Notes from ThrillerFest: Tribe, Tension, and the Road Ahead

Diane and I have just returned from my first ThrillerFest in New York City, and I’ve been reflecting on what the experience actually meant to me.

Part of the trip was personal. New York is where we met, and we’ve returned many times over the years. The afternoon before the conference, we walked through Central Park on a bright, sunny day, surrounded by thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing, and I was reminded what makes that city so extraordinary. Somehow the park manages to remove you from the surrounding intensity. Manhattan fades away for a while, and you’re simply present.

But ThrillerFest was the real reason we were there.

If I had to summarize the conference in a single sentence, it would be this: I found my tribe.

That may sound odd coming from someone who has already written ten novels and three novellas, but the feeling was immediate. ThrillerFest brings together writers across the full spectrum of the genre—psychological suspense, espionage, military thrillers, mysteries, procedural crime fiction, and hybrids that refuse neat categorization. What struck me almost immediately was that I was surrounded by people who think about story in the same way I do: tension, stakes, reversals, characters under pressure, and what happens when a secret collides with the wrong person at exactly the wrong time.

Many of these were writers I’ve admired for years—Douglas Preston, David Baldacci, John Sandford, Harlan Coben, Lisa Unger, Robert Dugoni. Authors whose books helped shape my understanding of pacing and storytelling long before I ever published fiction myself. Yet what surprised me most was how approachable everyone was. Warm, conversational, curious, and genuinely interested in talking shop. Whether speaking with bestselling authors or writers earlier in their careers, I felt treated as a peer.

One particularly meaningful moment came when I walked into the pop-up bookstore run by The Mysterious Bookshop and saw my books sitting on the shelves alongside major thriller authors. As independent authors, Diane and I spend so much time behind the scenes writing, editing, commissioning covers, adjusting metadata, and managing the business that publishing can sometimes feel oddly abstract. Then suddenly there’s your book. On a shelf. In New York City.

I’ll admit there was a brief flicker of regret—the kind that asks, what if? What if I’d started writing fiction in my twenties instead of much later? It’s a natural thought when surrounded by writers who have spent decades building careers. But I didn’t dwell there long. Better to focus on the books still ahead.

ThrillerFest also reminded me why I love writing in the first place.

There’s something extraordinary about taking language—mere symbols on a page—and arranging them so that someone experiences discovery, surprise, fear, relief, tension, delight. Storytelling is part architecture, part puzzle-making, part controlled deception. You construct something, dismantle it, rearrange the parts, and control what the reader sees and when they see it. Sometimes, of course, you paint yourself into a corner and have to figure out how Darwin Lacroix gets out of an impossible mess in a way that feels both surprising and inevitable.

One Hollywood producer on a panel said something that resonated with me immediately: authors notice things and build stories from them.

Exactly.

That’s how it works for me. A scientific paper. A strange article. An overheard exchange. Stories come from anywhere. Going to the grocery store is technically a story, but not an interesting one. Add a herd of giraffes at the bottom of the driveway, and suddenly you have narrative tension.

It also made me think about childhood and a teacher who once told me to stop daydreaming. I understand the classroom sentiment, but the broader advice was wrong. Daydreaming is one of the great creative gifts. The real lesson should have been learning when to focus and when to imagine. If you’re raising children or grandchildren, help them develop both.

My panel, Twists, Tension, or Triumphs?, was a lot of fun. I had prepared thoroughly, but once the conversation began, I relaxed and enjoyed it. My answers kept coming back to tension. Darwin is either pursuing something, or something is pursuing Darwin.

The moderator’s final question was what I hope readers feel at the end of one of my books.

“Entertained,” I said.

I believe that deeply.

Readers come to fiction to engage, to escape, to immerse themselves in an experience that temporarily removes them from daily life. I sometimes think of thrillers as ideal airplane books in the best possible sense. You’re wedged into a middle seat, the cabin door closes, and suddenly you disappear into another world.

That’s magic.

The business side of ThrillerFest was equally affirming. The conference sits firmly in the traditional publishing ecosystem, and being immersed in that world actually reinforced Diane’s and my decision to build Triple Shot Press. We respect the traditional path—it works for many talented authors—but our decision to remain independent was intentional. We wanted control of our intellectual property, our publishing schedules, our branding, and our global rights. Everything we create remains ours.

And yes, conferences require proper culinary research. The hotel food was uninspiring, so we discovered Boucherie, a French bistro down the block, and returned multiple times. Good meals, excellent cocktails, desserts requiring no apology, and one memorable mezcal riff on a Last Word courtesy of an attentive bartender named Tyler. Research takes many forms.

So what was my final takeaway?

ThrillerFest didn’t make me want permission. It didn’t make me reconsider the independent path.

It made me want to write better. Write smarter. Travel more. Keep building what Diane and I have created.

Most of all, it gave me a simple realization.

I belong in this world.

Not just as a writer, but as an author, entrepreneur, publisher, and storyteller building something meaningful on our own terms.

And yes, we did quietly introduce the next phase of the adventure.

SPEAR Ops is coming.

Poor Zac. He has no idea what’s about to happen.