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Each year we travel to New York City for ThrillerFest, the one indispensable writers’ conference for us. During that week in the city we meet with our publishers, editors, agents, old friends, and other writers. Nights are late and mornings come much too early. The conference is a curious mixture of business and fun–a reaffirmation of our identity as writers and a chance to communicate with our professional peers. Writing, especially in Wyoming, is a rather lonely business. Worse, we can’t just wander down to Butch’s for a burger and the chance to talk to other writers. Um, there are no other writers who hang out Butch’s. Even in a state with the highest per-capita percentage of published authors in the nation, we’re pretty much on our own. For that one week in June, however, we bask amidst the brethren. Not just writers, but other blooded professionals, many of whom have built their careers into international sensations. As well as many aspiring novelists desperately trying to sell their first book. Which leads us to CraftFest, the two day boot camp in writing offered by the International Thriller Writers. We go every year and buy a membership; and every year we sit among the ranks of the novices. There we dutifully fill the pages of our notebooks with copious notes. Ninety-eight percent of what we hear, we already know by heart. Ah, but hidden in words of Michael Connelly, David Morrell, Heather Graham, Philip Margolin, Steven Berry, or the dynamic duo of Doug Preston and Lincoln Child, are nuggets of wisdom that make us better authors. And where else, in what other venue, can we have the exclusive pleasure of listening to the likes of Michael Palmer, Alexandra Sokoloff, Gayle Lynds, and T. Jefferson Parker talk uninterruptedly for an hour about plot, pacing, setting, character, and structure. Additionally, every year we’ve been working on a book. This year it’s PEOPLE OF THE SONGTRAIL. And every year, while listening to our professional peers discuss their secret tricks, we have that moment of epiphany as it relates to the book we’re working on. And indeed it struck again! On the plane trip home we spent a couple of hours ignoring the cattle-car reality of modern air travel by re-structuring SONGTRAIL. It will be a better book because of something Alexandra Sokoloff mentioned in her session. Thank you, Alexandra. The fans thank you, too. They’re going to get a lot better read because of that pearl of wisdom you imparted. This year Michael taught a session on research, and why getting your facts right was critical in maintaining the willing suspension of disbelief. That’s the contract between an author and a reader: I’ll tell you the following story, and do the job so well that you’ll agree to believe it. But you’ve got to have your facts right! How many of us have been in that tight, tense, final chapter when the bad guy pulls out his revolver, checks the magazine for bullets, and takes the safety off? Hopefully we were able to give something back, and hopefully Doctor D.P. Lyle, who administers CraftFest, will have Michael back again next year. But no matter what, we’ll be there, signed up again, our notebooks open, pens in hand as we jot down other writers’ observations and discover more gems that will allow us to hone our skills even finer. After all, it’s our readers who reap the benefits.  

Dear All, Happy upcoming Independence Day! No matter how you feel about the recent scandals in Washington D.C. regarding the IRS and secret surveillance of American citizens, we think it’s important to remember what are, perhaps, the most stirring words in the history of America, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” dated July 4, 1776: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Thomas Jefferson would be saddened, we think, by recent events… Happy a Wonderful Independence Day. Mike and Kathy

Hi All! Well, today was wonderful. John Fish from Hot Springs State Park took the IU Field School on a tour of local petroglyphs, and it was just fabulous. Petroglyphs are ancient rock carvings, also known as “Rock Art.” These petroglyphs date all the way back to around 11,000 years ago, and the images are the stuff legends are made of. Magnificent. John, thanks for doing such an amazing job showing the students the rock art. And thanks to Audrey, Sam, and Gabriel for riding in the truck with Mike and Kevin Jones. Great conversations, folks. At the end of the day, just for extra fun, we went to a site on the ranch that we call Ground Stone Creek because it’s filled with prehistoric grinding stones, and were surprised to find fresh mountain lion tracks. She must have been just ahead of us on the trail. Kathy didn’t get to go today (she’s seen most of the petroglyphs before). Instead, she spent the day working on the final chapters of People of the Songtrail, the book about the first contact between Vikings and Paleo-Inuit peoples in North America, which should be out some time in early 2015. Hope everyone is well. Have a great summer. Mike and Kathy

Dear All: With our lecture at Indiana University now history, we’re focusing on our next public appearance at CraftFest in New York. On July 11, 2013 at the Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street, Michael will be teaching a class at 10:00 am in the Carnegie/Alvin room entitled “Research and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.” Willing suspension of disbelief is the pact between an author and his readers. In short, it can be defined as “I will tell you a made up-tale and you will believe it.” As part of the bargain, the author must make his story as believable as possible. To do that, he must not only make his characters and their motivation credible, but his facts must be in order. This is where research comes in. If an author makes a mistake, for example, has the wrong weapon in the wrong time, not only does his story become suspect, but the reader asks, “If I can’t believe his facts, why should I believe in the motivation of his characters?” It has happened to all of us. We’ve been reading a rollicking good story and suddenly, something so jarring slaps us across the face with impossibility. One of the biggest “I don’t think so” moments for us is when a character gets shot in the leg or shoulder, and sneaks out of the hospital to take the fight back to the bad guy. Knowing anatomy and terminal ballistics as we do, we’re usually evaluating the damage. “Oh, shot in the chest. That’s smashed the third and fourth rib, hydrostatic shock has taken out the brachial artery and possibly the aorta as well as the upper lobe of the lung.” Why then is the character driving a stolen truck in a mad chase through city streets in the next scene? PEOPLE OF THE MORNING STAR will be out in May of 2014. It’s a thriller set in the great city of Cahokia at around 1200 C.E.. Writing thrillers set in prehistory is a particularly daunting challenge. Not only do we have to keep the plot tight, with short scenes common to the thriller genre, but we have to build and describe a world foreign to most modern readers without slowing the story. And most of all, it has to be believable. When we got started writing the PEOPLE books, American publishers were pushing “prehistory” novels, and contracting with lots of authors to write them. At a book trade show we met a couple of our new colleagues, and will never forget the established romance author who beamed at us, saying, “I just love writing prehistory. No one knows anything about it so you can make up anything you want.” Fact is, yes, we do know quite a bit about these prehistoric cultures. It is only through research that we can write about them in depth, and with credibility. So far it has kept us in the game while the others are long gone. Why? Because at heart, the readers understood that other authors had been broken the covenant. The author had failed to establish the credibility of the story through sufficient research. If the worlds they created smelled fishy, who could believe the story? For more, we’ll see you in New York on July 11th at CraftFest. You must register to attend, and if you’re a budding novelist, you will learn valuable lessons. Meanwhile, we’ll continue researching extensively.  

Dear All: It’s been thirteen years since we’ve had a spring storm like this. We’ve had snow every day for a week and a half. At the maximum we had 18 inches on the deck even after some had melted. Our drought-stricken, parched earth has soaked it all up. None of the drainages are running, which means its going straight down to the roots. Not that we’ve gone totally Native, but many of America’s original peoples believed the buffalo called the snows. And in our case, we think it’s our Pia’s new baby heifer calf who did it. She waited until the height of the storm to come into this world. Maybe so that she could be dropped into a soft landing in eight or ten inches of new fluffy snow? Suffice it to say that we named her Stormy, hopefully because she’s called the moisture, and hopefully broken the drought. We’ve been delighted to watch her antics over the last week. She’s with a small herd of yearling and two-year-old heifers, all of whom she believes were put on earth for her to play with. Running like a shot, she’ll charge them, bucking to a stop when they put their heads down and stomp at her. Having elicited such a response, she leaps in the air, spins, and races off to harass the next buffalo in sight. Pia, of course, thinks the world is back in order. She’s never happier than when she has a calf. So, at least at Red Canyon Ranch, life is good. Now we’re waiting for the next bouncing bundle as the rest of the cows prepare to deliver. If the buffalo have called the storms, we’ll get moisture with each one.