{"id":139,"date":"2008-04-27T21:21:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-27T21:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amperzen.com\/blog\/?p=139"},"modified":"2008-04-27T23:54:14","modified_gmt":"2008-04-27T23:54:14","slug":"malice-domestic-sunday-27-april-2008-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amperzen.com\/blog\/malice-domestic-sunday-27-april-2008-day-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Malice Domestic — Sunday, 27 April 2008, Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MaliceSunday dawned overcast and cloudy after raining off and on all night. But up we got and headed to Malice Domestic<\/a> for its last day. We arrived shortly before the start of the 10:30 a.m. panels, missing the 9 a.m. panels (we’d have been a little earlier, but caffeine was determined to be a priority).<\/p>\n

Devious Devices: What Makes Their Sleuthing Unique?<\/em> Panelists: David Skibbins, Michael Dymmoch, Jack Cater (Moderator), Chris Grabenstein, and Andy Straka. Panelists discussed how to make a story and its characters believable. This included using explicit forensic methods, correct gun information, research, more research, and even more research. They stress that the characters must have reason either personal or professional for what they do, otherwise why would they get involved. Panelists also discussed the necessity of listening to the characters — you can’t force them to go against their nature (even though you originally gave them their characteristics and beliefs). This panel didn’t stray off the subject but it did use a much broader interpretation of “device” than I had expected. Chris told an amusing story of needing to research men’s rooms along the NJ Turnpike and how difficult it can be to walk in and start taking pictures (think about it).<\/p>\n

\"Panel<\/p>\n

Signings — We managed to get to a signing session — finally. Malice Domestic has a set of panels and then a half hour of signings by all panelists from the previous session. This gives attendees a chance to get their books signed and still get to see all the panels. We introduced ourselves to a number of authors and chatted for a bit and took pictures for our archives.<\/p>\n

\"PanelThe Credible Amateur: Regular People with a Gift for Detection<\/em>. Panelists: Earlene Fowler, Betty Hechtman, Rosemary Harris, Barb Goffman (Moderator), Kathryn R. Wall, and Maria Hudgins. The panel talked about the need to have police involvement and how to involve the police and yet be able to keep an amateur sleuth looking for clues. And as a corollary, the difficulty of having the sleuth solve a crime that the police can’t with all their experience. There’s the belief that if you develop your character fully then there will be personal, professional, or incidental traits or knowledge that allow the amateur to string information together in nonstandard ways allowing them to solve the crime. There was also discussion on how aggravating it is when authors have the police tell the amateur things that police would never divulge to a civilian — that, to be credible, the amateur needed to be given no more information than ‘reality’ would allow. The authors discussed how they handled these problems in their own mystery series. Later, they discussed keeping the readers reading even when they know that it’s total fantasy because no one could possibly fall over sixteen bodies in two years of book time. Some interesting ways to handle this dilemma were discussed (I’d tell more but you should consider attending a Malice is you really want to know)<\/p>\n

\"RobertLifetime Achievement Interview<\/em>: Peter Lovesy interviewed by Robert Barnard. This interview was totally fascinating as it covered growing up during World War II London and what it was being a child then: the games they played (collecting shrapnel and trying to find spies), books they read, the billeting of the children to areas outside of London. Then they covered Lovesey’s early career as a sports writer and his interest in the Victorian Era and sports then and now (writing articles on the history of sports: running). Some overviews of his writing process, books to film, the genesis ideas that later led to books. Once again an interview that was entertaining, informative, and humorous.<\/p>\n

Essentially, at this point Malice Domestic is over except for their hat contest and the Afternoon Tea. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get may pictures of hats prior to the tea, which we didn’t attend. However, we did pick up a list of the Agatha Award winner from Saturday night’s ceremony:<\/p>\n

The Agathas were awarded in five categories:<\/p>\n