Location, Location, Location: Place as a Character in Your writing with writer, social historian, and true crime expert Joan Renner

Muskoka Authors Association is thrilled to welcome true crime author, Joan Renner, on Wednesday, February 9 via ZOOM CONFERENCING. In her presentation, Renner will provide examples of place as a character, and share her love of 20th century Los Angeles, and why it is the place she writes about. No matter what your genre, place is of paramount importance. You can define place with maps and a compass, but it is also a more ethereal concept. It exists in the heart and mind—which is why you should treat it as you do any other character. Place has a personality all its own. Is your place a major metropolis, or a sleepy burg? Is it glamorous, or homespun? Understanding place gives your other characters context for their behavior, beliefs and motivation.Joan Renner is the author of The First with the latest: Aggie Underwood, the Los Angeles Herald, and the Sordid Crimes of a City. The LA Weekly selected the book as one of the top ten true crimes books about the city. She contributed to the Los Angeles Times bestseller LAPD ’53, written by James Ellroy and Glynn Martin. Her story, The Wages of Sin: The Ballad of Margie and Dale, appears in the true crime anthology, The Best New True Crime Stories: Partners in Crime, edited by Mitzi Szereto. Joan lectures on historic Los Angeles crime and appears on true crime TV shows and podcasts—most recently in City of Angels, City of Death, which is streaming on HULU. She is currently writing a book for University Press of Kentucky about Los Angeles during the Prohibition era.
Zoom Room opens at 6:50 pm; meeting starts at 7:00 pm.
Fee: MAA Members: Free, Non-Members: $20