A Conference Call

 

There are some new kids on the block in the land of conferences that may be of interest to writers and fans of crime fiction:

Lee Lofland (author of Howdunit Book of Police Procedure and Investigation:  A Guide for Writers ) is joining forces with the Mad Anthony Writers Conference near Cincinnati, Ohio, to host a Police Academy for Writers as part of that conference. As Lee says on his blog, The Graveyard Shift, "All police procedure and forensics workshops will be taught by active and retired police officers, detectives, ATF special agents, and forensics experts (some pretty famous ones, too)." It's not until April 17-19 of 2009, but it's never too early to start planning.

Also next year is the inaugural Killer Con, to be held in September in Las Vegas. It's a new mutli-genre (horror, thriller, and paranormal romance) convention, the brainchild of author Wrath James White. Author and LAPD veteran Paul Bishop has a rundown on his blog, Bish's Beat.

Coming up a little bit sooner are two conferences in September of this year:  the brand-new Sunday Independent's Books 2008 (September 5-7) in Dublin, with an associated Crime Writing festival featuring Tana French, Alex Barclay, John Connolly, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Declan Burke, Declan Hughes, Mick Halpin, and Gene Kerrigan; and the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, with authors including Sandra Brown, Brad Meltzer, Peter Robinson, Alexander McCall Smith, and R.L. Stine.

Ongoing through the Fall is the Thurber House's 2008-09 "Evenings With Authors" season. Although it's already underway, there's still time to catch Louis Bayard on September 19th and Michael Connelly on October 20th. Although not technically a conference, it's a good chance to hear the authors up close and personal, and Connelly will even be reading from and discussing his latest legal thriller, The Brass Verdict about a week after its publication.