By Vinnie Hansen
Last year, when registration for Left Coast Crime 2024 rolled around, my 70th birthday prompted me to seize new experiences. I took on moderating a panel and offering an Author/Reader Connection for the first time. Both prospects excited and terrified me. This year at LCC in Denver, I reprised the roles with more confidence.
My Stash the Stiff Author/Reader Connection (ARC) idea came from enjoying a similar casual experience initiated by mystery writer Cindy Brown at Left Coast Crime in Portland many years ago. During her event, I squeezed myself into the bottom of a lectern to play a dead body while other attendees pretended to discover my body and took photos.
Cindy gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to me borrowing her idea for what has become the official Stash the Stiff ARC. For Stash the Stiff, I lead five intrepid souls about the conference environs to scope out places to hide dead bodies. We then assume the position—so to speak—and take photos to post.
We have a lot of brave souls in our midst. This year the participants included: Nickie Perger, Alice Perger, Christy Emanuel, Darlene Dziomba, and Julie Ann Frank Moe.
As advertised, they brought the creativity, and I brought the $2.99 tube of “Vampire Blood.”
I was asked by one attendee how one found out about the Author/Reader Connections, which in my opinion include some of the most fun activities at LCC. If you visit the website, you will see one of the links at the top—along with Home, Registration, Hotel, etc.—is Connections. Click that link and sign up. You need to be quick on the draw. Some of them fill immediately. Last year, Stash the Stiff filled in two days. This year it filled in one!
As for moderating, LCC has started offering short story panels—right in my wheelhouse and an amount of reading I can handle. This year the panel was titled The Joys & Challenges of Writing Short Fiction. The panelists—Susan A. Bickford, Tom Larsen, Francelia Belton, and Kerry Hammond—were a joy.
(All photos from the crime scenes!)
Still sane(ish) after 27 years of teaching high school English, Vinnie Hansen has retired and plays keyboards with ukulele groups in Santa Cruz, California, where she lives with her husband and the requisite cat.
She also writes fiction. A Claymore and a Silver Falchion finalist, Vinnie is the author of the Carol Sabala mystery series, the novels Lostart Street and One Gun, as well as over seventy published short works. Level Best Books reissued One Gun at the end of 2024 and will publish her new suspense novel, Crime Writer, in 2025.
