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.

Bouchercon

This coming week I’ll be attending Bouchercon, the largest conference in the United States for mystery fans and writers. At last count at least 1500 adults and over 700 kids were registered. I’ve been to a number of writer or fan conferences such as the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference, Pikes Peak Writers Conference, Left Coast Crime Conference and Malice Domestic but this will my first time at Bouchercon. I set a goal of going once I had two published mystery novels and with the release of my second one this April, I signed up. I’ll be moderating a panel titled “Geezer Lit Comes of Age, The Graying of the Genre” with panelists, Chester Campbell, Naomi Hirahara, Mary Saums and Patricia Stoltey, a great group of authors. I’ll also perform a comedy routine at the Author Talent Show, participate in the Continuous Conversation program, auction off a character in a future novel along with Beth Groundwater, Bonnie Ramthun and Patricia Stoltey and sign books at the Book Bazaar. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting a lot of new people.

Author Fest of the Rockies

Yesterday I attended the Author Fest of the Rockies. Irv Sternberg and I conducted a panel on Geezer Lit Humor, and I had a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new people. The luncheon speaker was Alec Greven. For those of you who haven’t heard of Alec, he’s a ten-year-old fifth grader in Colorado who wrote a book titled How to Talk to Girls that became a New Your Times bestseller. He gave a delightful talk about his writing and promotional experiences including being on the Ellen DeGeneres show. During the question and answer session someone in the audience asked Alec if he still gets in trouble. His response, “Everyone gets in trouble.”

Tough Crowd

As an author I give talks at a number of retirement communities. Last week I was invited to an assisted living facility that specializes in memory care. As people arrived I went through the audience and introduced myself. One man shook my hand and said, "I'm Hal." Five minutes later while waiting for others to arrive, he came up to me and shook my hand again and said, "I'm Hal." When everyone had settled, "I said, good evening. I'm Mike Befeler." One man in the audience shouted, "Are we done yet?" Five minutes into my talk a woman jumped up and yelled, "I'm outa here." She took off. Five minutes later she returned and announced, "I'm back." Then a few minutes later she jumped up again and shouted, "I'm outa here." Still, the audience laughed at my jokes, nodded their heads at my description of the upsides and downsides to aging and gave me a good round of applause. A tough crowd but appreciative.

Geezer Cussing

The protagonist in my Geezer-lit Mystery series, Paul Jacobson, cusses. I've had some readers object to his language. I've told people that Paul picked up this bad habit when he was in the military during WWII and that I've tried to remind him to tone it down, but because he has short-term memory loss, he forgets. When asked to read from Living With Your Kids Is Murder, I warn listeners that if they have delicate ears to be prepared for Paul's language. Even with this warning, I had an audience member object to my reading a month ago in another state. Last week at an event in my home state of Colorado, I asked the audience ahead of time if there was anyone who who would prefer that I skip over the cuss words because I had someone object in another state. This time someone piped up and said, "This is Colorado, we don't mind."

Writers Conference

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver. In addition to moderating six panels, I renewed friendships with other authors, had a reunion with my online critique group and attened a number of excellent presentations. Eldon Thompson, science fiction writer and screenwriter, kicked off the Friday night dinner by telling us the six Ps of writing: passion, preparation, practice, patience, prioritization and perserverance. Saturday night's keynote speaker, thriller writer Joseph Finder, summed it all up with this statement: "How cool is it to be paid to make things up." In a session he conducted, he also stated that the most successful writers aren't necessarily the best writers but are the most stubborn ones who learn from rejection--stubborn in not giving up, but learning and adapting from the feedback they receive from agent and editor rejection notices and not taking criticism personally. He suggested including at least one of--reverse, reveal or surprise--in every scene written and writing what you love to read not what you think will sell. Crime writer James Born, concluded on Sunday by saying, "Nothing has been improved by whining." He describes how he writes thirty minutes every day and puts someone wanting something on every page. All and all a great conference with inspiration and good fellowship.

Grandkids

After a tough week dealing with the death of a relative, the next week was a refreshing change as my wife and I took care of our two grandsons in Iowa. There’s nothing like the smiles on grandkids’ faces to raise your spirits. Spending the day chasing after a 2 ½ year old and crawling on the carpet with a six month old, left me tired but contented. Sure, there were the outburst and crying jags, but they recovered quickly. I enjoyed walking through the nearby woods with my grandson while he collected sticks. When we came to a fallen log, he inspected it, nodded knowingly and informed me, “Too big, Grandpa.”