Writing & Keeping Busy in Key West
Last Wednesday began a long weekend of music here in Key West with the 17th annual Key West Songwriters Festival. I don’t think anyone in the music business stayed in Nashville, they were all here! The music, a mixture of country and rock, interests me because, usually, the songwriter is not the one to record the song and to hear the writer sing it and then compare it to the recorded radio version is very interesting.
This week begins the new Key West Mystery Festival (if you care you’ll have to Google it to find out more). It’s all built around a premiere of a play by someone whose claim to fame is he wrote/produced Monk and White Collar TV shows. I thought Lee Goldberg did a lot of that.
I’ve been busy trying to keep up with all the music and now all the mystery and still write. I actually surprised myself by getting three chapters written last week. Beginning of the book, now titled Key West Latitude, is a lot darker than my other Mick Murphy books and short stories. Almost at 100 pages. I may actually make deadline and have it available by Dec. 2012! Maybe, if we don’t have a hurricane or too many more long-weekend festivals.
Back to the mystery festival, I somehow got on a panel to discuss location in writing along with two other local writers, Mike Dennis and Jonathan Woods. This part of the festival isn’t too well organized, so when MWA Fla. Pres. Neil Plakcy asked to get involved, I did and recruited Jerry Healy and Sandy Balzo to join the event. Don Bruns too, but Don backed out because of a biz emergency at home. Two of the original writers the event had scheduled backed out, so luckily Jerry and Sandy were already on board.
Jerry will be the moderator – he’s done it before – while the rest of us will talk about how and why location works for us.
If you’re on island this coming weekend, stop in at the Westin Hotel on Front Street, 7 p.m. on Friday and join us.
This is the first year of the festival and I’ve emailed the organizers and suggested they have me get more involved next year. This is a great island and with a handful of South Florida mystery writers, I could arrange meet-and-greets and panels at a number of location. Almost one a day for the week of the event and add more mystery writers to the mystery event.
I understand that the play is the centerpiece but panels and a variety of mystery writers – hardboiled, cozy, thriller writers – could add spice to the main dish. It has the possibility of becoming a good event. After all, Key West has a certain reputation when it comes to writers and it hasn’t been exploited as much as it could be. I used ‘exploited’ in a positive way. The most visited attraction on the island is the Hemingway Home and Museum.
Key West needs more events that celebrate its heritage of being a home to writers and I am glad to be involved in this event, even in the early stages.
FYI – you can order trade paperback copies of my books directly from my wwebsite: www.michaelhaskins.net
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