Bouchercon, after the fact

Here’s what I have to say about Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, or the Big Fan Convention, or B’con, to it’s friends, which was held in San Francisco October 13-17. 2010.

Come Fly With Me…
We left mid-morning, had a smooth trip to the airport, sailed through baggage and security with no lines (really!) had a reasonable wait and boarded and flew on a half-full plane with good service, arriving ahead of schedule to beautiful weather. It can be done.

San Francisco can be a difficult city to drive in, and we were glad we had lined up a shuttle instead of a rental. Our room was on the 16th floor, which would be a blessing and a curse (more on the latter part of that, later on).

The blessing was the room had a great view. We had opted to pay a little more for rooms on the Regency Floors with access to the Regency Club, which is the fancy name for the floor with the complimentary coffee and fruit and a nice lounge area.  In this case that was the top of the hotel, the 18th floor, and indeed the view was magnificent. The pictures below are of a slice (limitations of cameras, ya know) of our room view and another slice, this time of the view from the Club lounge.

Diner and Early Registration
We grabbed an adequate bite at a hole-in-the-wall place across the street, then went through early registration at 6:00 or so Wednesday night, allowing us to get our book bags with their free books and miscellaneous goodies. In the room we went through eliminating the duplicates and tossing the unwanted, leaving us with a nice amount of good stuff. (see New Arrivals post HERE). After a walk, we went up stairs where we ran into Bill Crider, his wife and daughter and spent time with them before retreating to the comfort of our own space and it’s own wonderful view.

Breakfast with a Famous Author #1
Breakfast with Bill Crider, prolific mystery author, was a great way to begin the day, and after that it was off to panels, going our separate ways. The first panel I attended was Most Likely to Succeed which was subtitled “our favorite books, a fan/reviewer panel. Ali Karim did a fine job as a moderator, setting it up and asking the leading questions, but not getting in the way of panelists, Chris Aldrich, Sarah Bryne, Janet Rudolph and Andi Schecter. The hour flew by, I scribbling quick – undoubtedly misspelled – notes on my hotel scratch pad,  then having a nice chat with Chris, Janet, George Easter (publisher and editor of Deadly Pleasures mystery review and topical article publication) and others before heading off to the book room to try and find some of the suggested books.

I have more to post, but first I need to do a New Arrivals post, then I’ll return to this. See you on the other side…