Bouchercon 2006--the Mad City!

B’con in Madison started early for me this year, with an event at Booked for Murder with Jessica Speart, Clea Simon, and Donna Andrews on Wednesday night.  Booked for Murder is a fantastic store, and I really enjoy visiting there; the audiences are well-read and enthusiastic, which makes it fun for everyone.  Then the three of us went over to a nearby B&N to catch the last of a panel celebrating Agatha Christie, which included two more of my favorite people, Carolyn Hart and Aaron Elkins.  It was a fantastic start to a very crazy week!

You should definitely check out the Femmes Fatales’ blog, where I’ve written some about the panel I was on with Mary, Elaine, Donna, and Toni.  Toni and Mary have also written about their Bouchercon experiences there, too.  We had a bonzer crowd for our panel on “Action for the Amateur Sleuth,” and could have spent longer than an hour talking about how to write violence or sex scenes when your books don’t feature professional detectives and aren’t set “on the mean streets.”  If your books’ style is more traditional (in the style of Agatha Christie), that doesn’t rule out sex or violent scenes, it just alters how chose you to depict.  But not all amateur sleuths are part of traditional mysteries, so the questions writers face are even more complicated.  It all comes down to what serves the story and what best maintains the tone of your books.  For me it was the best kind of panel:  serious discussion about books and writing mixed with a lot of laughs.

The rest of the week was filled with panels and catching up with friends.  I also received my first Edgar…okay, it was an Edgar Allan Poe bobble-head doll, courtesy of fellow Femme and friend Charlaine Harris (my Poe and Toni’s Poe are checking out dessert).  And then there were the parties…at the Bleak House/ Mystery Scene brat-rave, I tried cheese curds (I had them straight-up and they were fabulous; I can’t even imagine what they are like deep-fried.  Mega-Cheetos?) and Pabst, reputedly the new hip beer (it must be a retro thing).   I wish I’d had a chance to go to the Farmer’s Market around the capitol, but I did get out for a couple of walks.  Madison is gorgeous!

Then Donna, Elaine, Jess, and I hit the road for Chicago, doing events and dropping in at every bookstore we could find between Madison and Chicago.  If you remember from the Adventures of the Durango Sluts last year, there are quite a few!  Alas, Big Red the Dodge Durango was replaced by Moby, the great white Ford Explorer, a vehicle easy to find in any parking lot, but in need of tug boats to maneuver.  Fortunately, between Elaine’s skillful driving and Donna’s Tom-Tom GPS (“Tony”—Australian accent, nice bloke), we had no problems.  One of my favorite stops was at Centuries and Sleuths, in Forest Park.  The store is wonderful—a great combination of mysteries and history—and I was delighted to meet Augie and his regular readers. 

Getting home was not so amiable.  Yes, O’Hare bookstores were selling my book (yay!), but my flight was cancelled.  And I was fighting off a cold.  And everyone seemed to be telling me to go to the opposite end of those very long terminals.  It was a little Terry Gilliam, there, for a while.  But eventually I got home, four hours late, to find my luggage had found a direct flight (I had not).   Mr. G is happy to have me back; Kate the cat is still radiating ambivalence about my having left in the first place.