Too Much Murder

It's Saturday night, and I am at Killer Nashville, a three-day conference for mystery writers.  I have been here for two days now, and I have Hit The Wall.  Not the kind of hitting the wall where detectives will try to discern the velocity of impact by the blood spatters.  Nor the kind where my skin will show recognizable impact marks from blunt weapons one might find lying around the boiler room.  There is no bullet wound with smoke stains around it from a 9 mm.

No, I have hit the wall of Too Much Information.

We started with the proverbial BANG on Friday morning with "Written in Blood:  DNA, Blood Analysis, and Reading Blood Spatter."  It was like a Physics class .... charts and graphs everywhere indicating how you can tell by the shape of the spatter its trajectory and velocity.  I now know what blood spatters look like on carpet, linoleum, glass, leather and metal.  There is a difference.  And of course, the blood cast off from a golf club bashing someone's head is different from that cast off from an axe.  I learned all this is in a dark room, surrounded by a hundred people who were feverishly taking notes, hanging on every word of this former police officer with his powerpoint.

This is my first mystery conference.  I came here for a little creative jolt, and, mercy, they have strapped on the electrodes.  But the magical thing is, I feel right at home.  I recall a time last year telling an acquaintance that I was writing a mystery.  He got this uncomfortable look on his face and asked how the murder was committed.  "Blunt force trauma to the back of the head with a baseball bat," I said with enthusiasm, thinking this was a real conversation.  He took a step back, looking at me like I had grown horns.

But here, the mystery and its intricacies and traditions are dissected, examined and displayed with a reverence that I understand.  All these attendees, tall, short, young, old, handsome and goofy looking, share this feeling.  Tell us about the hows, whys, motives, evidence, clues.  Bring on the police procedures, weapons, tests, autopsy tools.  We gotta know what happens in real life versus what you see on TV.   IT IS SO COOL.

We have a crime scene set up in the boiler room of the hotel.  It has been staged by real TBI agents, based on a real crime.  We trooped through there with notepads in hand searching for clues.  Each of us had to solve the crime and submit our reports.  Later they gave us the solution to the crime, and I learned that I got it wrong.  Rookie mistake:  I fell for the red herring.

So, this fellow had been stabbed multiple times and bashed in the head, and clues were lying all around.  I spotted menthol cigarette butts and Diet Pepsi cans and figured a woman was involved.  Then I poked around and spotted the Yellow Pages lying on the floor.  Inside it was a yellow sticky note, and Lolita's Escort Service phone number was underlined.  That's it!  It's gotta be a woman.  But based on blood stains, I knew the fire extinguisher was the weapon of choice, so there must have been another man on the scene besides the Dearly Departed.  It must have been a love triangle, right?  So I was thinking when Lolita was there drinking vodka (Skyy Vodka -- check that for prints) with the victim, another man (his boss, whose story didn't ring true) must have shown up.  Boss got mad and killed the guy.  But I was wrong, partly.  The Boss was, in fact, the killer, but there was no Lolita.  The Boss and The Victim had been playing cards, gambling, perhaps doing drugs, and things went Crash, Pow, Wham!  Too bad.  I liked the love triangle.  I liked Lolita.  And what about the menthol cigarettes!!!!!

The conference has included sessions on Villains (we Love a good villain), and Covert Surveillance, and Unusual Lethal and Less than Lethal Weapons.  Just the titles jazz me.  And there's also a track of Writers Workshops.  Because we are mystery writers, not just rubber-neckers, we talk about Creating Depth through Character Relationships, Backstory -- When and How to Use It, Using Humor in Mysteries.  I take copious notes and fuel myself with Skittles, until I finally say Enough.

Now I am so tired, I've forgotten how to Use Humor in Blogs.  But I'll be up early tomorrow because my favorite session is yet to come.  "Have Another Cookie, Dear:  Poisons and Poisoners."  I am so excited I can hardly stand it.  I may not be able to sleep.  Poison!  I adore poison!  What a perfect solution for a love triangle.

Go to the Killer Nashville website and read all about it.  And sign up to come next year ... well, as long as you don't mind hanging out in dark rooms with villains and victims.