Murder, Vampires and a Year of Work Ends

I'm delighted and relieved to report that my year of hard work came to successful fruition this past weekend at the New England Crime Bake for Mystery Readers and Writers.

While it has been exciting and stimulating to be co-chair of a conference totally run by mystery-loving volunteers, it also has been challenging and required much effort. It also has eaten up a great deal of writing (and other) time and I will be extremely thankful to get that back.

Crime Bake, now in its ninth year, takes place in "DEAD"ham, Massachusetts, and is co-sponsored by the New England chapters of the international mystery organizations Sisters in Crime (SinC) and Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Traditionally the co-chairs are the presidents of the local organizations, which in my case means not only presiding over an active SinC chapter that spans six New England states, it also required heading a Crime Bake committee of 20 people who hail from three of them -- and with someone I'd met only once before. In addition, this was only my second year on the Crime Bake Committee and it was MWANE President Margaret McLean's first so some of it we made up as we went along. (Here I persuaded Margaret that we should open the conference in vampire capes due to our Guest of Honor -- and sunglasses as daylight is a definite problem for vampires!)

We were aided in our conference planning by a strong cadre of dedicated fellow mystery writers who deeply love Crime Bake, which is known as a writer's conference. Sure, there were issues, false starts and some mistakes, but I was so grateful for the hard work of each of them because it has been vital to this venture and responsible for us selling out at the beginning of August.

Another major factor in our success was our guest of honor -- the incredible Charlaine Harris with four, count 'em four, mystery series, including the Sookie Stackhouse "Southern Vampire" books on which the HBO series True Blood is based. Charlaine was incredibly gracious, extremely generous with her time and writing advice, and one of the funniest women you'd ever meet. I had the privilege, along with my co-chair, of conducting a 45-minute Guest of Honor interview with this smart and engaging woman in front of a luncheon attended by almost 300 conference attendees -- and it was a highlight of my weekend. One of the things she told us is that in writing the Sookie series, she also is writing about discrimination, especially against the gay community.

This Arkansas mother of three has been a published author for 25 years (her second husband gave her what I consider an extremely romantic gift -- a typewriter for her to become a writer -- as a wedding gift so, as she says, she "kept him"). One of her characters has inspired a video game coming out early next year and CBS is developing a series based on her Harper Connolly books. We were very fortunate to have her as our Guest of Honor.

Our weekend lineup also included best-selling New England authors Dennis Lehane (seen here and personally invited by yours truly after stalking him at my local chain bookstore), Julia Spencer-Fleming, Hallie Ephron, Sheila Connolly and so many others, as well as exciting debut authors like Barb Ross. The schedule of fascinating panels also featured fabulous forensics experts, as well as 10 agents and editors from New York and New England. How could we not succeed?

This conference is always stimulating and energizing because the rooms are filled with so many enthusiastic mystery writers dedicated to improving their craft and talking about it. Let's face it: there also aren't many conferences where people can legitimately allow themselves to be excited about discussing murder, ways to dispose of a body or blood spatter patterns.

This year, we added a Vampire Ball to the activities in Charlaine's honor and urged people to dress in costume (the lobster and Vampire bride were among my favorites) or red and black, which are the official Crime Bake colors. Some, like me and "Dirty Business" mystery series author Rosemary Harris (photo at far right) also added the colors to our hair. The photo to the left below shows a bit of my red hair extension and two my fellow Working Stiffs bloggers after we met in person instead of the virtual world. Husband No. 1 (shown trying to keep up with me on the dance floor) opted for a blood red shirt to follow the red and black theme.
This weekend once again reminded me how blessed I am to have found my way to the mystery genre and to now be part of such an amazing community of writers. And I was giving thanks for this experience throughout the entire weekend, both when I was wearing my vampire cape and fangs -- and when I wasn't.

Magical Mystery Weekend

This past weekend was beyond magical for me as a mystery writer, led by the incredible opportunity to escort the guest of honor at the 2009 New England Crime Bake for mystery writers and readers -- New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton, creator of the alphabet mystery series that begins with "A is for Alibi" and will see her latest installment,"U is for Undertow, on Dec. 1.

Twenty-one books, each with an imaginative and intriguing plot and all featuring Private Investigator Kinsey Milhone, whose quirks include using nail scissors to cut her hair. Sue Grafton's books have been published in 28 countries, 26 languages and have a readership in the millions. The series, which Sue expects to conclude with "Z is for Zero" by 2015, remains set in the 1980s.

Sue Grafton is a rock star in the mystery world and an inspiration to women writers. She is also extremely funny and irreverent (no surprise to her readers), exceedingly gracious, and was extrordinarily generous with her time and advice to the authors and wanna-be writers at the conference. Not only did she sign every book and additional object pushed in front of her, she surprised everyone by offering to critique the first 20 pages of one attendee whose name she selected in a random drawing.

I also became aware of another example of her generosity, though far less public, during the weekend. A woman approached Sue with a book signed 21 years earlier that also included contact information provided for the fan to someday send a few pages of her own manuscript for Sue to review and provide advice. Sue asked if she'd ever finished and the woman said she recently had finally done so. "Then I'll read them now," Sue told her. The woman got in her car and drove home to retrieve them -- and later enjoyed the manuscript review of her life.

This was my first year on the Crime Bake organzing committee and it's unbelievable how much time each member contributed to make the 2-day event a success. At a time when other mystery conferences are canceling due to the economy, ours sold out and attracted fabulous authors, forensics experts and almost 300 people who love the written word. It is nearly nirvana for a writer.

Crime Bake also is the traditional launch of the esteemed annual "Crime Stories by New England Writers" anthology. The cute guy in the white shirt is Husband No. 1 signing his story that was one of only 18 selected out of about 150 submissions for this year's edition entitled Quarry." (Ironically, Sue' s Q book is "Q is for Quarry.")

He also had the opportunity to join me and other guests at Sue's table for the "Breakfast with the Authors" event. Twenty mystery authors "hosted" tables of 10, giving attendees another chance to informally interact with those they admire and each other. (Crime Bake is a great place to meet up with mystery friends and make new ones.)

There are countless opportunities throughout the conference to talk to authors (including best-selling writers Joseph Finder, Lisa Gardner and Michael Palmer) and also agents. Attendees can sign up for a 5-minute slot to pitch a manuscript to an agent. The lucky ones, like me, walked out with a business card and were invited to submit part of a completed manuscript for the agent to consider whether to offer to represent them in trying to sell it to publishing houses. I wanted to run home and finish my book immediately.

But I was scheduled to moderate the Sunday morning "U is for Unconventional" panel of authors featuring:

Lynne Griffin who wrote "Life without Summer" about a woman trying to find out who killed her daughter in a hit-and-run accident and the therapist who tries to help her;

Jedediah Berry whose "Manual of Detection"is a surrealistic tale of a file clerk who gets promoted to detective and seraches for a missing detective in a city where all the alarm clocks are being stolen;

Francie Lin whose "The Foreigner" won the Edgar (as in Edgar Allan Poe), mystery's top award, for best first novel. It's about a timid 40-year-old Taiwanese American virgin who, after the unexpected death of his domineering mother, must journey to Taiwan to find the "rebellious younger brother lost to him for almost a decade"; and

Paul Tremblay, author of "The Little Sleep," which features a narcoleptic, wise-cracking private investigator whose latest case begins when a woman shows up in his office to ask him to find her missing fingers -- or does she?

The panelists were so fascinating that I was sorry to see our session end. But I know the energy, enthusiasm and excitement of the panel and the Crime Bake experience will stay with me for weeks. Then it will be time to get back to work on planning the 2010 version, which I'm scheduled to co-chair. Our Guest of Honor will be best-selling and longtime mystery author Charlaine Harris, whose Sookie Stackhouse character now appears in the HBO series "True Blood."

The magic continues.