Writers Digest Conference 2018 was held at the Hilton. It was well organized and the staff were very helpful. I think there are more writers than readers. Estimating how many people were at the conference, I’d say between 800 and 1000. Pitching was amazing. You had one hour, 90 minutes with each agent to sell your story. Waiting to begin was like waiting for your own execution but once in the enormous, well organized room it went smoothly. Lots of good suggestions: Don’t wait in a long line. Find an agent with a short line and talk to her. Make sure you approach an agent who’s interested in your genre. There were signs over each agent’s desk describing his interest. Writers Digest had provided us before hand with a layout of the room, the names and specialties of the agents and their photos. In addition there were excellent discussions about craft, the business of publishing and lots of opportunities to speak to other people. It was an intense, wonderful experience. Well done, Writers Digest!

The Frick Staff Art Show on Frick’s Staff Day was terrific. Two examples are Don Swanson’s Landscape Marbleized paper

and Lorenzo De Los Angeles’s Like the gilt-bronze mounts by Jean Godille …paper, mat board, glue, paint sold tissue, crushed glass and acrylic medium.

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned a murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

Graphic Lessons: What do a teacher, a nine-year-old and an eighteen year old have in common? Murder. Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man..

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Mary Jo Robertiello

http://www.nymysteries.com