rachelmanija | Entries tagged with bouchercon

Panelists: Erin Flanagan, William Kent Krueger, C. Matthew Smith, David Heska Wambli Weiden.

Moderator: Mark Stevens

This was a really excellent panel. The panelists were all great and had a very nice rapport, and the moderator did a great job.

I use quotes for more exact quotes rather than paraphrases.

Mark: "Nothing like a dark, cavelike space for talking about the outdoors."

Mark: He reads a Walt Whitman quote about how being in nature makes people better people. He asks if everyone agrees.

Matt: "I don't agree. That's Walt Whitman being a little Walt Whitman." People need nature as part of a search for completion.

Erin: "Outdoors doesn't make us better people, or we'd all sleep outside and have world peace." Her father gave up working at IBM and became a farmer.

Krueger: "Yes, I agree. I can't imagine even the worst person visiting Boundary Waters and not coming back at least a little better." He took up biking during the pandemic. Talks about connecting to nature is a form of spirituality. "A soul that is somehow redeemed."

David: Quotes a Lakota saying: "We are all related." "I'm Lakota. Land is central to our being."

Mark: How does nature affect your writing?

David: Many people will not have visited the reservation I wrote about, so I took care to describe it for them and make them feel what it was like to live there, and what the Black Hills look like.

Krueger: "Place shapes the characters' ethos."

Erin: Deer Season is based on my parents situation, but if my mother hadn't ended up adjusting and being happy with it.

Matt: National parks are under the jurisdiction of us a small FBI department, the ISB. It has 36 agents covering 800 million acres of land. They live out of their cars, in the parks, and work alone, with new partners. It attracted him because I like time alone outside. "I started with an image of my character, who was an ISB agent. She was always going to be who she was."

Mark: How do you go about creating your villains and antagonists?

Krueger: "My villains are trying to rape the land." They're environmentally destructive. It's very easy to find antagonists that way. Fox Creek is a little different because it has an antagonist who didn't choose the work he did, and he changes during the book. "No one is born bad."

David: I teach a class in how to create antagonists. My villains are dark mirrors of my protagonist.

Erin: My villains are human. Greed often motivates them. Nature can't be a villain. It doesn't have feelings. It feels contrived to have weather events that are convenient for the plot, like, [imitating Oprah] "You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard!"

Mark: Can setting be a character in its own right?

David: I also teach a class in setting. The important thing is to write from the point of view of the character, so you're not just describing the setting in a neutral way, you're describing it from their point of view. You small details. That way you can use the setting to illuminate character and also theme.

Moderator: "Okay, Professor, but can the setting be a character?"

David: "No, for me the setting is more of a supplement than a character."

Erin: "No. A setting doesn't have a motivation. The outdoors will not take revenge."

Krueger (to Erin; this was playful, not condescending): "You wrote a wonderful book and I love your dress, but I still disagree with you."

Erin (same tone): "I like your sweater too."

Krueger: "Settings have a spirit. Settings have a face. They have scents, sometimes odors. You can set someone down in Arizona with the blindfold, and don't know where they are. Though hear the wind. Go here tumbleweeds rolling. The setting doesn't need motivation. I can provide motivation. But if you believe that land has spirit, then sure."

Matt: "Land gives motives. People want land, they fight over land, they buy land, they kill for land. But I'm not opposed to dialing up a blizzard."

Mark: Do you deal with climate change in your work? Do you worry about being seen as preachy, or of losing readers?

Matt: "You can't write a realistic story without taking it into account." Weather is unpredictable now. Stories can reflect that.

Erin: "I am not anti-blizzard." I worry about being preachy, but not about losing readers. How politics comes into the story depends on how the characters think.

Krueger: "I've used blizzards." I like books that are not just mysteries. I do occasionally get emails from readers about my liberal politics, but I only once had emails from readers saying they actually will never read me again. That was because of one story I wrote about the mistreatment of refugees on the border. That really made people mad.

David: I don't write about climate change and environmentalism specifically that much. "I wanted to touch on issues that are not well known." Native American spirituality was a federal crime until 1978." Krueger wrote a book on the boarding schools, which took children away from their parents and families and abused them. That was a favorite of mine. There's a lot I want to say, so much so that I hold a lot back. The Black Hills are sacred to my people. They were stolen by the federal government. We sued and won the lawsuit, but the government refused to give them back. They offered us $100 million for them but we refused it.

Moderator: What was your most extreme outdoor experience?

Erin: "When I was 10 years old, my dad and my sister and I took a long trip to Boundary Waters, along with another family. We re-created it recently, when Dad was in his 70s. I found out that Flanagans bring a lot of liquor. The first time we did it, the parents were helping the kids carry the canoe. This time, the kids were helping the parents."

Matt: Rock climbing is the scariest. When I was a kid I did things I tell my son, "Don't ever do this." Don't go camping alone where there's grizzlies. Bear spray won't stop them.

Krueger: "When I was 17 and living in Oregon, I decided to hitchhike to Mexico. I got as far as Disneyland, then I turned around and went back. Disneyland was great!

On my way back, I was in the desert, with absolutely nothing around. I waited and waited and finally a car pulled up. I got in.

Normally I'd kind of pay for my ride by telling stories, but this guy was not responding to my stories. He didn't say anything. I noticed that when he leaned forward, his coat fell open and he had a strap across his chest. I had a friend who'd dislocated his shoulder and had a similar strap, so I thought that was what it was. Then I saw that that strap led to a holster, and a gun.

I started thinking about all kinds of things. Maybe I could lunge forward and step on the brake and then jump out and run. The guy pulled out the pistol and put it down between us. Then he picked up up and pulled over to the side of the road. So we were stopping, but not like I'd wanted. He said, 'Get out.' I got out and he got out with me.

We stood there, and then he got back in the car and drove away. I ran straight into a field of alfalfa. When I figured I was far away enough that he couldn't find me if he decided to come back, I lay down in that field of alfalfa under the stars, and I thanked God I was alive."

David: "Native Americans, we don't ski. We can't afford it. We think it's insane. But when I was younger, I had some friends who did it so I decided to come along. I put them on, I no idea what I was doing and I rolled all the way down that mountain. That was last time I ever skied."

This panel had a bunch of last-minute switches, so I'm not sure who the moderator was or of the spelling of everyone's names. Panelists were S. A. "Shawn" Cosby, Alan Orloff, Mark Westmoreland, and Faye Snowden.

Bryan Quartermore, a white guy and a good panelist, is an author and an editor at Angry Robot.

Alan Orloff looks like he's a newer writer/editor. He's a white guy and was a good panelist. I think he was standing in for Hank Philippi Ryan, who couldn't make it due to covid and edited an anthology on revenge, This Time For Sure, which Alan had a story in. He read a statement from Hank saying that anyone who emailed her at her website would get a gift.

Alan: "My short story 'Killing Calhoun' has a huge twist in the last sentence. Hank suggested taking it out. Then I came up with a new twist. We had 20 emails back and forth, and then we ended up keeping it as is."

Shawn Cosby was an editor for the anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, which I had planned to never read on the grounds that it would be soul-crushingly depressing. He's also the author of Blacktop Wasteland (fantastic) and Razorblade Tears (reading now, so far fantastic). He's a Black guy with a beard and is incredibly charismatic.

Shawn: "The intention of the anthology was not to mythologize the police. We did a blind submission process and a lot of people didn't understand the assignment, which was to take the point of view that police violence is a solvable problem. We got a lot of very nihilistic stories that were basically 'Everyone's gonna die, everyone's gonna get their heads caved in, goodnight." That was not what they were looking for. [Rachel: This convinced me to buy the anthology, because I'd thought that WAS what they were looking for!]

Shawn: "There were eight editors, so we had a lot of discussion. Some submissions we were all like, 'Well this is horrible.' A guy from Africa submitted, we had trouble with edits because there was a language barrier. His story was good, but it was a process."

Shawn: "Most people took edits okay, not everybody. A really good editor doesn't take away your voice, just makes it louder."

Faye Snowden is a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try at novel length, but unfortunately they didn't have her novels at the con. She wrote the short story "Chefs" in The Midnight Hour, which I did not read due to cannibalism. She's a Black woman and was on several panels; she's a real highlight and is very erudite on the history of the genre.

Faye: "'Chefs' was the funnest story I ever wrote. It's set in Modesto, and was inspired by a commute I used to make between Modesto, where I lived, and the Bay Area, where I worked." The drive featured a lot of pumpkin fields.

Faye: "Editing on Midnight Hour was very simple. I think I had one or two notes. But the story was very polished when I submitted it."

Mark Westmoreland is also a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try, but unfortunately they didn't have his books at the con. He edited the anthology Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues.He's a white guy with a Georgia accent that is very nice to listen to.

Mark: "Trouble No More was a happy accident." He loves the Allman Brothers and Tweeted that he was going to do an anthology based on their music. Shawn Cosby Tweeted that he'd write for it, then DM'd him an idea.

Mark: "It was a joke!"

Another writer, J. B. Stevens, Tweeted, "I wanna write for that."

Mark: "I said, 'It ain't happening.' Then J. B. started emailing editors. 24 hours later, he tells me he has an offer. I said, 'The fuck you mean?'"

Next thing he knew, "I was emailing writers like I was asking girls in high school."

Shawn: "I was joking... I was just kinda fucking around... Then I wrote a story."

Mod: "What artist or group would you all want to base an anthology on?"

Shawn: "Bruce Springsteen. Right after I got dropped by my agent, I saw an interview with him on TV. He was making Born to Run, and he decided, 'I'll put everything I like in it.' So I wrote Blacktop Wasteland, and I did that too. Springsteen, when you're 25, you think, 'He's all right.' But when you're 45, he speaks to your soul."

Bryan: "My favorite genre of music is Motown, but I've got no business editing stories about that. But I'd do an anthology off the Beach Boys."

Faye: "Bob Seger. 'Row Me Away.'"

Alan: "Linda Ronstadt."

Mark: "Dolly Parton."

Shawn: "Whenever you think you're a really good writer, remember that Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same day."

Mod: "What hold does the south have on us?"

Mark: "Like they say, if you can't set a crime story in the south, you can't set it anywhere. The whole history of the south is fucked up. I mean, Florida..."

Faye: "But still, there's something about it, something about the soil. There's something that you love, that gets in your soul."

Shawn: "People think a dark alley is scary. Let me tell you, the scariest thing is the world is an empty country road with no moon."

Shawn: "Every scrap of land that a boy with a Confederate flag marched over, a Black person bled on it, worked on it. I'll be damned if I let you take it for a four year hissy fit."

Mod: "Hank's anthology has a revenge theme. If you could, would you take revenge on those who wronged you?"

Alan: "Yes."

Shawn: "I would. I worked at a hardware store for twelve years. I decided to quit and work with my wife so I'd have more time to write. My manager kept saying, 'But you got such a good career.' I thought, 'If you say that one more time, I'm going to throw you into the thresher.' After I left, even after I published a book, he kept saying that to other people who worked there who I knew. I came by and gave him a copy of Blacktop Wasteland. I signed it, 'I don't think I'm coming back.'

Bryan: "I used to be an angry, petty, vindictive person. Recently I gave up on a book I was writing because I wasn't that person anymore and I couldn't get into that mindset."

Mod: "I haven't grown up as much as Bryan has."

Mark: "I'm with Shawn, I'm on Team Vengeance. My day job is in customer service. After eight hours, you just plot creative ways to do away with them."

Faye: "I tell myself everyone's just doing the best they can. Of course, we're all human, so sometimes people do get to me. But I think success is the best revenge. They see my books, they can eat their livers."