Interview with Clay Stafford – S. 12, Ep. 1

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Interview with Clay Stafford – S. 12, Ep. 1

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My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Clay Stafford. Check out the plans for the upcoming Killer Nashville conference, which celebrates its 21st anniversary. So, it can now legally drink whatever it wants. 🙂 Transcripts available for download to all free and paid Patreon members. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Before we get started with the show, I’d like to announce that my third Erica Jensen novel is out now. It came out on June 6th as an ebook. It’s also coming out in print, hopefully soon, probably sometime next week. So be on the lookout for that. And with that, I just hope that you will check the book out and consider giving it a read. Now let me introduce my first guest for season 12. You could say he’s even a regular here. He’s just part of the show now, really. He is in fact a bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and creator of Killer Nashville, a fantastic conference that’s held every year in Nashville. It’s Clay Stafford. Hi, Clay. How are you doing? Clay (01:46): Hi, Debbi. I’m doing great. Yeah, I’ve decided that I’m just going to move in, so I hope you have a spare bedroom or something. Debbi (01:53): Dear me. Clay (01:56): Congrats on the new book. Debbi (01:59): I’m sorry? Clay (02:00): Congratulations on the new book. Debbi (02:01): Oh, well, thank you very much. It took long enough for me to get it finished in between trying to tweak screenplays and do other things in between. Clay (02:09): There’s always something going on, always juggling. Debbi (02:12): It’s weird. I mean, it’s like, okay, I’m going to go back to the book now and where was I? And who was this person? I got to go back and check. And I would find things that would change and it was like, oh my God. You really have to spend some time with a novel to really get it done. Clay (02:34): Yeah, you do. Debbi (02:36): It’s like trying to pitch a TV show, actually. TV shows are so dependent on characters that it’s just really, unless you really, really know your characters and where they’re going, there’s just no point. And you really have to know this stuff like the DNA of the whole world you’re creating in a sense. So it’s really interesting. But enough about me and my thoughts about screenwriting. It’s very good to see you. And I was going to say, how many decades have you been running Killer Nashville? And then I looked and I realized it was two. Clay (03:16): Decades. Yeah, started in 2006. Debbi (03:18): That’s amazing. Clay (03:20): Our 21st year. It’s funny how numbers work like that because 2006, 2026, but yet it’s 21. So I don’t know how math works, but … Debbi (03:31): Oh, wow. Clay (03:32): Yes. Debbi (03:33): Oh, wow. Okay. So 21 years. Ooh. Clay (03:36): Years. Debbi (03:37): Darn. Clay (03:40): I’m like 20 years ago today. Debbi (03:43): Yeah, I guess so since you started on The Zero. Yeah, that’s kind of like counting the centuries there. Interesting. Oh, math. Yeah. So what was it like at the beginning versus now? I mean, how many people signed up for the first one and how are you doing now? Clay (04:05): We had about 70 people that showed up the first year and then we started climbing and really our cap this year is 500. (04:19): And we sell out. We’ve been selling out for the past four years now. And so we will definitely sell out and I think we’re going to sell out. Even somebody I was talking to today said we may sell out at the conference by the end of June and the conference is not even until August. So any of your listeners or viewers out there that want to come to Killer Nashville, better check out the website and maybe move forward because we may be selling out early this year, but we sell out every year. And part of it had to do with the venues because they only cap a certain amount and we had only so many conference rooms. And so the first year we had a linear session where it was like class and then another class and another class. (05:13): Now we have 11 sessions going concurrently. So you got a choice of 11, you have to pick one and that goes on for the full four days of the conference. And so there’s a lot of sessions that are going on. So we’ve expanded since in the past two decades into what we’re offering as well as the increase in attendance. But we could have more people there if we opened it up. But those pesky fire marshals, they only say you can have so many people in there at the same time. And so they know what’s going on. But I think we’re at the Embassy Suites in Cool Springs area and they’re incredibly nice and they’ve refurbished the entire hotel. I mean, gutted the hotel this past year. We were the last event before they were waiting for us to finish and the next day they had the demolition crew in there tearing everything out. (06:14): So everything is completely brand new. They added restaurants and the whole little village section around it. So the place is really great. So we rent out...

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