C'mon Down! The New England Crime Bake

HALLIE EPHRON: November means we're coming up on the annual conference for crime fiction, The New England Crime Bake. And YES you can still register!

It's the coziest (not as in cozy vs hardboiled; cozy as in welcoming to all) of conferences. It's sponsored by the New England Chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

I still have the program from the first conference, November 9, 2002.

The Crime Bake started out as a one-day affair and featured an amazing roster of New England crime fiction authors. Jeremiah Healy gave the Keynote. Among the panelists were some of the greats who have since left us, including Barbara Neely, Phil Craig, Bill Tapply, Al Blanchard, and Jane Langton.

Even more amazingly, there are many writers who were there and, like me, will back in November, 22 years later (including Paula Munier, Kate Flora, Toni Kelner, Leslie Wheeler, Sarah Smith, and Gary Goshgarian)! Yes, there will be newbies, too.

The Crime Bake started as a glimmer in Kate Flora's eye and has been going strong ever since, now encompassing three days and including pitch sessions with agents and editors, manuscript critiques, and forensics experts.

This year the guest of honor will be Gabino Iglesias.

His novels include Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, The Devil Takes You Home, and his recent release, House of Bone and Rain. An Edgar Award finalist and winner of the Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, and numerous Book of the Year Awards. He also teaches writing. I can't wait to meet him.

Here's what The New York Times says about him:

Iglesias, a Puerto Rican novelist, found himself without a salary or health insurance. Unable to find other work in the bleak 2020 job market, he gambled on finishing the book he had started writing on his lunch breaks.

As Covid-19 raged outside, he wrote at a feverish pace for months on “The Devil Takes You Home,” his haunting noir thriller, which Mulholland Books will publish on Tuesday. Echoing the Book of Job, it follows a father in Austin who loses his job and health insurance, his young daughter to terrible disease and, finally, his marriage.

I'll be at the Crime Bake this year, too, on a panel and doing something that I'm not supposed to tell you about but TRUTH BE TOLD it will be exciting for any and all who follow Jungle Red.

So hope to see many of you at the Dedham Hilton (a 60-second cab ride from Amtrak's RTE 128 station.) I'll be in the bar sipping my Virgin Martini, looking to put names to faces.

So here's that link to register.