This was a bit of advice offered to fledgling writers by author John Katzenbach at the 2007 New England Crime Bake held November 10-11 in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Crime Bake, held annually, is one of the smaller mystery conferences. Its programs are geared more towards writers than fans, but that didn’t stop this fan from having a good time.
Katzenbach shared a Constructing Character panel with Sarah Graves, author of the popular Home Repair is Homicide series, and award winner Julia Spencer-Fleming.
Guest of honor Lee Child was on an Action & Suspense panel and he explained that writing good suspense fiction is as simple as asking a question and then delaying the answer, much like in television drama, where the “question” is asked and then there is a commercial break and you have to stay tuned in to find out what the answer is.
Of course, in a book you have to sustain the suspense for several hundred pages …
Good news for Mr. Child’s fans. Jack Reacher returns in June, 2008 in his twelfth book, Nothing to Lose.
I enjoyed hearing Connecticut author Justin Scott talk about how he came up with the idea for his next Ben Abbott mystery, Mausoleum. He happened across a website selling mausoleums for half a million dollars and was wickedly delighted to realize that people can take the same crassness they have in life (as evidenced in his last book McMansion) right along with them into the afterlife.
I also sat in on a talk on blogging – always eager for a chance to show mine off – which was given by Sarah Weinmann, who pioneered the form with her mystery blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.
Confessions has all of the latest news (she posts nearly every day) about authors, the publishing world, and all manner of things of interest to the mystery reading and writing community.
The next conference coming up is Malice Domestic – one of the larger ones – which will be held April 25-27 in Arlington, Virginia.
Peter Lovesey, one of my all-time favorites, will be a guest of honor along with Lindsey Davis and Charlaine Harris. It should be fan-tastic!