KILLER HEAT

Jane Anne Turzillo, Laura DiSeilvio, and me

The weekend before last one, our Northeast Ohio Sisters in Crime chapter put on Killer Heat: A Mystery Writer’s Weekend Getaway in Cleveland, Ohio at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch Library. On Saturday it went from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Our president Jane Ann Turzillo

After registration on Saturday, opening remarks were made by our NEOSinC president, Jane Ann Turzillo.

Following that forensic psychiatrist Megan Testa, MD, gave a very interesting talk on “Inside the Criminal Mind.” She talked about characters with mental illness and/or behavioral and psychological syndromes. She mentioned that 40 million people worldwide have mental illness. She talked a lot about schizophrenia and their odd symptoms, such as fixed paranoid ideas, losing touch with reality and hallucinations …some have command delusions that someone is telling them to do something, which can lead to self-destructive or violent behavior. Hearing voices is more common than seeing things that are not there.

She talked for at least an hour or more and I wrote down more about what she had to say.  She also talked about Bi-polar disorder, PTSD, and personality disorders, too.  All in all, it was a lot of information to use in the mysteries we write.

Irma Baker our previous president interviews Laura. Irma did a lot putting on this event.

After a brief break, our keynote author, Laura DiSilverio presented “Mystery Writing and Publishing: The Guts and the Glory.” She’s a retired Air Force intelligence officer, and is the national best-selling and award winning author of 21 mystery, suspense and young adult science fiction novels. She has written four cozy series for various Penquin imprints as well as the Swift investigation books, a humorous private investigator series, for St. Martins Minotaur. Her newest release is That Last Weekend, a suspense novel. Laura was a national past president of Sisters in Crime and taught for Mystery Writers of America’s Mystery University and teaches writing of Writers Digest conferences and in other venues. She was a wonderful speaker and kept everyone interested and was quite willing to answer questions

We had a lunch break at noon with a free lunch for the members of our Sinc chapter. A lot of other people attended that day some from as far away as Pittsburgh and a lot of people signed up to join our chapter, too.

After lunch was a panel called “Solving the mystery of Writing Mysteries with our chapter’s authors Vivien Chien, Shelly Costa, Amanda Flower (who couldn’t be there because of a death in the family) Annie Hogsett and Kathyryn Long.

Mary Ellis, Jullie Ann, and Casey Daniels

The 2:00 p.m. panel “After the Manuscript is Done – Confessing to What Comes Next” with Casey Daniels/Kylie Logan, Mary Ellis, Julie Anne Lindsey/Julie Chase? Jacqueline Frost and Jane Ann Turzillo. Both panels talked about the difficulty of getting agents or publishers and how much money they had to pay to them.

I'm the really short one. :-)

I was on the 2:45 p.m. panel: “Indie Publishing: We did it” with IreAnne
Chambers, Cari Dubiel, Michael Hoase, M.S. Verish, and Abby L. Vandiver. The two guys ended up doing the most talking. J

Afterwards there was an author signing and break and then an interview with Laura DiSilverio followed by closing remarks.

On Sunday, June 10^th, it didn’t start until 1:15 giving those of us who go to church a chance to go before coming. 

There was opening remarks by president Jane Ann Turzillo, too, followed by a workshop “Conflict – No Pain, No Gain, increasing the conflict in your stories” by Laura DiSilverio. It was very interesting and made me want to go to the book I started a month ago and check out how much I had in that so far.

After a fifteen minute break, there was a panel called “The Editors Clue You In” by Lydia Sharp, editor and acquisitions manager for Entangled Publishing, and Rhondo Marwarth, editor for Hallmark Publishing. I wasn’t interested much in that because I intend to keep publishing my own books. 

At 4:00 there was an author’s signing. I signed two books and then I packed up all the books I’d brought in for the bookstore:  The Learned Owl to sell.  I don’t think very many books were sold. I only bought two. One of the Pepper Martin books that Casey Daniels wrote and one of Laura DiSilverio’s books.

Would you have enjoyed this workshop?

If so what in particular would you have enjoyed?