by Rosemary Lord
I really miss the writers’ conferences we used to have. We were lucky in California; we had at least 2 each year – sometimes more, lasting from Friday through Sunday. Sometimes starting Thursday.
They were usually in Culver City or Pasadena – occasionally downtown LA or in Long Beach.
Our Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America chapters would often pool together to present these. California Crime Writers Conference was another popular convention.
They took a lot of organizing. Planning would start at least a year ahead, sometimes longer. The writing community would be notified of the theme – there was always a theme. One of the Left Coast Crime conferences was called ‘Southwest Sleuths’, ‘Trouble in Tucson” another they called ‘Murders a Beach.’
Way, way ahead the organizers would start a Nominating Committee for attendees to vote on their favorite or best authors in different categories. The culmination of the conferences would be the Saturday Night Banquet, when awards would be given out for each category attendees had previously voted on.
Volunteers were sought – to do everything from greeting attendees, manning the check-in desks, monitoring each of the workshops and running the onsite bookshop where attending authors could sell their books. They’d thought of everything.
The buzz would start about guest speakers and who the keynote speaker would be. The late great ‘alphabet’ series author Sue Grafton was a popular choice. Canadian writer Louise Penny another. Scottish-born Catriona McPerson was always a crowd-pleaser. They would speak at the evening events including the final night banquet.
The conference would open with a big breakfast event: a chance to see who was attending and catch up with long-lost fellow writers.
Each day, the schedule was filled with different ‘tracks’ or workshops and lectures. There was usually a series of workshops on the craft of writing: guest writers and teachers on the ‘How To…’ aspects of actually getting something on paper. Then a Promotion Track. Once you’d sold your book and were about to be published, the lectures were on how to promote your book and yourself. This would include different publicity and promotion ideas. Do you need to hire a publicist, or can you do it on your own? That sort of thing.
Other tracks included Forensic workshops. I found these were the most fascinating. They dealt with actual crime scenes, secrets of the morgue and so on. Pictures of gruesome crime scenes – then a talk with the people that clean up all this gore. Who knew that was a job? “And what do you do for a living?” “Oh, I mop up the blood and clean up murder scenes…” How’s that for a party-stopper?
There’d be a workshop on how to murder someone – fun things like that. Discussions on the efficacy of different poisons – and how quick-acting they would be – or not. Painful deaths or a quick ‘you’re dead.’ We must sound quite mad – but when you get all these writers minds together, sparks really do fly! And amazing new thrillers and tales of murder and mayhem get spawned.
Investigation talks from FBI agents, detectives and private investigators would discuss their different approaches and what their work entailed. FBI agents and private detectives talked about their procedures and presented a mock-up of a crime scenes with questions and answers.
The Nick Harris Detective Agency enthralled attending writers with tales going back to their origins as the first detective agency in in Los Angeles starting in 1906. Would love to have been a fly on the wall then!
Agents from the police department would discuss police procedures and answer the writer’s many questions.
There would be field trips. One that I went on was to the city Forensic Lab, where we were shown investigations in progress on different murders. There was a set up with dummies and infra-red lights working out the trajectory of bullets in a dummy corpse. Another was a bench where a young victim’s clothes were set out for examination. Brown grocery bags were stacked with evidence. Other field trips would be a tour of local murder sites and other fun things!
There would be workshops on historical novel writing, historical research and marketing the same. Aspects of writing novels set in foreign countries. Other ‘tracks’ would be on the publishing side of a writer’s world. Agents, editors, publishers would offer their expertise. Of course, the unpublished writers all hoped to get taken on by one of them. Everything a mystery writer or novelist could want.
One of the best things about these long weekends at the conferences is that we writers would all get together. Writer friends from all over the world would congregate for the weekend. A chance to meet authors of new books we’d read. A chance to compare notes, compare writing methods and swap ideas. We’d catch up with out of towners at the hotel bar – or over the New Authors Breakfasts served in the ballroom, where novice writers were introduced. At the lunches (served in the same room) it was a chance to sit with someone new, make new friends. The Saturday night Banquet was when everyone would dress up and applaud the nominees and winners for the Best First Novel, the Best Historic Novel, Best YA (Young Adult) Novel. And so on. And a grand time would be had by all.
And so, the Sunday morning departures were often bitter-sweet. Time to get back to the real world.
But that was then. It’s a different world today. The Covid shutdowns changed everything. Now the ‘conferences’ are on Zoom.
On the plus side, it’s a lot cheaper. No-one has to travel and people all over the globe can attend. But it’s not the same. Seeing familiar faces in a little square on your computer screen is not the same as the shrieks of joy when you spot an old friend, a fellow writer from far off lands that you haven’t seen for a year.
So, I miss all that razzmatazz of the in-person conferences. Whatever the cost.
And you can’t do hugs on Zoom.
The Writers in Residence 
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