I had a blast Saturday at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan covering the last day of ThrillerFest, the annual four-day gathering of the International Thriller Writers organization.
The ITW has only been in existence since 2004 but it is already giving such pillars of the crime writing community as the Mystery Writers of America and the annual Bouchercon conference a run for their money.
Like Bouchercon, ThrillerFest mixes panel discussions on crime fiction with seminars designed for aspiring writers as well as individual Q&A sessions with major writers.
What has given the ITW an edge is the decision to hold the conference in the same location every summer making it easier to plan a trip for a lot of people and to combine it with a visit to the Big Apple. Bouchercon is held in the fall and moves to a new city — and a new organizing committee — each year (this fall the event will be held in San Francisco, next year Bouchercon will move to St. Louis).
ITW was created by writers such as Lee Child, Steve Berry, Sandra Brown, Connecticut’s own M.J. Rose and others in the field who felt thrillers had 
become such a large and diverse genre — separate from traditional mysteries and detective stories — that there was a need for a group and an annual gathering of their own.I’ve attended several Bouchercons over the years — and had a great time at them — but they can be hard to get to (one was held in Alaska a few years ago) and sometimes the roster of special guests is far from spectacular.
ThrillerFest delivers the big guns of the genre every year, so that in the course of two days last week you could have attended in-depth public interviews with Harlan Coben, Lisa Scottoline, Sandra Brown, Clive Cussler and this year’s ThrillerMaster Ken Follett.
Because he isn’t a Bouchercon or regional mystery conference regular, Follett packed the largest ballroom at the Hyatt with great stories of his adventures in the publishing world and a very interesting account of the way that he broke out of the spy novel genre with such blockbuster historical novels as “World Without End.”
The writer talked about his Hollywood experiences — good and bad — and told the crowd that he won’t sell his epic novels to any TV production entity that won’t guarantee a six to eight hour miniseries. Follett said he was thrilled with the Ridley Scott-produced miniseries version of “The Pillars of the Earth” (above) that will be debuting on the Starz cable channel at the end of this month.
Genre-busting novelist Scottoline (below) kept a very large crowd captivated with an hour session Saturday that was packed with good advice for aspiring writers as well as the author’s wonderfully extended answer to interviewer Jon Land’s 
question: What is the one book you wish you could have written?
When Scottoline said her choice was Frank McCourt’s memoir “Angela’s Ashes” rather than a classic crime novel you could tell the crowd was a tad surprised.
But as the Philadelphia writer explained how much she admired McCourt’s storytelling skill, as well as his attempt to explore the mysteries of family life, and the sheer high quality of the writer’s prose, the chosen book seemed entirely apropos to those of us who admire those same three qualities in Scottoline’s novels (where the crimes and their solutions never overshadow the relationships between the people in the stories).
ThrillerFest VI has already been announced for the Grand Hyatt July 6 to 9, 2011, and next year I’m going to be sure to spend more than one day at this terrific gathering.
The ITW maintains an excellent website, full of information about thrillers and thriller writers at www.thrillerwriters.org
