I’m a ThrillerFest rookie, and I’m terrified.  What if I step into the wrong empty hallway or down the wrong narrow set of stairs?  Who or what might be lurking there? The festival brings together the greatest thriller writers and the greatest thriller fans, but think how scary that is! People who spend all day alone, thinking of ways to terrify others, looking for that dark parking lot where the siren finds herself, that clown climbing out of a sewer, that psychiatrist/cannibal who forces you to remember those screaming lambs—all coming together under one roof.  And then there are the great thriller readers—people who lie next to their spouses and drive their kids to school, all the while desperate to climb back into the arms of the serial killers on their night tables or in their back seats. Who are we?  A strange flock of birds, and like Hitchcock’s finest, there’s no telling what could happen when we all gather!

That said, it’s an honor to be invited to speak at ThrillerFest.  In THE RULE OF FOUR, where a series of murders take place on the Princeton campus, my co-writer and I stuck a toe into the thriller waters and they were oh so warm. My new novel, 12.21, out this August, centers on a mysterious, deadly disease that terrifies doctors in the weeks leading up to the day many believe the Maya predicted was the end of the world. I’ve clearly found my home in the vast and wonderful thriller sea, and I’m excited to get to step onto the luxury cruise of ThrillerFest for a few days in July. The eerie music swells…and I make my travel arrangements with a sense of foreboding…but like you, I’m drawn to the strange, creepy island of many hills—Manhattan—terrified but thrilled…

*****

DUSTIN THOMASON graduated from Harvard College and received his M.D. from Columbia University. He is the co-author of the international bestseller THE RULE OF FOUR, and has written and produced several television series, including “Lie to Me.” His newest novel, 12.21, will be published in more than twenty languages in August, 2o12.

By Shane Gericke

Five years ago, I was chugging down whiskey as a shot rang out and thunderclouds loomed on the horizon.

All right, not really. It was decaf coffee, I was sipping daintily, it was my telephone ringing, and the skies were blue and pretty. But what kind of opening would that make for a thriller-y kinda story?

Anyway, it was Kathie. You know her as Kathleen Antrim, co-president of ITW. I know her as trouble, as in every time I pick up the phone, I wind up doing another job for ThrillerFest. She’s diabolical that way, y’know …

Anyway, she was vice president of ThrillerFest then, and I was running the ThrillerFest Charity Auctions. We were (and are) good pals, and so she wondered if I wanted to add another teensy little job to my ThrillerFest resume:

Director of AgentFest.

“And what, pray tell,” said I, “is an AgentFest, and what do I do with it once I got it?”

She explained that we would invite the country’s best literary agents to ThrillerFest one afternoon, seat them at tables in a conference room, and let authors pitch their manuscripts in hopes of winning representation. I would recruit and vet all the agents, work out the details, and run the show. Was I interested?

Thought about it for three seconds. Took another swig of decaf, uh, whiskey, and said:

“I’m in.”

Like I said, she’s dastardly with that winning smile and sweet reason.

Over the next several months, I called and e-mailed more than sixty agents. Because ITW has such a good reputation, most of them said yes, and forty-five came that day. Kathie figured out how to pack four dozen agents and a hundred authors into one room—short version, not easily—and I bought what would become the shining symbol of that very first AgentFest:

The MacGyver bell.

It was a prop from the old TV thriller where secret agent Angus MacGyver, played to perfection by Richard Dean Anderson, thwarted baddies and solved crises with everyday materials like gravel, duct tape, and Swiss Army knives. I rang it every three minutes to tell authors it was time to pitch the next agent. (What I really wanted a revolver from Hawaii Five-O, but Kathie frowned on my accidentally plugging our agents and authors. Go figure, right?) The bell seemed like a fun gimmick the time—I gave it away to a lucky author at the end of the day—but by the end of the three hours, I hated that clang-a-lang so much I retired it forevermore in favor of air horns. Yeah, air horns proved more soothing than that bell. Live and learn.

The event turned out great, despite my running it. And a nice young writer named Kim, who I met at the very first ThrillerFest in Phoenix a couple of years earlier, noticed my shoes were smoking from all that running around and volunteered to help out. I summoned up my Inner Kathie and said, “Hey maybe you could add a teensy little job to your resume next year . . .”

Kimberley Howe did, becoming assistant director. The year after that, she replaced me as the director when I moved up to ThrillerFest general chair. And now Kim’s in charge of the whole shootin’ match: executive director of ThrillerFest.

But she’ll tell you that part of the story in her own blog, as the symbolic MacGyver bell rings in the next generation of AgentFest leadership.

Shane Gericke served as chairman of ThrillerFest, founding director of AgentFest, a judge for the Thriller, Edgar and St. Martin’s First Mystery contests, and one of the guys who handcarts the books into the ThrillerFest bookstore, proving that he really is a Teamster at heart. He’s the national print bestselling—and No. 1 Kindle bestselling—author of TORN APART, a finalist for the Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original. Read all about him at www.shanegericke.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.

I had never pitched a story before. “What if no one likes it?” I thought. I practiced my pitch before and after the luncheon. I practiced even as I stood in line waiting for the start of AgentFest, while other attendees chatted. My legs trembled and the suit I wore felt like heavy armor. “I only need one to say yes,” I said to myself.

I had tried query letters with my first and second books. I attended a writer’s conference in San Diego in 2000 and came close to getting an agent, but my dream fizzled. “Being face-to-face is better than query letters,” I convinced myself, as I placed the conference fee on a credit card. You have to try.”

Before arriving at ThrillerFest, I had meticulously researched each agent and their potential interest in my non-thriller manuscript (yes, I came to ThrillerFest without a thriller!). I knew which room I would attack first. The bell rang and the doors opened. I walked in, and immediately to my right was an agent who was on the top of my list.

I smiled and she introduced herself: Victoria Sanders. “I’ve never done this before,” I said. She nodded and assured me that all would be well. I closed my eyes and mechanically recited the five sentences to which my five-hundred-page story had been boiled down. I opened my eyes. “That sounds like something I’d like to take a look at,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. “The whole thing?” I asked. She smiled and said yes.

I shook Victoria’s hand and walked to the next line. Eleven more agents said yes that day. My voice trembled and the sweat poured at each table. “Twelve out of twelve!” I shouted into the phone to my husband at the end of the day. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life. But even sweeter was the call two weeks later from Victoria.

I’ve been smiling ever since.

AgentFest 2011 wasn’t my first attempt to garner the attention of an agent. And, if I’m any measure, I’d bet many of the authors who attended tried for years before deciding to see if meeting agents face to face makes a difference. I’ve been writing for seven years. Graphic novels, novels, new media writing and in several genres. I’ve really committed. And submitted. Let me tell you, face to face DOES make all the difference.

Seven years ago most agents made me send in Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes with my snail-mail query letters—that’s right, I had to pay to get my form rejection.  As a Canadian author, just getting my hands on American stamps was a challenge.  Even after having several of my graphic novels published, success with HURAKAN selling to a great independent press, and doing new media work with a major publisher, I still couldn’t seem to get my book into the right hands. I was willing to accept that my early work wasn’t strong enough, but my most recent novel, THE TERMINALS, was already optioned for film and to be published in graphic novel format.

It was time to invest in AgentFest.

And it is an investment. Having four daughters and coming from Ottawa, it takes a lot of monetary and family support to enable me to gallivant off to NYC. But I added up all the time I’d spent crafting query letters, personalizing notes, researching the right agents, printing and expediting manuscripts, etc. and the decision made itself.

It paid off.

This December, after pitching her at AgentFest, I received a request to speak on the phone with Literary Agent Gina Panettieri, President of Talcott Notch Literary Services. Under her wing ever since, I have revised and revised and the manuscript rocks. I couldn’t be more ecstatic.

But I’ve skipped the best part! AgentFest was nerve rattling …

Despite having honed my pitch at the CraftFest workshops and researched the top agents and agencies I felt would be a fit, my mind drew a complete blank as the countdown to AgentFest began. For the first few moments when the doors opened and I stood at the very back of what seemed like a herd of authors, it was as if I was being corralled into a slaughterhouse; I was a dumb cow ready for the bolt gun and the room full of agents prepared to carve my pitch into cubes of stewing meat.

So with total disregard for my carefully prepared list, I went to the first free agent I saw. In retrospect, a good plan. My delivery was terrible. Little did I know, however, I had time to loosen up.

In all, I pitched seventeen agents. SEVENTEEN! And had fourteen requests to see what I had. Some requests were for partials, but most for full manuscripts.

While writing this, my spell check corrected AgentFest to Agent Feast.  How apt. It was a feast.

I’ve had good experiences on and off the Internet with agents, but AgentFest is in a class by itself.

The first two said no.

They were both really cool about it, explaining they weren’t actually repping young adult titles anymore, and both offered referrals to agents who did rep YA. I jotted down the recommendations, thanked them, and moved on, turning once more to the daunting yet oh-so-exciting event that was AgentFest.

This was my first AgentFest—my first ThrillerFest, for that matter—and I’d come to New York with fairly humble hopes: if I could get one agent interested in seeing pages from my newly finished manuscript, a YA thriller I then called PHOENIX ISLAND and have since re-titled DISSIDENT, I’d count the experience a success.

But turning back to the room full of agents, editors, and hopeful writers, success seemed a long shot. I was 0 and 2 on the day. Gulp.

Truth be told, I didn’t tumble into total pessimism. I loved my book, and with the help of Jon Land, I’d polished and practiced a pretty good pitch. So I leapt once more into the fray.

And everything changed.

The rest of the agents I “speed dated”—nine in all—wanted to see the book. Needless to say, I was over-the-top excited.

I submitted to five agents. A week later, one offered representation. I couldn’t believe it happened so quickly. I was even more surprised, when three additional offers of representation poured in. Thus began a very exciting, incredibly nerve-wracking time, where, through multiple phone calls, emails, and a face-to-face meeting, I got to know the agents and worked out my best fit. The agents were great, one and all, brilliant and charismatic and generous with their time and patience; but in the end, I knew the right choice for me: Christina Hogrebe of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

Christina read the first half of DISSIDENT in one night and e-mailed the next morning to let me know she was soliciting further readers within the agency. The next day, we had a nice phone conversation, and she invited me to visit the agency and meet “the team.” A few days later, when I rode the train into Manhattan, at least four people at the agency had already read my manuscript. Four people in just a few days’ time—talk about an advocate!

Since then, with the help of all the amazing people at JRA, Christina and I have knocked the manuscript back and forth, creating what she calls a “mean, lean thriller machine.” She’s also secured the help of Joe Veltre from the Gersh Agency, who has agreed to handle the film rights.

Needless to say, I’m a big, big fan of ThrillerFest and AgentFest. I owe a huge thanks to Shane Gericke, Jon Land, Kathie Antrim, and the entire army of amazing folks who make the convention come together so perfectly. If you’re an aspiring thriller writer, I can’t recommend the experience highly enough. ThrillerFest changed my life, and I can’t wait to attend again next year.

To learn more about John, please visit his blog.

By Martha Pound Miller

Martha Pound Miller was born and raised on the Arizona desert. She married an architect, had three children and went on to become the Executive Director of the American Institute of Architects Society in Arizona for 20 years. Writing was always of primary interest but with a family and job, there was never time. Much later came retirement and a decision to move to the cool, wet Pacific Northwest where you could turn over almost any mossy rock and find a writer. Possibly a web-footed one. It does rain a lot in Portland where she lives, but rainy days are great for hunkering down by the fire and writing thrillers, so that’s what she did, running her stories through three critique groups and polishing them to the best of her ability. Each manuscript she wrote got a little stronger and she began to get more courageous about pitching them to agents.

Last year, a friend suggested they go to New York for Thriller/Agent Fest, so they began to make plans. Martha went online and studied the bios and pictures of attending agents, astonished at how many there were. She printed all the Agent Fest information and began the interesting task of reading and rereading the bios to find the best fits for pitching her novel. One face in the crowd of agent photos stood out.  It seemed almost to say, “I’m the One”, so Martha put a double checkmark beside that picture/bio and on Agent Fest day made her way to the table of Marian Young of The Young Agency. Marian asked for a partial, then the whole manuscript, and after a few revisions, invited Martha to be her client.

In addition to college classes in creative writing, after Martha moved to Portland she studied extensively with and was mentored by James N. Frey of “How to Write a Damn Good Novel” and several other writing craft books.  She worked with him for many years, and credits him with teaching her the basics of good commercial fiction. “But if I hadn’t attended Agent Fest, this story would have a very different ending,” she says. “With that many agents in attendance, all looking for thrillers, it was the best thing I could have done for my career. Anyone who is undecided about attending next year, take my advice and go. You won’t be sorry.”

As a journalist and author, I am quite well known in the eastern states of Australia. This is a bit like being a household name in your own house. A couple of years ago, I wrote a thriller, King of the Cross, about the rise and (of course) fall of a Jewish gangster in Sydney. It won the Crime Writers of Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, I optioned the movie rights to a local producer, and assumed I’d quickly become internationally famous. But all that happened was I grew slightly better known in Western Australia.

Agents in the US showed no interest in my work, and didn’t even acknowledge my emails. I was complaining about this to Peter James, whom I met at a writers’ festival in Melbourne, and who had somehow become lost in a city built around one of the most logical gridding systems in the southern hemisphere.

He told me about Thrillerfest, the International Thriller Writers (ITW) conference in New York. I was mildly surprised to learn thriller writers had a conference of their own – although I’d recently shared a ferry ride with a global gathering of proctologists (honestly) so I guess every trade and profession likes to get together once a year and share industry gossip and ass jokes.

Peter described to me an afternoon called “AgentFest”, in which authors without US agents attempt to acquire representation through a process he described as “speed-dating”. (It’s distressing to imagine what the equivalent might be at the proctologists’ conference.)

I persuaded my friend Mark Abernethy, also an Australian thriller-writer, to come with me to New York, which had the predictable consequence of persuading most people we met that all Australian thriller writers were called Mark.

I was mildly surprised to find “speed-dating” wasn’t a metaphor, but a literal description of the event. There were about sixty agents and several hundred un-agented authors, and the writers had to form queues in front of the agent’s desk. On each desk is a digital timer and a bag of lollies. Suitors have exactly three minutes to impress agents with their proposal, after which an alarm sounds and the next hopeful steps up.

I’d imagined only desperate, unattractive, acned, embittered, left-on-the-shelf agents might be into speed-dating, but some of the biggest agents in the US were represented, and we were advised to impress them by wearing a jacket and smart pants. The dress code had to be instituted to prevent authors from arriving dressed as their character, which had apparently happened in previous years, when a writer of westerns – who shouldn’t have been there anyway – turned up in a cowboy outfit.

The other would-be writers had been to workshops earlier in the day to refine their pitches, and been told to reduce them to a single sentence, which should also be a question. The only one I heard was: “What if Dexter was a professor of philosophy who only killed sex offenders?”

I didn’t have a sentence (“What if the Sopranos was a black comedy about Jewish mobsters in post-war Sydney?”) but I had my book, my award and my un-placeable accent. I spoke with eight agents, all of whom asked to see my writing. We were told not to bring our books, but four of the agents requested copies of King of the Cross. Astonishingly, they all read it within days, and each one arranged a meeting with me.

I met with an obviously brilliant agent from Trident Media in a Madison Avenue building. I had to have a security pass made – with my photograph printed on it – just to access the elevator. (By contrast, my much-loved Australian agent doesn’t even have an office). But in the end I chose Yishai Seidman of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner, because he seemed so fantastically enthusiastic about my work and promised to “never, ever give up” trying to sell my books.

I am now signed to the same agency as Patti Smith, Marilyn Manson and Tommy Lee, and even a few people who are known for writing books.

The next night, I went for a celebratory drink with The Other Mark. Now, I’m not as young as I once was – terrifyingly, I’m not even as young as the current first lady – and an evening of mildly irresponsible drinking scraped the skin off my heart and sent darts into my brain.

So I was not particularly receptive when I woke up in my hotel room – how the hell did I get here? – to a phone call from Mark inviting me downstairs for a conference breakfast. But he appealed to my torn and bleeding conscience, so I gathered what remained of my faculties (i.e. nothing) and lumbered towards the lift.

Breakfast, on the other hand, was noisy and packed, and held in honour of a group of first-time authors who had joined ITW. I wanted to go straight back to bed. The waiter brought around coffee. I asked for tea.

Everyone knows Americans can’t make a proper cuppa, so I wasn’t surprised when the tea the waiter poured was pale yellow, or that he didn’t bring me any milk. I asked for milk, with a condescending smile, and the waiter brought over a little jug, because the customer is always right. But when I tipped it into my tea, it instantly congealed into foul little cheesy balls, because that’s what happens when you add milk to camomile tea. I glanced at it, gagged, and ran out of the room. The bloke sitting opposite me, another hungover journalist, made the same mistake and had the same reaction.

After a couple of hours and two pints of Earl Grey tea I was on the mend, which was just as well, since I was supposed to take part in a panel discussion in the afternoon. I was asked to write a short biography for my introduction. After the moderator read out my modest self-description – “…although quite famous in Australia, he is unknown to anyone but his family in the US…” – he moved right along to Karin Slaughter, introducing her with the words, “And now for someone people have heard of…”

Four months later, Yishai hasn’t yet sold my book, and I’m still not famous in the US, although I am rather well known to the good people who run the ITW and who have been enormously supportive of my efforts take over the world.

I’d recommend AgentFest to any thriller writer looking for a US agent. Unless, of course, they’ve actually written a western.

“So you’re going to fly across the country to one of the most expensive cities to attend a pricy conference? What if nothing happens?” a friend asked after I registered for AgentFest.

“I’m going. Something already is happening,” I replied, sensing that his skepticism was geared more toward his stay-in-Los Angeles plans than mine to attend.

I’d been to three other conferences since completing my novel, IN HER SHADOW. And although I benefited from every one, I’d met a grand total of twelve agents, several of whom did not represent thrillers. AgentFest provided an opportunity to “speed date” with rooms full of agents in my genre. (Can we say ‘heaven’???) Considering the stockpile of queries agents routinely receive, I figured any chance to stand out, demonstrate my commitment as an author and bypass the risks of accidental email deletions was worthwhile. Plus, what other opportunity do we have for immediate feedback?

It was costly, so I asked myself this: If you end up landing an agent at this conference, would the airfare, hotel and conference fees be worth it? Absolutely.

Lucky for me, that happened.

Before the two-and-a-half-hour pitch session, I stood in a long line of anxious writers, my heart pounding and palms sweating as though it really was an important first date. Thanks to a suggestion from the ThrillerFest website, I had my one-line, “What if . . .” statement prepared and an armful of information sheets with a synopsis of my novel and my name, photo and contact information.

I pitched to twelve agents and two editors. (Thankfully, my knees stopped shaking after my first.) Thirteen requested materials. About a month later, I received two emails requesting phone calls to discuss representation—one from John Rudolph of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. I knew as soon as I read John’s that I wanted to sign with him; he was my top choice of the twelve. We chatted by phone and I signed a contract the following day.

Even if I hadn’t gained representation, I would not have regretted attending. As writers, we often lead solitary lives. There’s little better than submersing ourselves in a community of others who “get” us—share similar passions and relate to the world through words and stories. You also get a gift bag of books and the opportunity to hear fantastic speakers. In this way, AgentFest beats most every conventional date I’ve been on.

I feel extremely blessed, both to have had the opportunity to attend AgentFest and to be working with agent John Rudolph.

As for my skeptical pal, he’s already signed up for next year.

–August McLaughlin

To learn more about August, please visit her website.

Camp is the author of thirty-one published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times Best-Seller lists. He is also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. His books have been translated into most European languages, as well as Japanese and Korean.

To learn more about John, please visit his website.

~~~~~

Learn more about John Sandford’s latest book, Shock Wave.

The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: local merchants, fearing for their businesses, and environmentalists, predicting ecological disaster. The protests don’t seem to be slowing the project, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.

The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart’s headquarters. The second one explodes at the construction site itself. The blasts are meant to inflict maximum damage-and they do. Who’s behind the bombs, and how far will they go? It’s Virgil Flowers’s job to find out… before more people get killed.

Given the incredible insanity of the publishing industry, Coulter thinks the best antidote is a lot of drinking and a big sense of humor.

To learn more about Catherine, please visit her website.

~~~~~
Catherine Coulter is the author of 65 novels, including 59 New York Times bestsellers. She earned her reputation writing historical romances. Over a decade ago she added suspense thrillers to her repertoire– with great success. The Cove, the first book in her bestselling “FBI Suspense Thriller Series” spent nine weeks on the New York Times list and has to date sold almost 2 million copies. The Maze, which was reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly as “gripping enough to establish Coulter firmly in this genre,” was Coulter’s first book to land on the Times hardcover bestsellers list. Since then, she has lived up to that promise with ten additional back-to-back bestselling FBI thrillers, including The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh Hour, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take, Tailspin, Knockout, and two omnibus editions: The Beginning and Double Jeopardy. This summer will see the release of the latest in the FBI series WHIPLASH.

Coulter’s first novel, The Autumn Countess, was published at the end of 1978. She chose a Regency romance for her debut because, says Coulter, “as any published author will tell you, it’s best to limit the unknowns in a first book, and not only had I grown up reading Georgette Heyer, but I earned my M.A. degree in 19th century European History.” Following The Autumn Countess, Coulter wrote six more Regency romances. In 1982 she published her first long historical, Devil’s Embrace. She has continued to write long historicals, interspersing them with hardcover contemporary novels, beginning with False Pretenses in 1988.

Coulter lives with her physician husband in Marin County, California. She grew up in a horse ranch in Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas and received her graduate degree at Boston College. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, she worked on Wall Street as a speech writer. Catherine loves to travel and ski, reads voraciously, and has a reputation for telling jokes, believing the publishing business is too crazy not to laugh.