Monthly MeetingsUPDATE: As of April 2020
Please note that during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Malice will be following social distancing protocols. All meetings will be conducted virtually using Zoom, a free online meeting platform. Malice meets monthly at the Bartlett Library from 10 am to noon. Members and guests are invited to a dutch-treat lunch for socializing. |
Jaden Terrell, author of the Jared McKean detective mysteries, will be the guest speaker. Terrell is a Shamus Award finalist and writes a series of author interviews for the International Thriller Writers' The Big Thrill online Magazine. She and is also a contributor to the Killer Nashville Noir anthology and to Now Write! Mysteries, a collection of writing exercises published by Tarcher/Penguin for writers of crime fiction. Terrell is a recipient of several awards for service to the crime writing community, including the 2017 Killer Nashville Builder Award and two awards for service to the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA): the 2009 Magnolia Award and the 2017 Silver Quill Award. A former special education teacher with thirty years of experience as a teacher and trainer, Terrell is a writing coach and consultant who also teaches workshops on the craft and business of writing fiction. 
USA Today bestselling author Annette Dashofy has spent her entire life in rural Pennsylvania surrounded by cattle and horses. When she wasn't roaming the family's farm or playing in the barn, she could be found reading or writing. After high school, she spent five years as an EMT on the local ambulance service, dealing with everything from drunks passing out on the sidewalk to mangled bodies in car accidents. These days, she, her husband, and their spoiled cat, Kensi, live on property that was once part of her grandfather's dairy. Her Zoe Chambers mystery series includes five Agatha Award nominees including CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE, BRIDGES BURNED, NO WAY HOME, CRY WOLF, and FAIR GAME. The ninth in the series, UNDER THE RADAR, was released Feb. 25.
Kaye George, an Agatha nominated short story and novel writer, is the author of the Imogene Duckworthy Mystery series (Agatha nomination for best first novel), EINE KLEINE MURDER by Barking Rain Press (Silver Falchion Award finalist), DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE (A Neanderthal Mystery) (Agatha nominee and Silver Falchion finalist) and the Fat Cat Mystery series by Berkley Prime Crime (as Janet Cantrell). She's also written A PATCHWORK OF STORIES, a collection of her previously published stories, and several stories available at Untreed Reads. Other short stories appear in various magazines and anthologies. Her new cozy mystery series is called Vintage Sweets. Kaye George will talk about writing short stories versus novels at the June 13 Zoom meeting. 
Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She switched to novels a few years later, and achieved publication in 1981 with Sweet and Deadly. After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, a Best Novel 1990 nomination for the Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight books in her series about a Georgia librarian. In 1996, she released the first in the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare’s Counselor, the fifth—and final—Lily Bard novel, was printed in fall 2001. By then, Harris was feeling the call of new territory. Starting with the premise of a young woman with a disability who wants to try inter-species dating, she created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series before there was a genre called “urban fantasy.” Telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse works in a bar in the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each subsequent book follows Sookie through adventures involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which ended in 2013, has been released in over thirty languages. Sookie Stackhouse has proven to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of the HBO television series Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new HBO series based upon the books He wrote and directed the pilot episode for that series, True Blood, which premiered in September of 2008. In October 2005, the first of Harris’s new mystery series about a young woman named Harper Connelly debuted with the release of Grave Sight. Harper has the ability to determine the cause of death of any body. After four novels, this series is on hiatus. Now Harris is working on a trilogy of graphic novels with Christopher Golden and artist Don Kramer, “Cemetery Girl.” On her own she is writing a new series set in the small town of Midnight, Texas. Harris has also co-edited a series of very popular anthologies with her friend Toni L.P. Kelner, aka Leigh Perry. The anthologies feature stories with an element of the supernatural, and the submissions come from a rare mixture of mystery and urban fantasy writers. Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the American Crime Writers League, Sisters in Crime, and the International Crime Writers Association. She is a past member of the boards of Sisters in Crime and MWA, and she has served as president of the MWA. She is also a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America, just to make sure she’s covered. Personally, Harris has been married for many years. She is mother of three wonderful children and the grandmother of two. She lives in central Texas, and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously. Her house is full of rescue dogs. 
About Christopher RiceBy the age of 30, Christopher Rice had published four New York Times bestselling thrillers, received a Lambda Literary Award and been declared one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive. His two novels of dark supernatural suspense, THE HEAVENS RISE and THE VINES, were both finalists for the Bram Stoker Award. He recently entered the erotic romance genre with three works in all new series called The Desire Exchange. They include THE FLAME, THE SURRENDER GATE and KISS THE FLAME. His debut novel, A DENSITY OF SOULS, was published when the author was just 22 years old. A controversial and overnight bestseller, it was greeted with a landslide of media attention, much of it devoted to the fact that Christopher is the son of famed vampire chronicler, Anne Rice. Together with his best friend, New York Times bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, Christopher launched his own Internet radio show. THE DINNER PARTY SHOW WITH CHRISTOPHER RICE & ERIC SHAW QUINN. You can download or stream every episode of the show at TheDinnerPartyShow.com or from iTunes. Subscribe to The Dinner Party Show’s You Tube channel to receive the newest content in 2016. 
About Michael BrackenMichael Bracken, an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, and advertising copy, has received multiple awards for copywriting, two Derringer Awards for short fiction, and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction. The author of several books and more than 1,300 short stories, he has edited seven crime fiction anthologies and provides editorial services to book and periodical publishers. Michael regularly speaks about writing, editing, and publishing at conferences, conventions, and corporate seminars, and has taught non-credit courses for writers at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He’s been a guest speaker in classrooms at various universities, including Baylor University and University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing from Baylor University and currently serves clients and publishers from his office in Hewitt, Texas. Long Bio | Website |
