Editors Note: The 13th Annual Public Library Association Conference took place this past week at the Portland Convention Center, and this is the fifth (read the first here, second here, third here, and the fourth here ) in a series of dispatches from Reading Local contributor Teresa Bergen on her experiences at PLA 2010.

If you’re an author, how do you court librarians? By telling them stories about the importance of libraries in shaping your writing career. At least, that was a running theme of this panel. Luckily the stories were terrific. But what else would one expect from some of the big names in crime fiction?

Karin Slaughter spoke first in her light drawl. She generalized about Southern writers, “The thing that drew us to the library at first was that it was air conditioned.” She stressed the importance of reading for developing cognitive powers and thus the ability to operate as a democracy. “The funding of schools and libraries is a matter of national security,” she said. Librarians cheered.

Ted Dekker encountered his first library when he was sent away to boarding school at age six. It opened him up to the possibilities of life. Before that, he lived in a dark Indonesian jungle inhabited by head hunters. “The first time I picked up a human skull was probably when I was about ten,” he proclaimed dramatically. “I wanted to know who was this enemy and why did they kill him?” It sounded sort of glamorous until he said the wars were over women and pigs.

In addition to libraries, they discussed the thriller genre and their particular careers.

“I’d like to speak out in praise of the lowly thriller,” Slaughter said. “Why is plot a bad thing?” (Which was a reference to frequently less plot-filled literary fiction, in case you are a stranger to genre rivalry). She pointed out that stories about murder have endured. “How many bludgeoned prostitutes and street urchins does Dickens have?”

Crime and violence were not ladylike things to be interested in during her childhood, Slaughter said. Her grandmother also enjoyed reading in this subject area. She hid her true crime magazines in a bottom drawer. Slaughter liked to sneak peeks at them. One year she decided her grandmother would appreciate a subscription for Christmas. But when presented with the subscription in front of the family, Grandmother was mortified. “I don’t want the mailman to know I read that!” she reportedly said.

Cara Black sets her mystery series in France. Born of a father who loved books and everything French, it makes sense she would grow up to write ten books (and still counting) set in France. She told a funny story about learning French in Catholic school from old-fashioned nuns. When she got to France, it turned out the nuns had taught her words people hadn’t used in conversation for a century.

Norwegian author Jo Nesbo was a little hard to take, at least for those of us who have struggled with our writing for a number of years. First he played soccer and expected to go pro, before messing up his knees. Then he became a stockbroker. At the same time, he played guitar in a rock band that got famous in Norway. He did 180 gigs in one year while working as a stockbroker because he’d promised his mother he wouldn’t quit his day job. Then he decided to take a break. He wrote his first novel in five weeks. Sold it. We will speak of him no more.

Author Dana Haynes shared my horror. He complained about having to speak last, comparing himself to a Ding Dong served at the end of a French meal. “Nesbo is younger and hotter,” he said. “Dekker picked up a skull. I was a janitor at the Dodge dealership.”

Bantam published three of Haynes’ mysteries under the name Conrad Haynes in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Now, after a long hiatus, his book Crashers (St. Martin’s Press) will be out this summer. “I write all my books for me,” he said. “I was unpublished for fifteen years, but I was really hitting my demographic.”

Haynes has had more than his share of bad luck. He wrote Crashers almost ten years ago. It had a great plot, he said, about terrorists taking down multiple airplanes. He made a publishing deal. That was in August, 2001. “One month later,” he said, “it was the most unmarketable book in the world.”

Why write thrillers? According to Dekker, “My writing is dark. But I need that darkness. It’s all about going through the dark and being rescued.”

Slaughter put it succinctly when she said that crime fiction “is like pulling a scab off the social condition.”

Image credits Karin Slaughter, Ted Dekker, Cara Black, Scandinavian Books, AASCU.

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