Murder and Mayhem in Chicago!! November 2024
Well, it USED to be called Murder and Mayhem in Chicago. Now it’s the Midwest Mystery Conference, which I have to say is a bit of a name downgrade in my not-so-humble opinion. So, I’m just sticking with the name I prefer. ANY-way…
This was my first workshop focused on the MYSTERY/ SUSPENSE aspect of the Romantic Suspense stories I write A-N-D … now I have to go back every year, because I learned SOOO much. Never mind that I screwed up the address and initially wound up standing outside a closed UPS store, banging my head on a streetlight pole. I got myself sorted and tracked down the actual conference site (Roosevelt University, NOT a UPS store) and even managed to make it to the right place just as the intro announcements were winding down before the author panels got started. All hail, Uber!
Met some great people and listened to some amazing writers, among them:
- Sara Paretsky, author of the fabulous VI Warshawki books
- Connie Berry, author of the best-selling Kate Hamilton Mysteries
- Ellen Berry, former TV writer and author of several cozy series
- Tracy Clark, who writes both the Cass Raines and Detective Harriet Foster series (when she’s not stalking Sara Paretsky, which was a story that had the whole room laughing to the point of tears)
- James Hanna, author of the Henry Malone series
- PJ Tracy, bestselling author of the Monkeewrench series and the Detective Margaret Nolan series
- And on and on and on! (Check out the link to the program for the full list of fabulousness)
Came away with a notebook full of writing tips and ideas, two totes of new books (because … BOOKS), and an invite to do a book-signing at Morgenstern’s, a way-cool independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana when Chasing Shadows comes out. Double WOOT!
And then there was the fact that the program was in Chi-town, one of my fave cities. The conference just happened to fall on my bestie’s birthday, so she came along and we packed the rest of the weekend with even more fun stuff: got to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the stunning Nederlander Theatre and the hysterically funny Drunken Shakespeare Company butcher MacBeth in the best way. Spent a fascinating morning at the American Writers Museum and made a stop on the way home to visit the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, IL, which is just amazing if you’ve never been. In fact, I have to highly recommend ALL of these things! Links below, baby:
https://midwestmysteryconference.com/events/
https://www.drunkshakespeare.com/about
https://americanwritersmuseum.org/?srsltid=AfmBOopoiUDjgjacY3FDHT30nryghm1AHxDfsEhWNKJuDuccodhYI11A
