Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles

On August 2nd, 2020, Sisters in Crime/LA met virtually via Zoom.

Featured Reader
Ellen Byron

Ellen read from the opening of her new book, MURDER IN THE BAYOU BONEYARD.

Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Her new Catering Hall Mystery series, written as Maria DiRico, launched with Here Comes the Body and was inspired by her real life. She’s an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS. But she considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

Featured Speaker
Kathy Reichs

Photo by Marie-Reine Mattera

In an interview with Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles Chapter Speakers Bureau Director August Norman, Kathy discussed her career as a forensic anthropologist, common mistakes crime writers make when dealing with forensics, her journey from aspiring writer to best-selling author, and her 19th installment in the Temperance Brennan series, A Conspiracy of Bones.  Questions were then taken from the audience as time permitted.

Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her other Temperance Brennan books include Death du Jour, Deadly Décisions, Fatal Voyage, Grave Secrets, Bare Bones, Monday Mourning, Cross Bones, Break No Bones, Bones to Ashes, Devil Bones, 206 Bones, Spider Bones, Flash and Bones, Bones Are Forever, Bones of the Lost, Bones Never Lie, Speaking in Bones and the Temperance Brennan short story collection, The Bone Collection.   In addition, Kathy co-authored the Virals young adult series with her son, Brendan Reichs. The best-selling titles are: Virals, Seizure, Code, Exposure, Terminal, and the novella collection Trace Evidence. The series follows the adventures of Temperance Brennan’s great niece, Tory Brennan.  Dr. Reichs’ latest novel, Two Nights, was released July 11 and features Sunday Night, a tough-talking, scarred heroine.  Dr. Reichs was also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels.

From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerizing forensic thrillers. For years she consulted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and to the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec. Dr. Reichs has travelled to Rwanda to testify at the UN Tribunal on Genocide, and helped exhume a mass grave in Guatemala. As part of her work at JPAC (Formerly CILHI) she aided in the identification of war dead from World War II, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Reichs also assisted in the recovery of remains at the World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Dr. Reichs is one of only 100 forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and is currently a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte, NC and Montreal, Québec.

On June 7th, 2020, from 2 to 4 pm, Sisters in Crime/LA met on Zoom.

Featured Reader

Paula Bernstein

Paula Bernstein began her career with a PhD in Chemistry from Caltech. After several years of research, she escaped from her lab and went to medical school. Like the heroine of her medical mystery series, Hannah Kline, Paula has spent most of her professional life practicing Obstetrics and Gynecology in Los Angeles. After retiring from her full time practice, Paula unearthed all the first drafts she’d written over many years, found a great editor, and published the Hannah Kline Mysteries; Murder in the Family, Murder by Lethal Injection, Murder at a Private School, Murder in the Goldilocks Zone, Murder In Vitro and Murder on her Honeymoon. Her newest Hannah Kline novel, Murder is a Nightmare, will be published this year.  Her short story, On Call for Murder, a Hannah Kline prequel, was published in the Sisters in Crime 2017 Anthology, LAst Resort.

Featured Speaker

Lori Rader-Day

She talked about writing suspense and her newest novel, The Lucky One.

Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Anthony Award- and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She co-chairs the mystery conference Murder and Mayhem in Chicago and serves as the national president of Sisters in Crime. Her new book is The Lucky One, set in a true-crime amateur online sleuth community.

On May 3rd, 2020, from 2 to 4 pm, Sisters in Crime/LA held their first official meeting on Zoom.  Members and the public were provided a direct e-mail with an RSVP link, as well as access to the link on the website.

Susan Angard read from the book, ON THE WINGS OF A LION.

Rachel Howzell Hall, Sheila Lowe, and Laurie Stevens – the editors from the previous Sisters in Crime/LA anthology, FATALLY HAUNTED – provided their insights about the anthology process.

Tori Eldridge talked about the art of “ninja marketing,” sharing her experiences branding herself as a new author. She also focused on taking advantage of your existing networks of people who share similar interests to yourself, and finding ways to tie that into promoting your works, as part of locating people who can become part of a grassroots marketing team.