I picked up more than 35 books at ThrillerFest.

The fourth and final day of ThrillerFest was just as enjoyable as the ones that preceded it. As you can see from the photo above, I left the conference with a ton of books. Below are highlights, photos and videos from the final day of ThrillerFest, including the entire 43-minute interview with Michael Connelly. I’m attending next year’s conference, which I’m sure will be even better. Now I have to try and finish these books before next July. Wish me luck!

Does Speed Kill?

Does Speed Kill?

• “Writing expository material in my books makes me feel like I’m running in mud.” – Andrew Gross
• “I don’t like to write books that feel like screenplays.” – A.J. Hartley
• “If you have a sprint from the beginning of the book to the end, without slowing down, there’s no depth to it at that point.” – Sheldon Siegel
• “If my wife stops reading my book in the middle of a chapter, I ask her why.” – John Gilstrap
• “I love to go to plays to see where the acts end and whether or not people get up from their seats during the intermission. It’s a great way to learn about pacing.” – Heather Graham

Meeting T. Jefferson Parker.

T. Jefferson Parker Interview

• “I decided to be a reporter so I could pursue my passion for writing and in my free time work on novels.”
• “I didn’t want to be a series writer. I didn’t see myself in that place, at that time.”
• “The great thing about being a writer is you can be sitting on the boardwalk in Laguna Beach, minding your own business, and the main character in your next novel can walk right in front of you.”
• “When it comes to the writing process, I’m a Monday through Friday kind of guy, from 7 to 5 pm. If I can get five pages done, it’s a good day.”
• “The hardest part for me is not writing. It takes me three months to come up with an idea good enough to start writing. Then it takes me about six months to finish the first draft, and another three months to make it as good as I can before I send it off to my agent.”
• “The shortest outline I wrote was on a bar napkin. After explaining the outline to the publisher, my agent called me the next day and said, ‘I don’t know what you wrote on that napkin but the publisher just bought it.’”
• “For Laguna Heat, I threw away 2,500 pages over a five year period. I never worked so hard to make a book readable. In total, there were six drafts.”
• “I love to read; it’s nourishment for me. I usually have two or three books going at a time. If I didn’t read while I write, I’d never read.”
• Young writers’ first goal should be to find their own voice, and stop trying to write like their heroes.”
• “I still feel that my best work is ahead.”

Are Young Adult Novels Meant For Adults?

Are Young Adult Novels Meant For Adults?

• “A lot of my readers are adults because they grew up with me. I’m nostalgia to them. I’m Hall & Oates.” – R.L. Stine
• “There was a statistic saying that 52% of YA readers are adults. But if you remove The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, I’m not sure that’s true.” – Michelle Gagnon
• “I wrote my first young adult book in five weeks.” – Barry Lyga
• “I write YA because that’s what I like to read.” – Linda Gerber
• “Young adult novels have a direct, powerful and emotional point of view.” – Allen Zadoff
• “On social media, 30% of my followers are adults.” – Lissa Price
• “I don’t think it’s so remarkable that adults read YA. We all used to be teenagers.” – Kat Rosenfield

Michael Connelly being interviewed by Jon Land.