November 10 – 16: “What lessons can thriller writers learn from the movies?”

The Summer blockbuster season is over, but that won’t stop us from asking: “What lessons can thriller writers learn from the movies?” Join ITW Members Bernard Maestas, Steve P. Vincent, Raymond Benson, C. Hope Clark, F. Paul Wilson, Rick Zahradnik and Joe Gannon for another can’t miss discussion!

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C. Hope Clark is author of the award-winning Carolina Slade Mysteries and The Edisto Island Mysteries, four novels published by Bell Bridge Books, the current release being Murder on Edisto. Hope founded FundsforWriters.com, chosen by Writer’s Digest for 101 Best Websites for Writers for 14 years. She’s appeared in The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Writer’s Market, Guide to Literary Agents, and more, and speaks across the country. Member of MENSA, SinC, MWA, SWA, EPIC, and NINC.

Bernard Maestas lives in paradise. A police officer patrolling the mean streets of Hawaii, he has a background in contract security and military and civilian law enforcement. When not saving the world, one speeding ticket at a time, and not distracted by video games and the internet, he is usually hard at work on his next book.

Raymond Benson is the author of over 30 published books. His most recent thriller series is THE BLACK STILETTO; the fifth and final installment, THE BLACK STILETTO: ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS, was published November 2014. Raymond was the fourth—and first American—official author of James Bond novels, and his works are collected in the recent anthologies CHOICE OF WEAPONS and THE UNION TRILOGY.  Raymond also teaches film history and is a working musician.

Rich Zahradnik is writing the Coleridge Taylor Mystery series for Camel Press. The first, LAST WORDS, was published Oct. 1. Before taking up fiction full time, he was a journalist for 30-plus years, working as a reporter and editor in all major news media, including online, newspaper, broadcast, magazine and wire services. In January 2012, he was one of 20 writers selected for the inaugural class of the Crime Fiction Academy, a new program run by New York’s Center for Fiction.

Steve P. Vincent lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he’s forced to write on the couch in front of an obnoxiously large television. He enjoys beer, whiskey, sports and dreaming up ever more elaborate conspiracy theories to write about. He has a degree in Political Science and History. His honours thesis was on the topic of global terrorism. His first book, THE FOUNDATION, was published in September 2014.

Joe Gannon, writer and spoken word artist, was a freelance journalist in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. He also covered the civil war in El Salvador and the U.S. invasion of Panama. Since then his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Independent (London), The Valley Advocate, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He spent three years in the army, graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and earned his MFA from Pine Manor College. After a stint teaching high school in Abu Dhabi, he now lives in Western MA, at work on his second installment of the Ajax Montoya Series.

F. Paul Wilson is the award-winning, NY Times bestselling author of over fifty books and many short stories spanning horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything between. More than nine million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into twenty-four foreign languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media. COLD CITY, DARK CITY and FEAR CITY feature the early years of his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. Paul resides at the Jersey Shore.