HALLIE EPHRON: Once again I get to kick off with our WHAT WE’RE WRITING week. And this week, for the first time in, what, two years? I’m pulling together materials for writing workshops I’ll be giving IN PERSON over the next few months.
Zoom/teaching has been swell. But enough is enough. I’m ready for people! For a *conversation* about writing! I’m ready for people to ask questions, poke fun, and disagree. Moreover I don’t care if I get covid (again)… I’m going on a plane and eating in an airport and staying in a hotel, dammit.
First up is a conference in starting later this week – Surrey International Writers Conference. It’s near beautiful Vancouver where it is nearly guaranteed to be raining. I’m giving writing workshops, moderating panels, and my favorite: “blue pencil sessions” which are one on ones with writers where I get to listen and provide what advice and encouragement I can for their works in progress. It’s always a thrill when someone I counseled year earlier shows up to say they scored a book contract.
I also get to stay up late and be part of a SHOCK THEATRE! One year, Robert Dugoni played a memorable and terrifying werewolf...
This year it’s a mashup of DRACULA and HOUSE OF WAX put together by the inimitable Michael Slade and featuring me and an incredible cast, including Diana Gabaldon, Bob Dugoni, Donald Maas, Susanna Kearsley, Anne Perry, Mary Robinette Kowal… and more. We get to stay up late and pumpkins will be smashed. See: died and gone to heaven.
Then the New England CrimeBake – our very own bash where I’ll get to hang out with Hank and Lucy and host Lynn Denley-Bussard who was a student in one of the first classes I ever gave for the Cape Cod Writing Center. William Martin, one of my favorite human beings in the world, will be this year’s GoH.
Then on November 14 it’s back to Zoom-speaking for a great group, the California Writers Club (South Bay Writers). I was thrilled to be invited. I’ll give a crash course in writing a mystery novel. We’ll disassemble the sausages.
Rounding things out in early December I’m hoping to be in St. Augustine, one of my favorite-est of places if only just for walking around. The amazing Michael Neff is hosting one of his Algonkian author-mentor workshops and I get to play mentor for a group of always talented, interesting, and highly motivated attendees.
And it’s not public yet, but in February I’ll be teaching a week-long class in Key West. And for members only, in April a virtual, two-week class for the Sisters in Crime On-line Chapter Guppies.
In the meanwhile… I really do plan to get back to writing-writing. Really I do.
Are you back to meeting with the world in person, too?
