December 14 – 20: “Are thriller writers active enough on social media?”

Are thriller writers active enough on social media? This week ITW Members Brendan P. Rielly, Larry D. Sweazy, Bernard Maestas, Chuck Greaves, Jean Heller, R. J. Harlick and S. Harrison discuss whether a writer must participate in social media, or if the constant messaging and familiarity diminish suspense?

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An Unbeaten Man is Brendan Rielly’s first thriller. Brendan is a member of ITW and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and studied advanced fiction writing while attending law school. Brendan is chair of Jensen Baird’s litigation department and lives with his wife and three children in Westbrook, Maine, where he is the City Council President. Brendan is the middle of three generations of Maine authors with his father and son (as a high school senior) also published.

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 or the internet, he is usually hard at work on his next book.

A Shamus Award finalist for his Jack MacTaggart series of legal thrillers, Chuck Greaves‘ latest stand-alone novel TOM & LUCKY AND GEORGE & COKEY FLO (Bloomsbury) was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “boisterous historical fiction” with “the wild energy of a 1930s Warner Bros. crime-movie . . . Mr. Greaves is one helluva good storyteller.”

Larry D. Sweazy is a multiple-award author of eleven western and mystery novels and over sixty nonfiction articles and short stories.  He is also a freelance indexer and has written back-of-the-book indexes for over eight hundred and fifty books in nineteen years which served as inspiration for the Marjorie Trumaine Mystery series.  A standalone historical thriller, A Thousand Falling Crows (Seventh Street Books), will be published in January, 2016. Larry lives in Indiana with his wife, Rose, two dogs and a cat.

Canadian author, RJ Harlick writes the popular wilderness-based Meg Harris mystery series set in the wilds of Quebec. With an underlying Native theme, each book explores not only the motives behind murder, but also issues facing Natives today and their traditional ways. The fourth book, Arctic Blue Death was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. The latest and seventh in the series, A Cold White Fear, was recently released to critical acclaim. RJ is a past president of Crime Writers of Canada.

Most of Jean Heller’s career was as an investigative and projects reporter and editor in New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Petersburg Florida. Her career as a novelist began in the 1990s with the publication of the thrillers, Maximum Impact and Handyman by St. Martin’s Press. Then life intervened and postponed her new book, The Someday File, to publication in late 2014. Jean has won the Worth Bingham Prize, the Polk Award, and is an eight-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.

S. Harrison is an author from New Zealand, where he often indulges in his love of watching superhero movies and art house films. He frequently escapes to the many islands of the South Pacific, where he is hard at work on his writing. Infinity Lost is his first novel.