering of its kind, Bouchercon is only one of many mystery conferences that each year spice up the lives of genre authors and fans everywhere.
If you love mysteries but have never attended a conference, you've denied yourself a great pleasure. Why? Just imagine hanging out in a hotel lobby—or better yet, bar—rubbing elbows with the likes of Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Harlan Coben, and Nevada Barr. Or you can hear them discuss their work and the genre in a more formal panel setting. It's an opportunity to learn about fascinating aspects of crime fiction from those who know it best. It's also a great way to meet other people who love mysteries as much as you do.
There are conferences held in every season and in every part of the country. They vary from huge to wonderfully intimate. Two of the largest—Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime—are traveling conferences, hosted in a different city every year. Others are in fixed locations, such as Omaha (Mayhem In The Midlands), Washington, D.C. (Malice Domestic), Chicago (Love Is Murder, and Of Dark And Stormy Nights), Muncie (Magna Cum Murder), and Fort Lauderdale (Sleuthfest).
Most conferences are reasonably priced. Conference hotels usually offer greatly reduced rates. And there are so many gatherings scattered across the country that you'd be hard pressed not to find one a convenient and economic driving distance from your home. In addition to plenty of authors, most conferences include agents and editors invited for the purpose of answering questions from hopeful unpublished authors. To find out about conferences in the upcoming year, check one of several websites that offer this information. They include, among others, www.cluelass.com, www.whodunnit.com, and www.iloveagoodmystery.com. Go from there to the link with the conference website and you'll find the location, date, cost, and probably a roster of authors and fans already registered.
The Crime Wave loves these gatherings. We go to a lot of them. The truth is a mystery conference is so much fun it's almost criminal.
INTERVIEW WITH LIBBY FISCHER HELLMANN
By Carl Brookins
![[photo]](images/libby_leather.jpg) Libby Fischer Hellmann is the outgoing president of Sisters In Crime, the national organization founded in 1986 to work for women crime fiction writers. Libby is concluding her tenure leading this vibrant, active organization. I thought it a good time to get her views on her year as president and the future.
Carl: Now that your presidential year is over, how do you feel about it? Was it what you thought it would be?
Libby: It was—in a word—busy. And productive. We started several new programs ($300 grants for promotion for authors), we expanded our website, we planned and executed a number of 20th anniversary programs, including a national promotion with Borders, independent bookstores, and in a few months, libraries. We planned the first ever "SinC" goes to Hollywood" conference (to educate members how to sell to the movies), we hired a PR firm, we revamped our Monitoring Project, we started publication of an Anniversary anthology featuring former Presidents, we reworked a number of our publications, including a national brochure, our Books in Print, and we're starting production on a new publication, tentatively called "Mystery Matters."
Carl: What one accomplishment during your year gives you the most satisfaction?
Libby: People tell me the organization has never been this energetic before, so I'll claim that—infusing new energy into SINC—as my greatest accomplishment.
Carl: How has the world of publishing crime fiction changed in the recent past (or during your year)?
Libby: Unfortunately, the market is becoming grimmer every day. Mass market sales are down, hard cover print runs are down, and individual titles have an ever shrinking window of time to succeed. Because of these factors, it becomes even more important to "seed" the success of a book before it hits the stores. For example, Advanced Reading Copy campaigns are critical, as are wooing influencers and arranging for co-op sales. All of which are difficult for an author to do without a publisher's support. On top of that, the public is reading less, particularly fiction. So the author is getting squeezed coming and going. It's not a particularly sanguine situation.
Carl: Do you foresee a time when a separate gender-based organization will no longer be needed?
Libby: I wish I could say yes, but the reality is I don't think so. When you stop pushing against a boulder, inertia and/or gravity often tilts it back the other way. We've made tremendous strides in attaining parity in the mystery community, but I think we'll always need to be out there pushing.
Carl: There are significant and ever-faster changes in our publishing universe. Do you foresee a time when the printed book becomes a dusty relic of a bygone era? Do you think there will be a time when your children or grandchildren will do most of their reading from screens, rather than the printed page?
Libby: It's already happening. The problem is people are not reading books. They're reading other things in much shorter, more palatable chunks of prose. I'm afraid you're right, though, and it's sad—I get such pleasure from reading a book that it's impossible to think other people don't.
Carl: How's your personal writing going? Did you have to set aside your career for this past year as President of Sisters in Crime?
Libby: They say that being President of an organization like this means you lose a book during your tenure. That may be the case, but I write slowly anyway, so it's hard to measure. But there will be another year before my new book comes out. I do have a couple of short stories coming out, though. One in October, the other in December.
Carl: What's next for Libby Fischer Hellmann, author?
Libby: I have a new agent, and we've just finished revising my next novel, tentatively called Easy Innocence. It's a standalone PI book, featuring Georgia Davis (she was a cop in my 3rd Ellie Foreman book, An Image of Death). It's a mystery/thriller set on the North Shore of Chicago, and it deals with high school girls and what can happen to them when they're not adequately protected or supervised.
For more, including membership information, go to www.sistersincrime.org.
KNOCKING YOUR BLOCK OFF
By Ellen Hart
Here are a few examples of how I get around the deadly writer's "blocks."
First, I always remember the tip Sue Grafton once gave in the prologue to some book on writing. (Don't recall the name of the book, but I do recall the tip). She was in the middle of one of her mystery novels and didn't know what Kinsey should do next. Several chapters back, Kinsey had spoken to a woman briefly and asked her if she could come talk to her, The woman said no. Since Grafton was at an impasse, she simply went back, changed the woman's response to "Yes," and she was off and running. Sometimes it can be that simple. We're writing on a computer, not in stone, so we can change directions if we need to. If we want our protagonist to escape from a burning building, we can draw a door. On the other hand, we're not writing Science Fiction, so it has to be realistic.
Second. Occasionally, when I've taken time off from a novel—for whatever reason—I may have trouble getting back into it. Interestingly, this sense of "losing the threads "can also happen to me when I get close to the end. Whenever I've lost the threads—or my momentum—I usually go back to the beginning and read what I have. If I'm close to the end, I may start the second draft at that point—without having written the ending. By the time I get close to the end the second time around, I've got the finish well in mind and can write it with little trouble. Going back to what you've already written can often provide you with avenues you've forgotten about, leads that will pull you back into the book. That can be invaluable when you've hit a block.
Lastly, I spend a lot of time going for walks, taking showers, staring at a wall—thinking hard about what I'm working on. Since I believe that plot grows out of character, and not the other way around, I spend a lot of time with the people I write about, exploring who they are so I can understand them—understand their motivations. The plot flows from that knowledge. Sometimes, at night before I go to sleep, I give myself an assignment. I may have hit a snag that I don't know how to solve, so I ask my subconscious to work on it. This doesn't always work, but every now and then, when I wake up in the morning, I have a solution.
LATE BREAKING NEWS!
William Kent Krueger's Mercy Falls has been
nominated for a 2006 Anthony Award.
Read back issues:
Winter, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 1
Spring, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 2
Fall, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 3
Winter, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 1
Spring, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 2
Fall, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 3
Spring, 2004 - Vol. 3, Number 1
Fall, 2004 - Vol. 3, Number 2
Spring, 2005 - Vol. 3, Number 3
Fall, 2005 - Vol. 3, Number 4
Spring, 2006 - Vol. 4, Number 1
Spring, 2007 - Vol. 5, Number 1
Spring, 2008 - Vol. 6, Number 1
Fall, 2008 - Vol. 6, Number 2 |
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