Bouchercon 2013 Debrief

I’m just back from Albany, NY following the close of Bouchercon 2013. It was a great experience and I met some wonderful new readers, booksellers, and fellow authors.

Bouchercon is always a huge conference and this year was no exception. Attendance this year was approximately 1500, so our venue at the Empire State Plaza worked well for meeting rooms, theater seating for evening events, and signing tables, while still having plenty of room for all the booksellers and their loaded tables of books. This year’s noted guests included Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen, Louise Penny and Anne Perry.

So what were some of my highlights?

• The general atmosphere: It’s always fun to be immersed in the writing/publishing milieu. These are people who don’t stare at you oddly when you mention your own characters talking to you, or who nod in understanding when you talk about some of the crazy things you’ve done in the name of research. These are people who “get you” and think in exactly the same terms, be they writers or readers.

• Meeting readers: One of the great thrills of Bouchercon for me was meeting new readers. Not people I know who read the book because they know me, but readers who found the book in a store, or who discovered it in a library and then loved it so much they went out and bought their own copy (Kathy, I’m looking at you!). It’s very gratifying to develop a personal connection with people who love what you do.

• Meeting good friends for the first time in person: I’ve made some very good friends through my agency—other writers who either also signed with Nicole or have come into the agency family. It was a true pleasure to be able to spend five days hanging out with the hilarious Marianne Harden, another of Nic’s early clients, as she attended Bouchercon promoting her humorous mystery Malicious Mischief (which debuts Oct. 22^nd). There’s always time for a glass of wine in the evening with Marianne!

• Hearing words of wisdom from the professionals: Evening events included hour-long interviews with Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen and Anne Perry. It was fascinating to hear how their careers have developed and an outline of their future plans. All three ladies were very gracious, well-spoken and humorous.

• Favourite panel: I’ve been a Louise Penny fan for a long time (no, not just because she’s also Canadian!). The Beautiful Mystery is a personal favourite of mine, partly because of the musical aspect of the book. Louise did a panel with long-time friends and authors Rhys Bowen and Deborah Crombie. Instead of the typical panel with authors behind a table, these three friends brought their chairs out front and invited us into their impromptu ‘living room’. They were funny and gracious, and this definitely stands as my favourite panel of the con.

• Being on my first panel: I sat on the forensics panel on opening day. The lovely Elizabeth Haynes moderated myself, Elly Griffiths, Kendra Elliot and Sarah Shaber. It was a standing room only crowd, and we had a lively and interesting discussion with lots of very positive feedback afterward. It was a personal pleasure to share that hour with four very talented authors and genuinely lovely women.

It was a great experience to attend my first Bouchercon, and I look forward to many more. Look out Long Beach, CA in 2014. Here I come!

Meet the Bouchercon Forensics Panel!

Tomorrow I’m heading off on the long drive to Albany, NY (thanks to hubby for lending me his beloved Mustang for the trip) to Bouchercon, the premier North American mystery conference for both readers and writers. I’m honoured to be sitting on the forensics panel—We Didn’t Start the Fire (But We Can Tell You How It Started)—with four wonderful authors, and I thought I’d use this week’s blog entry to highlight my co-panelists and some of their body of work.

Elizabeth Haynes: Elizabeth, our panel moderator, lives in Kent in the U.K. and works as a police intelligence analyst. A writer from her earliest days, Elizabeth produced her first real novel for NaNoWriMo in 2005 and then tried again in 2006 and 2007. Her debut thriller Into the Darkest Corner (a real nail biter, let me tell you…) was written as part of 2008’s NaNoWriMo and was published in 2011. Since then, Elizabeth has released Dark Tide and Human Remains, with Under a Silent Moon scheduled for release in 2014.

Elly Griffiths: Born in London and currently living in Brighton, Elly writes the Ruth Galloway series about a forensic archaeologist who assists the police whenever local human remains are discovered. Drawing from her husband’s profession as an archaeologist, as well as her aunt’s knowledge and experience from living on the Norfolk coast, the Galloway series is full of real archeological details mixed with the mythology and history of the area. The series starts with The Crossing Places and includes The Janus Stone, The House at Sea’s End, A Room Full of Bones, and A Dying Fall. The sixth book in the series, The Outcast Dead, is scheduled for release in 2014.

Kendra Elliot: When Kendra first started out, she wrote contemporary romance. But when her characters ‘kept tripping over dead bodies’, she turned her hand to writing romantic suspense and hasn’t looked back. Kendra has released three novels (Hidden, Chilled, and Buried) and her fourth, Alone, will be released in January of 2014. A dental hygienist with a love of forensics, she turned her own knowledge and talents into her protagonist Lacey Campbell, a forensic odontologist in Hidden. Kendra is also a regular contributor to the wonderful Murder She Writes blog.

Sarah Shaber: Sarah won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery Award for the first novel in her Simon Shaw series, Simon Says. The series follows the adventures of Simon, a professor and forensic historian, through a series of historical murders in Snipe Hunt, The Fugitive King, The Bug Funeral, and Shell Game. Her newest historical suspense series stars Louise Pearlie as a young widow, working during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in Washington D.C. Louise’s story starts in Louise’s War and continues in Louise’s Gamble. The third book in the series, Louise’s Dilemma, will release in November 2013.

And then there’s me—I’ll be holding down the forensic anthropology and biological sciences end of the discussion.

I’m very much looking forward to meeting these talented ladies in person and sharing some discussion around forensics and writing within the genre of crime fiction. For any readers attending, we’ll be in room 2 at 2:40pm on Thursday and would love to see you there!

Photo credit: Jason Paris

Publishing News and a Cover Reveal!

It’s been a fun week for publishing news for Ann and me. First of all, we’re very happy to announce that DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is now available in Kindle format. There have been a lot of readers who were waiting for this, so we’re pleased that the novel is available for a cheap and cheerful $3.19, perfect for giving a new series a spin if you haven’t tried us out yet. The Kindle version is available here: Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #1: DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT.

The e-novella that follows the first series installment will release this fall. As several of you have asked for more information about it, I wanted to include its blurb here:

Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #2: NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL (November 2013)

Only the joint forces of science and law enforcement can help when a young woman is found brutally murdered with her identity erased.

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott and forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell come together to solve their second case when the remains of a young woman are found, thrown away like garbage at a local landfill. But what seems straightforward becomes something much more sinister when the victim’s bone damage reveals a shocking history of abuse. It will take reliving the horrors of Matt’s military background, all the team’s forensic skills, and Leigh’s intuition combined for them to catch the killer and give the victim the justice she deserves.

And now we move to our other big news of the day. This past week we got our first peek at the cover for A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. Thanks to the Five Star team and the designers at ENC for once again creating a cover that encapsulates the story’s basic themes:

Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #3: A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH (May 2014)

At Halloween, Salem, Massachusetts, is a hot spot for Witch and tourist alike. But when a murder spree begins, a cop and scientist must team up to find the killer before a media circus unleashes, panic ensues, and more victims are killed.

Forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell and Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott are called in to investigate burned remains following a fire in a historic antique shop. As Matt, Leigh and their team of graduate students investigate the death, clues point to Salem's traditional Witchcraft community. However, having dabbled in the Craft as a teenager, Leigh is skeptical that someone who has sworn an oath of good to all and harm to none would commit premeditated murder, let alone kill in such a vicious way.

A second body is found in a similar fire and the team begins to suspect that coven members are being framed. Now they must solve the murders before 100,000 tourists overrun Salem for what could be the deadliest Halloween of their lives.

Next week I’ll be preparing to attend Bouchercon, so I’ll be highlighting the forensics panel I’ll be on and the authors who will be participating with me. See you then!

The Trials of a Debut Author

Ann and I have been watching the hullaballoo surrounding J.K. Rowling’s surprise mystery debut The Cuckoo’s Calling with great interest. Debut authors ourselves at the very same time as ‘Mr. Galbraith’s’ release, we know very well how hard it is for a new author to make a name for themselves. Mr. Galbraith’s journey from a small print run and near obscurity to Ms. Rowling’s stardom and selling power is a stunning example of how publishing is often not about the product, but the name behind it.

This is not a slight against The Cuckoo’s Calling. The book received very favourable early reviews, and yet this book and its unknown author still couldn’t find traction in the market. It sold to only very modest numbers in the U.K. and North America in the first three months following its release.

Of course, all that changed the moment Robert Galbraith’s real identity was leaked, revealing that the author was actually Ms. Rowling. Suddenly a 300,000 copy print run was ordered for a book that sold less than 10,000 copies in all formats combined before the secret broke. Had the book itself changed? Not at all, simply the name behind it. But that made all the difference in the world.

Series tend to gather steam as they grow. When Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb, published the very first ‘In Death’ book, it wasn’t a huge event. She was an unknown author writing a combination of science fiction, police procedural, and romantic suspense. But as additional series instalments were published, more and more fans came on board. I discovered the series (currently standing at 36 books) when there were only several books out and have been an avid reader ever since. But it wasn’t until the release of the twelfth book that it was revealed that J.D. Robb was actually blockbuster author Nora Roberts. Her pseudonym was created because Roberts’ prolific writing made it difficult for Putnam to keep up with her content production, meshed with Roberts’ own desire to take her writing in a different direction. Thus, J.D. Robb was born.

One can’t blame Ms. Rowling for trying to make a fresh start. When she first began the Harry Potter series, she was a complete unknown. In fact, it wasn’t until the fourth book in the series—Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—was released that the phenomenon of Harry Potter really caught on worldwide. From that point on, the expectations and the hysteria around each new release grew exponentially. When the Potter series finally ended, the expectations around Ms. Rowling’s next book were impossible to satisfy, and, inevitably, The Casual Vacancy was met with mixed reviews. I can certainly understand why Ms. Rowling wanted to start from scratch, being able to write simply for the joy of it once again and not under the pressure of unrealistic expectations. Her intention was to publish at least several books in the series, building a fan base for Mr. Galbraith before she went public with the truth about her pseudonym. For the brief span of a few months, she achieved that goal. But the cat is out of the bag for good now, at least as far as Robert Galbraith is concerned.

The reality of the publishing world is that if you don’t write in one of the current ‘hot’ genres or categories, it can be very hard to make a splash, excellent product or not. As an unknown, it can be hard to get authors to blurb your book, and unless you are with a large house, the majority of your publicity is left to you—Mr. Galbraith was not with a small house, and still it appears he only had limited support. This series of events also shines a light on how even an excellent book struggles to find an audience in amongst the multitude of releases around it. It’s simply the truth of the business.

Ann and I are practical about building a career. We’re in it for the long haul, not for the flash-in-the-pan, so we’re satisfied to build our series with regular releases as we build our fan base. It’s certainly a realistic lesson for all debut authors about the challenges ahead of them, but forewarned is forearmed, and good things come to those who wait.