Malice Domestic 35

 The (once again) annual Malice Domestic conference took place last weekend in North Bethesda* MD. (Up yours, covid.) Malice caters to traditional and cozy mysteries, and I say with little fear of contradiction I do not write either. With that in mind, people I trust said things were opening up a little and that I should give it a try.

 

That’s why I trust those people.

 

I’ll be honest: Malice is still not quite in my wheelhouse. The panels are geared for more traditional tastes, and only a handful of the people I typically hang with at conferences were there. With that out of the way, The Beloved Spouse™ and I are both glad we went.

 

Things got off to a less than auspicious start. I was sitting in the front row of the “Malice 101” session wearing my “What Would Al Swearengen Do?” tee shirt when one of the presenters politely tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “What’s a Swearengen?”

 

That tells you a lot about Malice. Nicer people cannot be found, though most do not share the tastes of those I usually pal around with. That’s on me, and I readily accept it.

 

A few highlights:

 

Gabrielle St. George is negotiating to have her books made into a TV series. Her protagonist is 53, with grown children. The TV folks told her the hard cutoff for female protags is 36. The character will be 36 in the TV show; how old she was when giving birth is still under negotiation. (I don’t want to put words in Gabrielle’s mouth, but my first thought was “Why in hell did they want to buy the rights if the first thing they wanted to do was fundamentally change the primary character?”)

 

Catriona McPherson is hilarious.

 

Lord knows Hank Phillippi Ryan doesn’t need me to pump up her career, but I have to say she might be the best moderator I’ve ever seen; certainly none better. Most of the notes I have from her “If It Bleeds, It Leads” panel are tips on how to better moderate panels. Examples:

·       Trim the bios down to almost nothing. Time is precious and everyone’s CVs are in the program.

·       Don’t be afraid to interrupt a panelist who is rambling. Grab onto something they said and deflect the conversation to another panelist.

·       Hank read the opening of each panelist’s book as a game to see if we could guess who wrote it. I’m thinking to do this first, in place of the bio, as a way to set the tone for that author’s work. (I won’t have no bios, but will maybe keep them to 50 words or fewer.)

 

With a Western on the horizon, I am already grateful to Allison Montclair (not his real name) for making me aware of Etymology Online

 

Gabriel Valjan’s panel on “Social Issues in Police Procedurals” skirted the swamp on trigger warnings. I hope to have more about that in a little while here on the blog.

 

My panel (Small Town Cops) was moderated by Marcy McCreary and included Sarah Bewley, Justin Kiska, and James L’Etoile. Marcy kept things moving and the group had good chemistry. It must have gone pretty well; I sold three books as a direct result.

 

No conference would be complete without the social element. Many thanks to Dale Phillips, Bruce Coffin, Avram Lavinsky, Hugh Lessig (and wife, whose name I did not get; sincere apologies), Alan Orloff, Art Taylor, Tara Laskowski, and several delightful women whose names I did not get because the combination of my eyesight, lack of ambient lighting, and the positioning of their badges would have required me to violate the conference code of conduct to read them.

 

(Special shout out to Neil Plakcy for being the first person, ever, to guess “W.W.E.L.D.?” means without seeing the clue on the back of the shirt.)

 

Next year’s conference schedule is still up in the air, but the good feelings we picked up at this year’s Malice Domestic made it more than likely we’ll be back.

 

(PS

If you’re in North Bethesda* and in the mood for a burger, BurgerFi is the place to go.

 

* = Rockville south of Randolph Road)