Time to Surrender My Title at Citrus Crime Writers

As 2023 turned to 2024, my two-year term as an officer and board member for Citrus Crime Writers came to an end.

I was ready.

Citrus Crime Writers is the local (Central Florida) chapter of Sisters in Crime, a national collection of authors and others who advance the craft and profession of writing crime fiction in all its sub-genres and writing true crime. And, yes, the sisters allow misters into its membership.

Sometime in 2021, I was asked to “run” for CCW vice president. As the only nominee, I was summarily elected, along with our new president, Martha Geaney, and our longtime secretary and treasurer, Ruth Owen.

My predecessor, Bess Carnan, informed me that one of my most important duties was to recruit speakers for our monthly meetings. This was a daunting ask. Having been in the chapter for a few years and having recently re-engaged with it, I knew Bess had done a lot of work finding interesting speakers for us. Each month brought someone new and interesting:

·        The self-dubbed Poison Lady, who enthralled us with the many deadly traits of plants, chemicals and pharmaceuticals

·        A local mortician

·        An author publicist (who’s now an acquiring editor!)

·        Multiple successful crime novelists

Reaching a High Bar

Bess set a high bar. The chapter, like everyone else in the world, was still in the heavy wake of the early pandemic, and we had turned to Zoom for our monthly meetings. Which meant finding speakers from afar was very much on the table.

So I started making a list of all the writers, agents, publicists, author coaches, craft specialists, and others that I had seen and listened to during 2020 and 2021 when we were all stuck at home in front of our laptops. To that list I added people I had met or listened to previously at writer conferences, many of them in Florida. In all, my list was a healthy one.

Then I started emailing my pitch.

To my utter surprise, I had an 80-percent success rate. This is the thing about writers: we’re generous to a fault. Either that, or the people I emailed welcomed the opportunity to spend an hour hovering in the profession without having the responsibility . . . to write. I mean, there’s not an author alive who hasn’t found a good reason to be distracted from the page.

Ah, but I’ll stick with the first explanation. Authors are mostly generous people. Given the author panel on Imposter Syndrome that I sat in on last year, it’s also possible that many people who have a published novel are still so excited about that fact that they want to share with others how they did it — and that they did it!

The Gift of Service

My role as chapter VP was one of service, but it was also a gift. It enabled — allowed — me to connect with some talented authors and smart people about what they do and how they do it. It gave me a reason to pick their brains for 15 to 30 minutes on a Zoom several weeks before their presentation, letting me see behind the curtain at all the good stuff going on. Did I mention these people were all generous?

Because they’re all entrenched in the author world, I didn’t have to explain how a man came to be a chapter officer in a sub-group of Sisters in Crime. They knew. And they didn’t care, even though I was self-conscious and mostly hushed about my gender in an overwhelmingly female national organization.

What was gratifying was how well they all delivered. To a person, each of them killed. Within days after a meeting, I would get feedback from attendees about how appreciative they were to have time with this presenter or that speaker. This is when you know your prep and work has paid off, and people logged off with a smile.

Other CCW Leaders

The other gift from my service was getting to know other chapter members better, particularly the leaders. Martha is an absolute force. Lucille Ponte, who serves in an unelected post as chapter publicist, web guru and social media director, gives so much passion to our membership. So does Ruth and one of our former presidents, Charlotte Hunter, now our membership chair.

All of them remain are tightly connected with a group that, only a few years ago, had shrunk and was endangered. Charlotte, Ruth, and Lu were the resurrectors. Martha was the flux capacitor, driving us to the future with a vengeance. I will forever value their insights and what they taught.

Next Up: Nancy Cohen

Because Bess ended her tenure with several future speakers already in place for me, my goal was to do the same for my successor, Nancy Cohen so that she didn’t have to find 12 presenters for 2024. That I was able to accomplish.

So, in 2024, I look forward to getting on Zoom on the second Sunday afternoon of each month and being delighted by someone new to teach me something about writing crime fiction novels. This time, I’ll just be an attendee. Can’t wait.