CCWC 2023 Recap

by Sybil Johnson

I spent last weekend at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, California. It’s a 2-day conference held every other year, put together by the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America. This is the first in-person CCWC since Covid. I haven’t heard the final stats, but I believe we had 160ish people there interested in learning more about all aspects of the writing/publishing game.

I admit to being a tad nervous because I was serving as a mentor, I really prefer guide, to one of the three WriteGirl scholarship winners. From WriteGirls website: “WriteGirl is a creative writing and mentoring organization that promotes creativity, critical thinking and leadership skills to empower teen girls and gender-expansive youth.” I had breakfast and lunch with my winner, Kai Adia, introduced her to people and basically tried to make her feel welcome. It was a lot of fun. Kai is a graduate of the WriteGirl program and co-founder of Bee Infinite Publishing. She’s also an experienced copywriter, a writer of poems and an artist. I enjoyed meeting her and the other WriteGirl scholarship winners.

 

Me and Kai

CCWC Guests of Honor were Deborah Crombie and Rachel Howzell Hall. They each did a keynote address at the luncheon (Rachel on Saturday and Deborah on Sunday) as well as leading a workshop.

Deborah Crombie

Rachel Howzell Hall

They both did a great job, but Rachel’s keynote address really resonated with me. She talked about her 10 commandments of a writer’s life. Here they are: 

(1) You shall not ignore your emotions. It’s okay to cry when you get a rejection or don’t win an award. Acknowledge your emotions. 

(2) You shall not forget those trunk novels. Maybe you can get an idea for a new story or take a passage out of one of them for your next project. Mine them. 

(3) You shall not quit your day job.

(4) Remember the IRS.

(5) Honor your interests outside of writing. Take a break away from writing. Do something else you enjoy. 

(6) You shall not ever say ‘I don’t have time to read’. You can learn a lot about writing by reading. 

(7) You shall not shun friends and family. 

(8) You shall not hustle all the time. Remember to enjoy your accomplishments. 

(9) You shall not stay home. Travel somewhere. Drive somewhere. 

(10) You shall be kind. To readers, to authors, to family.

During lunch, the hotel alarm kept on going off. The hotel folks told us it was a false alarm. When Rachel was giving this speech, the hotel alarm went off once again. She held her cool and kept on going.

A full schedule!

There were lots of panels and presentations to attend. It was hard to choose. I tried to mix it up, doing a little forensics, a little business of writing, a little on writing. I went to one on advertising strategies given by Sheila Lowe, one on a brief history of criminal investigations by Anne Louise Bannon, one on the road to publishing by Naomi Hirahara, a panel on Hollywood and book options, a panel on writing historical mysteries, and a panel on anthologies, how they’re put together, how to find calls for submission...

Anthology Panel

They were all great. I got a lot out of them. I also enjoyed meeting new people and reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. I always come away from events like this a bit more inspired. The next CCWC will be in 2025. I’m looking forward to attending that one, too.

CCWC 2023

 

This week people are heading to Bouchercon in Minneapolis. I’m not one of them. I admit there’s a bit of FOMO going on with me, but I’m okay with living vicariously through others on Facebook. Looking at the weather, part of me wishes I were there since it’s been 98 here in the beach cities for a few days. Extremely unusual for us, which means most people don’t have air conditioning, including us. In one of my books, A Palette for Murder, my fictional town of Vista Beach was going through a similar thing. Now all I can think about is the crimes that can occur when it’s hot and people leave their windows open!

Speaking of conferences, the 2023 California Crime Writers Conference is now open for registration. The details: 

Where: Hilton Los Angeles, 6161 W. Centinela Ave., Culver City, CA

When: June 10 and 11, 2023

Deborah Crombie

Rachel Howzell Hall

 

Guests of honor are Rachel Howzell Hall, Critically Acclaimed Author and LA Times Book Prize Finalist Nominee for the Anthony, Lefty and ITW Awards, and Deborah Crombie, New York Times Bestselling and Multiple Award-Winning Author of the Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James Mystery Series

This conference is a joint venture of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Its roots are in the SinC/LA No Crime Unpublished conference which was a one day event put on by the chapter. SinC/LA teamed up with SoCalMWA in 2009 to put on this conference which is a two-day event that happens every other year. In 2021, it went virtual, but it’s now back to an in-person event.

The programming for the event is not set yet, but in the past there has been four different tracks going on at the same time: Law Enforcement/Forensics, Marketing, Industry/Business and Writing Craft.

I’ve attended every conference since its inception, serving as co-chair in 2011, and have learned an awful lot at each one. It just keeps getting better and better. 

Visit https://ccwconference.org/ for more info and to register.

That’s all I am going to say for now. Too hot and tired to think.

CCWC 2021 Recap

 

I spent last Saturday attending the California Crime Writers Conference - Pandemic Edition. CCWC is a joint effort of the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It’s held every other year and is usually a two day event. The pandemic turned this year’s into a one-day virtual event via Zoom. All of the presentations were recorded except for one. They should be available on the ccwconference.org website sometime in the next few weeks.

Past conferences were two-day events with around 200 attendees. In a normal year, there are 4 panels going at a time. I recapped the 2017 Conference here on Type M. You can read about it here to get a sense of what a normal year looks like.

Even though we couldn’t get together in person, the virtual event was still a lot of fun. There was a variety of things, all interesting in their own ways. We had a fifteen minute break between events.

The first panel at 9 a.m. was The Exquisite Joy of Finding Out: How to Research Your Novel. SinC/LA President Anne Louise Bannon moderated. Panelists were Anne Perry, Jeffery Deaver, Naomi Hirahara and S.A. Crosby. Panelists talked about researching for both contemporary and historical stories. YouTube was mentioned, which I admit I’ve gotten a lot of useful information from. Newspapers.com was mentioned for online access to newspapers from the 1700s to 2000s. Jeffery Deaver also mentioned he used Natural Reader to read chapters of his WIP to him. I'm going to check this one out myself.

The next panel was Some Like It Hot: Adding Romance and Sex to Your Mysteries. Paula Bernstein moderated with Victoria Thompson, Deborah Crombie, Toby Neal and Pamela Samuels Young as panelists. I missed about 5 minutes of this one because my laptop decided it wanted to reboot itself during it.

Then came Police Procedurals 2021: Social Justice and the Pandemic. SoCal MWA President Jessica Kaye moderated with panelists Rachel Howzell Hall, Faye Snowden, Ausma Khan and Isabella Maldonado.

Next was the presentation that I was most interested in (and the only one that was not recorded): Identification of the Buckskin Girl: Forensic Genealogy and Cold Case Resolution presented by Elizabeth A. Murray. She is a forensic anthropologist and college professor. You may know her name from several books she’s written or the two Great Courses series she’s done: Trails of Evidence and Forensic History. 

In this presentation she talked about how they identified a body found in 1981 many years later through the use of genetic genealogy. I’m used to hearing about using this method to identify perpetrators of crimes, but this was a nice reminder that it can also be used to identify victims. In 1981, they had fingerprints, a photo of the face of the deceased, dental charts and autopsy results. Over the years, efforts had been made to identify her, even using palynology (analysis of pollen) to see if they could link her to a specific area. It was a very interesting presentation on how they finally identified her 37 years later.

The last presentation was Publishing in a Pandemic: A Glimpse of the Future Opportunities & Challenges with Jane Friedman. Jane Friedman talked about the state of the publishing world. How books sales dramatically increased during the pandemic and so many other things. She also talked about Kindle Vella, a way to publish serialized stories. It’s going live for readers in the summer. They don't take rights for this, but an author can't use Vella to publish a work that has been published as a book. This is one I hadn't heard about.

That’s my very short recap of the conference. The videos should be available for you to view soon. This year’s conference was fun, but I’m looking forward to an in-person conference next time around in 2023.

Excitement And Fear

Starting a new book is usually a mixture of excitement and fear for me. Right now I’m in the dreaded “why did I ever think I could write another book phase.” This lasts until I finally feel like I’ve figured out the general direction I’m going in. It usually takes me several months to make my way through this period of unease as I slowly figure out my characters and the story they want me to tell.

It’s a phase that feels a lot like designing software. You do a lot of thinking, head scratching, walking up and down the hallway, and drawing diagrams. It always feels like I’m not accomplishing anything. I have to constantly remind myself that I really am getting something done. That all of this thinking and tossing ideas back and forth in my head is actually accomplishing something. That it’s all part of the process.

Talking to other writers about writing helps to remind me that I’m not alone. That other people find the beginning of a project difficult as well.

I got the opportunity to talk with a lot of writers (some who I’ve known for a while, some who I just met) at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, CA a couple weekends ago, two days of workshops and panels on topics related to crime writing. So many things going on at the same time that it was hard to choose what to go to.

I was on a panel called “Built to Last: Creating a Series” with Rachel Howzell Hall, Sheila Lowe, Keenan Powell and Faye Snowden. We had a great time talking about our experiences writing a series.

Ellen Byron interviewed Private Eye Nancy Swaim about her experiences. I also learned about Medieval Weaponry from Swordmaster Roberta Brown. And attended a panel with Joe Broido, Phoef Sutton, Gillian Horvath and Carlene O’Neil about Hallmark Mysteries. And, and, and...lots of lots of different things were available on the business side of writing, craft, forensics...

Plus we were treated to workshops and keynote addresses from Guests of Honor Tess Gerritsen and Catriona McPherson. And fed lots and lots of food. I admit that I ate way too much.

But probably the best part was the chance to hang out with fellow writers and talk about writing and the writing business.

The next CCWC will be in 2021. (It takes place every other year.) Consider going if you get the chance. It’s well worth it.

In other news, I now have the cover for Book 5 in my Aurora Anderson series, GHOSTS OF PAINTING PAST. It’ll be out November 19th, pre-orders start the week of August 28th. Thought you might be interested in seeing it. It takes place around Christmas as you can probably tell from the cover.

Guest Post - Laura Brennan

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to put together a writer’s conference? I can tell you from experience that it’s a lot of work. Please welcome this weekend’s guest poster, Laura Brennan, who gives us a behind the scenes look at the upcoming California Crime Writers Conference.

Intrigue! Murder! Carrot Cake!
Behind the Scenes at the California Crime Writers Conference

 

By Laura Brennan

 

When I took on the position of co-chair of the 2019 California Crime Writers Conference (along with the fabulous Jennifer Younger of SoCal MWA), I knew there would be a lot of details to take care of. Plenty of e-mails. A fair amount of scrambling when the best-laid plans went awry.

And yet I was still caught by surprise.

First, the good news: we were incredibly lucky to nab Tess Gerritsen and Catriona McPherson as our Guests of Honor -- and we didn’t have to resort to kidnapping either of them! Both are prolific, writing both series and stand-alones, and between them covering much of the crime novel spectrum, from hilarious cozy to gritty dramas, and all the layers of conflict, character and emotion in between. Whew! That was the first hurdle and we sailed over it.

We are also lucky to have so many talented writers attending the conference and participating on panels. The putting together of those panels based on their talent and experience -- now that was a minor miracle. You can’t create great panels without knowing who has what to offer, and of course with authors, the best way to do that is to read their books.

This was the beginning of the crazy.

I had not budgeted gobs of time to read the new-to-me authors attending CCWC. And I am not someone who can skim -- I get too emotionally involved. Happily, I run my own business and found myself between clients at the critical moment. Not that my bank account was happy, mind you, but my TBR pile got tackled with vigor. I discovered new laugh-out-loud cozies, some marvelous amateur sleuths, and a few gut-punching, edge-of-my-seat thrillers. Want to know who these authors are? Check out our Unusual Suspects (the list of those attending the conference) and definitely check out their books.

Then there was the week when I sent out over 300 individual e-mails. Thank goodness for cut and paste; I only had to individualize a line or two. But still, I can now tell you from experience that 300 e-mails will eat your life. Speaking of eating, my family had pizza and sandwiches for the week. On the plus side, it encouraged my son to crack open a cookbook. Win-win.

Continuing on the food front, an unexpected bonus was the tasting menu at the venue. Jennifer and I went in with a firm idea of what we were ordering for the conference lunches, and it all flew out the window when the chef presented us with his suggestions. The mushroom ravioli is killer, and I mean that in the best possible way. And death by chocolate cake? We have you covered.

But the best part has been coming up with new ideas for extra fun this year. We are running a Best First Sentence Competition, and all attendees are invited to submit. The winner will be announced on Saturday, and we’ll have a second off-the-cuff competition based on the winning entry. I am also writing an escape room for some Saturday evening entertainment, for those who want to play. Someone has left clues to solving their own murder, but the police are baffled. Can you ferret out the killer? If that’s not your cup of tea, there’s always the hotel bar. Some time-honored traditions can’t be improved upon.

Am I crazy to have volunteered to co-chair the conference? Absolutely. But it’s already been worth every moment. When it’s all over, I will have learned how to spot a suicide bomber, how to have a long career, and what happens when my novel is (fingers crossed!) optioned for the screen. Best of all, I know I will have made new friends -- and I’ve already found new authors to love.

For more information on the 2019 California Crime Writers Conference, taking place June 8-9 in Culver City, CA, go to https://ccwconference.org/

Laura’s eclectic career includes a picture book to help parents explain a loved one’s dementia (Nana Speaks Nanese), numerous short stories (“A Slice of Heaven” appears in the 2019 Malice Domestic Anthology, Mystery Most Edible), and Destination Mystery, a podcast featuring interviews with crime writers. Find out more at LauraBrennanWrites.com.