SLEUTHFEST 2025

Sleuthfest, a conference for mystery, thriller, and suspense fiction writers, was postponed because of bad weather (hurricane!), but here's the new date: May 15-18, 2025. Don't miss this fun conference!

Click here to register. 

Bad Monkey: Apple TV+ series

Bad Monkey is now on AppleTV. I've seen the first two episodes, and I thought they were great -- intense, quirky, funny--just like Carl Hiassen's mystery on which the series is based. Apple’s comedy Bad Monkey stars and is executive produced byVince Vaughn with executive producer Bill Lawrence. It's a 10-episode series with the first two episodes available now. New episodes will drop every Wednesday through October 9.

Bad Monkey is the story of Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), who has been bounced from the Miami Police Department and is now a health inspector in the Florida Keys. But after stumbling upon a case that begins with a human arm fished up by tourists, he realizes that if he can prove murder, he’ll be back in. He just needs to get past a trove of Floridian oddballs and one bad monkey. And, it goes from there. The humor isn't for everyone, but I'm a huge fan of Carl Hiassen, so it is for me. 

Let me know what you think. 

 

 

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore is closing

Sad News! Murder on the Beach, a mainstay in the mystery community, has announced that it will be closing its doors in April. I was lucky to visit this bookstore (in its former location) several years ago. So many wonderful writers and readers have passed through their doors. Wishing everyone the best as they pursue new endeavors.

Announcement from Murder on the Beach:

After 25 Years in South Florida, we sadly announce that Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore will be going out of business as of April 15, 2022.

 

Although we have tried our best to keep the store alive, Covid and its aftermath have done us in. Joanne and Cheryl will move on to other things, and Stacey will be working for Book Wise.

 

Thank you to all our customers, friends and authors who have supported and helped us over the years. Twenty five years is a good run, and we have enjoyed every minute of it. Our only regret is we never got to give a big party for our 25th anniversary 2 months ago!

 

Thank you all for everything! Come to see us before April 15.

 

Joanne, Stacey, Stephanie, Cheryl, Jay, Sue.

SLEUTHFEST 2018

SleuthFest 2018 Writers Conference: March 1-4, 2018, Boca Raton, Florida, hosted by Mystery Writers of America’s Florida Chapter.

SleuthFest is an intensive four-day conference featuring writing workshops, social events, and pitch sessions. SleuthFest includes four tracks of workshops, presentations, and panels on the craft of writing, business, traditional and self-publishing, marketing, and forensics. In addition, top literary agents and editors will be available to hear pitches from aspiring writers, offer troubleshooting sessions, and manuscript critiques.

SleuthFest also features the annual Freddie Awards for Writing Excellence and the SleuthFest Author Auction, where attendees can bid on such once-in-a-lifetime experiences as one-on-one sessions, critiques, and character naming opportunities featuring the conference’s guests of honor, agents, and editors.

SleuthFest 2018 features an incredible line-up of guests and events: Keynote Speaker Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author of The Blue Zone, The Dark Tide, and WWII novels, The One Man and The Saboteur, will present “History as a Thriller Backdrop”, a presentation about how to best use which elements of history to immerse the reader in the story and his Keynote talk, 'Career Transitions-Meeting the Challenge of Change.” Renowned forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D., will lead a workshop on 'Integrating Forensic Research Into Fiction'; a presentation on 'Talking to Serial Killers’, and an additional presentation, 'A Discussion and Demonstration of Hypnosis - How to Use Hypnosis As A Tool For Your Sleuth', with certified hypnotist, Glenn Miller.

Additionally, SleuthFest 2018 features an outstanding lineup of Award-Winning Guest Authors delivering not-be-missed presentations: including: Hallie Ephron: 'The Grand Finale - Writing the Final Climax' and 'You're Giving Me the Creeps - Getting the Right Amount of Creep Factor'; Hank Phillippi Ryan: 'Write a Mystery or Thriller in an Hour' and 'Starting With Wow - The Crucial First Chapter'; Kristy Montee (PJ Parrish): 'Let Them Breathe - How to Pace Your Novel' and 'Villainous Thoughts - Getting Into the Head of Your Antagonist'; and James R. Benn: 'Show Me - Learn About Show Vs. Tell' and 'Stranger in a Strange Land - How to Write the Unfamiliar.'

SleuthFest affords writers a unique opportunity to connect with industry insiders, writers, and publishing professionals.

To Register: www.sleuthfest.com. Space is limited. SleuthFest conference attendees who book a hotel room at the Embassy Suites, Boca Raton, before January 28, 2018 will receive a discounted group hotel rate of $185/night plus tax.

For more information please contact SleuthFest 2018 Co-Chairs Victoria Landis victoria@landisdesignresource.com 561-716-3481 or Michael Joy author.mljoy@hotmail.com.

Sleuthfest Writers Conference

SleuthFest 2017 Announces Special Programming Geared Towards Helping Writers Succeed:

Mystery Writers of America’s Florida Chapter will host SleuthFest 2017 Writers Conference February 23-26, 2017 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton in Boca Raton, Florida.

SleuthFest is an intensive four day conference featuring writing workshops, social events, and pitch sessions. SleuthFest includes four tracks of workshops, presentations, and panels on the craft of writing, business, traditional and self-publishing, marketing, and forensics. In addition, top literary agents and editors will be available to hear pitches from aspiring writers, offer troubleshooting sessions, and manuscript critiques.

SleuthFest 2017 line-up of guests and events:

Special guests include Keynote Speaker David Baldacci; Forensic Guest of Honor Dr. Vincent Di Maio, legendary publisher Neil Nyren, and special Guest Authors Jeff Lindsay, Reed Farrel Coleman, SJ Rozan, Jane Cleland, and Jess Lourey.
Renowned Forensics experts, including Forensic Guest of Honor, Dr. Vincent DiMaio, will host an in-depth examination of the Black Dahlia case from 1940s Los Angeles. 

Auction items include:  A signed book and 15-page critique from Hallie Ephron; a half-hour private conversation in the bar with Dexter (Jeff Lindsay); the chance to have a character named for you in the next Robert B. Parker Jesse Stone book by Reed Farrel Coleman, and so much more.

Fiction University guru and author of the bestselling guides, Planning Your Novel & Revising Your Novel, Janice Hardy will be present a workshop on writing for the Young Adult and Middle Grade readers. Learn what the differences are in plotting, pacing, character, and dialogue.

To Register:  www.sleuthfest.com. Space is limited.
For more information please contact SleuthFest 2017 Co-chairs: Joanne Sinchuk  murdermb@gate.net or Victoria Landis  victoria@landisdesignresource.com

Sleuthfest: February 23-26, 2017

Mystery Writers of America’s Florida Chapter announces Sleuthfest 2017 Writers Conference:  February 23-26, 2017  in Boca Raton, Florida

Sleuthfest is an intensive four day writers conference featuring writing workshops, social events, and pitch sessions. SleuthFest includes four tracks of workshops, presentations, and panels on the craft of writing, business, traditional and self-publishing, marketing, and forensics. In addition, top literary agents and editors will be available to hear pitches from aspiring writers, offer troubleshooting sessions, and manuscript critiques.

The 2017 SleuthFest Writers Conference features a host of authors and industry insiders, including Keynote Speaker David Baldacci; Forensic Guest of Honor Dr. Vincent Di Maio, publisher Neil Nyren, and special guest authors, including Jeff Lindsay, Reed Farrel Coleman, SJ Rozan, Joe Lansdale, and Jane Cleland.

To Register:  www.sleuthfest.com. Space is limited. For more information please contact SleuthFest 2017 Co-chairs: Joanne Sinchuk  murdermb@gate.net  561-279-7790 or Victoria Landis  victoria@landisdesignresource.com 561-716-3481

If It Can Happen, It’ll Likely Happen in Florida First: Laura Belgrave

The most recent issue of Mystery Readers Journal focused on Florida Mysteries (Volume 28:4). So many great articles. Have a look at the Table of Contents HERE. There truly is something unique about Florida, and Laura Belgrave has her take on it!

Laura Belgrave is the author of the Claudia Hershey Mystery series. When she’s not writing, she works as the social media guru for a skilled nursing facility in Florida, which she says bring its own amazing challenges. You can learn more about her at www.laurabelgrave.com

Laura Belgrave: 
If It Can Happen, It’ll Likely Happen in Florida First

If I had my way, the Florida state bird would be the chameleon, not the mockingbird. Of course, there’s a problem with that because the chameleon is a lizard and it doesn’t have wings. Yet.

I say “yet” because if there’s anything particularly outstanding about Florida, it’s the state’s ever-changing, quirky personality. That means that if anything can happen, it’s likely to happen in Florida first. After all, if you keep up with the news, then you already know Florida earned the dubious distinction of being the first place in the country where one man chewed the face off someone—and that someone was a man the attacker didn’t even know. It occurred in May 2012 and after the initial horror, the story morphed into black humor that went viral all over the web.

Florida is that kind of place: mercurial, divided between rich and poor, and altogether dynamic not for what you can expect next, but for what you can’t. Not surprisingly, I have a love-hate relationship with it and so does Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey, the protagonist of my three police procedurals.

For those of you with whom I am not yet acquainted, those mysteries are In the Spirit of Murder, Quietly Dead, and Deadly Associations. They originally appeared in hardcover and paperback, but have since found their way into downloadable ebook format for the iPad, Kindle, Nook and other places. If you’ve read any of them, then you already know my homicide detective came from Cleveland, Ohio to a central Florida town where she figured she could do better as a single parent in raising her daughter, Robin. The town wouldn’t pay as much, but murder was far less likely to occur. Right?

Here’s the thing, though: Central Florida, filled with Palmetto bugs big enough to saddle and ride, may be wildly different in appearance than the shimmery coastal areas that make for great TV, but it isn’t immune to murder. Murder is just a bit better disguised, and more cleverly buried under the kind of small-town secrets that make it tough for cops on limited budgets to adequately tackle.

Still, there are some similarities between the coastal areas and Central Florida. Some years ago the middle of the state adopted the long-held development pattern of its coastal counterparts. Yup. Developers, sensing opportunity even in the part of the state where a breeze is worth a full day of conversation, began tossing up condominiums and planned housing communities. Those changes in Central Florida had one thing in common with housing communities in the rest of the state, and that would be the ever-popular concept of the homeowners association. If you live in a community that has one, then you already know how powerful—and contentious—they can be.

That kind of friction made it impossible for me to ignore the kind of setting where a homeowner’s dispute with the association could spiral out of control. It occurs in my third novel, Deadly Associations. (Catchy title, no?) Now, I’ll admit, I had absolutely no idea what the story would be about when I started writing it. That’s just how it works for me. All I knew is that my own despairing efforts with an aquarium of fish blew an image into my head and I was off and running, dragging Hershey along with me. In my case, the fish died. In Hershey’s case, she was taken hostage.

Here’s the basic opening, straight out of Chapter One.

The water in the fish tank looked cloudy. That couldn’t be good, although most of the fish didn’t seem to mind. They glided tirelessly through the murk, occasionally darting left or right, or up or down, for no apparent reason. Maybe they were scavenging for particles of food invisible to the naked eye. That’s what the guy who owned the tank said. He said they had radar sharp as a bat foraging in the night for insects. Of course, that might not be true, because when the guy talked at all he leaped feverishly from subject to subject with no thought to connecting the dots for his audience. In a bar, it would merely be irksome and you’d sidle away. But this was the guy’s family room and it was impossible sidle anywhere, not with a gun trained at your head. 

There was a lot of tedious research in writing Deadly Associations, of course. Police procedurals demand it. Still, what mildly twisted fun I had while putting Hershey through her paces. For one thing, I got to use terms like “crinkum crankum,” which was of tremendous interest to the police chief’s nephew, a kid that for the second time the chief attached to Hershey like a pilot fish. In the chief’s mind, it might make the kid a little more savvy. Hershey didn’t see it that way. In fact, being saddled with the kid, who bears the preposterous name of Booey, was of great consternation to Hershey. Then again, much that occurs in the small town is of perpetual consternation to Hershey. That’s just her way.

Make no mistake, however. Although I enjoy plugging occasional humor into my novels, none of the books could be described as being a cozy. Then again, neither could they legitimately be described as hard boiled bogged down with detailed violence. What readers tell me is that the Claudia Hershey mysteries do embody the kind of tension that makes them hard to put down. Well, hell, that seems only fair in a state where tension on so very many levels gives Florida its distinction as being one of the most strangely remarkable states in the country.

Now, having said that, really, please don’t make the mistake of believing that all of that distinction comes from the glittery coastal areas. Huh-uh. In fact, the next time you visit, take some time to swing through the central areas. You’ll see the old and the new. You’ll see agriculture and cows. See if you don’t agree that where the old and new meet, collisions are bound to appear. If you aren’t sure, just ask Claudia Hershey. Ask her, too, about the eventual possibility of a flying chameleon.

This is Florida. You never know.