Chemical Weapons give New Thriller Immediacy

The history of my new thriller involving the theft of Soviet Army nerve gas has an interesting twist. It was written back in the early nineties and accepted by a large New York agency that let it sit on the shelf for a couple of years. Why? I have no clue. After changes in the agency's management, the book was submitted to editors. I only saw one rejection letter, which came from Tor-Forge. The editor liked the book but said it was "dated." The irony is that his comments came about the time of the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in May of 1995. If the manuscript had been sold in the first year the agency accepted it, the book would have been published about the time of the sarin attack.

Fast forward eighteen years. After languishing on my office floor for eons, I re-edited and revised the manuscripts of my Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy. Night Shadows Press published the first two as ebooks, then paperbacks. The third, Overture to Disaster (click to view), has just been released for the Kindle. It appears in the midst of the widespread news coverage of a sarin gas attack on civilians in Syria. A different twist on history repeating itself.

The "political" slant of the book came from my reading of Gary Allen and Larry Abraham, whose conspiracy theories dwelt on the New World Order. I created the Foreign Affairs Roundtable (FAR) and Council of Lyon to mirror the organizations Allen and Abraham accused of being shadow groups behind efforts to create a New World Order.

Their writing claimed that international bankers helped finance the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union over the years. I quote the FAR president as sharing their view that there was never any credible threat of a Soviet military strike against the West. He insisted "The top communists were not about to bite off the handouts that were feeding them. Gorbachev, good soldier that he was, had fought to the end to preserve the status quo. His big problem lay in his outmoded economy that was sinking of its own dead weight. He had just about worked out a method of holding the union together when that group of dull-witted underlings had staged their amateur coup."

This led the FAR to support a dissident group of hardliners with plans to reorganize the former Soviet republics into a new socialist government the one worlders could more easily deal with. What they didn't realize was the depths to which the plotters would go to keep the U.S. President out of the picture. The three principal characters in Overture to Disaster find themselves the only hope of thwarting the use of nerve agents against a large crowd.

Read more on my website.

Post Cold War Trilogy Background

By Chester Campbell

When I first wrote my post Cold War political thriller trilogy back in the early nineties, I had a character who, as a young man, had been led off course by a charismatic leader who then rejected him as a failure. I wanted to show how his courage and determination overcame the stigma of that experience and allowed him to regain his self-respect. It had to play out against the backdrop of tensions that remained in the aftermath of the Cold War.

For years I had devoured Cold War spy stories like a chocoholic with a plate of brownies. I supplemented my novel reading with a steady supply of books on the KGB, the CIA, and figures like the famous British-born Soviet spy, Kim Philby. By the time I took up novel writing, I was well-versed in the field of espionage. I also kept up with events in the Soviet Union and what occurred when it was dissolved and the Commonwealth of Independent States came into being.

The central character, Burke Hill, faces one crisis after another in Beware the Jabberwock, the first book in the trilogy. A former FBI agent, he has the moxie to tangle with rogue elements on both sides of the old Iron Curtain. Rather than have him battle the odds alone, however, I created a sharp, talented, independent young woman to share the journey, his old CIA pal's daughter, Lorelei Quinn. She provides additional incentive for Burke when the bad guys target her as a way of getting to him.

The second book, The Poksu Conspiracy, finds Burke working as director of clandestine activities for a PR firm that's a CIA spinoff. I continued to develop his character as a tough, uncompromising intelligence agent. Lori Quinn, now Mrs. Burke Hill, remains in the background, pregnant with twins. As with the first book, I spent almost as much effort creating the bad guys as I did the good ones. I gave them full backgrounds and valid reasons for acting as they did.

When it came to book three, Overture to Disaster, I had a different idea. Instead of starting the story with Burke Hill, I came up with two widely different characters on opposite sides of the world, both tormented by painful experiences from the past. I used my Air Force background and a lot of additional research to create Special Operations helicopter pilot Col. Roddy Rodman. His counterpart in the east was Chief Investigator Yuri Shumakov with the Minsk, Belarus city prosecutor.

Rodman was court-martialed for an error that resulted in his helicopter being shot down over Iran, with everyone aboard killed except the two pilots. While working to learn how his brother, a Soviet Army captain, was killed, Shumakov is falsely accused of murder. The two characters' paths cross in Mexico where they discover they're both looking for the same person. That's where Burke Hill comes into the picture as he joins forces with the other two men.

If you're a fan of conspiracy theories, you'll love Overture. Behind the plot is a shadowy group of international bankers and corporate socialists. It will be out as an ebook on Amazon in a couple of weeks.

Visit me at Mystery Mania

Taking on a Conspiracy Theory

By Chester Campbell

Back in the early nineties, I subscribed to a financial newsletter by Larry Abraham, who headed an international investment house based in Panama. One of his pet subjects was the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group. He and Gary Allen wrote a book in 1972 titled None Dare Cal it Conspiracy. It was revised in 1985 with the title Call It Conspiracy. The book detailed his studies of the CFR and his belief that its leadership, including heads of major corporations and financial institutions, used their influence to set the agenda for the government and the economy. The Bilderberg Group, including wealthy bankers and corporate leaders from around the world, acted in concert on an international scale.

When I tackled my third book in the Post Cold War political thriller series around 1993, I cloned Abraham's theories into organizations I called the Foreign Affairs Roundtable and the Council of Lyon. The Council was named for the city where it first met, as the Bilderberg Group took its name from the hotel where it met first in the Netherlands.

Abraham said the groups involved an aristocracy of the financial elite. He said the multinational bankers had supported Lenin's Bolshevik revolution and provided loans that funded building of the Soviet empire. I used this idea in the book.

After the demise of the Cold War, dissident factions in the old Soviet Union tried to re-assert their influence and regain the power they had lost. I built the plot of Overture to Disaster around such a group seeking to undermine the work of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, formed from the former Soviet republics.

The story follows parallel plot lines, one that begins in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the other in Washington, DC where an operation is under way to remove a dissident from Iran using an Air Force special operations helicopter. The lines come together in Mexico when a Belarussian investigator meets the pilot of the doomed helicopter.

I hope to have the book available after the first of the year as an ebook for the Kindle. The conspiracy gets deadly before the end of the tale.

Chester Campbell

Visit me at Mystery Mania

The Fear Artist Is an Award Winner

By Chester Campbell

Tim Hallinan is my favorite thriller author. His Poke Rafferty series hits you at the gut level. The characters are a diverse lot that will tug at your heartstrings, make you laugh, absolutely infuriate you, and bring about a dozen other feelings. But they'll remain indelibly impressed on your mind. The stories take you into the heart of Bangkok's seamy side and keep you on the edge of your seat as Poke tangles with a succession of bad guys. I just finished the fifth book in the series, The Fear Artist.

With Poke's Thai wife, Rose, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, visiting Rose's mother in the north of the country, Poke is ready to repaint their house when he collides with a man who dies of gunshots in his arms. The man utters a woman's name and a U.S. city before dying. This makes Rafferty a person a great interest to Thai secret agents who want to know his connection to the dead man and what he was told.

Poke winds up on the run from the police and an American named Murphy who is working with them. In an effort to find out what he's up against, Poke seeks out a motley group of former spies who inhabit one of Bangkok's offbeat  bars. He learns he's been caught on the fringes of the War on Terror being masterminded by Murphy, a man who was involved in the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. He's the most sadistic, unprincipled character I've run across in ages.

Like all of Hallinan's books, The Fear Artist delves deeply into the rationale behind the characters' actions. He brings back Poke's half-Chinese half-sister, a sharp-witted, quick-acting teenager, and his best friend Arthit, a Bangkok policeman, who he unhappily deceives. Poke, an expatriate American, expresses a lot of angst at his home country's actions involving the War on Terror and treatment of ordinary citizens, but he is no less critical of his adopted country's policies.

Two Vietnamese women, one with leftover wounds from the war in the sixties and seventies, and a mistreated waif of a girl, a daughter of Murphy's, are particularly poignant characters. The ex-Russian spy Vladimir lends some comic relief to the story.

The Fear Artist, check it out here, should win some awards.

Visit me at Mystery Mania

Free Books - an Amazon Promo

By Chester Campbell

When Amazon first announced its KDP Select program, it looked like another effort of the 800-pound gorilla to throw its weight around. I had all of my mysteries set up on Amazon for the Kindle and at Smashwords for all the other ebook formats. The key to Amazon's program is the requirement that you make the book exclusive to the Kindle for 90 days.

The kicker to the deal is that the book is available in the Kindle Owners Lending Library. Amazon currently puts up a kitty of $600,000 a month to be divided among authors whose books were borrowed from the library. The kitty is divided by the total of books borrowed, and each author gets that amount times the number of his or her books checked out. According to the KDP Select FAQ, each book earned $1.70 per borrow in a prior month.  It isn't as much as the 70 percent royalty, but it isn't bad.

Only members of Amazon Prime can borrow books, and they're restricted to one per month. It costs $79 to be a Prime member, but you get other benefits like free two-day shipping on your puchases.

When I finished revising and getting my first Post Cold War thriller edited and ready for publication, I decided to try the KDP Select deal. I know several authors who have done well in the program. One of its features is the ability to make the book free for five days during the 90-day period. It's a good way to get word out on the book and encourage reviews. So here's the deal:

Today (April 27) and tomorrow (April 28), you can get a free Kindle ebook by going to this link: Beware the Jabberwock.

The book is set in the fall of 1991 and spring of 1992. As the Cold War winds down, former enemies on both sides of the Iron Curtain plot to retain power with a deadly stroke against top world leaders. Telephone intercepts hint at its existence. Veteran CIA spook Cameron Quinn finds it necessary to recruit an old FBI friend to assist in his investigation. Burke Hill, still trying to live down his dismissal by J. Edgar Hoover years ago, travels from Tel Aviv to Hong Kong and soon finds himself unable to trust anyone. He and Quinn's daughter, Lori, face one trap after another as they put the pieces of Operation Jabberwock together and find they're fighting against the clock to stop the slaughter.

Pick up your free ebook today or tomorrow and put a review on Amazon.

Review: The Queen of Patpong

Review by Beth Terrell

A few years ago, I passed a rack of discounted hardback books. One captured my attention. The title, A Nail Through the Heart, was evocative; the cover was attractive; and I had just read a post by the author, Timothy Hallinan, on DorothyL, a newslist for mystery lovers. Wanting to support a fellow DL-er, I picked it up and read a few lines. They were good. Very good. So, I bought it, beginning a long-term love affair with Hallinan's series of beautifully written thrillers set in Bangkok and featuring "rough travel writer" Poke Rafferty. Poke writes travel books for people who want to experience the parts of the world not included on the usual lists of tourist destinations. Some of those parts are a little seedy, a little gritty, and a little dangerous. When he arrives in Bangkok to research a new book, he falls in love with Thailand, the Thai people--and with Rose, a beautiful bar dancer in the red-light district of Patpong. Together, they rescue and adopt Miaow, a street child who struggles to reconcile her love for her adoptive parents with her shame about her roots and about Rose's former profession.

In the fourth book in the series, The Queen of Patpong, as Poke, Rose, and Miaow are dining at a favorite restaurant when Rose "drops her fork with a clatter on top of her cup, which tips over and spreads coffee across the tablecloth." A man approaches the table, someone who knew Rose when she was a dancer. After threatening her and her family, he swaggers away, and Rose tells Poke that the man is someone she thought--and had hoped--she'd killed.

With the help of a menacing partner, the stranger begins a cat-and-mouse game clearly intended to end with Rose's death--and the deaths of her loved ones. Hallinan plays out the plot masterfully, juxtaposing the elements of a tense, modern-day thriller with a sensitive exploration of Rose's past and her transformation from an awkward village girl nicknamed "Stork" to the strong, confident woman she has become.

Much of the book takes place in the past, beginning with Rose's discovery that, although her father has accepted money from her teacher to keep her at home and in school, he has also sold her to someone in the sex trade. She escapes this all-too-common situation with the help of Nana, a former village girl turned bar dancer. Nana also "sells" her, but into a more benevolent system.

Hallinan balances the various elements of this book perfectly. The tension is high throughout. The moral message is both powerful and subtle. Poke's determination to save both the lives and the emotional fabric of his family engages the reader from beginning to end, and the portrayal of Rose is pitch-perfect--thoughtful, insightful, and always authentic.

If you've already fallen in love with Timothy Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series, The Queen of Patpong will cement your loyalty. If you haven't...it's probably because you haven't read him.

Sarin Gas Attack Stirs Memories

By Chester Campbell

In Dr. Doug Lyle's The Writers Forensics Blog last Saturday, he wrote about the terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway on that date (March 20) in 1995 using sarin gas. It was headline news fifteen years ago as the first case of a CBW (chemical and biological warfare) agent being used in a major city.

The blog brought back memories for me of what might have been. I started writing end-of-Cold-War spy thrillers when I retired. I finished the first one in 1990, the second in 1991, and the third in 1992. Book three brought me a contract with a well-known New York agency. It was the last of a trilogy featuring Burke Hill, a former FBI agent who runs an international PR agency that's a CIA front.

In this book, which has the working title Overture to Disaster, Burke doesn't appear until midway through the plot. It starts out in the Ukraine just before the demise of the Soviet Union. A group of KGB officers steal several mortar shells filled with nerve gas from an army unit, killing a young army captain from Minsk.

At about the same time, a USAF special operations mission to extract a defector from Iran goes bad and the helicopter pilot is falsely accused of responsibility. He is court-martialed and discharged.

The story picks up a couple of years later with the murdered captain's brother, a chief investigator with the police in Minsk, the Belarus capital. He uncovers a plot by the ousted KGB officers to organize dissidents in the new Commonwealth of Independent States, a move designed to usher in a new Soviet-type state. Knowing the U.S. is committed to supporting the independence of the former Soviet republics, the plotters plan a diversion to keep the Americans occupied at home.

A team of Shining Path guerillas is trained in Mexico, where the former Air Force helicopter pilot now lives. This is where Burke Hill joins the story. It all winds up on the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., where the nerve-gas shells make their appearance.

The agency let the manuscript gather dust on the shelf for a couple of years. When it finally went out, a Tor-Forge editor liked the story but said it was dated. What makes it so sad is that if they had found a publisher early on, the book would have come out about the time of the Tokyo subway incident Dr. Lyle wrote about. With that hook, the book could have really taken off.

Maybe (probably) I'm dreaming, but it just goes to show how the luck of timing enters into this peculiar business. I pulled up the the manuscript today (I still have all my old unpublished stories in the computer) and I still think it's a great story. I think I'll do a little revising and try it again.

Maybe my luck will change this time around. And the title? It refers to the 1812 Overture played by the National Symphony on The Mall behind the Capitol at the climax of the Fourth of July celebration. Makes for a rousing finish.

Chester Campbell's Website

The Time Factor

By Chester Campbell

Time is money, time is ripe, time flies, time hangs heavy—our lexicon is filled with references to time. How does time figure in the writing of a mystery novel, other than the obvious fact that it takes a long time to write one?

Some family sagas cover several generations over many years. A tightly-plotted thriller make take place in one day, or a matter of hours. The important thing about time is to use it wisely. Let the story take place over whatever period of time is necessary, but don’t stretch it out just to fill pages.

It is also important to use time realistically. I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code. I had seen comments over the years about how the time frame didn’t add up. I didn’t go back and try to tally how many hours the story covered, but the characters did a lot of moving all around Paris and environs in a matter of hours, then flew to England, toured various parts of London, then drove to Scotland. I don’t recall them doing any sleeping and little if any eating during all that time.

The nonstop action is what made the book such a hit (plus all the religious controversy), but the use of time was a bit bewildering. I usually jot down a chronological list of what happens from day to day so I can keep the time line in order. Dan Brown must have worked with a spring-wound clock that was winding down.

The calendar is essentially a timing device, filled with 24-hour blocks. Another time factor that can have an important effect on your book is the season. My Greg McKenzie mysteries take place roughly four months apart, so each occurs in a different season. Number 5 is back to winter. This changing of the seasons provides an opportunity to picture the scene differently in each story.

My new book, as yet unfinished, takes place around Christmas with nippy winds and freezing temperatures. The previous story was set during the steamy days of August. Quite a contrast in describing the scene.

Whether you’re dealing with the clock or the calendar, time can have a major impact on your story. As with all the other elements of writing a mystery, the major caution is to keep it realistic. Don’t try to cram too much into one day or stretch it out like a long siesta on the beach beneath a broiling sun. You’ll get burned with either choice.

Beware the Jabberwock, an Agenting Tale

By Chester Campbell

A long-running thread on several lists for mystery writers is the old question of whether or not to try and find a literary agent. I’ve mentioned in several places that I had four agents back in the early days who sold nothing for me. After that, I went the small press route and got a three-book deal. With my last two books, I switched to a new publisher who comes under the category of a micro press.

It’s been nearly 20 years since my first book and first agent, and my memory was a bit hazy on the experience. So I dug back into my files and pulled out the one labeled “Beware the Jabberwock.” It was an enlightening experience. Strictly a neophyte at the time, I had little understanding of the publishing business except what I had picked up through Writer’s Digest and its Writer’s Market directory.

The first thing I noticed in going through the file was that the query letter didn’t correspond to what is currently recommended. My opening paragraph said:

“I am a former newspaper reporter and magazine editor and have served on active duty in the Air Force and in the Air Guard as an intelligence officer. I am now retired and devoting full time to writing.”

I then quoted Sen. Jim Sasser, who was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, as telling a local audience the previous night that Mikhail Gorbachev had told him, “I believe everybody who wants to leave the Soviet Union ought to be allowed to leave.” Sasser also said the Soviet Union was “verging on significant social and political instability” and its leaders “have absolutely no idea” how to shift to a market economy.

I then stated that those views tied in with the plot of my new suspense novel, which I proceeded to outline up to the last paragraph on page two, which concluded, “I am enclosing three sample chapters that introduce the plot and two of the main characters. The novel runs about 130,000 words. Please let me know if you would like to see the full manuscript.”

She did.

An associate handled the manuscript, and over the next few months he sent me interesting replies from several editors. Up to a point, I really enjoyed the first one, from Eamon Dolan at Harper-Collins.

“As discussed, I’m returning this manuscript to you. I simply can’t get over the timeliness of this book (I suppose I should say its prescience, given that it was written before the coup) and Mr. Campbell’s deep understanding of the American and Soviet systems is impressive. But this book’s writing and its characterizations seem very much in the traditions of the thriller genre. That’s hardly a bad thing, of course, but Harper, with its fledgling thriller line, looks specifically for books whose style and characterization are quite different from the genre as a whole.

“Thanks for letting me see BEWARE THE JABBERWOCK. I enjoyed it and I’m sorry I couldn’t quite see it for the Harper list.”

Then came this rejection from Natalee Rosenstein, Senior Editor at The Berkley Publishing Group:

“It is a very well written thriller, but this genre is just too hard to sell in mass market at the moment. Maybe this would work well in hardcover.”

Liza Dawson, Senior Editor at William Morrow, wrote:

“While Campbell’s scenario was creepily plausible and nicely audacious, this book did not seem quite as fast-paced and compelling as a thriller of this type should be. Also, given the speed with which global politics are changing these days, I’m reluctant to take on a thriller this topical—for fear that it would already be out of date by the time it sees print.”

Finally, this one from James G. Moser, Senior Editor for Grove Weidenfeld:

“As I mentioned yesterday, this isn’t the kind of novel we usually publish at Grove. It’s a competent and entertaining piece of work, however, and I wish you luck with it.”

The agent’s associate left after this one, and she decided to concentrate on non-fiction, leaving me dangling in the wind. What I found most interesting about this situation is that on re-reading the manuscript, which was lauded by all the editors, I found I had repeatedly violated many of the taboos I have since learned to avoid. Things like changing POVs within a scene (I think it was pretty clear whose head I was in, however) and using various dialogue attributions other than said and asked.

Granted, a lot of that could have been changed in the editing process had the book sold, but comments like “very well written” and “a competent and entertaining piece of work” left the impression that the editors were not put off by what seems currently unacceptable.

I continued to write topical thrillers that met the same fate in a market as tough as the present one. I’m wondering now, however, if Beware the Jabberwock might be resurrected as a near-historical thriller? It takes place in 1990. And I’ll always wonder what might have happened to my career if one of those editors had taken a chance and published that new 65-year-old author?

Writing is Easy...

By Beth Terrell

Gene Fowler once said, "Writing is easy. Just stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." Or how about Ben Hecht's, "Writing is easy. Just open a vein." We've talked a lot about how much fun writing is (and it is!). None of us seems to have too much trouble with writer's block. I have a dear friend, a brilliant writer, who has been unable to write creatively for years. I've been fortunate that, when I do get stuck, I can usually find a way through it pretty easily. I write fiction, which is a joy to me; if I wrote two books a year and never had another new idea, I would still be writing for the next fifty years. I sometimes get busy; I sometimes have to find my way through a section that isn't working; but I don't get blocked.

But this week, I've had a very specific type of writer's block: Blogger's Block. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has it, since when I thought I'd coined the name and Googled it, I got 44,000 hits. That's a lot of blockage.

Take yesterday for example. I spent much of the day coming up with and discarding ideas. At 8:00, I sat down in front of my computer fully intending to write my blog post a day ahead of time. At 11:30, when I had to go to bed because I had to get up and travel, I still had a blank title box and "By Beth Terrell" in the composition box. Not an auspicious beginning. Not a single idea had been able to gasp past the finish line.

Today, I my mom, brother, and I drove from Nashville to a little town just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (we'll finish the last leg of our trip tomorrow). We checked into a Country Hearth Inn & Suites and ate at a nearby Italian restaurant (crab manicotti!). Then I came back to the room and pulled up the composition box again. No title. "By Beth Terrell." Bleh.

Took a shower while mom checked her email. Checked my own email and responded to the ones that couldn't wait. Made a couple of false starts on the blog entry and couldn't for the life of me think of anything to write that anybody would particularly want to read about. Checked email again and found a link from my sister-in-law to a video of a group of people at Dragoncon (a fantasy and sf convention) trying to break the world's record for the number of people dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in one place. The previous record was a 242 by students at William and Mary. Dragoncon had 902. Now this, I could not resist.

If you're the least bit curious to see zombies, Klingons, a man dressed as a giant silver glove, sort of tentacled creature with eyestalks, and a host of other costumed and plainclothes folks dancing in semi-unison to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," you can see it here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1345089824?bctid=37858935001.

I came back to the composition page refreshed and a great deal more amused. Made a couple more false starts. Chuckled about the Dragoncon dancers. Called my husband and complained that I couldn't think of anything to write that anybody would want to read. Apparently, I'm in a funk. He said it didn't matter. Write anything. Just write something.

This is the something, and the point of it is, my husband is a wise man. I often meet writers who say they would love to write if...They would write if only...They have this great idea, but...How do I start? What do I do? What if a publisher won't buy it? What if no one reads it?

The answer is always the same. Just write something.

Killer Conference

By Beth Terrell

Wednesday. Time to write the blog entry, because I am the Thursday person and I positively promised Chester that I would not wait until midnight of "the day of" to post my offering.

I wracked my poor cluttered brain for a topic of interest: How can we create riveting plots that keep readers on the edge of their seats? What makes such diverse characters as Jack Reacher and Stephanie Plum beloved by readers? Will Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the handsome actor from the ill-fated T.V. show New Amsterdam, ever call to option my book for the movie in which he plays my Nashville-based private detective? Oops, sorry. A soupcon of fantasy crept in.

What about Amazon's new plot to take over the world? Everybody's talking about that, right?

Then the distractions begin their assault.

Oh, my gosh! Did I remember to pick up the name tags?
Did I send out the emails with directions to the Guest of Honor dinner?
Did I remember to update the database and send out the last batch of confirmation letters and...

Well, you get the gist of it. The reason for all this angst is also the highlight of my summer--and maybe some of yours. I've been helping producer Clay Stafford and Assistant Producer Phillip Lacy coordinate the 2008 Killer Nashville Mystery and Thriller Conference. Clay even gave me my very own title: Associate Producer. It makes me feel all warm and important. And if that sounds like sarcasm, it's not.

I never realized what went into the making of a conference. I've been to some great ones: Sleuthfest, Cape Fear, Bouchercon, Harriett Austin, and the Lost State Writer's Conference. Events magically occurred, and I went to and enjoyed them. But thanks to Killer Nashville, I have a much better idea of what it takes to attract a Guest of Honor (world-renowned forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass), contact agents and editors (there will be one of each available for pitches at the conference), get panelists assigned, answer questions from attendees, arrange critiques and pitch times and schedules, assemble conference materials, contact sponsors, and the host of other tasks it takes to get a thing like this up and running. Not that I did all those things myself. We all did them: Clay (whose vision it is), Phillip, PJ Parrish, me, and an army of wonderful, dedicated volunteers (including our beloved Chester Campbell, author of the Greg McKenzie mystery series and the Tuesday writer for this blog). For months, we've eaten, drunk, and breathed Killer Nashville. Our to-do lists have gone from scribbles on Post-its to page-long treatises.

Even so, I know we've probably overlooked some things, that minor things will go awry, and that, in spite of this--or even because of it--this is going to be an incredible conference. With Body Farm creator Bill Bass, a killer schedule (see it at http://www.killernashville.com/), and authors like PJ Parrish, Mary Saums, Don Bruns, Edgar-nominee David J. Walker, and two of our own (Chester Campbell and Ben Small), how could it not be?

So if you're in the neighborhood and would like a chance to hobnob with fellow mystery and thriller lovers, hone your writing and marketing skills, vote on the first annual Silver Falcion Award (best novel written in 2007-2008 by a registered attendee), or just say hi, we'd love to have you hurry on over to the website and register. Besides, Don has promised to play his guitar, and Ben just might be persuaded to tell us where the bodies are hidden.

(And Nikolaj, if you're reading this, please stop by. There's a movie option I'd like to discuss.)