Bouchercon 2022 Minneapolis: Land of 10,000 Crimes!

Minneapolis Sept. 8-11, 2022.

Guests of Honor and Interviewees

LOU BERNEY interviewed by KATRIONA HOLM 

SA COSBY interviewed by DENNIS LEHANE 

ELLEN HART interviewed by WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER 

WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER interviewed by MINDY MEJIA 

ATTICA LOCKE interviewed by KELLYE GARRETT 

JESS LOUREY and LORI RADER-DAY interviewed by CATRIONA McPHERSON 

JO NESBO interviewed by JEFFERY DEAVER

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH interviewed by LORI RADER-DAY

Register HERE.

LEFT COAST CRIME AWARD WINNERS

2018 Left Coast Crime “Lefty” Awards

Left Coast Crime 2018, “Crime on the Comstock,”  awarded four Lefty awards at the 28th annual LCC convention at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno/Sparks, Nevada. 
The Lefty are for books published in 2017:

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel.
 Ellen Byron, A Cajun Christmas 

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bruce Alexander Memorial) for books covering events before 1960.
Rhys Bowen, In Farleigh Field 
 
Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel.
• Kellye Garrett, Hollywood Homicide 
 
Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories).
  • William Kent Krueger, Sulfur Springs 
 
The Left Coast Crime Convention is an annual event sponsored by mystery fans, both readers and authors. Usually held in the western half of North America, LCC’s intent is to host an event where readers, authors, critics, librarians, publishers, and other fans can gather in convivial surroundings to pursue their mutual interests. Lefty Awards have been given since 1996.

The 28th annual Left Coast Crime Convention took place in Reno, Nevada, March 22–25, 2018.

Left Coast Crime is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation holding annual mystery conventions in the West. Each LCC convention raises money to support a local literary organization and is staffed entirely by volunteers.

For more information on Left Coast Crime 2018, please visit http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2018/

California Crime Writers Conference

The California Crime Writers Conference is presented by the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. This is a great convention for both aspiring writers and established authors to mingle with agents and editors, to get inside information on the publishing industry, to hone skills, and revitalize your creativity.

June 10-11, 2017
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel
Los Angeles—Westside
6161 West Centinela Ave
Culver City, CA 90230

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: HALLIE EPHRON
New York Times best selling author Hallie Ephron grew up in a family of writers and a household filled with books. Her parents were Henry and Phoebe Ephron who wrote screenplays for classic movies like Carousel and Daddy Long Legs.

Hallie was the last of their four daughters (Nora, Delia, Hallie, Amy) to start writing or, as she calls it, succumb to her genes. Now Hallie writes suspense novels she hopes keep readers up nights. An Edgar Award finalist and a four-time finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, Hallie grew up in Beverly Hills where her new suspense novel, Night Night, Sleep Tight, is set. The story is inspired by Hallie’s experiences growing up there in a Hollywood family, and by an infamous Hollywood murder. Hallie's website

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER
Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota.

He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves. Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe.

His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers. Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. Windigo Island, number fourteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in August 2014 and was chosen by Amazon.com as one the best books of the year. Kent's website

NEW FACULTY MEMBERS

LAPD Detective Paul Bishop
Novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop is also a nationally recognized interrogator and behaviorist. He spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department where his high profile Special Assault Units regularly produced the highest number of detective initiated arrests and highest crime clearance rates in the city. Twice selected as LAPD’s Detective of the Year, he continues to work privately as a deception expert and as a specialist in the investigation of sex crimes.

His fifteen novels include five featuring LAPD homicide detective Fey Croaker and his latest novel, Lie Catchers, which is the first in a new series featuring top LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall. The sequel Admit Nothing is due in 2017.

AGENT JILL MARR
Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Agency, graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing and a minor in history. She has nearly 15 years of publishing experience. She wrote features and ads for Pages, the literary magazine for people who love books, and continues to write book ads for publishing houses, magazine pieces, and promotional features for television. After writing ad copy and features for published books for years, she knows how to find the "hook" and sell it.

Jill is interested in commercial fiction, with an emphasis on mysteries, thrillers, romantic suspense and horror, women's commercial fiction and historical fiction. She is looking for non-fiction projects in the areas of history, narrative non-fiction, sports, politics, current events, health & nutrition, pop culture, humor, music, and very select memoir.

AGENT DANIELLE EGAN-MILLER
Danielle Egan-Miller is president of Browne & Miller Literary Associates. Over the past 15 years as an agent, she has sold hundreds of books with a heavy emphasis on commercial adult fiction. Her roster includes several New York Times bestselling authors and numerous prize- and award-winning writers including 2014 Edgar Award winner for Best Novel, William Kent Krueger. She is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and The Authors Guild.

Conference Hotel Reservations
There are a limited number of rooms at the conference hotel at the rate of $169.00 per night. Confirm your stay by calling the hotel at 866-819-5320. Mention that you are attending the CCWC conference, June 10-11, 2017.

William Kent Krueger Literary Salon 10/6

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening Literary Salon with William Kent Krueger on Thursday, October 6, at 7 p.m. in Berkeley, CA. Please RSVP (make a comment below with your email address) for directions and to attend.

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.


Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist Cork O’Connor is the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. Krueger's work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers.
Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America for  best novel published in that year. Windigo Island, number fourteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in August 2014 and was chosen by Amazon.com as one the best books of the year.

Left Coast Crime 2014: Calamari Crime

What a terrific convention! The 24th Left Coast Crime Convention is being held in beautiful Monterey, CA this year! The weather is beautiful, the panels and interviews are exciting, and the  people are great!

I decided to post photos today!  I'll post a summary when I get back...or if I find any time while I'm here!

Monterey Bay

Seagull waiting to Register for LCC

Authors Catriona McPherson & Rhys Bowen

Award Nominees: Louise Penny, Catriona McPherson, Jeff Siger, Lisa Brackmann

Authors Tim Hallinan & Lisa Brackmann

Award winner William Kent Krueger

G is for Guest: Sue Grafton

Sunrise on another day at Left Coast Crime!

William Kent Krueger interviewed by Craig Johnson

Continuing our At Home Online interviews: Author to Author to Author, Craig Johnson interviews William Kent Krueger. Next up Craig Johnson will be interviewed by an author of his choice.

William Kent Krueger is a multi award-winning American author and crime writer, best known for his Cork O'Connor series of books, mainly set in Minnesota. Krueger's stories always include an element of life in and around native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor, is part Irish, part Ojibwe.

CJ: In the newest edition of your series, you spend a sizable amount of time in Wyoming rather than your own Minnesota. What effect did that have on the process of writing your new book, Heaven’s Keep?

WKK: None. But the research was a blast. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Wyoming—the state of my birth, as a matter of fact—and it was fun to look at it from a different perspective, one that required I take particular note of the physical geography. What a beautiful place that state is. And unpopulated. Which is very enticing, especially when you consider that isolating characters in the wild is a great way to create suspense.

CJ: You put your protagonist through a great deal of torture through the potential loss of his wife, Jo. Do you enjoy writing characters on their emotional frontiers?

WKK: Emotional frontiers? You must have an advanced college degree. Every story, to be compelling, demands tension. And despite the fact that we work in a genre that general gets a lot of mileage out of putting people in jeopardy, I think it’s really the emotional dynamics that drive readers’ interest. I also think that characters reveal themselves most fully and most compellingly when their nerves are frayed and their deepest fears surface. I love Walt Longmire, for example, not because he cuts a dashing, daring image (unlike his creator), but because I know him and trust him emotionally, and I care about what happens to him and to the people he loves. I hope the same is true for those readers who enjoy Cork O’Connor.

CJ: Your usual stomping grounds are among the Ojibwa, comparatively, how was it dealing with the Plains Indian tribes of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and others?
WKK: I approached the Arapaho, who play an important part in Heaven’s Keep, in the same way I’ve always approached the Ojibwe (Anishinaabeg) in my neck of the woods. That is, as human beings first, and as a culture second. What I mean is that Indians and whites are more alike than they are different. We hope and fear and love and hate and couple and fight in pretty much the same ways. We have moral compasses that guide us. And these days, we all eat at McDonalds. But each culture—Finn, Irish, Ojibwe, Arapaho—has certain cultural trappings that are unique, and a hierarchy of values that may be in a different order from the others. I did a good deal of research on the Arapaho, and talked with a lot of folks on and off the rez when I was in Wyoming. Christ, I just hope I got it right.

CJ: Do you consider yourself a regional author, or do you believe that Cork and crew are more indicative of a universality of the human condition?

WKK: I’m a regionalist first and foremost. That said, I think the best regional writers—the best writers, period—create stories of universal appeal about the universal condition.

CJ: I must say that one of my favorite authors was and is Tony Hillerman because of his innate understanding of Native Americans including pacing, in which you are the only writer currently capable of this same feat. So when were your German ancestors kidnapped by Indians?

WKK: I appreciate your estimation of my understanding of the Ojibwe culture. But I think there are a lot of writers out there who are doing a great job with other tribal groups. Margaret Coel, with the Wind River people in Wyoming, for example. Or Dana Stabenow, with the Aleut in Alaska. James Doss, the Thurlos, Jean Hager—the list is long, and all of us owe a incredible debt to Tony Hillerman. My German ancestors were bootleggers, so probably they contributed to the downfall of America’s indigenous population.

CJ: “Cork put his arms around his son and looked toward the mountains. Up there the snow was already falling heavy, burying everything more deeply. Beneath it, the grass and flowers of the meadows would lie dormant until spring, when they would rise again. Beneath it, animals lay curled in holes and in mountain caves where they would sleep through the dark, cold months ahead, and wake in the spring. And beneath it somewhere, God alone knew where, lay Jo, who would neither wake nor rise.” (P. 127) –Its passages like this in Heaven’s Keep that make other mystery authors want to plant exploding devices in your tires and sabotage your flights. Care to comment?

WKK: You do know how to sweet talk a guy. It’s passages like this—I worked on this one for a very long time—that make the writing both a marvelous challenge and an overwhelming pleasure.

CJ: On page 141 Cork makes the comment that, “Some men behave differently when they’re away from their families”, and on page 184 another character says, “Hard telling how a man behaves away from home”. Umm… This begs the question, what are you like on the road, Kent ?

WKK: A hellion. I never met a roadhouse I didn’t like. Actually, I’m pretty staid. Although at conferences I love to hang out in the bar after the work of the day is done, I don’t hang out as late as I used to. Which reminds me, don’t you owe me a drink?

CJ: What do you consider your books to be, police procedurals, classical mysteries or literary whodunits for people that are so entranced by the story that by the time they get to the end don’t give a damn about whodunit?

WKK: I hope that by the time they close the book people don’t give a damn about whodunit, because honestly most readers are smart enough to have figured that part out long before the end. So I pray that I write a compelling narrative in all regards—with powerful language, intriguing characters, dynamic tension, great setting, etc. Some of my favorite writers in this genre are people whose books don’t quite fit a niche, but who write one hell of a great story. Like you, for example.

CJ? Some of my favorite descriptive passages in your novels usually have to do with water, so in what way has living in the land of ten thousand lakes affected your writing?
WKK: I’m a water sign, and I’ve always been drawn to water. I’m really grateful that I can set my stories in a place where water in so many forms—rivers, lakes, streams, rain—helps to define the landscape. I’d be screwed if I lived in Arizona.

CJ: Do you drink a Leinenkugel’s Creamy Dark beer every once in a while just for ‘sense memory’ purposes?

WKK: Honest to god, it’s my beer of choice, particularly in winter. In summer, I go with a regular Leinies.

CJ: In the opening of Heaven’s Keep Cork is no longer a standing sheriff, how has this change in context affected the novels?

WKK: Cork’s been and out of uniform a lot. I’ve finally had him put the badge away for good—although the tension between him and Jo at the beginning of Heaven’s Keep is due to the possibility that Cork might take a job as deputy. In our genre, as you well know, you have to have a believable motivation for your protagonist’s involvement. In your case, Walt is a sheriff. His interest is understandable. In order to believably involve Cork in things, I’ve made him a PI. That said, his involvement in the intrigue at the heart of Heaven’s Keep is profoundly personal. When I look at all the books in the series, that’s what I keep coming back to. Even when Cork was sheriff, his involvement was very personal because often the safety of people he cares about was at issue. So that will probably continue to be the case. Until, I guess, everyone Cork cares about is dead.

CJ: How would you say the arc of story differs in a series as opposed to a singular novel, and after this impacting episode, where does Cork O’Conner go from here?

WKK: In any series in which the characters age, there’s story arc. That’s one of the things I love about a series, watching how time and circumstance shape people I’ve come to know as well as I know my own family and friends. Cork’s story has played out over about eight years of his life now. His children have grown and are departing for their own lives Cork has to deal with his own aging and the changes in his circumstance. It’s a broad canvas we get to paint on, and in my case, I just see it extending blank into the future, waiting for me to imagine what will fill it. As for Cork, to know where he’s headed, you’ll have to read the next book in the series, Vermilion Drift, which should be out in the fall of 2010.

Hey, buddy, I just want to say thanks. These were great, thoughtful questions. But I wasn’t kidding about that drink you owe me.