Blog postings are supposed to be kept short. The five nonstop days of ThrillerFest were filled with so much material and so many experiences that it’s impossible to be brief, yet still be comprehensive. I’m just going to have to do a series of blogs to be able to get the full flavor and import of the conference across to those who may have an interest in learning what goes on there.
First, a little background. I spent many of my years in the real estate development industry as an active member of its largest professional organization. It was supposedly an organization for active professionals in the industry, but actually was run by and for the benefit of the bureaucrats in its offices. The most they knew about real estate development is that they’d bought a house. Members received a constant barrage of BS over-promising what its annual gatherings would do for them, but unfailingly under-delivering. The only people who benefitted from the organization were its office staff.
ThrillerFest is an annual production of ITW—the International Thriller Writers. The people who run the organization, as well as organize and conduct ThrillerFest, are thriller writers. You know their names: Steve Berry, Heather Graham, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Walter Mosley, and many, many more bestselling writers. As a result, ThrillerFest over-delivers on all counts. All presenters and panelists are published writers who share their hard-earned experiences and steps to success with others in attendance.
I have a boatload of experiences from this year’s ThrillerFest and dozens of pages of bulleted notes. I plan to share them in these posts over the next couple of weeks. If you’re a fellow thriller writer, or harbor a secret desire to be, stay tuned.