Bouchercon 2

I had a great time at the Bouchercon conference. The only problem was getting off the ground in Denver. When I arrived at the airport, the flight showed on time until half an hour before scheduled departure. Then it began to slip due to foggy conditions and after moving six times I ended up back at the original boarding area before taking off three hours late. That was the only glitch. From there everything went well. Wednesday night I had dinner with the 4MA people, a wonderful group of avid mystery readers. The conference kicked off on Thursday and I had an opportunity to participate in a continuous conversation with Barbara Fister, Molly MacRae and Libby Fischer Hellmann. Thursday night I participated in the talent show along with others including Parnell Hall, Don Bruns, Peter Lovesey and Liz Zelvin. On Friday I attended the guest of honor interview with Michael Connelly. His advise was to write what you know and what you never want to know and to move your story ahead at least one step every day. Friday night we had a gathering of the Five Star and TeknoBook authors including Beth Groundwater, Patricia Stoltey, Molly MacRae, Julie Hyzy, Mike Black and Deni Dietz. On Saturday our Geezer Lit Comes of Age Panel with Naomi Hirahara, Chester Campbell, Mary Saums and Patricia Stoltey played to a packed room with lots of laughs. On Sunday I participated in the Book Bazaar where each attendee had five tickets to use to get signed copies of authors’ books. It was a madhouse due to not having enough space for everyone to walk through the aisles between the author tables. I picked up books by Brett Battles, Wendelin Van Draanen, Lori Lacefield, Cricket McRae and Julie Hyzy. During the conference I attended two sessions put on by Amazon.com. I learned that they have a beta program for Author Central whereby authors can post their own information to be put up on Amazon’s Author Pages. Another session discussed Kindle which can now hold 1500 books with a battery life of two weeks of continuous reading. Over 370,000 titles are now available on Kindle. I had a chance to meet authors as Michael Connelly, Charlaine Harris, S.J. Rozan, catch up with old friends and make many new ones.