I just signed up to attend the New England Crimebake, coming up in November. This is a whole weekend of sessions on the craft ( or is it art?) and business of writing crime and mystery stories. I have been to many science fiction conventions, but the only other mystery con I have attended was the 2017 Bouchercon, when it was held in Toronto.
A few weeks ago, I attended by Zoom a meeting of the Desert Sleuths, which is the Arizona chapter of Sisters in Crime. The topic of the meeting was Make a Mystery. They had a panel of three authors who solicited ideas from the other attendees.
Over the next 90 minutes we came up with a setting (RV park in Arizona), heroine (Felicia, park manager), a villain (Pastor Bob), and a bunch of other characters. Plus a basic plot. When we were done I asked if it was OK for us to use all this in our own story, and they said that was fine. Even with the same basics, every author would produce a unique story.
So over the next few weeks I wrote a 7800-word story called “Angels Grove.” I changed the heroine’s name, but crammed almost everything else in. Personally, I think it came out great. Last week I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. We’ll see if they take it. Oh, and next week is the next meeting, so we’ll see who else wrote something. Stay tuned.
Well, it was fun but did not go as well as I hoped.
We had a steady stream of people all evening. I was at the first table by the door, so people walked in, right past me, and only then started looking around! But that was OK, some of them came back eventually.
Before we opened to the public, I got a chance to meet some of the other exhibitors. There were other mystery writers, memoirists, and children’s authors. The youngest was a five-year-old kid who had written a book about his lemonade stand.
I shared the table with a guy who had written many books on a variety of topics: animation, Boston sports legends, baseball. He had a great patter, telling people about the books and how unique they were. He made a valiant effort, but nobody was buying.
I kept buttonholing people and asking, “Do you like murder mysteries?” Quite a few said no, but enough stopped that I had time to talk with them. I had printed out copies of some of my stories, but only a few people wanted to read them. The ones that did seemed to like them, though. I also passed out my business cards, which have the address of my web site, with examples of my stories. So, as I said, it was fun.
The only really bad thing was that there was ice cream for us and the guests. By the time the event had ended and we were free to get some, it had all melted from the heat. So we never got any. Oh well.
I did buy a copy of the lemonade stand book.
I can’t wait for next year!