Bill Cameron, mystery writer
Bill Cameron will be a presenter at Southwest Washington Writers Conference at the Walton Science Center in Centralia, Washington on September 10 and 11 of 2021.
If you get a chance, you should hike up there and meet him. He thinks deeply about what he’s doing, and then he writes a mystery that keeps you reading. Bill Cameron has won many well-deserved awards for his writing.
Woody and I met Bill Cameron while I was hosting a writers’ salon at the Heathman Hotel. He had just written Lost Dog, his first mystery novel. I had just read it and was delighted to find that my local park’s playground (his setting for a body-find) was a lot scarier than I ever imagined. Woody read Lost Dog, too, and has read every mystery of Bill’s since.
Not too many years later, Bill came to the rescue of a writers’ conference by filling in for the guest speaker who had become ill. Bill’s talk about character creation was a home run, which is why he since has been a speaker at many writing conferences.
Down a couple of years and Bill and I began meeting to share stories, then worked together for several years, teaching an after-school writing club at a local middle school.
We both like middle school students for many reasons. They push your buttons to see what you might do, they still want the world to be just, they want to understand villains and good guys, and they have fresh ideas about what makes a good story.
And the students loved it when we put out an anthology of their stories, and helped them learn to read aloud more dramatically, present their stories to others, and enjoy the accolades of their fellow writers and their families.
Each year, we had these events at 60th and Division, the Rain or Shine Coffee House, the same coffee shop where Bill and I met to critique each other. We all had a great time.
Thank you staff at Rain or Shine, and to Theresa Snyder at the print shop at Mount Hood Community College. You both were patient and fun. And thank you to our students. We really enjoyed our time with you.
Meanwhile, both of us were working on the next novel, and the next mystery. Bill came out with more stories featuring Detective Skin Kadish. His novel, Chasing Smoke became a huge hit.
And then, he wrote another winner. One afternoon at the coffee shop, Bill’s phone kept chiming. Each chime was a report to him of another sale of his hot novel, Day One.
And then came the torrent of emails. “Why did you kill him?” A beloved character had died and all of Bill’s fans were ticked off.
Does that tell you how well he writes?
And among his presentations at the Southwest Washington Writer’s Conference will be a talk on creating characters.
Another presentation covers what you hope to learn about world creation, which, as Bill says, is for all fiction, not just science fiction and fantasy.
So, I urge you, get your thumb out and hitch-hike to this very affordable event.
And go look for Chasing Smoke, County Line, Day One, Property of the State. His newest novel, Crossroad, gives us a new detective.
When Bill and his wife, Jill, moved to the Eugene area, Woody and I were saddened, but we keep track of his work, and we read his online tales of The Adventures of Bill as the Cat Valet. We look for his stories, and hope that cat allows him time to work.
Go to https://www.bcmystery.net to see all of his works, including short stories that are also stunning
There’s a new novel coming out soon. We can all look forward to that.