By Mark Alpert

My favorite part of ThrillerFest is sharing stories with other writers. Making novels is an inherently solitary activity; although I get feedback from my agent and editor and the handful of people in my writing group, it’s nothing like the team effort of putting out a newspaper or magazine. When I edited feature stories every month for Scientific American I was constantly interacting with art directors, copyeditors, fact-checkers and freelancers. It wasn’t always peaceful — I have a bad habit of getting too emotional over stupid things — but every afternoon at three we stopped butting heads and went to a café on 49^thstreet for our coffee break. I miss the place, I really do. Life is full of trade-offs: I love having the time to work on my thrillers, but I miss the camaraderie of journalism.

Now I have to get some sleep so I can do it all again tomorrow. As Jackie Gleason used to say, how sweet it is!