Jeffery Deaver to Headline North Carolina Writers Police Academy

[Lee Lofland]

I'm pleased to announce that international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver is the keynote speaker for the North Carolina Writers Police Academy. The event is scheduled for September 24-26, 2010 in Jamestown, North Carolina (just outside Greensboro). Registration opens soon. Handcuffing, shooting, and murder investigations will follow shortly afterward!

Details here

More to come.

[Dan Coleman]

If you can wade through the handcuffings, shootings, and murder investigations that are actually going on. Keep your head down, your eyes up, and don't go back on the same trail, while in Greensboro.

Well, it ain't that bad. Just a little jab.

[Lee Lofland]

Whoa! This comment comes from a man who survived living in Newport News, Va. Aren't their city flags made from crime scene tape? Isn't the city seal a chalk outline? :)

[I. J. Parker]

What, Dan is from Newport News? We're practically neighbors. And yes, bullets fly around here.

[Lee Lofland]

Ingrid - You're on the safe side of the highway, with all the sun and fun.

[Dan Coleman]

Yeah, I.J., Newport News and Hampton. So where is your territory in Tidewater?

[I. J. Parker]

I'm in Virginia Beach. At the moment, the worst places for murder and mayhem seem to be NN, Portsmouth, and Norfolk. I guess, we're number 4. Not exclusively Sun and Fun, and horribly high taxes to fund the developers' dreams.

[Clay Morgan]

Virginia Beach! I was stationed in Portsmouth in 88-90 in the Coast Guard. I did judo in Virginia Beach and drunkenly crawled...I mean strolled along the beach on many occasions.

Turned down a job offer from the Newport News newspaper a couple years back.

[Dan Coleman]

I know the feeling. I was stationed at Camp Elmore, in Norfolk, my last year in the Corps, '66-67. Used to be a place called the Jolly Roger in Ocean View, where you could take your life in your own hands when you entered. So I entered, frequently. But Va. Beach was a great place back then.

Must have been the Daily Press that offered you the job.

[Dan Coleman]

I checked the property taxes last year and Portsmouth was the highest, though no place is cheap, and it's the skankiest. I know people who leave Virginia to avoid the taxes. The place is almost like a police state, especially the Tidewater area. Traffic is horrible. The corner off which I lived in NN"s East End as a child is now the most dangerous and doped up in the whole seaboard region.

[I. J. Parker]

Very true about the traffic. One of the reasons I don't do book signings any longer.

[Dan Coleman]

LOL. I got out before it got bad. Why I'll never move back there. A regular concrete jungle. Can't stand to visit there more than a few hours, and will never spend the night.

[Jon Loomis]

I really want to do one of these, maybe write a non-fiction piece about it. I wonder if there's anything similar in the upper midwest.