October 24 – 30: “Can Halloween be a good setting for a thriller?”

This week we’re joined by ITW Members John Hegenberger, Christina Hoag, Charlaine Harris, Alexia Gordon, C. E. Lawrence and James Marshall as they discuss the question: Can Halloween be a good setting for a thriller, or is it destined to be the genre of horror forever?

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Christina Hoag is the author of Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld forthcoming from Martin Brown Publishers, and Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults forthcoming from Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books. She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She resides in Los Angeles.

Charlaine Harris is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. Born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area, she is the author of the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, which are the basis for the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Aurora Teagarden original movies; the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series, which was the basis for the HBO show True Blood; the Shakespeare mysteries; the Harper Connelly mysteries; and the Cemetery Girl mysteries. Harris now lives in Texas with her husband.

Award-winning author, John Hegenberger has produced more than a dozen books since mid-2015, including several popular series: Stan Wade LAPI in 1959, Eliot Cross Columbus-based PI in 1988, and Ace Hart, western gambler in Arizona in 1877. He’s the father of three, tennis enthusiast, collector of silent films, hiker, Francophile, B.A. Comparative Lit., ex-Navy, ex-marketing exec at Exxon, AT&T, and IBM; and happily married for 46 years and counting. Active member of SFWA, PWA, SinC and ITW. His novel SPYFALL won a 2016 award at Killer Nashville.

James Marshall Smith is a physicist whose critically-acclaimed thriller, Silent Source, was an international finalist for the Clive Cussler Grand Master Award. James was a chief scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta for two decades and has served in consulting or advisory roles for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the G7 Global Health Security Action Group, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Alexia Gordon won her first writing prize in the 6th grade. She continued writing through college but put literary endeavors on hold to finish medical school and Family Medicine residency training. She established her medical career then returned to writing fiction. Raised in the southeast, schooled in the northeast, she relocated to the west where she completed Southern Methodist University’s Writer’s Path program. She admits Texas brisket is as good as Carolina pulled pork. She practices medicine in El Paso. She enjoys the symphony, art collecting, embroidery, and ghost stories.

Carole Bugge (C.E. Lawrence) is the author of nine published novels, award-winning plays, musicals, poetry and short fiction. A two time Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee, her most recent Lee Campbell thrillers are Silent Slaughter and Silent Stalker, under the pen name C. E. Lawrence. Her short stories were selected for the two most recent Mystery Writers of America anthologies. Her Sherlock Holmes novels, The Star of India and The Haunting of Torre Abbey, have recently been reissued, along with her Claire Rawlings mystery series. Her latest book is the historical thriller, Edinburgh Twilight.