award-winning author of While Galileo Preys
So:
This past week, I was in New York City for one of my favorite events of the year, ThrillerFest. For those of you who don’t know what ThrillerFest is, take a gander here. For those of you who are like me and therefore too lazy to click on a link, I will explain:
Today I sat on my second panel of the convention. The topic was Conflict and who better to moderate than the masterful Allison Brennan. Alongside me on the panel were Andrew Peterson, April Smith, and Brett Battles. The panel went quite well, but sometimes at these things – sometimes – I feel like a little kid who’s pretending to be an adult and is going to be found out at any minute.
From what I’ve heard, this is a common psychosis among writers.
Before my panel, though, I attended two tremendous – and tremendously different – panels in the morning: one on sex and one on the FBI.
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Although I arrived here with a nervous preconception that perhaps I didn’t belong at this particular convention (if only because the only sex scene I’ve ever written involved a female clown in a steam-pipe closet on a Dutch freighter), today went really well. Much of that I owe to my roommate, Stephen J. Schwartz, who never fails in making me feel like I fit in.