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Kill a Friend with Lisa Gardner · WriterCon

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This week on the Writer Khan podcast. Everyone always says you need to read,
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and I do think that's true, but I would add need to read
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across many many genres, Like just read across the board. You will learn
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something from each genre. For example, I love to read poetry. I
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can't write it, but learning how to be that concise with words, how
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they sound together, how to convey an emotion with five words or less.
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Very handy when writing suspense. So read a lot and read all over the
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place. Welcome to Writer Khan, a gathering place for writers to share their
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knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best
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selling novelist and author of The Red Sneaker books on writing, and Renee Gutteridge,
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best selling author of over thirty novels and screenplays. Hey they're writers.
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This is a very special episode of the podcast because it features an interview with
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our writer khn's Sunday keynote speaker, Lisa Gardner, one of the most successful
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thriller writers, in fact, one of the most successful writers period on the
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face of the planet. Of course, we previously interviewed Susan Meisner and Tuskily,
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both major writers who will also be delivering addresses at the conference. So
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Renee, at this point, we have been doing this conference for a while
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and we've seen a lot of keynotes. Do you have one in particular that
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sticks out in your mind? You know, I love having Don Moss he
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you know, I've followed him for a long time. I consider him like
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one of my teachers. I've read his books, I've gone to his workshops.
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So to have him come was wonderful. And you know, it was
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one of those awkward moments when you feel like you know somebody better than they
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know you. You're just like, you follow me so much, and they're
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like, thank you, ma'am. But it was really great to have him.
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So yeah, I agree, that was terrific. Well, for that
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matter, last year's Sunday keynote, Robert Degoni gave I thought the best inspirational
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get out there and night talk I've ever had. But I think my absolute
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all time favorite was Dan Millman. You remember, at this point, he's
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over seventy and he started his speech by doing a handstand on one of those
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crummy little plastic chairs, and they had the conflience room. Of course,
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he is a former world class gymnast but man, he still got it.
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I was impressed. Jesse. What about you? Do you have a favorite
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writer con moment? Well, mostly it's just like watching as a non writer,
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right, watching there's always one speaker who gives a sort of different or
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new piece of advice, and watching that like click with somebody in the audience
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who I've been watching, like hear all of the normal well, you know,
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right every day, whatnot? I finally connect with a speaker on like
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what has been blocking them or troubling them in their writing journey. Like seeing
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that connect and like seeing their eyes open a little bit, like seeing the
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excitement return. I always enjoy that because I'm like, that person's life just
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changed. Just that I'm like, good, Oh, that's great. All
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right. Our interview today, as I've said, is with Lisa Gardner,
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a number one New York Times bestselling novelist. She says she began her career
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in food service. I think that means she was waiting tables, but according
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to her, after catching her hair on fire several times, she decided to
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take the hint and focus on her writing. She says she's a self described
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research junkie, and she transferred her interest in police Procedure and Criminal Minds into
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a streak of internationally acclaimed novels. She's been published in more than thirty countries.
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She's had four books become movies. That's At the Midnight Hour, at
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The Perfect Husband, The Survivors Club, and Hide, and she's been on
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television repeatedly. Her novel The Neighbor won the Best Hardcover Novel from iw the
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International Thriller Writers, And as you know a former board member of that group,
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I can tell you that is a serious, big deal. That's an
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award everybody wants. She's won the Grand Pre Electrics l I'm sure I mispronounced
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that awarded in France. She's got the Daphne Dumarrier Award for a book called
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The Other Daughter, and she got the Silver Bullet Award from it tw for
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her work on Behalf of At Risk Children and the Humane Society. So much
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to talk about, and we will talk to Lisa right after this news segment,
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Jesse, take us away. First news item, there is a new
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Harlequin imprint which has been directly inspired by TikTok. These are romances, of
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course, but this new line, which is called Afterglow, will be targeting
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the under thirty five romance reader. They're building on TikTok's hashtag spicy talk content,
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which, in case you didn't know, is for spicy romances, which
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have become a boom industry this year. Spicy romance. I mean, I'm
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not an expert, but I think that falls somewhere between your typical category romance
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and erotica, sort of straddling and the middle. But anyway, they're going
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to release two trade paperback titles a month starting in January. The editor Stacy
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Boyd says, and I quote, afterglow is that feeling after a beautiful moment,
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achievement, or experience. It takes readers to the happy part of life.
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It's timeless, positive and rings true for the characters in these books.
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End quote. I don't know. We know that the romance sector is the
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most popular genre by a significant margin. Rene should we all just give up
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and start writing romance novels? No? Okay, that was direct. I
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like that. That's my final answer is that all can you expand? I
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mean, I think i'd be really bad at it, because even my wife
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doesn't think I'm very romantic. But I'm sure you could pull it off,
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right Once wrote a romance, and my editor had to address the fact that
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it was not romancy enough with a letter to me and to also she suggested
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I lean into the wisdom of my co writer, a male who had written
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the screenplay, and see if I could get any tips from him. So,
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yeah, I don't think I'm the one to write the next romance.
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And you know, it's okay to have a bustling genre, but not everybody
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reads that, so we've got to We've gotta serve the other readers. Right,
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romance can't be more than what fifty six percent of or something like that,
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of all genre fiction. It's hard to believe. It's not big.
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But anyway, okay, go ahead. Yeah, and the spicy romance I
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heard about that for the rest time. On the writer con cruise. We
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had, of course, an agent with us, Amy Brewer, who is
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wonderful, and she start talking and she could even go into some of the
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like sub subcategories, and boy, it was an eye opener. And it
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all is due to TikTok Jesse. How can TikTok be so influential? I
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don't know, I don't know. It's very frustrating. No, that's Renee's
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answer. You. I know, I'm in Renee's camp here I will say
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the is it spicy? Became one of my favorite inside jokes of that cruise
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though, because I would just ask everybody, but is it spicy? So
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you think this is gonna last? Is TikTok or book talking to hang?
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Who? Is it going to be replaced by threads? I don't know,
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well, but probably not, since apparently the threads engagement dropped off dramatically after
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Yeah. I mean, I keep waiting for TikTok to be made illegal and
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it keeps surviving, So who knows. I don't know. They keep saying
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but not doing. I mean, I think I think eventually people will figure
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out what it is about TikTok that allows for this kind of engagement, and
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we'll be able to replicate that in other forms. But until then, apparently
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it's TikTok. So you know, if you're trying to get your book out
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there, find someone who knows how to make TikTok's it's not me. So
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okay, that hasn't come up in this episode yet. Ask chat Gpt how
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to make a successful TikTok for your book. Well, as that happens,
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that's exactly where we're going. OK At the news story number two, we
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reported, well, we've reported several weeks, but last week we've talked about
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the open letter from authors saying basically, stop stealing our stuff. Some authors
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have filed a class action lawsuit. But just a few days ago we heard
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that the Associated Press has actually struck a deal with one of these companies,
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open AI. It's a two year agreement to share access to AP's news content
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dating backed at nineteen eighty five. That's a huge amount of content. And
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in exchange, AP gets You think, I'm going to say money, but
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no, they get access to open AIS technology and product expertise. Nobody's exactly
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sure what they that means, but we assume they're getting something. Maybe there
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shouldn't be surprising because historically the Associated Press was one of the first major national
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news organizations to use automation technology and its news reports. They about a decade
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ago they started automating first corporate earnings reports, and it just grew from their
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local sporting events and now they're using automation in some parts of the news gathering
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and production process. RENEE, you think this is a step forward for authors
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in AI I don't know. I don't even know how. I have no
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idea that it is. So we're waiting to hear you this, Well,
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I have no idea. Well I didn't. I'm glad, I'm I'm not
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the only one that doesn't understand exactly what the AP is getting. But yeah,
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I mean it's unfortunate because honestly, like, the AP was always like
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who you look to to check the news, the real deal, to get
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the real deal. So I mean it's like they're they're kind of selling out
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in a sense, it feels like, but I don't exactly understand it all.
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So it's hard to know like how much is AI, how much is
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humans? How many reporters are involved? But the AP was always the gold
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standard in my book, and so I don't understand what this all means.
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So yeah, well, I mean they're trying to get them to stop scraping
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the internet and authors work to feed their program. But I don't know,
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Jesse, will this end open AI data scraping? I mean, but I
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will say the one good thing about a partnership with the AP with with AP
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is like I do trust AP to not like abuse this and to use it.
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Well, it would be nice to know what they're actually getting from it.
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But there are ways that AI systems can help us, you know,
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automate and improve and speed up delivery of news. Maybe I don't know if
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listen, opening eye, if you're listening, I know you're listening because they're
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scraping everything, like they'll listen to the transcript when it's posted Opening I'm talking
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to you directly here. You can come up with it with a tool to
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help us, like figure out what news is real and what news is fake.
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That's what we need. You can really improve your pr with us content
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creators, slash people you're stealing things from. We don't need faster news,
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we need accurate news. Yes, that's a tagline for something, the tagline
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the thought. Now, yeah, I don't think that's where the AI money
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is. Wouldn't that be nice? Well, and here's the thing, No
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one's maybe someone has report on this and I haven't seen it. But how
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are these AI people making money? Is my question? Because it costs a
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lot of money to come up with these models and these you know whatever you
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want to call them massive computers, and no one like chat GBT will charge
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you. But they also most people use the free version. So where is
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the money coming from? That's eventually going to change? Don't you think eventually
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they're going to start charging people for this, right, They're gonna get you
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hooked. You can't think anymore and you have to put everything into chat GPT
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to get an answer, and then they're going to charge you fourteen ninety nine
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a month and your brain has stopped working and you're gonna be completely dependent on
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it. So what am I having for breakfast today? I tell me it's
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the Foe Been Project all over again. All right, essay, on that
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happy note, Let's get out of the news, queue off the music,
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let's talk to Lisa Gardner, said Gardner. Welcome to the podcast. Thank
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you. It's a pleasure to be here this evening. Oh, it's great
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to have you. Okay, we have a traditional first question. If you
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could offer writers one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh,
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oh, I got this one. Okay, Okay. Everyone always says you
14:33
need to read, and I do think that's true, but I would add
14:37
you need to read across many many genres, Like just read across the board.
14:43
You will learn something from each genre. For example, I love to
14:46
read poetry. I can't write it. But learning how to be that concise
14:50
with words, how they sound together, how to convey an emotion with five
14:56
words or less very handy when writing suspense. To read a lot and read
15:01
all over the place. Yeah, every word counts, but they've got to
15:03
be the right words, right exactly. Well, congratulations on the publication of
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your most recent book, One Step Too Far, Tell us about it.
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One Step Too Far is the second book in the Frankie Elkin series. She's
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like an everyday average person who's obsessed with solving missing person's cold cases. And
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this case, it brings her to the mountains of Wyoming where a young man
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has gone missing. She joins the search team and I call it Agatha Christie
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goes for a hike. It's basically and then there were none setting, you
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know, the far out back of Wyoming. That is fantastic. So where
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did the idea for this book come from? No, it's interesting. I'm
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an avid hiker. I live in the mountains of New Hampshire, and all
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of my thirty plus years, I've just never written about hiking. But there
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was a really great article that came out about the number of people that go
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missing each year on our national public lands, like our National Force. These
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are the kinds of cases that fall through the cracks, so to speak,
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So they're perfect for Frankie Elkin. You know, when someone goes missing in
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the woods, it's a volunteer effort to find them, and there'll be a
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ton of volunteers, hundreds of people and dog handlers, drone operators, a
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TV guides and a lot of the community goes into this and really tries very
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hard. But once you read a certain threshold of time and it looks like
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you probably will not get positive results. These volunteers have to get back to
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their everyday life so slowly but surely they all fade away. And for the
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family of the missing, there's no closure and they still don't know what happened
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out in the woods. That is intriguing. Well, I'm sold. Okay,
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before we go any further, I want to thank you up front for
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a coming to writer Khan and given the keynote speech. I know how busy
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you are, so you must enjoy conferences at least a little bit, or
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you wouldn't be doing it right. Oh, I'm very excited, and I'm
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very excited for writer Khan. That's one of my favorite kinds of conferences because
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you know, we get to be in the company of our own kind,
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you know, other people who wanted to argue about point of view, and
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you know hear voices in their head, and you know possibly you know,
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spend a great deal of time thinking about how to get away with murder.
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And I haven't been arristed yet. So it's all good stuff. I can't
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wait looking forward to it, tremendously fantastic. We are so excited here and
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I cannot wait to meet you. Thank you so much for I can't wait.
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Thank you. And I always learned something there's never any moment in this
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industry, so you know what you're doing. Congratulations on your seven novels.
17:52
Thank you, Thank you so much. So I heard that you actually start
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your career in the food service industry. But right what of it's in our
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official bio, it must be yes, Yes, it is a sad,
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sad story. So I was very lucky in that I wrote my first book
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when I was seventeen, and of course writing during the day. That's like
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you completed it, like started completed. A wow. Yeah, it's a
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great example of sometimes it's best not to know any better. I mean,
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I live in Oregon. I never met an editor, an agent, and
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author. I didn't know what could or couldn't be done. So I'm ambitiously
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writing during the day. Need to make money, of course, so I
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was waitressing at night, and I will assure you I was the world's worst
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waitress. One of our appetizers was something called flaming saganaki, which is this
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cheese it's deep fried, and then you take it out to the table and
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you pour brandy or something on it and you torch it. Except you know,
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this was the early nineties, and there's a lot of aquanett and when
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I went to torch it, my hair just so I flipped the baby cheese
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onto the ground and got the carpet on fire. I did have the good
19:08
sense to beat it out, and I decided waitressing was probably not a good
19:12
job for me and really needed the book thing to work out. No judgment
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from me, I've had a lot of I've had a lot of different jobs
19:22
myself. So you may be the only writer in history for whom writing was
19:26
a safer choice fair other job. Well said, Well said, And speaking
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of things I've never seen in anybody else's bio. Ever, is it true
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you wrote and sold your first book while you were still in school in college?
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I did so. I actually wrote the first book right before I went
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to college, and I didn't know what to do with it because again I
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didn't know anyone who in the industry. So I just put the manuscript under
19:55
my bed, because you know, what else are you going to do?
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I went off to college back east, the University of Pennsylvania, and what
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people said, you know, what did you do this? Somewhere? I'm
20:03
like, oh, I wrote a book, and at a certain point,
20:06
people like, you should try, you should try to do something with it,
20:10
and you know, I rewrote it a couple of times. I then
20:14
I followed we had books back then, you know how to write and publish
20:17
a novel. You know, you know, no Google. But followed the
20:21
instructions and I got very lucky. The publisher I reached out to the editor
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actually recognized my address as the dorms at penn because she went there too,
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so she, you know, gave the manuscript to read, and you know,
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a mere two years in revision work later, it all worked out.
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Thank you for saying that, because I think it's important that first time writers
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here about what a very lengthy revision process that first novel might initially take as
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we are learning that process. So thank you for that. I got a
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twenty page, single spaced revision letter. I actually cried. Wow. I
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learned a lot and I ate a lot of brownies. Good. So I
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gotta ask. I hear you you Okay, okay, stop, let's pause,
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Jason, you're gonna have to cut this out. Mustopher has broken in.
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Can you set him outside the door and really shut the door this time?
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For Renegade always make cuts on the podcast, but me in some devils
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that'll make great outtake footage. Yeah, the cats of writer cop that's right.
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Yeah, like that, well, what's gonna make a great edit.
21:48
It's like I'm going to disappear right when you guys start again. So that's
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what I'll know exactly when to make the cut. So all right, okay,
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like take it from that last question, I think, Laura, So
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I need to know more about this. I hear that you host an online
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contest called kill a friend, Name a Buddy. My goodness, right,
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what is that about? So when I set up my website many many moons
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ago, my agent was like, you need to offer read or something they
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can't get anywhere else. I'm like, uh, you know, the books,
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but of course I can get the books many places. And I'm like,
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well, I can offer them the opportunity to die possible. And my
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very first thrill of The Perfect Husband. I was working then as a business
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consultant and I was very frustrated. So many many of the bosses who made
22:44
me work late and weekends possibly died in the making of The Perfect Icisband,
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and I found that very therapeutic. I thought other people might as well.
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Healthy way to get rid of that is it's been a lot of fun.
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There's people who nominate themselves, so yes, so you go to the website.
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It's an easy enough thing to do. You can only nominate yourself once,
23:07
but other people can't. Last year's winner like she had thirty members of
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her family all submitting her name. It's meant to be a lot of fun.
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One year it was a wife who she said it was her husband.
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I'm like, I don't want to end up in court over this. Non
23:23
No, he's really excited, pad ass, and I'm like, okay,
23:30
so I love it. That's terrific. Your books are called or described as
23:37
psychological thrillers, but also I've seen some of them called from a nick suspense.
23:45
Don't you have someone telling you, I mean, I get the advice
23:47
picka genre and stick with it. Do you not hear that so much?
23:52
Or how are you juggling that well? I don't like to overthink the labels.
23:56
I'll be honest. I'm always writing suspense, so there's always going to
24:00
be some kind of crime. But I've also been around thirty years, so
24:04
like when I first started out, it was the FBI Profilers, so it
24:08
was the straight up, you know, incredibly violent thriller. But you know,
24:11
ten years of that later, I got more into domestic suspense, which
24:17
I think has a tendency to be a lot more psychological. You know,
24:19
wondering about the person you think you love most in the world, but maybe
24:25
now you should fear the most. Some books, I think a relationship makes
24:30
a great deal of sense, and so there's a romantic element some books.
24:33
It's not right for that. I You're right, you have to be somewhat
24:37
consistent within a genre. But I think suspense is a big enough umbrella.
24:41
There's plenty space to move around within that umbrella, you know, series characters
24:49
and series books are very popular. In fact, I think I'm speaking on
24:52
this subject at writer condom. I think about it, but it should be
24:56
you because you've got am I right, like five different series. I'm terribly
25:03
confused on the issue you are, correction, what draws you to that kind
25:07
of fiction? You know, I'm the non series series writer. I never
25:12
planned any of them, so I'm never sure if I'm the best or worst
25:15
person to talk about this. The Perfect Husband my first breakout thriller, that
25:22
book that ten years later made me, you know, an overnight success,
25:26
had an FBI profiler in it because you know, it's a serial killer book.
25:30
Well, at the end of that, I wrote a different standalone book.
25:33
But then my publisher came back to me and they're like, you know,
25:36
everyone likes that Pierce Quincy. Maybe you could do another Pierce Quincy book.
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My gun, I think I could. I have an idea that would
25:41
work, and then it say, oh, well, maybe I could do
25:44
one more. I have an idea that works, But then I came up
25:48
with a crime that would actually be a Boston cop. So I left him
25:52
behind and I did Detective Deity Warren. Except then I had an idea that
25:56
needed an FBI profiler, and you get the gist of how this all worked
26:00
out. So none of them are actually published consecutively. You know, that
26:04
would be way too simple for me or my readers, But I think it's
26:10
worked out. Yeah. Yeah, trying to write books where you will love
26:15
the characters and you want to follow them, and it's just which characteristic?
26:22
Yeah, whose turn is it? You have called yourself a research junkie.
26:27
Does this mean you actually enjoy your research? She said, incredulously. Does
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that mean you actually enjoy on his? Hands down, I think it's the
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best part of being a thriller writer. People like to talk to us because
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they think we're authors and we have a cool job. You know this,
26:48
well, are we type all day? There's not even really a good work
26:52
day story to share with your family at dinner time. The typed, then
26:56
I deleted it, then I typed it five times. Yeah, then I
27:02
had some chocolate. So the opportunity to talk to people who have really cool
27:10
jobs, you know, to go to the body farm to work with a
27:14
search and rescue dog canine unit too. I read an article one day in
27:19
a magazine about real life tracking in law enforcement and kind of the whole point
27:25
that everyone thinks we have drones and technology, but you still need old fashioned
27:30
boots on the ground tracking. I liked it so much I emailed the guy
27:33
who wrote it and I was like, can you teach me fugitive tracking?
27:34
And he did and it was so much fun. Well, I I like
27:41
when we're on trips, and I use that for research purposes if I know
27:45
that I want to set a book someplace. So I suppose I enjoyed that
27:49
when we're traveling. Absolutely. Okay, you open this interview by giving some
27:55
great writing advice. Now we'll flip it and I'm going to ask what's the
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worst piece of writing advice you've ever received or heard? Oh that's a good
28:04
one, geez. You know, I think when you start out. I
28:11
still think one of the things that helped me the most was I just didn't
28:15
know better, and neither did my family. They're actually my whole family teaches
28:18
math and engineering. They just thought this was kind of crazy but harmless or
28:22
whatever. Writing a book again, Yeah, it was interesting. When I
28:29
joined my first writing group, all of a sudden, it's doom and gloom.
28:33
Well, this is really hard. Oh, editors don't want new writers.
28:36
Oh you'll never get an agent. Oh the midlist has collapsed, you
28:40
will never make it in this business. You mean you got to cut that
28:45
all out. I mean it was weird because I was already published when I
28:48
joined these groups, and it really really liked knock the wind out of my
28:52
sales. It was like all the reasons we can't succeed in that. There
28:56
is no way to go about writing a novel which is isolating enough and challenging
29:02
enough and you know, just mind boggling enough being inundated with that kind of
29:07
negativity. You have to just believe you're going to do it. It's going
29:10
to be great. And if not this book, well then the next one.
29:14
That's the one ten years later. We'll make you an overnight success.
29:18
And stay away from the negative voices. Right yeah, Okay, you mentioned
29:22
you've been doing this for thirty some years. There must be some tips,
29:27
tricks, of suggestions, advice. What are some of the things you've picked
29:32
up along the journey. Well, actually that's the best word, journey.
29:37
I think, like a lot of aspiring novelists, when I first started out,
29:41
I was looking to, you know, have it made you know,
29:45
to hit the new York Times, and then I'd feel like a published author,
29:48
or to be in hardcover, and then I'd feel like a published author,
29:51
or sell so many copies, and then I'd feel like an author,
29:55
maybe be reviewed in the right publication. At the end of the day,
29:59
we don't control any of that. And what I did discover when my second
30:04
thriller hit the New York Times list is when I got up the next day
30:07
to write, it was just as hard as the day before. I mean,
30:11
my beautiful manuscript had no idea that I was now suddenly successful. So
30:19
I think the trick to sanity in this business is we are writers. What
30:23
we do is write, and that's our focus needs to be. That's the
30:27
process. We need to be folks thinking about and we're enjoying telling a great
30:33
story. The rest will follow, Okay, love it. So what does
30:38
your writing day look like now? I like writing first thing in the morning.
30:44
I also think you can't think about it too much. Bad things will
30:47
happen. You know, Just get coffee and get to the computer and I'll
30:52
try to get out you know, so many words, and then I'll take
30:56
a break late morning, early afternoon. I'm a big hiker. Something outside
31:02
and it's you know, with the help of my two canine assistants, it's
31:06
often how I think through what I just wrote, kind of figure out,
31:10
oh yeah, everything I did wrong. Then there's the re revision process later
31:12
that day and by end of the day. I'm not good at writing after
31:19
three pm for whatever reason. But as you know, in our line of
31:22
work, there's a lot of business side to all of this too, on
31:26
social media and webs so all of that kind of stuff, all the miscellaneous
31:29
stuff. Well, we always ask this question, are you a plotter or
31:36
a pancer or a planner or a panser, depending on which one you like
31:41
seeing. This is why I love writing conferences because we can debate this passionately
31:45
for the next day. Yeah. I always consider the writing equivalent of taste
31:52
great less filling, like you are what you are, you're committed to it.
31:56
But I have a answer. I actually started out plotting because the first
32:02
few books were too terrifying not to know what I was going to write,
32:08
what I found for me personally, because both work, it's just whatever works
32:12
for you. My books were more linear because by definition, when I'm plotting,
32:19
I'm coming up with like a year's worth of good ideas all in that
32:22
day. So it's really the best ideas I had in one day. So
32:27
what I like to do now is come up with the crime, do some
32:30
work with experts, and generally in that process I start getting a lot of
32:35
good ideas and logical steps. Investigators need to be smart. But then I
32:40
kind of just see how it evolves from there, and I never know who
32:45
did it till the week before deadline, and it is really pressful, and
32:49
maybe that's the part I should work. One that's so hard to believe,
32:53
seriously, like you don't know till you get there. I don't know what
32:58
I love about it. I feel, you know, when readers come up
33:00
and say I never saw it coming, I'm like, yeah, me neither.
33:07
I can't telegraph what I don't know either. So all right, we
33:15
mentioned this great book that's most Recent's what's coming up next? What are you
33:21
writing next? So I'm working, actually just finished the next Frankie Elkin book
33:25
that'll be out in March of twenty twenty four. Still see you everywhere.
33:30
It was fun to hear you talk about Lucation and Laura because last year I
33:32
had the opportunity to go to this remote atoll in the Pacific called Palmyra.
33:37
It's not populated at all. That's just a research crew doing ecological reclamation,
33:43
working on repair of coral reefs. And it was so isolated, like they
33:47
don't like it if you have your appendix isolated, because it'll be three days
33:52
to get you a medical evac it. Of course, it's the natural place
33:57
to commit murder. I mean, come off, it is just begging for
34:00
it. So that will be the next book. It'll come out in March
34:04
next year's topical too. The coral reefs are are in the news even now,
34:10
oceans warming and they're worried about it in Florida anyway. Yeah, that
34:15
sounds good. I'm a treat sounds terrific. Hey, Lisa, thanks so
34:19
much for being on the podcast. Oh, thank you so much, William,
34:22
And we'll see you in just a few weeks in Oklahoma City at Ryder
34:24
Khan. I can't wait looking forward to it. Thank you. Thanks.
34:35
Just a few parting words, Renee. You got a new webinar, don't
34:38
you. Yeah. We've partnered with writing momentum dot com, which of course
34:44
is one of our partners with Ryder Khan, and we put together a conference
34:53
prep workshop. So if you are new to conferences or you just want to
35:00
refresh on how you can get most prepared, go to writing momentum dot com.
35:07
It will be on that landing page and it's free, and it also
35:10
comes with a PDF of list of things you want to make sure that you
35:15
are bringing, so really great resource. That's yeah, terrific, terrific resource.
35:22
So check out that and then come to writer Khan and hear more from
35:28
Lisa Gardner and a host of other successful writers that September one through four,
35:34
which is Labor Day weekend in Oklahoma City. We've got not just Lisa,
35:38
but in addition to that fantastic keynote speaker, we have dozens of other best
35:45
selling authors, a terrific roster of agents, really the biggest and best we've
35:51
ever had, includes movie TV agents and books and publishers. And we've got
35:55
a bunch of author assistance people will whosh wise and marketing or publicity or author
36:04
photographs or whatever you need you contests, manuscript reviews, private consultations, and
36:10
a great author photo for free. I mean, at writer Con we do
36:15
it all. So for more information, visit our website which is Writercon dot
36:22
com all right until next time, keep writing and remember you cannot fail your
36:29
FU. See you next time.