September 12 – 18: Creating characters

What do you call upon to create your characters? Life experience? People you’ve encountered? Other fictional characters? Your own inner-psyche? Archetypes?

Join ITW members C. C. Harrison, CE Lawrence, Bob Levinson, S. Eric Wachtel, Camille Minichino, and Marc Cameron for another fascinating Thriller Roundtable discussion!

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C. C. Harrison’s award-winning books include, THE CHARMSTONE, a mystery set on the Navajo Indian Reservation, that was called “An important book!” by Tony Hillerman.  Next came RUNNING FROM STRANGERS, and SAGE CANE’S HOUSE OF GRACE AND FAVOR written as Christy Hubbard), which was honored at the Aspen Institute as a finalist in the 2010 Colorado Book Award.  PICTURE OF LIES will be released October 2011. She is currently working on CEMETERY TREES, a Michigan mystery.

C.E. Lawrence is the byline of a New York-based suspense writer, performer, composer and prize-winning playwright whose previous books have been praised as “lively. . .” (Publishers Weekly); “constantly absorbing. . .” (starred Kirkus Review); and “superbly crafted prose” (Boston Herald). Silent Screams and Silent Victim are the first two books in her Lee Campbell thriller series.  Silent Kills comes out later this year.  Her other work is published under the name of Carole Bugge.

Robert S. Levinson, bestselling author of nine novels, among them the newly published A Rhumba in Waltz Time, and The Traitor in Us All, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, and Ask a Dead Man. Regular contributor to Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen mystery magazines. An EQMM Readers Award selection three times. A Derringer Award winner for a Hitchcock story, “The Quick Brown Fox.” Currently nominated for a Shamus Award of the Private Eye Writers of America. Stories in “year’s best” anthologies six consecutive years. Various novels and original short story collections available at Amazon Kindle, other e-book locations.

S. Eric Wachtel was born and raised in New York City and studied at the University of Missouri. While in college he crafted his first historical based short story. Recruited by the CIA, he opted out in favor of a business career. Starting on Wall Street, he was later a vice president of an international conglomerate, director of a management consulting firm, and then president of a medical technology company.  In his debut novel, THE ESSENE CONSPIRACY, a blend of fact and fiction, he has created dynamic fictional characters from composites of personalities with whom he crossed paths during his business career. Eric lives with his wife, Lynn, and Russian Blue cat in Vermont and Washington, D.C. A member of International Thriller Writers, he is at work on the next Harry McClure thriller.

Camille Minichino has published eight novels in the Periodic Table Mysteries series, featuring retired physicist GLORIA LAMERINO. The series continues in short stories on Kindle and smashwords.com. As Margaret Grace, she’s published five novels in the Miniature Mysteries series, featuring miniaturist GERALDINE PORTER and her 10-year-old granddaughter, Maddie. As Ada Madison, she’s poised to release a new series, the Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries, featuring college professor SOPHIE KNOWLES. Camille received her Ph.D. in physics from Fordham University, New York City. She is currently on the faculty of Golden Gate University, San Francisco and on the staff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Camille is on the boards of the California Writers Club and NorCal Sisters in Crime. She’s a member of NorCal Mystery Writers of America and SF Romance Writers of America.

A 27 year law enforcement veteran, Marc Cameron’s assignments have taken him from Mexico to Alaska and California to Manhattan. The author of six Western novels (as a ghost writer and under his pen name, Mark Henry), his short fiction has appeared in BOYS LIFE Magazine. His debut Thriller, NATIONAL SECURITY, will be released by Kensington November 1, 2011, with the sequel, ELEVENTH HOUR, coming out the following May. Marc lives in Alaska with his wife, blue heeler dog and BMW motorcycle.