Minnesota Now with Nina Moini

Fans of thrillers and mysteries converge in the Twin Cities for Bouchercon

A photo of a woman.
Jess Lourey is a Twin Cities based mystery writer. She’ll be co-toastmaster at the world mystery convention “Bouchercon” in the Twin Cities the weekend of Sept. 8.
Courtesy photo.

Audio transcript

CATHY WURZER: Do you love a good mystery, maybe a thriller or a crime novel? Well, you're in luck, because next weekend, the Twin Cities is hosting Bouchercon. Now, what is that?

It's the world mystery convention where mystery readers, writers, agents, and editors gather to talk all things mystery. Jess Lowry will be there. She's a Minnesota-based mystery writer. Her 22nd book is coming out this fall.

She joins me right now. Say, by the way, we're going to talk briefly here in the next few minutes about someone taking their own life. Jess, hello, welcome to Minnesota Now.

JESS LOWRY: Thank you. I am so glad to be here and talk about what is summer camp for people who love books, Bouchercon Mystery Festival.

CATHY WURZER: Bouchercon. I love the name. Where did that come from? Do we know?

JESS LOWRY: It's a weird little bit of trivia. Anthony Boucher was a New York Times book reviewer in, I want to say, the '40s, maybe the '50s. And he also wrote some books, some mysteries, and somehow, even though everybody's forgotten him, he lives on in the name of this conference.

CATHY WURZER: I love that. So I understand a number of people show up to this every year and they come from all over the world?

JESS LOWRY: It is an international mystery fan conference and it travels. So it's in a different location every year. We haven't had it in Minneapolis since 2006. And so it's quite an honor. Right now, we're at 1,300 people registered.

CATHY WURZER: Tell me about some of the people you are excited to see.

JESS LOWRY: Oh my gosh, it's a hard list because it's so welcoming. But it's also these superstars like Craig Johnson, who writes the Longmire series, Charlaine Harris, who wrote the books that True Blood on HBO was based on, Jo Nesbo, who is a Scandinavian writer. There are so many superstars that I can't wait to hang out with, and some locals too like William Kent Kruger will be there, Ellen Hart will be there.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. Oh my goodness. So you mentioned a diverse group of individuals. Let's talk about that for just a moment. How diverse is the pool of mystery writers at the conference?

JESS LOWRY: Within the crime fiction community, it's been a topic of conversation how we need to be more diverse, how we need to have that wide pool of brilliant voices. And so the committee, which I'm not on, but the committee for organizing Bouchercon specifically had as their manifesto to make it very diverse. And so Shawn Cosby is one of the guests of honor.

He's a rising star, but he's actually a superstar right now. He, in the last year, has soared. And so there's diverse panels. These are people who have stories to tell. And the community is stronger with more diverse voices.

CATHY WURZER: I also went through all of the various panel discussions, and they look fantastic.

JESS LOWRY: It is so much fun.

CATHY WURZER: Who comes up with these names too-- The Art of Misdirection. I like Grief and the Gumshoe. That's a good one too.

JESS LOWRY: Right? It's writers who put the panels together. They're very creative.

CATHY WURZER: It sounds like you've got a little something for everybody.

JESS LOWRY: Right. It is a fan conference. So first and foremost, it's for book lovers. But if you are a writer, there will be agents and editors there. If you are a librarian, you can talk to the authors and find out who you want to be stocking-- and stocking, S-T-O-C-K-I-N-G, not the other way.

So there is something for everybody. And even though it's huge, it is very warm and welcoming. And you'll just meet people on the elevator, in the bar, in the hospitality room. You'll see amazing panels. It's just a really good time.

CATHY WURZER: Because there are editors and agents at the conference, do folks come hoping to sell a manuscript?

JESS LOWRY: I've heard stories of agents getting manuscripts slipped under the toilet stall to them in past about Bouchercons. Some people come more to connect, more to see the people face to face so they can submit their manuscripts later. But there are book deals made at Bouchercon, for sure.

CATHY WURZER: So as a mystery writer, I'm betting you probably live a fairly solitary life-- I'm assuming that. Maybe that's a wrong assumption. What are you looking forward to?

JESS LOWRY: No, you are absolutely right. It's a conference for introverts. And so it's all these people who love books-- all these book nerds who, for four days, get together, and talk books, and wear themselves out. I was talking to somebody about my very first Bouchercon-- at the end of it, I was sitting in the airport with all these new friends I had made sitting next to me, and none of us even said, hi, to each other because we were so tired from talking.

CATHY WURZER: Let me ask you about you-- what made you take on the mystery genre?

JESS LOWRY: It's actually sort of a sad story. It was my husband's suicide in 2001 drove me to have to get this grief out somehow. And mystery writing was just a perfect fit because it's about justice. It's about answers. It's about connecting with something larger than yourself. And so I wrote my first mystery in 2002. And it came out in 2006.

CATHY WURZER: So this is how maybe writing mystery novels, then, helped you work through the grief of your husband's death?

JESS LOWRY: It absolutely did. I have a TedX talk about it, but just the healing power of writing. Even if you don't publish, maybe especially if you don't publish, just writing, giving coherence to a story really helps us to release the pain of it so we can take the lessons away.

CATHY WURZER: I told you off-air I've written a couple of books myself and had them published. And because I pound out news copy for a living, I find long-form writing excruciating. Now, I guess mystery writing would be even more difficult. Do you concentrate on setting, on characters, or maybe that one gasp-worthy plot twist? Give us a sense of the questions you ask yourself as you launch into writing.

JESS LOWRY: I'm an outlier. And so I look at the plot first. But there is a misconception that mysteries are all plot and no character development. And so there is no plot without characters.

So I look at how the twist, which is very popular right now, right-- we love a twist-- how the twist can help the character to grow and how the character's growth leads to the twist. And so I outline, but it's kind of a big soup I keep in mind as I'm going.

CATHY WURZER: Kind of dive into that a little bit deeper for me here-- do some of the characters live with you, in a sense? Does that make sense?

JESS LOWRY: It makes sense. I'm not one of the writers for whom the characters talk to me. I know that's true of some writers, but for me, they start to take shape and so I can feel them walking alongside me. And so I carry old school paper and pen so I can write down when bits of dialogue or bits of insight come to me.

CATHY WURZER: Now, as I said earlier, your 22nd book is coming out this fall. Congratulations.

JESS LOWRY: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: I can't even imagine writing 22 books. Tell me a little bit about the book.

JESS LOWRY: It's called The Quarry Girls. It's set in 1977 St. Cloud, Minnesota. And I was living in St. Cloud, I was a child then. And in my research, I found out that there were two and potentially three active serial killers in St. Cloud in the '70s.

And so I sort of fictionalized my experience of growing up immersed in this kind of terrifying environment. And I turned it into, hopefully, a page-turner.

CATHY WURZER: I recall hearing about those murders. And that was quite a story in St. Cloud.

JESS LOWRY: It really was. And the third, the murder of the Reeker sisters, was never solved. And so it really sort of shaped, for me, anyhow, my childhood of what it felt like to grow up in a sort of medium-sized town and what safety looks like or doesn't look like.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, how have you managed to write 22 books?

JESS LOWRY: For me, it's sanity. It really keeps me sane. And you will find that mystery writers, if you go to Bouchercon, are the nicest people you've ever met because we work all our dark thoughts out on paper. And so it's really cathartic.

And some days, I don't want to write, like any other job. But I'm very blue collar about it. It's my job. I show up for it. And it gets a lot of stuff off my shoulders.

CATHY WURZER: OK, Bouchercon-- someone wants to show up there, but before they go, if they need to read a couple of books before they show up to talk intelligently with those gathered, what should they be reading right now?

JESS LOWRY: Sean Cosby's Razorblade Tears is amazing. Oh, that's the must read between now and the 8th when the conference starts. I'd say, read that one. Absolutely, you will find it in any bookstore in Minneapolis. It's brilliant.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Gosh, Jess, it's been fun talking with you. I hope you have a wonderful Bouchercon.

JESS LOWRY: Thank you for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Jess Lowry is a Minnesota-based mystery writer. Her 22nd book is coming out this fall. And she will be at Bouchercon with about 1,400 other people next weekend, September 8 through the 11th. If you'd like to go to the conference, you can still register.

The deadline, though, is Thursday-- this Thursday, September the 1st. It's Bouchercon2022.com. I'll spell it for you-- it's B-O-U-C-H-E-R-C-O-N Bouchercon2022.com. She was a delight to talk to and that conference does sound like it would be fantastic.

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