History at Bouchercon 2023

History at Bouchercon 2023

Bouchercon is the annual world mystery convention, this year held in San Diego, California. Every conceivable form of mystery, suspense, and thriller novel, from teddy bear cozies to hard-boiled, and noir can be found here. This year’s convention brought together approximately seventeen hundred people for four and a half days of fun and crime at… Read more »

Noir and Its Cousins at Bouchercon 2023

Noir and Its Cousins at Bouchercon 2023

Bouchercon is the annual World Mystery Convention held in honor of Anthony Boucher, a writer and editor of mysteries. This convention moves to a different city every year. This year in San Diego, seventeen hundred people attended. In the next few years, Bouchercon will go to Nashville, New Orleans, and Calgary before coming back to… Read more »

History at Malice Domestic

History at Malice Domestic

As writers, we are encouraged to go to conferences. To get the lay of the genre and the industry. To fangirl/boy with our favorite authors. To network and to take workshops. To meet and pitch to agents. In short, to find our community. I cannot think of a better one for the new or emerging… Read more »

Categories of Historical Fiction

Categories of Historical Fiction

Classification, like periodization, is arbitrary, and much of it derives from marketing. Where do we put in the bookstores, so interested people can find it? A quick tour of the internet, however, may lead us to paraphrase Ozzy Osbourne: How many bloody categories are there? Five, eight, ten?  Keeping in mind that historical novels need… Read more »

Historical Fiction: What is it?

Historical Fiction: What is it?

When I told a writing instructor I wrote historical fiction, she replied, “Don’t put too much history in it.” I blinked. Say what? How can we have a clue about where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been?  Historical fiction can take us to the foreign country that is the past, can make… Read more »