An ice cube should not cost $3, I'm teaching a class on writing action, and other stuff...

Another Left Coast Crime in the books + announcements

Seriously, Denver’s Downtown Westin: $3 for that big ice cube in my whiskey? Lord. I swiped a bottle of wine from the banquet on Saturday so I didn’t have to sell a kidney to afford my bar bill…

Anyway, another conference in the books. This year’s Left Coast Crime was a good time (other than the ice cubes). It’s a smaller crowd than Bouchercon, which is nice, because it means I get to spend quality time with friends like Christa Faust, pictured above, whose new book, The Get Off, is out now.

We’re just coming back from our conference-tradition Fancy Lads dinner (hence the suspenders), where we were joined by my partner Cyn Grace Sylvie (a brilliant poet and tarot reader, and you can learn more about her at

Cyn’s Substack

).

We ate at The Wolf’s Tailor, which we picked solely because it has a Michelin star but the website is… a lot, and we wanted to see if they earned it. They did, in spades. A fantastic dinner. Highly recommended.

I got to spend some quality time with pals, and meet new ones, and I could spend the next hour shouting people out, but I have to get to the gym.

I did lose the Lefty Award for Best Novel, but the lineup was so great, it would have been an honor to lose to any of them. And I’m incredibly happy for James L’Etoile, a fantastic writer and a stand-up guy who is very deserving of the accolade.

(If you’d like to see me lose another award, nominate Assassins Anonymous for Best Hardcover on your Anthony ballot for Bouchercon!!!)

My publisher got galley copies of The Medusa Protocol (available June 24) into some people’s swag bags, so it was nice to see those floating around.

And I got to sit on two great panels, and did my best to push the same narrative I always do: how thankful I am to be in a place like that with a buncha nerds who are willing to fly to another city to talk about books and writing.

This is a lonely sacrament we’ve chosen, and it’s nice to remember we’re not alone.

We got a nice reminder of that during the banquet, where folks like toastmaster John Copenhaver and guest of honor Sara Paretsky, among others, talked about the importance of joy and resistance, at a time when the world is a very scary place.

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Writer’s Digest is running a mystery and thriller virtual conference this weekend—and I’ll be teaching a class on how to write action. This is something I enjoy talking about—not to toot my own horn too loud but I think I write pretty good action scenes, in part because of my background in Krav Maga and Muay Thai.

My lecture will be on Friday afternoon, and you can find more information at this link. The whole thing looks killer, and it’s online, so you don’t even have to go anywhere.

I love working with Writer’s Digest… I’ve got a few more pieces coming out soon in their print magazine, and I’ll be teaching at their in-person conference in Baltimore this summer. More info on that soon.

Also, this Saturday I’ll be at Kew & Willow in Queens, to help

Nick Kolakowski

release his new novel, Where the Bones Lie. It starts at 7 p.m., and you can find more information here.

That’s all for now, folks.