COME HAVE DINNER WITH SOME GREAT AUTHORS

We are preparing a great time for you at this years, MD C3 Con

Have you ever wondered what Heather Graham does on her days off? Well you can find out at the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity Con, or as we like to call it, the MD C3 Con.

You can sit and have dinner with her before she gives the keynote at Saturdays dinner.

Have you picked up her latest novel, The Dead Play On yet? If you have, why not bring it with you to the conference and you can ask her to sign it for you.

We are also happy that just before our conference, she will release another novel; The Silence and you can also have that one signed as well.

As you an see, we are bringing you some of the best authors around. So why not join us for the MD C3 Con in September. Its a bargain at $245 until March 31. 

You will get three days of conference, 5 full meals, two great keynote speakers, two local guests (yep from the DC Area) and you also get to sit in on master classes taught by +Heather Graham and +F.Paul Wilson

Beginning on April 1; the price increases by $30 to $275 but you still get all of the great stuff listed above. Oh, did we mention you get a goodie bag filled with books, coupons and you may even win a Kindle Fire.

So sign up today; we hope to see you there!

LOOK WHO WE HAVE COMING!

We have secured one local guest from the Washington Metropolitan area. 

S.D.Skye is a native of S.D. Skye is a former Senior Intelligence/Operations Analyst for the FBI Counter other 3-letter agencies. She is a highly opinionated blogger on National Security and Intelligence Community Topics. She is also a romantic mystery novelist. She is also a proud member of the MWA and Romance Writers. She is also a member of the International Thriller Writers Association.

If you want to see the fun that we had this year. Take a look at our conference website; Md C3conference. 

We hope to see you there in September

LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

The countdown has officially began.

Well, it didn't just start, it started 13 months ago when the brain child of this conference twisted the arm of a webmaster and got the website up and running. The countdown clock was the brainchild of our webmaster, James.

Every week I would look at that clock and say, "wow, that's seems like a long way off" and then I looked at the clock today and said, "oh my gosh! it's here already".

I have been fortunate enough to work with some great people on this conference and have learned a lot about them and about myself in the process.

I learned that I love to have fun in everything that I do. Our monthly meetings started off with organization and an agenda and quickly erupted into a free for all of conversations, jokes, laughs and plenty of coffee. In the end we all have worked like a well oiled machine. We have come together for a common goal and that is to bring you the best damn conference possible.

If you are coming to the conference, I can't wait to meet you and if you aren't...shame shame, you are going to miss the best damn party, EVER!

See you in four days, 20 hours and 15, 14, 13, 12....well you get the picture....

I'm as giddy as a two year old waiting for Santa!

Submitted: B. Swangin Webster

ROMANTIC-SUSPENSE JUNKIE

Hi, It's me again, Author Deliah Lawrence and Yes, I’m a romantic-suspense junkie. You may be wondering what that means and I’ll tell you that it’s the best of both worlds. There are some folks who enjoy reading a good romance novel, especially one that’s filled with characters staring lovingly into each other’s eyes, exchanging sweet kisses and locked in warm embraces? Well, for me that would only last for a split second before I start looking for the action. You see I like non-stop action where the protagonist is on a quest to solve a murder and still finds time for a lot of kisses and warm embraces.

Typically when you think of non-stop action, you think of thrillers with high drama, a rush of emotions and excitement that truly keeps you on the edge of your seat. Thrillers are villain driven where the protagonist must overcome some obstacle amidst the desire for justice and their morality. Just think of novels by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and Michael Crichton or movies like The Bourne Identity and Taken or some of my favorite TV shows, The X-Files, 24 and Prison Break. The action truly never stops when reading any of these novels or watching any of these movies or TV shows. Unfortunately, it doesn’t slow down enough to care too much about the romantic side of things.

Mysteries on the other hand, can be less dramatic. It involves giving the readers clues or “red herrings” to allow them to find out who committed the crime. They also contain less violence than thrillers. For example, a cozy mystery is full of clues and its plot is not full of action. It’s more of a mind game between the criminal and the detective. However, an amateur detective mystery involves a detective who gets involved in the plot by accident. These amateur sleuths don’t follow the same rules as the police but it’s fun to read how they solve the cases. Here too, not enough time is spent on romantic relationships.

There are many sub-categories of a thriller (e.g. psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, erotic thrillers, spy thrillers, etc.). However, suspense is an integral part of thrillers that builds up the “on-edge” feeling for the audience. So, for me, writing romantic-suspense novels where I strive for a balance between heart pounding action and sexual tension between the characters guarantees that my readers will be turning the pages. In my debut novel, Gotta Let It Go, the protagonist is on a quest to solve a murder, throw in unresolved feelings for a soon to be ex-husband, attraction to a hot detective and a few death threats and you have a roller coaster ride of a romantic-suspense novel. Although my novel, won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist Awards in the multi-cultural fiction category, the ultimate praise for my novel came from a family friend who said that her husband asked if she wasn’t coming to bed. When I heard this, I knew that I’ve done my job as a writer! 

CON YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS

Okay, I’m not proposing that you do anything illegal here. What I’m proposing is that if you’re an author or an unpublished writer you should consider attending writer’s conferences or cons as us authors like to call them as a path to success.  Cons provide a wealth of information that writers find very useful: how to start a novel, how to plot story lines, how to develop strong characters, how to promote and market through social media and the list goes on.  It gives you a platform to be visible as a panelist to “strut” your stuff, to act as a moderator – showing that you can manage the authors and the audience and if you’re not quite comfortable doing either, you can always be a volunteer. Regardless, it affords you the opportunity to meet, mix and mingle with like-minded individuals and who knows you may run into your “writing” hero.

When I decided to become serious about my writing, I quickly joined the Maryland Writers’ Association and was eager to attend my first con. I remember it was on a brisk Saturday morning in spring and I dragged a couple members of my writer’s critique group along with me.  We were the first ones to arrive. After receiving my “goodie” bag of freebies, I started going through the list of workshops and one in particular caught my eye. It was being taught by Leslie Esdaile Banks aka “L.A. Banks.” She was so engaging as a speaker sharing how she got started writing and that we should consider writing a “business.” Unfortunately, a few months later, she succumbed to cancer. However, I was glad I was in her presence at this con. Since then I’ve attended the Eastern Shore Writers Conference twice and was a panelist at the Love is Murder conference in Chicago earlier this year.

Fast forward a few months later and I’ve taken on a new role as the Author Panel Coordinator for the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, September 13 – 15, 2013 at the Hunt Valley Inn. This con will bring together readers and writers of mystery, suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy and steam punk. My job is to communicate with all registered authors and ensure that they are placed on the panels of their choices so that they can “strut” their stuff. This is not an easy task as most of the authors would like to be placed on the “hot” panels such as “New Writers Talk About their First Novel,” “What Makes a Hero,” “Men Writing the Softer Side/Women the Rough Stuff,” etc. So, the juggling begins when all the choices come rolling in.

With all of these moving pieces, I’m thankful that I’m very organized in coordinating and putting things together. Overall, it’s a very exciting process and I look forward to meeting, mixing and mingling with all the authors and fans when they all come to con their way to success!  

Submitted by: Author Deliah Lawrence

What is genre?

I’ll soon see the release of the fourth book in my Stark & O’Brien series . 

When I wrote the first book I knew it was action/adventure.  That’s what they were calling other similar novels at the time.  Then at some point I was told that what I write are really international thrillers.  Okay, people seemed to understand that meant lots of action and suspense, although before that I had thought thrillers were scary.

Then the other day I was describing my novels to someone who doesn’t read thrillers.  When I mentioned that my two protagonists happen to have a psychic link that warns one when the other is in danger her eyes lit up.  “Oh!  So you really write UF or PNR!”

I nodded and smiled but when I got home I had to Google it.  UF turns out to be short for Urban Fantasy.  These books aren’t urban in the sense of books about drug lords and hookers.  In this case urban is NOT a euphemism for African American or gangbanger style.  UF literally means fantasy fiction – ghosts, goblins and demons – set in a city.  Jim Butcher seems to be the leader of this pack, although C3 conference keynote speaker Christopher Golden is also a leading figure.  A lot of this material is what I would have called horror.  Much of what Bram Stoker and Stephen King have written would qualify as Urban Fantasy.

Then there’s PNR – ParaNormal Romance.  This label seems to separate the vampires and werewolves (and other shape shifters) from the UF books.  Of course, as the name implies there has to be a romance element, but vampires and werewolves still sound like horror to me.  Except that a lot of these books (like Laurell K. Hamilton’s  work) are about vampire hunters or demon hunters, and they read like action/adventure to me… or maybe I mean thrillers.

When we set up the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference we tried to take in all the fictional genres that seemed to fit together: mystery, suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy and even the newcomer steampunk (a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid that would have described Jules Verne’s and HG Wells’ work.)  But we didn’t account for the rush of new sub-genres.  So it’s startling when someone writes, “I see you don’t take romance, and that’s what I write but my books have shape-shifters and elves.  Will I fit in at your conference?”  To me that’s fantasy, or horror, or SOMEWHERE in that space.

My point, (and I do have one)  is that if you think the books you love to read might edge their way into one of the categories we’re touting for the C3 Conference, then you can be sure you’ll meet others who read them, and maybe someone who writes them.  So bring your love of genre fiction in almost all its forms to the C3 Conference in September.

And let me know what other sub-genre we should call out to.