Thrillerfest

Posted by James O. Born

Last week I attended Thrillerfest in New York. I had a great time at Thrillerfest in Scottsdale, Arizona, so I looked forward to this year’s event. One of the advantages to the New York local was that I got to meet with my publishers and agent. In fact, one of the highlights of the trip was a party at the Jane Rotrosen agency where my family and I wolfed down sushi with other clients. The office and weather were both beautiful and I felt lucky to have an agent like Meg Ruley. She rocks.

I had my camera and ended up taking three photos. All of my daughter or me and her. This is us in front of the famous Flatiron building. Sorry I don’t have any of the conference.

I was on two panels Saturday morning. I was the “Panel Master” of the first one dealing with villains. Being the moderator is a lot of pressure. You have to keep things moving and take the blame if the panel sucks. I was lucky and got a good group which included the fabulous Robin Burcell, Robert Fate and J.D. Rhoades.

Now, Dusty Rhoades is a friend of mine and I knew to expect the unexpected but this is the bio he sent me to read as an introduction:

J.D. Rhoades never knew his parents; he was found abandoned on the steps of a cut-rate Filipino tax preparation service in Slidell, La. As a child, he was bounced around between a series of orphanages, reformatories and opium dens. His first brush with the law came when he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. He was seven years old at the time.

He first turned to drugs at the age of five, when he discovered you could get high by snorting Nestle’s Quik through a rolled up copy of Highlights magazine. Since then, he claims to have ingested marijuana, peyote, heroin, psilocybin, uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, dried banana peels, glue, paste, mucilage, LSD, DMT, STP, ABC, CNN, TLC, Sterno, Drano, Bondo, Ketamine, Dopamine, glucosamine, Ovaltine, and Krispy Kreme.

He decided to turn his life around after he did all of the above in the same night. He woke up two weeks later, hanging upside down by his knees from a tree limb in Duluth, Minn., singing an Aria from “Die Fledermaus.” In German. And he doesn’t even speak German. That’s how JD rolls, baby.

He once killed a stripper with a fondue fork and disposed of the body using an electric pencil sharpener. It took 14 hours.

He knows Tom DeLay personally.

You can guess how the panel went.


The very next hour, I was a member of the panel on Tracking Serial Killers. This is where the photo of me and Michelle Gagnon was shot which appeared on Paul’s post Tuesday. Her debut novel, The Tunnels sold out at the conference and is excellent!

Jeffery Deaver was also on the panel. I had never met him before and he proved to be a very nice guy. He is also a gun collector and seemed to know his stuff.

It was a fun weekend and I got a lot of dad points for the effort.

Ken Bruen on CBS Late Late Show!!!

I saw the show, which aired on 7/10, on my DVR. I've heard it was on You Tube, but I haven't been able to find it.

Ken was his usual, charming self and I liked that Craig Ferguson appreciated his work.

Give Ken a pat on the back for a job well done.

See you next week,

Jim