So many enticing meetings for crime and mystery writers of every stripe in this season. Some national, some regional, some hyper-local! It’s hard to know where an author should lay their travel budget bets. In the past few years, I’ve put my money toward the Public Safety Writers Association’s annual July conference in Las Vegas. (The hotels are cheap at that time of year, and since the temperature outside is 115, I’m not tempted to wander away from the excellent sessions. And I don’t want to miss the fun prize-drawings!)

The attendees are current and former public safety professionals—police, FBI, CIA, EMTs, fire fighters, military—and people like me who write about them. I can’t tell you how much extra confidence it gives me about my writing, when I’ve been able to check some tricky bit of action with someone who knows what they’re talking about (i.e., not what I see on tv). Many of the friends I’ve made through the group are happy to do that.

I enjoy the conference presentations too. Most important, they’re interesting and informative, especially when presenters talk about their experiences, scary or funny or sad. What I’ve learned from those is not only how a particular individual responded to a particular situation, but much more helpfully, how they think. So, when I put my character into a situation, I can extrapolate. None of us can experience first-hand all the things we subject our characters to (and thank goodness for that!), and we have to extrapolate their reactions from our own experiences and from what we know about how others have reacted in parallel encounters.

I consider this a tough crowd of expert authors, so I’m pleased to say that two of my short stories have won prizes in the PSWA’s annual competition, and my novel came in second one year (beaten out by the estimable James L’Etoile, who any crime writer would not mind being bested by). When this audience respects my work, I know I’m doing something right! My cousin once asked me, suspicion in her voice, “How do you know so much about crime?” I, of course, refused to answer and just gave her a sly look. But now, I suppose, my secret’s out!