Bouchercon 2009, Day 2

Today had the fewest number of panels I wanted to attend, so we began the day with a brief walking tour of Indianapolis. Large swathes for Monument Circle were closed for renovations, so we moved on down a few blocks to the war memorials.
One thing I adore about places where the weather makes sense (if you live in Texas, you have to agree with me that our weather doesn't make any freakin' sense) is the fall colors. Or rather, the glorious riot of color that happens outside. We had a great time photographing the trees, frollicking with satyrs, misidentifying statues ("Look, it's Lenin!"), uncovering discarded gin bottles, taking artsy photos, stalking squirrels, and eyeing the local Scottish Rite building. We were going to try and get closer to the building, but Al thought he spotted some death-laser turrets on the tower. We settled for some performance art, instead. There was also a brief scare at the public library, with what we thought was a giant scary alien. Actually, it might be a giant scary alien, just one that moves rather slowly.

On the way back we stopped in an alley for a gag photo, where I saw this lovely piece of artwork, which you can click to enlarge if you can't read. Love it.

Around 3 we moseyed on over to the convention to sit in on the How I Met My Protagonist (Julie Kramer, P.J. Parrish, Charlaine Harris, Martyn Waites) and Murder At The Edge Of The Map (Leighton Gage, Christopher G. Moore, Tamar Myers, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Michael Stanley) panels. The first panelist had a talented moderator; it would have been easy for Charlaine Harris to dominate the conversation - not because she's an attention hog, but because she's the most famous - but instead the mod kept things pretty balanced. I may have to finally read one of Harris' novels, and I'd never heard of Martyn Waites, but his books sound interesting.

The Murder panel was fantastically intriguing: the focus was on writing mysteries that take place in far-flung (from the United States) places. The authors covered everything from superstitions in Thailand/Brazil/tribes of headhunters (no, really) to the local traffic of these places and exactly how good are hyenas at disposing of bodies? [Answer: they eat literally everything].

Between panels I did a bit of author-stalking. Liza Cody was wonderfully polite when I stopped her twice in the hallway. The first time was to ask the name of the novel she read from last night (Gimme More) during the Dirty Rotten Liars gameshow. The book proved difficult to find in the dealer's room because I guess it's not widely available in the U.S. yet. We even had to convert the cover price from pounds to dollars - not a difficult task, thanks to the fact that I spend far too much time on ebay. Then I pounced on the poor woman a second time to ask her to autograph the book. She was very nice, and although I considered that authors might not enjoy being asked for autographs outside of signing times, I took heart from the fact that she didn't tell me to go to hell; she does not appear to be the type of person who falters at being blunt :-). So, that was my exciting interaction with an author for the day, and I think I'm going to enjoy Gimme More, but I want to finish Hard Line first.

Dinner was at TaTa Cuban Cafe, where dinner - and especially the mojitos - was delicious.
After dinner it was time for a nap (or, in my case, troubleshooting the cable that connects my camera and laptop) so we could catch the late showing of Surrogates.

Three quick notes on Surrogates, because I just noticed that it's almost 1:30 in the morning. First, it is a brilliant example of successful world-building. Second, it's a bit slowly-paced, but well-written and interesting. Third, Bruce Willis kicks a fair amount of ass and looks great (and I don't even need to add the modifier "for his age"). 4 1/2 stars.

Bouchercon 2009, Days 0 & 1

Wednesday - Day 0

Alek flew out from Nebraska (stopping over in Minnesota), and we flew out from Austin (stopping over in Chicago) to meet up in Indianapolis Wednesday evening. This was the first time we'd seen him since he left for college, although he was much the same as usual ... except for the hair. That was different.


Go Big Red!

Then we took the bus to the hotel, which has quite a nice view.
Thursday - Day 1
After a very early start and a half-hour trek through the SkyWalk and the mall (which, at four floors and several city blocks, is enormous), we finally made it the half-mile to the convention hotel.
The last convention I went to was Ikkicon, which appeared to be mostly populated - and run - by teenagers. Bouchercon, in stark contrast, has been around for four decades and is as far as I can tell incredibly well put-together. We each got a huge tote with mystery magazines, a nametag pouch with zippers and pockets, a professionally-printed informational booklet, and a little mini-schedule that fit in the nametag pouch.
In the morning, we hit The Mean Streets of Indianapolis panel (Tony Perona, Brandt Dodson, Michael Z. Lewin, Brenda Stewart, and Ron Tierney). All of the authors were born in the city and/or have set novels here; the discussion topics covered the ways in which they viewed and portrayed Indy, and of course the question, "What makes people in Indy want to murder each other?" As it turns out, Indianapolis gets a disturbingly high number of murders each year for its size.

That panel was followed by BSI: A Canonical and Conanical Confluence (Michael F. Whelan, Steven T. Doyle, Laurie R. King, Leslie S. Klinger, Roy E. Pilot). I dragged the guys to this one for two reasons: 1) I love Sherlock Holmes and 2) I love Laurie King's work. I got the impression during the panel that King's not a huge fan of Sherlockians, but I wouldn't have discovered her work otherwise: At camp, over a decade ago, a friend heard that I was a Holmes fan, and gave me her copy of the Beekeeper's Apprentice to read. I finished it in about a day, and have been hooked ever since. This was an informational panel, if a little dry - Al's been making jokes about the phrase "if I could correct your footnote..." all afternoon.

After the BSI panel, we walked down the street to have lunch at Noodle & Company, which has excellent pad thai and linguini (two great tastes.... ah nevermind).

Lunch was followed by a trip around the dealer's room to check out the silent auctions (I have no hope of winning my bid, but here's hoping), and then Laurie King was doing a book signing! Here is a shot of me basically being a speechless fool while she signs my worn copy of Beekeeper's Apprentice:
Hopefully she'll be at a future Bouchercon, and maybe I'll string more than four words together. Although we did have a little laugh at the spelling of a name ("it's got a silent Q, right?") on a second book a brought. Except I can't tell you what the name is because it's a Christmas gift for another King fan.Also in the dealer's room, we got a stack of books at the 3-for-2 table:

Hard Line, by Michael Z. Lewin; I liked him so much in the morning panel that I grabbed his book when we saw it

Under Vesuvius, by John Maddox Roberts; historical mysteries are usually a good read

One Dollar Death, by Richard Barth; with a title like that? Of course I bought this.

Then away to the Suddenly I'm Thirsty panel (Con Lehane, Chris Knopf, J.A. Konrath, Jason Pinter, Tom Schreck). For a discussion on alcohol and alcoholism in the mystery/crime novel, this was easily one of the funniest panels of the day. Konrath was a bit ... enthusiastic ... but once he started actually answering the questions posed, he had a lot of good points to make. Tom Schreck, on top of being well-spoken and having an amazing job, is ridiculously good-looking; he was also unfortunately seated the furthest away from us. I enjoyed hearing what Chris Knopf had to say about the use of alcohol - he pointed out that it's often used as a sign of a deeper issue, and as a way to let the reader know that a character has faults/flaws/problems not immediately visible.

Alek was tired, so he went back to the hotel to sleep while dad and I visited our final panel of the day, Dirty Rotten Liars: The Game Show (Liza Cody, Michael Z. Lewin, Peter Lovesey). This was a variation on the "two truths and a lie" game, where each of the authors also read an excerpt from one of their novels. Very entertaining, and if you ever get a chance you should ask Liza Cody to tell her story about the time she made half a concert crowd mellow out.

On the way out we stopped by the Crime Scene room - they had a crime scene all set up with little forms to fill out for a chance to win prizes. While my crime scene drawing left much to be desired artistically, I think I scored well on the "evidence you would want collected" and "conclusions drawn" sections, drawing mainly on my extensive experience watching CSI: NY and NCIS. Dad, for his part, decided to fill the entire conclusions section with a sordid story involving a rabid mystery fan, a critic, J.A. Konrath, and a gun. Which is about par for the course.

Later, from 9 to midnight, Bouchercon threw us all a party at Gameworks involving food, music (I have video proof that we got the DJ to rickroll us), and free games. We beat House of the Dead 4, played three-puck (!) air hockey, and various shooting games. And racing games, where Alek showed us new levels of multitasking.

The way back to the hotel had us traveling through a darkened mall, so there were hijinks.

And, I finally realized what the windows in the SkyWalk remind me of - giant James Bond-style sights, like in the opening to most of the James Bond movies: