Bouchercon Afterthoughts

Bouchercon isn’t just a mystery fan conference. It’s an experience like no other. It absorbs two large hotels. Programming fills four days. And with 1500 attendees it can give you Disney World flashbacks when you’re lined up for a popular panel or to get a book signed.

Many writers’ Cons are designed for writers to learn and network. At Bouchercon fans outnumber writers 4 to 1. Of course, most of us writers are fans too. I still can’t get used to having Heather Graham, John Gilstrap and Alifair Burke call me by name.  I still get a little tongue-tied when I get to chat with Karen Slaughter, Kathy Reichs and Alexandra Sokoloff. Those are the best moments of the event.

The hour-long panels can overwhelm you, not so much because of the content but because there are so many choices. Seven different panels at any one time and all sound so interesting.  How do you choose between “Just the facts: T

Police Procedural,” “The Private Sector: Professional Investigations” and “Crime Mystery and the Far East?”  (Actually I bypassed them all to see a panel called “Beyond Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald & Spillane” which featured my pal Peter Rozovsky, plus Kevin Burton Smith and Laura Lippman.)

And then there were the awards. The Anthony Award is voted on by the Bouchercon attendees and most of the nominees attend. It’s fun to see who’s book is the most popular in 5 different categories. This year was a special kick as my friend Art Taylor won for best short story.

Of course, some of the best moments of the Con take place in the bar after the panels and ceremonies are over. The hotel bar was way too noisy but they did have some interesting specials. I had something called The Red Death and I have no idea what was in it but it sure did the trick. Blood Spatter was less sweet but I swear it had even more alcohol.

Meanwhile I, and the other 2 principals of Intrigue Publishing, were hunting keynote speakers and guests for next year’s Creatures, Crimes and Creativity Con. Networking galore took place, and I’ll let you know how successful we were in a later blog.

So? What were YOUR most memorable moments at Bouchercon? 

Book Festival - From the Inside

I have a quiet moment here at the Virginia Festival of the Book and thought I'd record some of my impressions. 

One point I want to make is that a book festival is not a conference or convention.  In this case, the entire Charlottesville community gets involved to simply celebrate the act of reading!  It is a warm, pleasant and decidedly NOT business-like atmosphere.  Right now I'm writing in one of the unoccupied panel rooms, thanks to the  kind assistance of Sara and Jenny, just two of the marvellously helpful volunteers who keep this thing running every year.

Last night I attended a nice little soiree at a local bookstore called Read It Again, Sam.  Authors scheduled to be on panels today gathered there for wine, cheese and war-stories.  It was nothing more, or less, than a chance for writers to chat in a peaceful environment. 

Afterward I enjoyed a panel called Friday Night Frights.  Ellen Crosby (a wonderful local author in her own right) moderated a lively discussion with best-sellers Dan Fesperman, John Gilstrap, Victoria Thompson and Lisa Scottoline.  The conversation wandered all over the map and the audience was wowwed.  Not many questions afterward, but this was a more academic and refined group than usually gathers at Cons.  They came to listen and learn from these great writers.

This morning kicked off with a brunch featuring Lisa Scottoline.  She was perhaps the best keynote speaker I have ever heard.  She had us roaring with laughter most of the time detailing her writing life.  Lisa says she loves book clubs because when she goes they spend ten minutes talking about her book and the rest of the time it's the kids, the jobs, the news, chocolate and wine.  The brunch was double fun for me because I was seated beside bookaholic Kathy B. Reel a blogger and reviewer with a big laugh and a sharp eye for good books. 

After watching Lisa Scottoline sign books for an endless line of fans (and BTW, she never sat down, but stood in front of her table and greeted each person with a handshake or hug before signing their book) I attended a great panel of mystery writers who are not so famous... yet. But be watching for Ellie Grant, Tracy Kiely, Nancy Martin and Jan Neuharth because based on what I heard today they will all reach the top!

MY panel isnt' until 4pm, and maybe I'll tell you about that later.  But I so often speak to you from here as a writer, or a publisher, that I wanted to take a chance to speak as a fan.  I am that too, you know.

C3 Conference - polished paneling

When planning the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference it was easy to decide what we wanted the content to be in general.  But the devil’s in the details.  The plan calls for a total of 13 hours of panel with three presentations happening at a time.  That means we need 39 different presentations that will be fun and interesting to readers and to writers of seven genres of fiction. 

Filling two of those slots was easy.  Our local special guests, thriller author John Gilstrap and suspense writer Trice Hickman each offered to give a one-hour presentation.  Both these best sellers have had interesting writing journeys and I think their fans and fellow authors will be jump at the chance to get up close and personal with them and ask their own questions. 

We’re saving one of those hour-long slots for a special event I’ll tell you about later.  That still leaves us with 36 spaces to fill.  Luckily we’ve all been to enough cons to have seen dozens of panels, and we know which ones we liked and which we didn’t.  So the group got together and started throwing out ideas.

In conversation we’ve learned that a lot of people have heard of steampunk but don’t know what it really entails.  So a “What is steampunk” panel seemed a natural.

The team is pushing for me to do a one hour class called “Let’s write a mystery” in which the audience will collaborate, with my guidance, to build a story from scratch.  I love the panel idea, but I’m looking for another mystery author to take it over.  We’d also like to see a panel of new writers talking about how their first book came about and what the experience of being a first-time author is like.

Like the previous idea, a panel discussing how to create a strong protagonist can have writers of different genre.  For mystery and thriller fans we’d like a panel on real-life crime fighting and forensics.  And we plan to mix the genre again for a panel of writers discussing where their ideas come from.

Of course this only scratches the surface – the ideas bubbled up out of control.  The real challenge will fall to romantic suspense author Deliah Lawrence who is our talent coordinator.  As each author registers for the conference she will contact them to learn about their genre and their talents.  Then she will place them on a panel or two with others who will provide the right balance of similarity and contrast. 

Honestly, I can’t wait to see some of these panels, and we haven’t even assigned any authors yet.  And we’re still open to ideas so if there’s a panel YOU’D like to see… or be on… let me know!

In the company of authors

Yes, the current economic climate has triggered lay-offs and restructuring at major publishing houses and the loss of some popular imprints. I’ll chatter on about the state of the industry next week - I promise. This week I want to talk about something positive closer to home. Yesterday I attended a small writer’s event that turned out to be the social equivalent of a perfect storm.

As the current president of the Northern Virginia chapter of the Virginia Writers Club I arranged a sort of holiday gathering to end our first year of existence in style. When I say it was a perfect storm, I mean that all the right elements happened to come together at the same time to create a more enjoyable experience than I could have hoped for.

First, we found ourselves in a perfect venue. Busboys and Poets is a restaurant/bar that moonlights as a bookstore. I know of it because it is across the street from a library. Authors who speak at the library often go across the street afterward to do their book signing. I was just looking for a writer-friendly place but it also turned out to be a warm, welcoming atmosphere with an intimate back room perfect for our meeting. They prepared sweet snacks and kept the coffee/tea/juice flowing.

Then there was the turnout. Twenty-one local writers and aspiring writers joined us – just about a perfect number – plus the speaker and me. Enough for lively discussion, but not so many that people got lost in the crowd.

Finally, we had a great speaker. John Gilstrap’s writing career includes five award-winning published thrillers, a successful nonfiction book and several screenplays. That gives him the kind of credibility that makes new authors sit up and listen. It also means he has the varied experience to talk about a number of different sides of the writing business. But most importantly, John has the kind of positive and upbeat attitude that is encouraging to new writers, even while he’s delivering the hard realities of the publishing business.

And he’s such cool guy! How gracious is John Gilstrap? Well, if he’s reading this now I guarantee you he’s blushing. He was gracious enough to stand for more than an hour, answering questions about getting published, writing craft, process and business. He’d have gone on but I called a halt to give him a break.

The bottom line of all this for me is that despite what is happening in the publishing industry, there are still great people in the business, and great people who are fighting to get into it to tell their stories. I may never be on anyone’s bestseller list, but living a life in the company of authors carries its own sweet reward.