If you want to write crime fiction, you should investigate the possibilities of attending a writers’ conference for that genre. I attended my first crime writers conference in August. Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference covers crime fiction in all its subgenres – suspense, cozy mysteries, whodunits, police procedurals, even YA and middle grade mysteries. Attendees ran the gamut from people who haven’t published anything to authors with multiple novels. The experience was so rewarding for a number of reasons.
1. It was small. At most there were 200 people at the conference. It was held in an Embassy Suites hotel in Franklin, just outside of Nashville. The conference rooms were a short walk from the hotel rooms. I didn’t have to navigate a huge conference complex to find my sessions. And with that number of people, it was easy to bump into the same ones over and over again and strike up conversations.
2. The variety of sessions. Each time slot offered six different sessions. I went to ones focused on writing, like what makes a mystery a cozy, writing mysteries for teens, and adding humor to your writing, Then they were the informational sessions. One was led by a recently elected sheriff from Tennessee, another by a retired officer in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and another by a retired FBI agent. They provided us with the kind of information you can only get by talking to a person.
3. The professionalism and support. Since I’ve decided to purse mysteries with main characters who are police officers, I’ve been shy about approaching law enforcement professionals. After all, I’m just a writer. Clay Stafford, the conference director, encouraged all of us to feel free to ask the professionals any questions we needed to. He said they are flattered that writers with little or nor law enforcement experience have made an effort to learn about their profession so they can write accurately.
Most of the writers I talked to were published with several books or short stories to their names. Not one of them made me feel less of a writer because I only had one short story published. I thought I might be a fish out of water because I write Christian fiction. But there was a session on writing faith and fiction with five writers leading it.
4. I didn’t pitch. I know many writers attend conferences for the access to agents. At Killer Nashville, I didn’t think there was an agent who would be interested in my YA novel, and I was debating whether to scrap it and start on a new project. Without the pressure to land an agent, I was free to relax and enjoy learning. Maybe that should have been my attitude toward all the conferences I’ve gone to: go to learn and if I pitch and get an agent, that’s a bonus.
What writers’ conferences have you attended and would recommend?
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