Love Is Murder – Saturday Events
My second day at Love Is Murder is almost over. Only thing left is the “mother of all” booksignings and the awards banquet. The booksigning starts in 30 minutes and then the banquet follows.
I attended three panels today – Humor in Mysteries, Screenwriting, and a question and answer session with some police detectives. Listening to cops talk about their cases is always very interesting. They had the audience hanging on their every word. Several had been involved in serial killer cases and they talked fairly freely about the crimes and how they were solved.
The screenwriting panel featured a gentleman, James Strauss, who has written for both feature movies and television. Currently he’s writing for House and trying to switch careers. He wants to write novels. It was fun listening to him talk about the Hollywood scene and some of the actors/directors/producers he’s known. He handed out a “treatment” he’d done for a new tv series so we’d have an example of how to write one. Apparently “treatments” are what you use to “pitch” a screenplay. He was very clear that we shouldn’t use the word “pitch,” instead call it a “presentation.” He also said if we were serious about writing screenplays, we should buy “Final Draft” – a software program that is the industry standard.
My afternoon panel on Collaborative Writing went well. The audience was very small, but those who attended had lots of questions. Susan Smily and Honora Finkelstein authors of the Ariel Quigley mystery series sat next to me. I met them for the first time two years ago at Love Is Murder and we’ve crossed paths many times. It was fun to catch up on all the news.
After my panel there was a “tea” in one of the larger banquet halls. While I was there, I met Deb Baker, author of the Gretchen Birch mystery series and the Gertie Johnson mystery series.
The best thing about conferences is meeting people and authors you’ve chatted with on-line!
Got to get ready for the signing.
More later.