ThrillerFest 2025 recap

Inspiration, comparison, and a reminder that a writing life is a long road, but there will hopefully always be dancing cowboys.

ThrillerFest 2025 has come and gone. My suitcase is still sitting next to the bed with clothes spilling out of it—I took too many options, as usual. I came home with a wicked case of poison ivy/sumac/oak (I’m not sure which - we have all three around here and I’m clearly not good at identifying any of them. I know, “Leaves of three, let it be” but do you know how many plants have three leaves?!?). That was definitely not something that I got in Midtown Manhattan, though I had a frantic 4am tearing-off-of-the-bedcovers to check for bedbugs (no bedbugs).

I came back from ThrillerFest feeling lots of things. Exhausted, inspired, determined to face with renewed energy the parts of this industry that I wrestle with (marketing) and the parts of writing that never seem to get easier (first drafts). Encouraged by the people I met and the authors whose interviews I got to listen to. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of people writing these books but also delighted by the variety and appetite for these stories. And itchy, metaphorically (for the reasons outlined below) and literally (as stated above).

There are two parts of big conferences like this: the scheduled events - panels, author interviews, cocktail parties that involve drink tickets, and the non-scheduled events, which are the conversations that happen in the lobby between panels, the impromptu meeting in the restroom of an author you’ve been wanting to talk to, the person you happen to sit beside at a dinner and get talking to about something non-book related, taking a break in Central Park to sit on a rock and eat a falafal, Flaming Saddles Saloon. . .

From left to right, top to bottom: me on my panel / a shot of the whole panel I was on /Lisa Unger interviewing John Grisham / at the SourceBooks party with fellow author, Allison Buccola (right), and audiobook narrator extraordinaire, Megan Tusing (left) / finding my book in the onsite bookstore, run by The Mysterious Bookshop / Oyinkan Braithwaite being interviewed by Hank Phillipe Ryan/ my agent, Victoria Marini (left), fellow writer, Michelle Maryk (right), and yours truly at the PACKED opening night cocktail party.

So, first, the scheduled:

One of the highlights of this conference are the author interviews. International Thriller Writers is able to pull in some major writers and this year I got to listen to interviews with Oyinkan Braithwaite, John Grisham, and James Patterson.

Oyinkan Braithwaite has not had a long career, yet, but she certainly will. Her rise to international literary stardom has been meteoric, but that came with its own stresses. She spoke to Hank Phillipe Ryan about writing her amazing debut, My Sister, the Serial Killer, and the idea of beauty privilege that is at its heart. She talked about how surprised she was when My Sister became an international hit, but how that also made writing the next book a challenge. There’s been a significant gap since the publication of My Sister in 2017, and the arrival of the second. Two years ago, she was many months pregnant and although she had stated that she wanted the second book finished (or at least drafted) by the time the baby was born, she kept having trouble with it. It took her father, who was living with her and her husband at the time, badgering her each day to get her to finally sit down and face her fears and write it. That book, Cursed Daughters, is out later this year.

“Trust your instincts and trust your joy, and your book will find its readers.”

~ Oyinkan Braithwaite

John Grisham talked about growing up in rural Arkansas, his involvement with the Innocence Project, and the inspiration for his first book, A Time to Kill which came from a small-town trial he was working and a moment in the courtroom that was never meant to happen¹. His family moved a lot when he was young and the way his mother always judged a town was by the Baptist church—she’d sit the family in the front row—and by the library. His family didn’t have much money, but each week, he and his siblings would take out piles of books (there wasn’t any television in their house) and this was what fostered his love of stories. Although A Time to Kill is well known now, when it came out, it was not considered a success. He bought 1000 copies and started holding community parties in libraries to sell them. (He also stated that some might still be buried in his backyard.)

James Patterson talked about his work with the University of Florida to increase literacy and the results they’re already seeing in middle school literacy rates, co-writing with Dolly Parton, Bill Clinton, and his new project with Viola Davis, and his friendship with Stephen King. To say that his output is astounding is an understatement². He writes about two books a year, as well as about 2600 pages of outlines for other books. Each book outline is 60-70 pages long.

“My time here is short. What can I do most beautifully?”

~ James Patterson

While all the big names come for the closing weekend of ThrillerFest, during the week, there are hundreds of people attending craft classes and standing in lines to pitch their work to agents. (I wrote about Craft Fest, Pitch Fest, MasterClass, etc in my last post.) It can be very easy to focus on the pecking order when you’re standing in a group of authors: who has the hottest book right now, how many books have each of you published, what kind of reviews have you got, but, it is also really important to remember that this can all change. I have a friend who I met at one of these conferences a few years ago. At that time, she had written two books and was working on her third, but was still trying to find an agent and get traction. She went to the conferences, she met people, she learned what she could, she showed up. This year, she was on her first panel talking about her publishing journey and just today, People did the cover reveal of her book³.

There’s something necessarily humbling about remember that this is a long journey. I think of another woman who I met this past weekend who gave me her business card with the name of her WIP (work-in-progress) on it. I followed her on social media and can see that she made an effort to meet as many authors as she could. In the pictures, she’s got a big smile, but in our brief interaction she said, “This is hard, isn’t it?” Next year, her situation might totally have changed. I hope it has and will look out for her.

Publishing can be—has to be—a long game. Each writer has had ups and downs. It seems like a cliché to say, but I find myself coming back to this repeatedly. Being able to listen to authors who have had long careers helps put the immediate stresses in perspective. I am only a few years into this world of publishing and in that short amount of time, I’ve had my own roller coaster of highs and lows. It is very easy to go on social media or the New York Times and see the wins others are having, and to feel like those are out of reach, but for every one of those public victories, there have been misses, rejections, and days of feeling like it will never happen, like there’s some kind of secret club you have to be a part of. This is true for every author, and it’s something that needs to be talked about if only to remind us to keep going because you don’t know what’s around the corner.

For the unscheduled, I’m just going to leave this video here. It was well worth the late-night walk on sore feet over to Flaming Saddles Saloon on 9th Ave. I think this sums up the joyful energy that can come when you leave the comfort of your writing cave.

Thanks for reading. If you were at ThrillerFest, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. What do you get out of conferences like this? What do you struggle with? What inspires you? I would genuinely love to hear from you.

1. The trial was for a man accused of raping a young girl. The trial had been packed but when it came time for the girl to give her testimony, the judge had cleared the courtroom. Grisham had been able to stay because he was working on the case. After her testimony, the judge called a recess and Grisham had just left when he realized he’d forgotten his briefcase in the courtroom. When he went back in, the accused was still sitting there and in that moment he thought, if I had a gun, I could end this now. That realization and the mechanisms of the law—mechanisms Grisham believed in, being a lawyer—were what lead to his first book being written.

2. According to a quick online search, Wright Book Associates says that in 2024, James Patterson had published 285 books. Some of these he has authored himself and some he has co-written.

3. Michelle Maryk’s book The Found Object Society comes out from Hyperion Books in February 2026. I got a chance to read it, and it’s excellent. High concept and totally original. And knowing Michelle, I can attest to how much she’s worked her ass off for this.