The PolyBlog

I mentioned in my coverage of Friday that I’m feeling tired, and that is even more true today. I fly home tomorrow (Sunday) and then back to the day job on Monday morning. And work has NOT been that quiet of late, lots of unusual extra work going on that my boss and staff have been handling over the last month, mostly without me. It’s time I dig back in.

Friday was a late night for many attendees, I understand, and things lasted until the wee hours. I was not part of those shenanigans, I am old and boring. And I don’t know anyone nor do that kind of thing anyway. I digress.

There was an early morning “Debut Mystery Author Breakfast” where a number of attending debut authors would get a chance to speak about themselves for a minute and introduce their books to the audience (if they haven’t been on panels already, for instance). The list included Brian Tracey (aka J.B. Abbott), Tom Andes, Faye Arcand, Valerie Biel, Andrew Bridgeman, Elise Burke Brown, Hunter Burke, Chelsea Conradt, John Dingle, Laurie L. Dove, Leigh Dunlap, Wendy Gee, Amran Gowani, Walter Horsting, R.L. Carpentier, III, Elle Jauffret, Georgia Jeffries, Christy J. Kendall, N.L. Lavin, Andrew Ludington, Josh Mendoza, Jennifer K. Morita, Mark Nutter, Mark O’Neill, Joe Pan, Ryan Pote, Jenny Ramaley, R. C. Reid, Michael Rigg, Jennifer Sadera, Diane Schaffer, Amie Schaumberg, Rob D. Smith, Suja Sukumar, and Mark Thielman. Tracey, Walter Horsting, Ryan Pote, and R.C. Reid were on panels I attended, and I’ll get around to checking out all of the new authors’ offerings, in lieu of actually getting up early enough to attend breakfast.

I was hoping to attend Panel 14-4: Marketing and Promotion: Getting Exposure, moderated by Jeff Circle with panelists Valerie Biel, Maddee James, Riley Mack, Julia O’Connell, and Sonya Sargent. I used to be part of an online group called “Murder Must Advertise”, which eventually died as a newsgroup, but it had a really good base for ideas in the pre-digital world on how to promote yourself as a writer. Lots of physical ideas like bookmarks, business cards, postcard covers of books. All of which were in evidence throughout the conference. But recently, Kristine Kathryn Rusch posed the question of “What would a 2025 full-court press promotional blitz look like?” and there aren’t many lists out there. I was hoping to go and pillage the brain trust assembled.

Instead, I attended a panel that I thought was much more important: Panel 14-5: Traditional/Indy/e-book/Hybrid/Self: Choosing the Best Publishing Path in an Evolving Industry. It was moderated by Shawn Reilly Simmons with panelists Joe Brosnan (editor for small press), Nik Xandir Wolf (writer, editor), Kirstyn Petras (writer), Zelly Ruskin (writer), and Jessica Tastet (writer). The room it was set for is not that big, and I thought, “Hmm, this will be a popular panel, I should be there early.” I need not have bothered, as there were only about 35 people there, including myself.

I thought it was a great panel. The moderator is a publisher from an earlier panel, and she did a great job walking them through the advantages and disadvantages. And the panel didn’t exactly dig in on the definitions…for one, anything that is not the Big 5 is “indie” to them, and for most, they include any form of self-publishing as indie, although that is conflating a wide spectrum of offerings from “mini” press that pays advances to a la carte services. I confess that I really liked Kirstyn, Zelly and Jessica’s experiences that they shared with different ways of trying to go the traditional route, then going a different way. Zellly paid for a bunch of services that she knows she won’t make back for those specific books, but feels it is setting her up further in her career for future launching points. Kirstyn by contrast has found success through a podcast where her and her friend interview indie authors writing more darker tomes; she joked that her first book was a dystopian novel that she finished in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit when NOBODY wanted to read dystopian proposals. Jessica elaborated more on the long tail of her book sales (my term, not hers), that now she has 10+ books, they generally are turning a profit and still selling, which she finds surprising given that they have a very strong local/regional appeal. I tried pulling them up on Amazon, and it did NOT show anything, so I may have to do more concentrated / expanded searching. I chatted with Jessica and Joe a little bit after the panel about the long tail equivalent, and Jessica is aiming for 20 books before she thinks the long tail will tip over for her. For Joe, it was interesting; he said that he normally would only buy a book from an agent/author if he thought he could sell at least 5000 copies. But he didn’t say “by when” or over what timeframe in his presentation. With a little poking afterwards, he said five years was probably about right, although it wasn’t anything hard and fast.

I’ve had more time today to think about my expectations for the panel, and I realized that part of it was just my mindset. I think all authors should know all their options, always. To use Joe’s numbers, for example, let’s say that a press sells 5000 copies and hands you 15% on the sales. By contrast, self-publishing can get you much higher returns, with more challenging distribution of course, but might be 75% after some expenses. Which means you only have to sell 1000 copies to get the same revenue stream. So, for me, I think all authors should know those numbers before they sign their deals. And I talked to one person at the conference who works for a press, is in charge of many of the contracts that the authors sign, and she wouldn’t sign it if her life depended on it. People make money, and it ain’t the author.

So why weren’t more people at the session? I forgot. The vast majority of Bouchercon are published authors who were published traditionally. Of course, they have no interest in the alternative models, at least not now. I’ve been studying the market and the business model for almost 20 years now, actively engaging and poking people. And I saw one author who listed on one of her slides at a presentation the results of her publishing efforts. Her first 10+ books were rejected, and I have no issues with that, per se. But then she published two or three, and then had another rejected. Then she published another and had the next two rejected. Then, it was relatively good for several years before another was rejected. I think she had 19 published and 12 listed as rejected. Leaving my brain wondering, “What did she do with the other 12?” Did she decide that because they were rejected, they were now just “dead”? One of the biggest laments online, and in writers’ communities over the last 15-20 years, has been the midlist author who published 3 or so books in a series and then their big 5 publisher dropped them. And after that, most other presses won’t touch you. But they often seem to just “take it”. Oh well, the publisher said it won’t sell, so it won’t sell. What? You know that if you do a bunch of it yourself, you only have to sell 20% of what they would to make the same profit?

Now, today’s session was great at showing the pitfalls. Namely, that all the same things have to be done to get your books into readers’ hands. But, you really have three choices for every activity:

1. Have a publisher do it and take the costs out of your sales (most people often don’t realize this is happening, but it’s built into the business model);
2. Pay someone else to do it, either through the press or on your own; or,
3. Do it yourself.

A lot of people hate the idea of #3. They literally want to hand it off to someone else and protect the purity of their muse. They don’t want to sully themselves with the ugly production side of the business. I kid you not, there are some who think it is tantamount to sweatshops that are better not seen.

I should clarify that I seem a bit hostile and I am, but not for the reasons people think. I am not hostile because they denigrate the indie route; I am hostile because I don’t like people assuming there is only one model nor showcasing their approach as the best approach when the majority don’t understand any model except the one they used.

For me, it is like someone saying you should never buy a used car, and that the only “business model” that makes sense is to go to a dealership, buy whatever they have in stock, and pay whatever the sticker price says you should pay. It is obviously not the ONLY business model nor arguably even the best. However, I may do that, or at least I have done something similar. But I did it knowing there were other options, what they were, and how they worked. And I didn’t pretend it was the best option for everyone. It was just the option for me right then.

I’m not rabid about it, though. This is not the crowd to expect that, umm, enlightened discussion of all possible opportunities. 🙂 There are a number of independent writers’ groups, and they have conferences too. And if you go to one, you’ll likely hear that there is only one model, DIY, never consider anything else. People find their own tribes.

I’m agnostic about which model, although I know where I’m likely to land. For me, it’s entirely circumstantial. Anyway, I’m digressing. Good panel, like the three writers’ voices a lot. There was something odd going on with one of the presenters, and I would be curious if it was related to the overall approach of the conference. It is, by and large, about corporate entities running the publishing world. And he said, quite openly, that a lot of what he writes about, edits, and even writes music about is more ethical objections to capitalism. Yet, of course, he was there to talk about other options of getting your stuff out there but contributed very little to the discussion. I would have loved to go off and have a chat with him, to hear more of his perspective, but ’twas not to be.

Moving into the next batch of panels, my interests were starting to branch off in all directions. I’ve covered technical aspects of writing; I’ve covered aspects of the business model; now it was time to tackle aspects of the community. Panel 15-6: Beyond the Conference: Write, Learn, Connect was moderated by Kathleen Antrim with panelists Allison Brennan, Harry Hunsicker, Shirley Jump, DP Lyle, and Douglas Pratt.

So. Let’s see. How to put this. I guess, I’ll use the general thrust that almost everyone in the community does. Basically, there are lots of people in the industry who have tread the same path and trails you are on, and they are happy to share with you their map and locations of handholds to help you get the next level. Generally speaking, it’s true. There is a very welcoming community out there. I overheard two guys talking later in the corridors, and the one guy was flabbergasted. He said that he had come for the first time, was looking to get into writing, and was a Type-A hard core ex-military guy who expected a bunch of backstabbing / office-politic-playing civilians. Instead, he met a ton of people who said, “Hey, you sound cool, you have ideas, how can we help you?” They gave him their time, they chatted with him, they encouraged him, and said, “Soooo, have you met my friend Dave yet too who is writing in a similar genre and he’ll be happy to tell you what he did!”. In short, he was expecting gatekeepers of publishing, not the open community of writers who would tell him where to start, what to read, how to get going, all for free with no expectation of anything in return. They were just happy to talk to ANYONE who wanted to know what they had done.

Which is generally true for anyone and you can find it at the conventions. But the panel was more about what you can do in between conventions. Obviously, they push people towards local writers groups, hopefully who meet in person. Mystery Writers of America, Nashville, Sisters in Crime, etc. For me, it is the Crime Writers of Canada group in Ottawa, of which I am a dues-paying but frequently-absent member. In addition, they suggest people find critiquing groups too, if they can. With all the potential for any critiquing group to be hit or miss.

For the panel, Kathleen, DP and Douglas are all active members of the Outliers University, which offers a lot of courses about writing. They were a large and active sponsor of Bouchercon, with part of their unofficial mandate to occupy the space for training with credentialed teachers so people don’t get scammed by people who self-published one book that was poorly edited and marketed and really don’t know what they’re doing, but offering to teach others. Outliers is not free, of course, but for those interested, they offered a huge discount on membership and courses. I’ll figure it all out when I’m back home.

Another strong resource they suggested even before Shirley arrived at the panel was Shirley’s own Youtube channel where she goes through and deconstructs writing elements. Basically, free tutorials and tips/tricks etc Things that she has learned that she’s passing on to others. That resonates pretty strongly with me, since that is the same model as my HR guide (well, except I blog it, I don’t put up YouTube videos. Yet.).

Now, if you go back a paragraph or two, you see me hesitating on how to describe what looks like very simple and straightforward approaches. It isn’t that I don’t think they’re legit; it’s more that they fit very well with specific types of personalities, and not necessarily so much with others.

Let me digress for a moment. I love the Insights Discovery model of personality profile types for Analytical Introverts (Blue), Analytical Extroverts (Red), Intuitive Introverts (Green) and Intuitive Extroverts (Yellow).

Conferences, by and large, are huge gold mines for the extroverts — the type A reds and the sunshine yellows. Clear goals to panels and events, lots of interaction, they’re in heaven. Analytical introverts (blues) do okay as they like all the info options, although they’d prefer a transcript or more consistent form to the panels. And emotive Greens? They’re in hell because everyone is running everywhere, and they don’t often feel like they have time to meet someone slowly one on one.

When you come to online training, the blues love it, especially if the material is circulated in advance and they can turn their camera off; the yellows and greens don’t feel engaged; and reds will only measure it by the outcome and if it is practical.

For the various writing groups, greens are often first in line, except that they can find it intimidating if there are more than about 3-4 people, and they don’t particularly like receiving or giving negative feedback. Yellows want more people, blues want to just share it by email, and reds want to run the group.

Those are all gross exaggerations, of course. And based on stereotypes of broad personality traits, of which we have all four colours at once. However, the point is that I feel the “push” to find your tribe seems to think you can or should consider all of them, that they are all good, and it is more about what’s easiest for you. Not necessarily at times what is RIGHT for you, as it assumes all formats and approaches are good. That’s a hard nuance though to convey, as they (the proverbial they) all say, “Find what works for you.” I just feel that they often assume that all of them are good and all of them are interchangeable. And I really don’t think they are.

Take me, for example. At some point, in the next week or so, I’m going to ask myself, “Was Bouchercon worth it for me?”. And that will generate a very complicated answer. I came to observe, and I did. Maybe I should have had a slightly different approach than just “sit and see”. I talked to people, but I didn’t make any connections. I doubt anyone that I spoke to would remember my last name, for example, and I had no card with me that I was trying to promote such a connection. Which is stupid in a way. I have PolyWogg business cards. Sitting on a shelf at home, rarely used. I could easily have brought some, never really thought about it. Cuz I feel like I’m two years away. Yet I digress. I’ll answer that later.

The point is that I will not be the only person who would potentially feel far more overwhelmed by the conference, not an opportunity to network that they would embrace. I mentioned yesterday that I didn’t introduce myself to Lee Goldberg even though we’ve interacted on social media a few times, etc. A few comments here and there. But I felt like a kid with the adults, and I might be bothering him somehow. I chickened out. Except today, I saw him standing with Ace Atkins (I didn’t realize it was him, the guy who took over the Spenser series!!!!!!), they were heading to the airport but killing some time first. So, when there was a lull, I introduced myself, said hello, mentioned who I was (Paul from Canada, the guy with the frog avatar on social media), asked him about a conversation we had earlier in the week, thanked him for the panel, and wished him well. Nothing big, I just wanted to say hi. And I did. Yay me.

I would love to put Ace Atkins in a leg trap for a couple of hours, though and interrogate the crap out of him. He is living a version of something I want to do at some point, in the way the Spenser series works, but there wasn’t time to tackle him today. Next time, I hope.

Now, where was I? Oh, right. Explaining that I love the way the community says “Participate with us!”, except that for introverts, it would be great if they had a handy-dandy one-pager that said, “Here’s what you can do!”. It must exist somewhere, and if not, over the next two years, I’m going to build it. A framework of sorts (says the guy who thinks in frameworks) that anyone could look at and say, “Oh, yeah, well I can’t do THAT, that’s too scary or painful for me, but I *could* do THAT over there to accomplish the same thing in a different way”. Not surprisingly, there isn’t that nuance in a short 50-minute panel. But without it, it’s just a brain-dump for me. I’m not explaining it very well, I’ll have to noodle it. I did find it interesting that the panelists assumed two things about newbies that are not actually true for me. Two “weaknesses”, perhaps, that I don’t have or at least not in the form others do. I hadn’t thought of that in my noodling so far, but I’ll come back to it in future weeks.

After lunch, I wanted to go to a session called Panel 16-3: The P. I.: A Different Breed of Character. It was moderated by Nora McFarland with panelists Cheryl Bradshaw, Marco Carocari, JD Allen, Delia Pitts, and John Shepphird. I have plans for an extensive series of novels, and they are PI-ish, if not PI-like in most of them. I would have enjoyed the topic immensely, but it is also a question of priority. I feel like I’ve been researching PIs for most of my reading life, I don’t feel uninformed on the genre. 🙂

And I really wanted to go to Panel 16-4: Book to Screen: Worth the Journey? It was moderated by Jeff Ayers, who did a fabulous job in my view, with Michael Connelly, Tony Eldridge, Craig Johnson, Michael Koryta, and Dennis Tafoya listed as the panelists. MK had to bow out due to illness (I think) but Alafair Burke stepped in.

It was a highly entertaining panel, although I confess I didn’t take much in the way of notes. Mostly they shared their experiences with Bosch, The Equalizer, Better Sister, Longmire and Dopey. I found it interesting that in almost every single case, none of them wrote the series chasing the screen money. Not for TV, not for video. In most cases, it happened long after the fact and took a considerable amount of time, with many false starts. Although Connelly had talked somewhat about Bosch two nights ago, he elaborated on some of the experiences a bit more. Burke talked about two very different experiences, one for TV and one for a movie that eventually fizzled, but may still be able to be a TV show at some point. I really loved the Longmire story where Johnson met with the producers wanting to make the TV show. He said, “Okay, you realize that this is the lowest population town with a sheriff in the lowest population area…and you want to do a procedural with murders as a TV show? At what point is that going to start to look ridiculous?” (I’m paraphrasing, I didn’t do a transcript).

At the end, I asked a question that I intended for the whole panel but seemed to go to Connelly only by accident. I wanted to know, after seeing their stuff shot and going through that process of having it filmed, did it change the way they write? I guess I was wondering if it made them think more in “scenes to shoot” than scenes in a book. More pedantically, perhaps, did it make them write TV-friendly books to chase the TV money? Connelly answered in a way I didn’t expect. He said, yes, he DID write differently now. After having written for the screen, and seen stuff stretched out over several episodes, he now spreads his story out more than he had previously. I found that fascinating. As did someone else, apparently, because another audience member nudged me after the panel to say he thought it was a fantastic question and he loved Connelly’s answer as much as I. Umm. Okay then.

The last panel of the day was also the last one of the conference for me. I go home in the morning. So I thought about attending Panel 17-5: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Solve and Report or Report and Solve? The panel was moderated by John DeDakis with panelists Cindy Fazzi, Lori Duffy Foster, Elise Hart Kipness, Thomas Kies, and Lawrence Light. I wanted to go to hear what Kipness had to say. I have never met her, and I’ve never even heard of her before the conference. I saw her in passing at one point, and overheard someone say something about sports mysteries. I looked her up and now I want to try her books. She’s writing stories with a sleuth who is sports reporter-turned-amateur detective. I swear, it sounds like Alison Gordon’s books from the late 90s, early 2000s. I would have liked to ask her afterwards if she had read them, had modelled anything after them, never heard of them, whatever. They are a few of my favourite books, perhaps in part because I got to know Alison online somewhat before she passed away. We weren’t friends or anything, more just friendly acquaintances, which led me to read her books. Not a good look though as a potential conference goer, “Hey did you model your books after a dead author?” I didn’t think that one through but it didn’t matter. I went to another panel.

Panel 17-4: Don’t Pull Your Punches: Writing Exciting Action Scenes was moderated by Brian Tracey, with panelists Bruce Robert Coffin, Parker Jamison (aka Ox Devere), John Gilstrap, Ryan Pote, and Brad Thor. Two of the panelists have written 25+ books each, almost all with action. And I’m interested for two big reasons. First and foremost, the first book of one series I’m working on ends with a long fight scene. Kind of like a long boxing match that is a bit more MMA. And I have no idea how to make it work. I’ve never written anything like that before, but I know how about a third of it goes in scenes, not the mechanics. Secondly, for the other series, there are going to be some physical scenes. Not long bouts or huge fight scenes, but some physicality at times.

I took a LOT of notes. My notes include references to visualizing the scenes; less is more (in John’s case as he likes to end fights quickly, as does Brad in terms of finding ways to cheat and end a fight before it starts, using anything, even a car door); how to raise both the stakes and the tension beforehand; the limited thinking space during the fight, a monofocus on what’s happening; the terrifying nature of having a relentless villain who keeps coming, even if you already broke their arm; in a big battle, can’t really comprehend it on the page, but you have individual mini-vignettes / POVs that are certain characters and what they’re doing; use of dark humour within the action; ways to improve action just with format of shorter sentences and pacing tricks (this was in follow-up to a question I asked where Brad said he liked to throw away his first four obvious ways to solve something as too easy, and I asked if others had ways to improve the action if it seemed too soft or easy…Parker went to a technical writing solution which was awesome); and the extensive use of improvised weapons aka Jason Bourne fight scenes but particularly for women who can’t go toe-to-toe with bigger stronger heavier men. Ryan noted too that this was often driven too by a decision tree — fight or not; attack or wait; weapons or no; in close or stay wide; go fast or go slow. I really liked that idea.

However, I was REALLY surprised by the answers to another question. Brian Tracey was filling in for James Rollins, but using James’ questions. And one of them was what sort of good examples do they find in other people’s writings that they think is strong. I expected them to mention any number of good top writers. Robert B Parker did a great job with some boxing scenes early on in his books. I always liked all of them in fact. Clancy always did well too, imho. However, one suggestion was a book about a pilot shot down and all the stuff that went on in it (named Durant? I’ll have to look that up). Another was anything by Joe Abercomby. No clue. For gunplay, someone said they really liked Stephen Hunter’s books, which I think I have one of somewhere in my large TBR pile. Another suggested Mark Rainey. Again no clue. And the last one I didn’t hear (someone named Simon???).

I really liked the panel. I got a lot out of it, and I enjoyed their take on things. It dovetails with the physical side of the panel previously about kick ass women in mystery novels.

Soooo, that took me to the end of the panels for the day. And for me? The end of the conference, really.

The Anthony Awards were being tabulated today and awarded tonight. But I don’t know any of the writers, and I only voted in one category. I could have voted in others, but I have the same ethical musings that many Academy Award voters have — if you haven’t read all the nominees, should you really vote? I skipped all the categories except the anthology, as I did enjoy Tod Goldberg’s Eight Very Bad Nights.

There was also a late-night movie and music option in the ballroom, but it is not my cup of tea. Plus, I’m tired, and I am ready to go home. Even though the conference continues on Sunday.

I confess, I would like to stay for parts of Sunday. Or at least, I should say, if I was still here, and I had any energy left, I would do two of the agenda items. There is a set of panels left starting at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and another set at 9:30, and I didn’t get a chance to really hone which of the first four would have made my pick out of six nor which of the three of six would have been my pick at 9:30:

• Panel 18-1: The Appeal of the Amateur Sleuth
• Panel 18-3: It’s All About the Story: Deciding What Works and What Doesn’t
• Panel 18-4: Marketing and Promotion: Podcasts, Websites, Social Media, and More!
• Panel 18-6: Mystery or Thriller, Historical or Modern – Spies Spice Up the Plot!
• Panel 19-1: Location, Location, Location: Place As Character
• Panel 19-4: Crafting Surprises Without Misleading the Reader
• Panel 19-5: Lawyers, Judges, Juries and Witnesses: Legal Thrillers and Mysteries

I would probably have listened to Marketing and Promotion and then gone for Crafting Surprises. However, what I would have liked to stay for was the 11:10 a.m. presentation of the Canadian delegation hosting next year in Calgary. I met the team at the table, and I was a little surprised by something. When I met them, I made mention of the fact clearly that I’m Canadian, and thinking about next year. But without really thinking about it, I mentioned that I also used to run conferences for the government aka I was a logistics guy at one point (I was talking about how I have tried to get Waterton in the list of considered options regularly). And in the back of my mind, I thought, “Shut up! Shut up! They’re going to rope you in to volunteer!” Nope, no pickup. Maybe cuz I did say I wasn’t sure if I was going or not yet. Either way, whew.

I think the one after Calgary is Washington, then Minneapolis, and then Miami (that was decided on Saturday but I didn’t hear if there were any alternative offers). Some people were very excited that the American dollar would go further in Canada and that things would be cheaper in Minneapolis. Nobody seemed thrilled about Washington (huh, I assume they mean DC!), although I heard the Miami organizers were pushing that they had a great rate locked in (4 years ahead!) and the hotel is right on a great beach. Sounds nice. I don’t know what I’m doing next month, let alone anytime in the next four years!

I survived Bouchercon 2025 so far. I’ll let the dust settle before I decide what to do about future years.

A morning departure, and I still have to creatively pack. Onward!

I had a bit of a rough night with my cold. I woke up around 3:00 and I was really congested. So, I decided to take an antihistamine. As an aside, because of my diabetes and obesity (hey, a two-fer!), I can’t take most cold meds that are decongestants. I learned that the hard way about 15 years ago when I went to see a clinic doctor for a potential ear infection, only to find out my ear was fine — my blood pressure on the other hand was 162/105 or so. Heart attack and stroke territory. Because I had been maxing decongestatant with a stimulant in it. Oops. My BP had never been really problematic before, maybe a little high once in a while, but not alarming. On decongestant, I was JACKED.

In the day-to-day stuff, this generally only presents a problem if I forget to take some meds OR I get a cold. Cuz then there isn’t anything really good to take. Antihistamines help, but they dry my nasal passages out a little too well, and then I start wheezing or occasionally coughing like I have a speck of dust somewhere in my windpipe. With a strong gag reflex, we are starting to get into territory nobody needs from me.

But I took the antihistamine at 3:00, fell back asleep until 9:30, and finally woke up like I was doing a zombie walk the night before and the special K hadn’t left my system yet. Not that I know what that’s like, but as a wannabe writer, I’m imagining it with artistic license.

Anyway. I had missed Tai Chi (yay), some sponsorship rooms, morning speed dating sessions to link people in Column A of the industry with people in Column B of the industry, and alas, half of the fourth set of big panels. I had hoped to catch “Hooking the Reader” with great first lines, but I needed to hook my energy with some yogourt and a fruit cup first.

I made it to the fifth set of panels at 10:30, and went to Panel 5-4: Kickass Female Protagonists: Prince Charming Is Out of a Job. The panelists were Steph Cha, Tori Eldridge, J.T. Ellison, Taylor Stevens, and Nina Wachsman. I knew of J.T. Ellison’s work in advance, and my brain is mush as I didn’t realize Tori Eldridge writes the Lily Wong Ninja series (I’ve only read two of them). Steph Cha was new to me but she’s written the new series called Butterfly (Amazon Prime). I’ve heard of the show as it has Daniel Dae Kim in it, but I haven’t checked it out yet.

So, I’ve been thinking about something over the last two days of being here. People ask me if I’m a writer, and my answer is generally no. I blog, I’ve written my HR guide in web form, but I don’t consider myself entirely a writer. Not by MY standards, at least. I have written short stories, was in a writer’s group, honed them, and even submitted a play for a contest. By some definitions, that is enough. I wrote something, I submitted it. But it’s not really what I consider true writing. Which is more a question of degree for me. I don’t mean I’m not a writer until I sell something. Writers write. That’s the defining situation. But until I complete a whole book, fully packaged, where I say “It’s done”, I won’t consider myself a writer.

And when I talk about writing anywhere, I generally do not admit to many about my fiction goals. I have strong plans for writing in my retirement related to non-fiction, and I’m completely open about that. However, I am not normally open about two fiction “universes” or “worlds” that I intend to create. The first is fiction in a modern world, and I thought I would never be able to do it. I had a big breakthrough mentally last year, and now it is on like Donkey Kong when I retire. The second world is an interconnected one, centring around a lawyer turned investigator for a law firm, a friend from elementary school who dances on both sides of the law “line”, and two women they interact with during their investigations. Both are bad ass, in my view, but in totally different ways. One will be very physical while the other will be more methodical and cerebral; one is a rookie cop, one is a local P.I.

Sooooo, extrapolating back to my interest in strong women characters, I wanted to hear what they had to say about women who kick ass.

They talked about physicality being one component, but also how they focused on work ethic, importance of family, perhaps subterfuge of hiding skills and abilities to fit in, the importance perhaps of redefining it in terms of empowerment or more particularly agency and choice. They also discussed the importance of getting the tone and motivations right, particularly if they are amateurs, otherwise people are left wondering, “Why aren’t they deferring to the police?”. Tori Eldrige had an interesting take about how she saw Lily Wong as a combination of Skills (huge skills) + Motivation (strong) + a moral code (which drives choices but in turn also shows the impact of the choices made). The moderator asked them if the goals of their characters change throughout the series or even a book, and they framed it more as a layer of goals, with some staying static over several books, some being more dynamic, and some just being more narrowed/defined with sub-objectives for the problem-of-the-episode.

I confess that I have not spent as much time on one of the women characters in the series as the other three are in it from day one, and she doesn’t show up until book 4 probably. It’s a long way away, I know, but I also am a plotter, not a pantser (i.e., I will plot the arcs in advance, not write by the seat of my pants). For the one series, I have to plot out a 12 episode arc before I can even write a word as I have to be sure I have the rules of the world right from book one before I risk getting to book four and realizing I screwed up. It’s hard to describe, and I don’t need ALL the details plotted, but there are two serious issues that could go either way, and I don’t know which is the right answer yet. For lack of a better transparency, think of it like deciding in Harry Potter if all spells have a visual component or not or require verbal commands — can you “think” a spell and have the result happen or does it have to be verbal and a “spark” will fly from the wand to the destination? There are no spells in my plans, but you get the drift.

Anyway, I found their approaches to their characters interesting for not only the second woman, but gave me ideas on how to re-“form” the first one with more depth and backstory. A really interesting panel, and I like the sounds of some of their characters enough to check out their books soon.

At 12:30, the sixth set of panels started, and I opted for Panel 6-5: Suspense, Action, Conflict: Prime Elements of Mysteries and Thrillers with Colin Campbell, Bruce Robert Coffin, Audrey J. Cole, Jeffrey James Higgins, and Carter Wilson. Their moderator was a no-show for some reason, so they just did a bit of winging of the session. Carter raised early on the frequency of forms of violence in this type of writing, and he said it frequently drove him nuts when someone would get shot in the leg and then kept running. He recommended STRONGLY that anyone writing fight scenes etc to get Violence: A Writers Guide from a correctional officer to talk about what really happens during violent encounters. I’ve added it to my wish list from Amazon.

I confess that I didn’t really get what I hoped for out of the session. Audrey came closest at one point. She talked about how in one of her books, she did a flashback to an event 20 years before, and how people remembered it differently or at least had told it differently officially. But when she was done, she reviewed each section separately to see if the two stories were “complete” on their own. Extrapolating from that, I was wondering about mysteries in particular…if you took out the suspense and the action, does the mystery still work? Because if it doesn’t, the book doesn’t work for me. My books won’t be thrillers, and while one of them might have some suspense, the core is mystery and problem-solving. There might be some physical conflict situations, particularly for two of the characters, but they aren’t action films.

Instead, they talked more about the thriller aspects. This included the interesting consequences that can come from violence, the goals of the protagonist if they choose violence (hoping to achieve something), the nature of remote locations as pseudo-locked-room mysteries, extending suspense for the last 25% of the book with tone and psychological or emotional suspense more than physical, etc. Audrey also talked about the idea of not protecting your characters — put them in big, challenging situations, otherwise you’re not really taking risks with them or for them.

I confess that I was very disappointed with my next two panels, although not for any fault of the participants. They were all informed and helpful, just not in my areas of interest.

I attended Panel 7-2: Writing a Series: Avoiding the Pitfalls, moderated by Diana Catt, and including panelists Michael J Cooper, Margaret Fenton, Danielle Girard, Sulari Gentill, and Jon Land. As a future writer of two series, I was hoping for a list of things to avoid. Instead, it was more about how they handle their series, and often, the strengths of the form. To the extent that every strength is also a weakness, or a pitfall, I will be able to use some of it, but I took only a handful of notes. They talked about the need for episodic books to both standalone and propel the series, the risks of long series going stale if the main character can’t grow or overcome anything (not their example, but there’s a reason why sequels to Superman rarely do as well as the one where Clark becomes Superman), the time between books in series requiring some exposition to catch up the old and new readers vs. standalone books not needing that extra layer, and experiences with prequels (which were more often easier as the framing often built itself to include some things and exlude other things, particularly people they haven’t met yet). Even for historical fiction, both writers who wrote HistFic saw it as a strength not a pitfall, that the constraints of history helped them more than hurt them.

I was also disappointed with Panel 8-4: Need to Know: The Business of Writing, moderated by Marty Ludlum, Leslie S. Klinger, R. C. Reid, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Alice Speilburg. I really liked the opening line by one of the panelists, I forget who, who quoted another that you either think of writing as a business or you let someone else spend your money. Like most of the sessions, everyone is in good humour, everyone is trying to be helpful without being potentially rude to anyone else, and I confess the tone wasn’t working for me. They talked about taxes or the need to be involved in promotion, but I found two things particularly disturbing. First, as someone else pointed out, all of this assumes the person is agented and going through traditional presses with contracts; nothing on self- or independent- publishing. Fair enough, the whole conference suffers from that complaint, it’s part of the Bouchercon world. Even 10-20 years ago, members were arguing about whether non-traditionally published authors could be on panels. That is an old issue, and while some want to raise it, it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t care how THEY (the authors talking) got published, I know what my route will look like in the future. Second, something one of the writers said was indicative of some assumptions in the business world where I vastly prefer the teachings of Kristin Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. He noted that his wife was a she-wolf looking over his shoulder with his contract, protecting him, but she relaxed when she got to know the people. KKR in particular has written about this recently with digests — it doesn’t matter if the person you’re dealing with is a good person and would never abuse the intent of the contract against your interest; it only matters what the contract says. Because that person can die or get bought out, and suddenly the next person through the door decides to exploit that clause in ways you thought it would never be used. Every contract should be scrutinized from the lens of “How can this be used against me in the future if something goes catastrophically wrong?”. It’s a risk analysis, although that isn’t how KKR describes it, that’s my term. Probability is half of that analysis, sure, but the other half is “if this happens, how big an impact is it?”. Yet I think the biggest piece I found disturbing was that I tried to put the cat amongst the pigeons and start a rumble, so I asked what they as lawyer, writer, publisher and agent thought the other groups didn’t understand well enough about their piece of the business. Everyone laughed, as they should, but it is a serious question. What bothered me most though was the round-up that they are all part of the team supporting the author, which is great, but then they said the agent should be in charge of relatively minor negotiations and the lawyer just tells you what it says, but don’t worry too much because it’s all boilerplate and it “ain’t going to change much, if at all.” Yep, I can see why authors get screwed if the three entities — publisher, agent and lawyer — all agree that the author cannot negotiate any of the terms. The old “trust us, we’re publishers and we’re here to work with you” mantra is alive and well. I know that’s harsh, but I went to law school, I studied business at university, I read KKR’s blogs, the disasters at Romance houses, and I used to follow ThePassiveGuy when he was blogging. Plus I saw what happened to Paul McCartney, 1000s of other musicians, and most visibly of late, Taylor Swift. All people who sold their souls for standard language contracts they couldn’t negotiate. Not a good look, and a dangerous world to encourage people to embrace with their resting trust face on. They were all nice, I liked all of them, I would work with any of them in a heartbeat, but I would absolutely negotiate the contract clauses I care about, and if they have rights grabs, as most do, they wouldn’t be in any version I would sign. Even if that meant no deal. But it also most likely why I will never go that route for my business model. I would rather have no deal than a bad deal. To quote Lawrence Sanders’ Archy McNally, my flabber is gasted that anyone in 2025 thinks that’s a practical business model for any author to accept.

I was hoping for more insightful comments than general hopeful comments. However, one thing I really found interesting was the agent’s view about taking authors on who do not have social media platforms. For fiction, her view was that was okay; for non-fiction, they really want to see that right away and know where, how much, if you’re blogging, etc. I never realized that the NF side was so interested in that. I have mentioned that I have great plans for NF when I retire, and I have a decent following on my guides to date. I assumed no one would be interested in my musings in a publishing house, but perhaps I should explore before I take alternate routes.

At 5:30, Alafair Burke was doing an interview with Michael Connelly in the big ballroom. I was a bit surprised that it wasn’t even more full, but there were a fair number. She did a great job, and at the start, I had a brain fart. First, I didn’t even remember Michael Connelly had also done the Lincoln Lawyer…I remembered Bosch, of course, but my brain blocked Haller. And then when they were first talking, Michael mentioned that he liked to read series too, including those of Alafair’s father. Father, huh? Who is her father? Oh dear. How did I not register that Alafair Burke is the daughter of James Lee Burke and the king of Louisiana mystery fiction? Sigh. I will blame the antihistamines.

She did a great interview, obviously comfortable with him and with the loveletter style interview, walking him through much of his career. I knew very little of it, which is common for most authors I read. I read their books, not their bios. I found four things really interesting in the interview.

First, he had been taking engineering and not doing very well at it at school, and he decided he’d rather be Raymond Chandler, so his father advised him to switch to journalism to get on a crime beat and see how crime really worked. Second, he had some cute Hollywood linkage stories…He saw a movie at age 19 starring Elliott Gould that started him towards becoming a writer, and then with the Lincoln Lawyer show, Elliott Gould is playing in it. Equally, the real guy that gave Connelly the inspiration for a lawyer working out of a car said that he did well and lived in Malibu near Matthew McConaughey, only for MM to play the Lincoln Lawyer in the movie version. Third, he regularly stated over and over that he isn’t that creative. Much of the examples he used are almost 1:1 inspirations from real people. Lastly, as a softball question from me, I asked if he had any other acting plans after his cameo on Castle, where he seemed to be having fun. I had hoped he might talk about that a bit, open up a bit more. He did respond to say that one interesting thing from Castle was that he got to be a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild for playing himself, which he found amusing.

However, I think the most interesting thing he talked about was working as a screenwriter on the TV series. Alafair asked if he felt he was “exercising different muscles” and he said, “No, it was more like he was missing a muscle.” He found the inability to write what Bosch was thinking a huge challenge to write in just about every scene he did.

The night wrapped up with a Second Line Parade to the WWII monument, and some opening ceremony remarks as well as launch of the anthology for the conference. I didn’t feel up to the parade, and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling the desire to do the trolley even. I wanted to take a run at the Campaigns of Courage exhibit, purely as a tourist, but I decided a quiet evening around the hotel would likely do me better.

I grabbed a simple burger, read for a while, picked up some snacks and drinks as well as more antihistamine tablets, and then sat down eventually to write this entry.

And just to prove I was there for the interview tonight, here is a terrible shot of Michael Connelly and Alafair Burke.

Let the conference keep rolling…